Gods and Generals

And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers.

Major, I do not know why God does the things He does, but I believe you have the same duty to God as you have always had: to follow the right path, to live your life with a clear conscience.

The heavy round face was looking at him, the hard look of a man who had also understood, who had seen all the stupidity, who knew, after all, that the gold stars were often mindless decoration, that the army was led not by symbols, but by the fallible egos and blind fantasies of men.

Across the river he could see the burnt and crushed buildings of Fredericksburg, the debris piled along the streets, the scattered ruins of people's lives, lives that were changed forever. His men had done that. Not all of it, of course. The whole corps had seemed to go insane, had turned the town into some kind of violent party, a furious storm that blew out of control, and he could not stop it. The commanders had ordered the provost guards at the bridges to let no goods leave the town, nothing could be carried across the bridges, and so what the men could not keep, what they could not steal, they had just destroyed. And now, he thought, the people will return, trying to rescue some fragile piece of home, and they will find this...and they will learn something new about war, more than the quiet nightmare of leaving your home behind. They will learn that something happens to men, men who have felt no satisfaction, who have absorbed and digested defeat after bloody stupid defeat, men who up to now have done mostly what they were told to do. And when those men begin to understand that it is not anything in them, no great weakness or inferiority, but that it is the leaders, the generals and politicians who tell them what to do, that the fault is there, after a while they will stop listening. Then the beast, the collective anger, battered and bloodied, will strike out, will respond to the unending sights of horror, the deaths of friends and brothers, and it will not be fair or reasonable or just, since there is no intelligence in the beast. They will strike out at whatever presents itself, and here it was the harmless and innocent lives of the people of Fredericksburg.

To his left he saw the other regiments, men from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Men like these, he thought, just farmers and shopkeepers, and now we are soldiers, and now we are about to die.

We got a duty . . . we all got the same duty, all of us, Major.” Armistead

I always have felt that we are a nation that is very different . . . unique, perhaps. We were founded by thinking men, brilliant men, men who designed a system where conflicts were resolved in debate, where the decision of the majority would prevail. These men had confidence in that majority, they had faith that the design of the system would, by definition, ensure that reasonable men would reach reasonable conclusions, and so we would govern ourselves, all of us, by this new type of system, a system where our conflicts and differences would be resolved by civilized means. There is no other system like this, anywhere.

Is that not what a commander must do, earn respect, give them discipline and . . . love them?

I always had the faith that this country would elect those who knew best, who could follow the best course through any situation.