At Cliopatria this weekend, Ralph Luker discussed the New York Times Magazine’s The First Occupation, a look at lessons to be drawn from Reconstruction. A good read.
The photograph accompanying the piece blew me away (here’s the same scene, though not the exact same photo), and put the conversation we had earlier about the Confederate flag into a new perspective. That’s an American city (Charleston, 1865). 1865 really wasn't that long ago.
The article made an interesting point about damage from war getting conflated with damage from an occupation, but I don't think it went quite far enough. A lot of war damage (burning of Richmond, sacking of much of Texas) was done by Confederate troops in retreat or by disbanded soldiers in the days of chaos preceding Federal occupation. I'd be interested to know the details on the ruins of Charleston -- how much was actually due to bombardment?
These sorts of losses tend to get blamed on the enemy after the war's over. For example, all references to the burning of the Hanover County VA Courthouse I can find are in the passive voice, noting that its records "were burned in April 1865, at the end of the Civil War."
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at May 31, 2005 08:12 AMGood point, Ben, especially when and if retreating armies follow a "scorched earth" policy in order to deny food and resources to the advancing enemy.
Posted by: Ralph Luker at May 31, 2005 11:19 PMApparently some very destructive fires were initiated during or just after the evacuation of Charleston by Confederate troops. However, I'm not sure the specific source of the destruction is important. The destruction becomes part of the lore, the story of the carnage the North visited upon the South. Like the idea that Germany was stabbed in the back or that we lost Vietnam because of Jane Fonda, the myth has more power than the truth.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at June 1, 2005 07:46 AM