What happens when an idealist goes to war? How did the bloodiest battle in all of American history go down? And how did those who witnessed the Civil War firsthand write about a war that continues to send shock waves through American culture 150 years later?
A new reading discussion series examines those questions, as "Let's Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War" begins Wednesday at the Pleasant Valley Library in Washington Terrace. The free six-session series, led by Weber State University history professors Richard Sadler and Branden Little, focuses on three books that will be readily available to the public.
The books include the award-winning "March" by Geraldine Brooks, "Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam" by Pulitzer-winning author James McPherson, and "America's War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on Their 150th Anniversaries," compiled and edited by Edward Ayers.
Sadler, the former dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at WSU, said the choice of the books -- one a work of fiction, one a historical look at a deadly battle and one a collection of speeches, memoirs, diaries, novels, short stories, etc. -- provides a good mix for those interested in gaining a better understanding of the Civil War.
"We're not going to just have lectures on the war," Sadler said. "We're going to discuss the readings and their impact and what they really meant in relationship to this war that we fought 150 years ago."
Mr. March goes to war
The series begins with a look at "March," which puts an adult spin on "Little Women," arguably the most famous Civil War-era young-adult novel. "March" was written in 2005 by Brooks, an Australian journalist turned novelist who was the featured speaker last fall at the Ogden School Foundation's annual author event.
"Her book is such a superb book to draw people into the Civil War because it's a takeoff from Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women'," Sadler said. "Her book really tells the story in novel form of the father of the little women, the man named March."
In an interview with the Standard-Examiner last fall, Brooks described Mr. March, the father who went off to war in "Little Women," as "an example of an idealist at war."
"The void of him is what is important in 'Little Women' because it's in his absence that the girls have more agency and more necessity and freedom to find themselves in the world," Brooks said.
But Brooks found herself wondering what happened to Mr. March. As it was originally published, "Little Women" ends with a happy homecoming as an injured Mr. March returns to his beloved family.
"He goes around the room and tells all the girls how they have changed in the year he has been away, but how the year of war has changed him, nothing is said," Brooks said. "So I had that wonderful void in which I had to do my exploration of what kind of war an idealist like Mr. March might have had for himself out there."
What he found "out there" smashes against his idealism as the atrocities of war and ugly barbarities of slavery come into harsh focus. Brooks earned high marks -- including the Pulitzer Prize -- for her insights and compelling prose.
"It is a most interesting novel to read," Sadler said. "It brings about a powerful look at slavery and a look at this man who is an avowed abolitionist, and how he runs up against both slaves, Confederates and Union people and their different attitudes about slavery."
A bloody battle
This September marks the 150th anniversary of a battle in Maryland that was the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 6,000 soldiers killed -- four times the number lost on D-Day, and twice the number killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The reading series examines how this battle affected the war in "Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam" (Oxford University Press, 2002) by Civil War historian McPherson, who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for another Civil War book, "Battle Cry of Freedom."
The war had been raging for nearly a year and a half, Sadler said, when both sides decided to take off the gloves, and hell on Earth was unleashed.
"They decided: We can't go in and just bloody a few people, we've really got to go after them," he said. "So both sides threw huge numbers of people into each other."
With the single-shot rifle being the weapon of choice, Sadler said the bodies quickly piled up as the grim day unfolded.
"The Union is a little cautious, but throws huge numbers of men at the Confederacy, so they are both just hammering each other in the battle," Sadler said.
At the end of the day, Sadler said, more than 23,000 soldiers were dead, missing or injured. McPherson's account includes the events that led up to the battle and its aftermath. The battle was a turning point in the war in that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's invasion into the North ultimately failed.
"Just earlier in the month, Lee has decided after defeating the Union in Virginia on two occasions that he is going to invade the North, take the battle to the North and perhaps bring the Civil War to an end," Sadler said. "But Lee is defeated in the battle of Antietam and is forced to go back to Virginia, so the North was really saved on this occasion."
The Union victory also paved the way for President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation a few months later, in January of 1863, which immediately freed tens of thousands of slaves and ultimately led to the abolishment of slavery.
A call to arms
Three months after Lincoln's proclamation, a man who had been born a slave in Maryland gave a speech in Rochester, N.Y., titled "Men of Color, To Arms!"
"By every consideration which binds you to your enslaved fellow countrymen, and the peace and welfare of your country; by every aspiration which you cherish for the freedom and equality of yourselves and your children; by all the ties of blood and identity which make us one with the brave black men now fighting our battles in Louisiana and in South Carolina, I urge you to fly to arms, and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave," Frederick Douglass said in the speech.
Douglass -- who had escaped slavery and went on to become one of the greatest orators, social reformers and abolitionists of his day -- was urging his African-American counterparts to join what was increasingly becoming a war to make real what Lincoln's proclamation only promised -- absolute freedom.
Douglass' impassioned speech is in the reading series' third book, "America's War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on Their 150th Anniversaries." The book also includes writings by Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau and Ulysses S. Grant, among others.
Sadler hopes their voices, as well as the other books in the series, will help participants realize how the Civil War is still influencing their lives today.
The road to freedom hasn't been without it share of nasty bumps, including the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1900s and America's continuing struggle with racism. Movies such as "Birth of a Nation" glorified the rise of the Klan, Sadler said, which spread across the country and even took over some states such as Indiana. Utah didn't escape the ugliness; crosses were burned in Ogden, Salt Lake, Magna and Price, where a black man was lynched in the 1920s.
"Along the way, this promise to black people that we are going to free you and make you equal -- which is a promise that is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 -- is a gradual kind of thing coming," Sadler said. "It took at least a hundred years for that to come in actuality with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It's probably appropriate now that as we look back at the Civil War 150 years ago, we have our first African-American president."
"It's taken 150 years for this Civil War promise to come about," Sadler added. "I hope we realize that we are living history."
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