THE CIVIL WAR AND HONORING THE WAR DEAD

FROM:  VETERANS AFFAIRS
PHOTO: AFTERMATH AT GETTYSBURG
The Civil War’s Legacy of Honoring War Dead
April 18, 2012 by Alex Horton
We’ve all been taught the consequences of the U.S. Civil War since childhood. How it led to the emancipation of slaves, solidified state and federal rights, and further made the case for women’s suffrage. But the unprecedented carnage of the war also transformed the attitude of how the nation honors its military dead; a tradition now indelible to the American spirit.

That was the premise behind a talk given by Harvard University President Dr. Drew Faust at VA central office in Washington today. Through her research, Dr. Faust found that the Civil War fundamentally changed the way our country handled death on the battlefield. Both the Union and Confederacy were ill equipped to bury fallen troops in a dignified manner, and death notifications sent to families were informal and happenstance, if they happened at all. Unmarked and hasty graves littered fields and farms near battlefields where hundreds of thousands of men struggled and died.

Humanitarian ideas and the dignity of the human spirit were transformed in the crucible of war, and an emerging sense of responsibility for our war dead led to drastic shift in government obligations.

Edmund Whitman, an Army officer and a quartermaster during the war, led the effort. Whitman inspected cemeteries and battlefields across the south from 1865-1869, examined informal records, and conducted interviews to find out locations of fallen troops. He oversaw the reinterment of over 100,000 Union soldiers. About 300,000 were reburied in 74 national cemeteries, which now fall under the purview of the National Park Service.
As Dr. Faust noted, it was Whitman’s mission to put human faces and human cost to the war, and to recognize the sacrifices of so many of our own. His work helped to establish the notion that those who fell in battle are to be honored, and it’s our duty as citizens to remember and cherish that.

It’s difficult to fathom the damage of the war. An estimated 600,000 soldiers from both sides were killed; if the war were fought today with the same casualty rate, six million would lay dead. But it’s also hard to imagine a time when the care of our slain troops was an afterthought—an annoyance to both troops in the field and folks in the halls of government. It’s now one of VA’s most sacred obligations, but it took a war of staggering magnitude for our nation to realize it had a duty to honor the dead as much as they honored us.

CIVIL WAR SPEAKER INITIATES PENTAGON SPEAKER SERIES

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE

Civil War Historian Kicks Off Pentagon Speaker Series

By John Valceanu

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2012 - Lessons of U.S. Civil War history were brought to life in the Pentagon yesterday during the first of a series of historical presentations to be delivered to interested audiences in the U.S. military's headquarters.

Ethan Rafuse, professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College on Fort Leavenworth, Kan., delivered a lecture in the Pentagon auditorium in which he focused on the first months of the Civil War. Rafuse is a recognized expert on the Civil War who has authored several books on various aspects of the conflict. The lecture was open to anyone in the Pentagon who wished to attend, and it was webcast live on the Pentagon Channel.

During his talk, Rafuse explored the ideas that drove strategy and tactics on both sides of the war. He showed how the war was part of a larger "sectional conflict," and he explained that it was interpreted by leaders on both sides as a "people's contest." He also discussed the "tripolarity of the struggle," in which he showed how combatants and supporters on both sides strove to sway unaligned populace to their cause.

Rafuse showed that U.S. Army Capt. Nathaniel Lyon's conventional victory over the pro-Confederate forces of the Missouri State Militia in May 1861 resulted in Missouri's alignment with Union forces. The professor explained how this then helped drive President Abraham Lincoln's advisors to push the idea of achieving a political result by scoring a quick conventional military victory over the Confederates.

The thought was that if the Union could defeat Confederate forces in a big battle, the South would lose the will to fight on, and the war could be concluded quickly. Unfortunately, the Union was unable to achieve that victory during First Manassas in July 1861, and the result was that war then raged and ravaged the country for another four years.

During his presentation, Rafuse explained that the study of history is critical for military personnel and defense strategists, and he quoted a variety of leaders who hold or held this view. These included Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper; the late Army Gen. George S. Patton Jr., one of the great leaders of World War II; the late President Harry S. Truman, commander in chief at the end of World War II and for the Korean War; and Napoleon Bonaparte, a professional soldier who became leader of a nation.

Rafuse used a complicated presentation slide from the Afghanistan conflict to illustrate the complexities of war, and he drew attention to the similarities between the multidimensional, layered aspect of the current conflict and that of the civil war. Nevertheless, he cautioned against drawing simplistic analogies from history and applying them to current situations.

History doesn't repeat itself, "but there are echoes that can inform thinking about situations," Rafuse said. He also noted that those looking to learn from history have the challenge of "seeing the parallels that inform our thinking while also being sensitive to differences that also shape our thoughts."

In an interview with the Pentagon Channel conducted after the lecture, Rafuse said the value of history is "to broaden people's thinking – thinking about context, the breadth of events, the depth of events, the larger context in which they take place to develop critical thinking skills and the framework for dealing with problems in the future."

The speaker series is sponsored by a collaborative effort between the history offices of the secretary of defense, the Joint Staff and the military services.

"We plan to offer a presentation each month and cover a wide range of subjects related to military history," said Jon Hoffman, deputy chief historian in Office of the Secretary of Defense, in a blog post introducing the series.

"The concept for the series is simple—identify interesting and relevant historical topics and find a well-qualified and well-spoken historian to address them in a venue available to all personnel in the Pentagon (and hopefully well beyond)," Hoffman said in the blog.

"The presentations will serve as professional military education (in official lingo), promote historical awareness among those charged with developing and influencing national defense policy and strategy, and also honor those who have served before us in defending the nation," he said.