The standard accepted “ending date” for the Civil War is April 9, 1865, the day the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

It didn’t end there, of course. The immediate postwar period had the chaos that follows all such massive conflict and major change; such periods are imbued with even more of the “we’re making this up as we go along” quality as all of history does. Decisions made in such times can set the course of all time to come.

I’m going to bet you’ve never heard of this very early, if not indeed the first, Memorial Day service, because I hadn’t and I follow such things fairly closely. The excellent Kevin Levin, recounts the scene as told by David Blight, perhaps the premier scholar of the early Reconstruction period working today:

After Charleston, South Carolina was evacuated in February 1865 near the end of the Civil War, most of the people remaining among the ruins of the city were thousands of blacks. During the final eight months of the war, Charleston had been bombarded by Union batteries and gunboats, and much of its magnificent architecture lay in ruin. Also during the final months of war the Confederates had converted the Planters’ Race Course (a horse track) into a prison in which some 257 Union soldiers had died and were thrown into a mass grave behind the grandstand.

In April, more than twenty black carpenters and laborers went to the gravesite, reinterred the bodies in proper graves, built a tall fence around the cemetery enclosure one hundred yards long, and built an archway over an entrance. On the archway they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.” And with great organization, on May 1, 1865, the black folk of Charleston, in cooperation with white missionaries, teachers, and Union troops, conducted an extraordinary parade of approximately ten thousand people.  Read more 

Juan Cole today:

Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don’t hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on. It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper’s bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn’t so bad). So nothing that John McCain saw in Baghdad on Sunday meant a damn thing. Not a goddamn thing.

That’s him just warming up. There’s more, before and after, including praise for good journalists and even some kind words for Gen. Petraeus.  Read more 

History is such a hoot. From an interesting blog called Civil War Power Tour (don’t ask; just go read Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz to understand the name) we find that the phenomena of Chest-Beating War Fans who do their part for the Glorious Cause on that vital battlefield called the Home Front rather than waste their tremendous talents on the battlefield dates back to a much earlier time. This is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he called the Yellow Elephant The Sweet Little Man:

Dedicated to the Stay-at-Home Rangers.

Now while our soldiers are fighting our battles,
Each at his post to do all that he can,
Down among Rebels and contraband chattels,
What are you doing, my sweet little man?

All the brave boys under canvas are sleeping;
All of them pressing to march with the van,
Far from the home where their sweethearts are weeping;
What are you waiting for, sweet little man?

You with the terrible warlike moustaches,
Fit for a colonel or chief of a clan,
You with the waist made for sword-belts and sashes,
Where are your shoulder-straps, sweet little man?  Read more 

Exhibit One: Maliki stoned by mob in Baghdad.

Exhibit Two: Government ministers avoiding showing up for work for fear of being shot or kidnapped.

There will be Exhibits three, four, five…and lots more in the coming days. Not Friedmans, not McCains, but days.

Recently, in the comments of this post reader and blogger Mark from Ireland made the suggestion that the term “civil war” isn’t the right one to describe what’s happening in Iraq right now. In response, I offer this devastating article by Nir Rosen. It is probably one of the top five articles I’ve read about Iraq since the war started, and I cannot encourage you enough to read it. And reread it. It’s long, detailed, and has the context and background so missing in so much “reporting” about Iraq. I will be blogging more on this piece and the questions raised here, but that will have to wait until I’m back in DC. I’ll say this: I’m glad my nephew is too young to read, because I don’t know what I’d tell him about what he would find in this article.  Read more 

US casualties rising to near record levels:

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Spin! Spin my pretties!

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  Read more 

I love it when people quote history, to make an entirely stupid point, and get the history entirely wrong, and then when asked about it by reporters, corrent correct themselves to make their point even wronger. Case in point: Saxby Chambliss, R-CSA

According to Roll Call’s source, [At a closed door meeting of the Armed Services Committee] Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn’t correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, “If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”  Read more 

So Congress just passed another $95 billion appropriation for Iraq. What have we spent now, as we pass the (no doubt to be largely ignored) milestone of 2500 dead soldiers? And how little a dab of that $95 billion would have taken to hire a few more folks to mow grass and do maintenance at parks that honor victims of previous wars? Per the NPS Morning Report:

On the evening of Saturday, June 10th, after working in the park all day, Don Turner, a maintenance employee at Manassas National Battlefield Park, died from a massive heart attack. As the maintenance staff in the park dwindled because of tightening budgets, Don worked harder to make sure that the park always put forward its best appearance for its visitors. He was so dedicated that when we had to bring our employees in from the field during heat advisories, we had to go out and find him and get him off his tractor.

Any of you in northern Virginia have any idea how much 5000 acres of open, pristine landscape would go for in that market if it were put on the auction block to developers?  Read more