Alan T. Nolan (1923–2008)

When the mighty fall, where do they land?

In the case of Robert E. Lee, his reputation, at least, landed in a very good place. For a long time after the American Civil War, he was the man Southerners most respected -- the man who held off the Yankees for four years and then helped make things better after the war.

Alan T. Nolan begs to differ. He sets out to examine the aspects of Lee's reputation and compare them to the actual truth. This is a good and useful thing to do -- it's something that all of society is attempting to do today, with less than perfect luck, as we argue about, e.g., Confederate monuments. But I think Nolan goes too far at times.

Much of this work is very good. For example, Chapter 2, "Lee and the Peculiar Institution," examines Lee's feelings about slavery. The record is curiously mixed. For example, Lee's father-in-law wanted his slaves freed when he died, making it Lee's problem to free them. Lee did it, but rather slowly. And Lee clearly was not particularly fond of the idea of a mixed-race society. Lee was not the worst racist among Southerners -- not by millions of them! -- but he was certainly not one who believed in Black equality. Nolan demonstrates this clearly and convincingly.

But his other arguments bother me. When he discusses Lee and secession, he finds a number of somewhat contradictory statements in Lee's record -- and treats this as some sort of perfidy. Certainly Lee's statements, expressed over the course of years and to different audiences, contradict each other in part. I don't think this justifies Nolan's conclusions. It should be remembered that Lee genuinely did not want the Union to break up. Thus his early statements on secession were mostly opposed to it. But once it happened, and Lee went south, he had to adjust to his new role. What person would not slowly change his attitudes to match his situation? And who does not adjust the way he says things to match the feelings of his readers? One may argue that Lee's change of attitude was unfortunate, but it was certainly human.

Nolan also points out that, particular after Gettysburg, Lee expressed the belief that the Confederacy could not win the war by military means -- and from this suggests that Lee should have surrendered his army to save unnecessary bloodshed. Ignore the fact that, if Lee had tried, his officers would have overruled him and had him shot -- Lee was not in position to just end the war! But, as I say, ignore that. The fact that the Confederacy could not win by military means did not mean that it could not win. It just needed other means. And to surrender when not compelled to is, to put it mildly, not in accord with military ethics. (Which is why Lee would have been shot.) This is simply an unfair complaint.

Nolan also argues that Lee was too aggressive -- too willing to go on the offensive even though he fully knew that the South's grand strategy was ultimately defensive. This is flatly unfair. If the Confederates had simply been content to passively defend, they would have quickly lost the war, because the North could simply have bypassed their armies, taken over the rest of the South, and starved the armies to death. Sometimes, the Southern armies needed to come out and fight. Was Lee sometimes too aggressive? Nolan makes a good case for excessive aggression at Antietam, but otherwise, I think his argument fails. Lee made mistakes -- more than we generally acknowledge -- but mistakes aren't the same as violating his purpose in fighting. Lee's mistakes were far fewer than other Confederate officers such as Braxton Bragg and Earl van Dorn. The officer who hardly ever made mistakes was Joseph E. Johnston, and it didn't win the war and it caused Jefferson Davis to fire him during the Atlanta campaign!

This is a genuinely good corrective to the myth of Lee -- he was human, he was inconsistent, he made mistakes, and he certainly wasn't a believer in Black rights. But most of the conclusions really strike me as going too far. Nolan's view seems to be that, since Lee was not a mythic hero, he must have been a complete schnook. Having met real people in my life, I believe that there is an intermediate position: That Lee was a human being. He had flaws, but on the whole he probably had fewer of them than most men of the time. He had just been brought up in a culture whose attitudes we now -- rightly -- reject. If that is a recipe for calling a man evil, there wouldn't be much good left in the world! The Confederacy was founded to preserve slavery, and that was pure evil. It certainly doesn't deserve commemoration. I would still consider Lee both a more competent and a better man than most southern leaders. I readily grant that that isn't saying all that much.… (plus d'informations)

The Iron Brigade, the legendary Black Hats, was one of the most famous fighting unit in the Union Army. Its major claim to popular fame arises from its “last stand” on July 1st, 1863, the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. There, rushing to the rescue of John Buford’s cavalry who were holding off Heth’s Division of the confederate Army, the Iron Brigade fought to preserve McPherson’s Woods and then later Seminary ridge until the major part of the Union Army could concentrate at Getysburg. They were successful—but at enormous cost. The Brigade suffered the most losses of the Union Army in that battle; the 24th Michigan had the highest losses of any regiment in that battle—an unimaginable 80%. Overall, the Iron Brigade lost nearly 2/3 of its men in that battle.

But the Brigade was already famous long before Gettysburg. Nolan describes in detail the history of the Brigade, from its beginnings in the 2nd Wisconsin volunteers in May, 1861, answering Lincoln’s calls for volunteers to preserve the Union; the Brigade consisted entirely made of Western regiments: the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin volunteers, the 19th Indiana, and last but not least, the 24th Michigan. They were justifiably proud of their reputation and their position: "the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Corps" of teh Union Army. Shattered at Gettysburg, the Brigade lost its identity with the incorporation of Eastern conscript regiments in late July, 1863; subsequently, after more losses, the regiments were consolidated and the Brigade broken up in order to incorporate the stronger regiments into other brigades.

One of the advantages of a unit history such as this one is that the author can give in much more details than any general history an account of the engagements fought by the unit. Nolan, although a lawyer by profession rather than a historian, does an outstanding job in this regard. We learn about the battle at the Brawner Farm, the prelude to 2nd Bull run, where the Iron Brigade got its real baptism of fire under its new commander, John Gibbon. We learn how the Iron Brigade got its name and why—at Turner’s Gap, prior to the horrors of Antietam. And then Gettysburg, since the Iron Brigade did not see significant action at Fredricksburg.

Nolan, better than some professional historians, does a skillful job of weaving excerpts from letters and diaries of both officers and soldiers of the different regiments into the main narrative; these do not hang up the narrative thread the way such excerpts do, say, in Harry Pfanz’s otherwise excellent volumes on Gettysburg. Because Nolan is a very good if not outstanding writer, he does not get in the way of the material itself; the only problem I found is that by the nature of the history—that of a unit—and due to the casualties, there is sometimes a confusing array of names that wind up in the narrative, as the Brigade, like others in the Union Army, sought to fill gaps caused by battle.

The maps serve, although it is annoying to have to flip back and forth in the book since text in the last 2/3rds of the book may be dependent on a map on p. 48. The diagrams of the actual fighting are excellent; the movements of the regiments are very clear. Thus, together the maps and diagrams are more than adequate, unusual for a Civil War history where the constant complaint is a lack of such; the organization could have been somewhat better.

The Appendices list the regiments, their officers, and the counties in the three states from which the members of the iron Brigade came. The notes are well done.

All in all, this is an excellent book, quite professionally done, and written in such a way as to be accessible to a reader who has, say, read Shelby Foote’s narrative general history of the Civil War and who wants a more detailed look at a legendary regiment that played a critical part in the high drama of Gettysburg.

Highly recommended.… (plus d'informations)