Grant Comes East

Forstchen, William R, Gingrich, Newt. Grant Comes East. New York: St Martins P, 2004. 218-233.

This media portfolio assignment is about a book that I read about the Civil War. The book is called Grant Comes East and it is about the period of the war after the Battle of Gettysburg. In it are interesting perspectives about some of the Southern power players of the time. I chose the text because I find the racial and political motivations for the Civil War fascinating.

The book engages in “active history” which is a fictional yet historically responsible accounting of North and South after a Confederate victory at Gettysburg. The meeting is between Rabbi Samuel Rothenberg, Judah Benjamin the Confederate secretary of Defense, and General Robert E Lee. The conversation starts out as cordial as they discuss the progress of the war. The conversation turns to the issue of slavery and the potential use of blacks in the Confederate Army. Rothenberg makes the point that if the South does not win the war the institution of slavery will not endure and so why not abolish slavery and take the North’s righteous cause away from them. Judah acknowledges that he has given the matter some real thought, but laments that if they were to grant blacks their freedom and arm them, then what would it say about the cause they believe in (and why wouldn’t they just rise up against the Confederate Government). General Lee remains quietly resigned and does not want to enter the political conversation. Benjamin persists that the black man would make an inferior soldier, and Rothenberg points out that Africans have been soldering in elite units in the Middle East. Lee finally asks why President Davis was not invited, and he is met with a reply that it would only inhibit the conversation. Lee begins to drop his resistance to the conversation and starts to express some of his views. As per the bible, Lee was much more tolerant of Blacks and had a reputation of treating them with dignity. The conversation turned to the political implications of freeing the slave’s voluntarily. The most interesting potential outcome discussed was the potential for France or England to enter the war on behalf of the South once the abolition had taken place. In the end the conversation concludes and the night is adjourned.

One of the first things that goes against contemporary thinking is that the Confederacy as a whole was racist. While I will not argue that they were not racists toward blacks, they were surprisingly not racist toward Jews. Judah Benjamin was Jewish and a prominent and intelligent member of the Confederate government. Robert E Lee was a devout Christian and was tolerant of the Jewish religion. It is an interesting exercise to think what outcome the Civil War may have had if the South had preempted Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation and freed their slaves. It potentially may of let the righteous wind out of the sails of the northern cause, and the addition of the much needed soldiers into the Confederate Army would have had at least a delaying effect on the end of the war, gave the green light to foreign armies to enter the war on the side of the confederacy, or it could of provided the catalyst to envelope and destroy the Union Army and thus sealed Lincoln’s defeat in the presidential election. The part of the conversation where Benjamin alludes to possible uprising by blacks against the Confederate government is a theme that is congruent with Takaki’s “Giddy multitude” chapter, as well as Zinn chapter 9. It is important to note that the Confederacy painted themselves into an ideological corner with their exercise of controls over blacks. By arming them and allowing Blacks to serve would have given them a legitimacy that would ultimately have unraveled the ideologies supporting slavery. They were intern unable to make the changes discussed in the book that would have allowed the Confederacy to survive.

I think it is very important to look back into history and attempt to understand that there is always more to the story then what is presented in High School history books. The Confederacy was always presented as something akin to evil incarnate, when history rarely makes those sorts of distinctions. General Lee, the deity of the southern cause was a tolerant and religiously devout man who was motivated by duty and service, and not by the political trade winds of the day.