But I hope there are enough specifics, for only by means of them is it possible to take a stab at suggesting what it was like to serve in, and live through, the struggle.
Librarian-scholar Richard H. Shryock aptly stated the case for detail fifty years ago: "Political and military traditions, plus the apparent necessity for abstraction, rob historical writings of that realism which alone can convey a sense of the suffering involved in a great war. An historian's description of the battle of Gettysburg is likely to tell of what occurred to Lee's right wing, or to Longstreet's corps, but rarely of what happened to [the bodies of] plain John Jones and the thousands like him. ... The historians might, however, picture reality and convey a sense of the costs involved if, in describing campaigns, they gave less space to tactics in the field and more to ... the camps and hospitals."
Amen. That is the reason Charles encounters the first land mines on the peninsula, and Cooper experiments with "torpedoes" (confusingly, that term at the time meant naval mines). That is one reason Cooper descends in Hunley, whose full-size replica stands outside the entrance of the Museum of the City of Charleston today. That is why there is less here about generals than about soldiers of lower rank tending their horses, losing company elections, getting ill, feeling homesick, reading tracts and pornography, scrounging food, sewing clothes, scratching lice.
One problem with some of the details of the war is their tendency to strain credulity because we gaze at them through a modern lens flawed by the circumstances and skepticism of our own time. Thus it may be hard to accept the virtual absence of presidential security even in the Executive Mansion, or the fact that Lincoln got his first solid news of the Fredericksburg defeat from an angry field correspondent frustrated by military censors, or that the unsteady General Burnside, in connection with the same engagement, consulted his personal chef for strategic advice. The reader must take particulars like these on faith; they are not invented, no matter how odd they may seem.
Some of the details that are fictional have a sound and reasoned base in possibility. Powell's scheme, for one — no more unlikely than the real plan to establish a "third nation" by joining the Upper South — the so-called border states — with the Middle West. This idea was afloat in Richmond during the winter of '62-'63. A Pacific Confederacy, also mentioned in the novel, was widely rumored early in the war.
The assassination plot against Davis is an invention, but it, too, seems logical in view of two givens. One, if Lincoln was constantly considered an assassin's target, why not his Confederate counterpart? Especially since — two — Davis was just as passionately hated, most notably by some from his own cotton South. I sometimes wonder if the few present-day Southerners who ride around in pickups adorned with crass license plates declaring Hell no I ain't fergittin'! have ever heard of Messrs. Brown and Vance — the war governors of Georgia and North Carolina respectively — surely two of the most venomous enemies a Chief Executive ever had. Furiously waving the banner of states' rights, they damned and defied the central government, withheld men, uniforms, and shoes the army desperately needed, and generally did as much, or more, damage as many a Union field commander.
Neither governor is here accused of sinister plotting. But a man such as Powell, whose remedy for grievance is bullets, is not that far removed from those like Brown and Vance who continually screamed "dictator" and "despot" at Jefferson Davis.
The second ingredient I needed, also mentioned in the Afterword of North and South, was accuracy.
I don't mean infallibility. In a novel this long and complex, it's impossible to be perfect. But it's absolutely necessary to try. I had a sharp lesson on the point during the early stages of work.
Always a fan of Errol Flynn films, I taped and watched one I hadn't seen for years — Santa Fe Trail. It was released by Warner Brothers in 1940 and is still shown frequently on television. It includes the following men as members of the West Point class of 1854. Jeb Stuart, played by Flynn — that, at least, is correct. There is also Longstreet (class of '42), Pickett ('46), Hood ('53), and Stuart's best pal, George Custer ('61). Young Custer is portrayed by young Ronald Reagan.
During the course of the muddled plot — Flynn devotees consider it one of his lesser efforts for Warner's — we meet a silver-haired actor cast as a familiar character type, the Distinguished Businessman. This Distinguished Businessman possesses a Kansas railroad and a daughter whom Jeb marries. In other words, Jeb doesn't come anywhere close to doing what he really did: wed the daughter of Philip St. George Cooke, the career officer who became his sworn foe in the war and the man he attempted to humiliate as part of his ride around McClellan.
Stuart's endlessly grinning sidekick Custer is forced to settle for an insipid blond, the daughter of Jeff Davis. Davis is made up to look like a bargain-basement Lincoln; the girl resembles a chorine from a Betty Grable musical.
Even worse, it's a curiously spineless film when dealing with the slave question. The cavalrymen at one point fight John Brown in "bloody" — sic — Kansas, but Stuart and Custer mutually declare that "others" must "decide" about slavery. They just "carry out orders" and presumably have no opinions on national issues.
Well, not many, anyway. At one point Custer makes a mild statement on behalf of the abolitionist position. He is at once reprimanded. The script then requires Reagan to grin sheepishly and say, "Sorry."
The film is relevant to the matter of accuracy in this way. Since people, not machines, write novels — and screenplays — the re-creation of any chunk of the past will more than likely result in at least a few mistakes. (I made a dandy in connection with coinage in the first book of this trilogy.) But unintentional errors are not quite the same as gross revisions of the record, perpetrated for heaven knows what reason, and obviously tolerated in many novels, but most notoriously in motion pictures. The technique is what I call "History a la Polo Lounge." I hope readers have found none of it here.
In fairness, it must be said that film producers are not the only individuals guilty of doctoring the past. As a people, we all tend to be mythmakers as the generations pass. Thus our icon version of Lincoln is forever the all-knowing, eternally calm idealist and humanitarian, rather than the doubt-ridden, depressive, and widely hated political pragmatist who was lifted to greatness by necessity and his own conscience. Our Lee is the eternally benign hero seated on Traveller, not a soldier whose ability was suspect, whose decisions were often questioned, and who received the scorn of many fellow Confederates through nicknames such as "Granny" and "Retreating" Lee.
We mythologize not only individuals but also the war itself. Perhaps the Polo Lounge effect, the remove of most serious historians from the personal elements — there are splendid exceptions, such as the late Bell I. Wiley — and our own quite natural human tendency to prefer the glamorous to the grimy, have combined to put a patina on the war. To render it romantic. It was — for about ninety days. After that came horror. And the horror grew.
Yet the dewy visions persist.
Although Gone With the Wind is a film deserving of all the admiration and honor it has received, the reason is not its faithful re-creation of history; the picture is a romance. Sanitized battles occur — briefly — in montages, or on title cards. Atlanta burning is a grand action spectacle, but says little about personal tragedy. Slavery is never an issue; the house blacks at Tara are happy, cute, and apparently content. And despite a few hospital scenes, genuine suffering is never depicted, except in the famous depot shot with the camera crane rising and rising to reveal, gradually and with devastating power, more and more and more maimed men.