Every war seems to spit out some politician, some general, willing to foolishly stick his foot in his own mouth, promising that the war will be swiftly prosecuted, that the bloody struggle will be quickly won with the enemy righteously routed. The American Civil War was no exception and, just as on all previous occasions, the prognosticator was proven to be an idiot. And yet the claim is made because the claimer is convinced of the rightness of their cause, that god and the quality of their men will see justice done. But then is this not just blindness to the universal truths of war? That they are all bloody, that they are all deadly, and that pride fuels their burn long after the ashes should have coldly settled to earth.
The second volume of Mr. Foote's lyrical epic of the American Civil War is an illustration of this ugly truth. It describes in painful detail all the bloody stalemates, all the appeals for more troops, all the recriminations as what was promised to be a swift skirmish devolved into a contest for the future of America. Would that more of the politicians who initiated it were forced to serve. One wonders if then the conflict would've lasted to waste so many lives and change the destiny of the first modern-day republic.
A gory, difficult and sometimes hopeless read, but no less good for it. We are in the darkness before the dawn, when was promised to be swift has dragged on without end. Will the South be starved out? Will the North hold its nerve? Will the president widely thought to be responsible for the war lose the next election to the appeasers, the party of reconciliation? (4/5 Stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment