A New Era
I have been furiously writing about the American Civil War since the fall of 2019. In that time I have attempted to write a chapter of between 10-18 pages every single week. Occasionally, I managed two chapters because my muse forced me on. This past week I completed the last of the nine books that comprise my factually-founded but fictional account of the Civil War … and took a break.
This is the first week I can remember in which I did not write a chapter.
That is not to say that I‘ve been idle. I reviewed and sent off Book III of the series, “Graybacks and Greenbacks,” for final proofing. I created a Reconstruction timeline and mapped out subplots for my characters. I also researched a solid bibliography on Reconstruction (see said Bibliography which I recently added to this site) and ordered those books online. Jenny tells me I should be ordering cheaper Kindle versions. Maybe someday, but for the present I’m too fond of the weight and feel of real books.
I am not as well versed in Reconstruction as I am in the American Civil War but I am truly excited to dive into it. Civil War Reconstruction is but a blip in our public school history books. They gloss over too much and leave us with such a distorted view of our backstory. If presented honestly and in its entirety, the Period of Reconstruction would help us better understand the current fracture lines that exist in our society more than a century and a half after the Civil War ended.
Our fratricidal conflict lasted four years, not counting the contentious period leading up to it. Typically, historians suggest that Reconstruction lasted from 1865 until Federal troops left the South in 1877, or three times the length of the war. Others suggest that it continued up to the turn of the twentieth century. Still others maintain that it did not end until the Civil Rights period of the 1950s and 1960s. Whatever its length, it had everything to do with our founders’ words, “All men are created equal,” and the pushback that ideal aroused.
So, Reconstruction … what’s it supposed to mean? Most people haven’t a clue. On the surface, the term, Reconstruction appears to be a good thing. To reconstruct: to build or form or reorganize something after it has been damaged or destroyed. Lincoln meant it to be a good thing. The abolitionists and the Radical Republicans meant it to be a good thing. At the same time, all of them had ulterior motives that impacted the African American and ultimately, the Native American. The defeated South agreed with none of their motives and worked tirelessly to undermine Northern policies. They wanted to re-entrench, as much as possible, the racial order and maintain some semblance of the antebellum years, or escape the south to recreate it in the West.
Reconstruction, as we now know it, involved evolution and revolution. It involved shining moments of achievement and horrifying moments of greed and depravity. It overlapped and encompassed the “settling” of the west, the growth of the industrial age, the emergence of the United States as a World Power and the collapse of an ambitious dream of liberty (see the illustration accompanying this blog. It produced its share of heroes and villains and characters who at times fit both categories: Johnson, Grant and Hayes; Pinchback, Douglass, Du Bois, and Washington, Bruce and Galloway, Tweed, Vanderbilt, Hill, and Forrest; Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Chief Joseph; Custer, Sheridan, Howard Crook and Miles; Dickenson, Twain, James and Wharton.
History is nothing if not complicated. We are taught and grow up believing in a two dimensional history of our nation. Good and bad. Right and wrong. White hats vs. Black hats. Well, that makes life simpler, doesn’t it? But life is not simple. Llife, like history, is complicated and to teach otherwise is to delude ourselves and misunderstand who we are and where we came from. That’s what I am attempting to do with this heavily researched SNAKEBIT series. I want to flesh out for you in three-dimensional fashion the two-dimensional history of the Civil War and its aftermath many of us have come to accept as gospel.
My characters will meet and interact with many of those historical men and women, those movers and shakers that I mentioned. They will celebrate civil rights victories just as they will weep over the many disappointments along the way. They will live the Reconstruction years, just as you will when you read along with us.
A good friend recently sent me a wonderful essay on the ephemeral nature and importance of history. I found in it a marvelous metaphor that I paraphrase here. Trying to understand where we are headed without understanding where we have been, is like trying to plant cut flowers and expecting them to grow.
Thank you for having the presence of mind to know that history has many facets. The more of them we study the better we understand our nation and our culture.