For the coming test I want the students to think about the following question: ‘How did the causes of the war impact how the war was fought, and how did these factors help lead to the ultimate victory of Union forces?’
The first thing they need to do is to discern what they believe to be the root cause of the war. The three main options are:
1. Some say that slavery is the root cause of the war. While slavery was not a direct issue in 1861, it influenced all the political controversies of the time, and all the previous political controversies, going back to the Declaration of Independence itself (where a section condemning slavery was removed from the original text).
2. Some say that the root cause of the war was growth of federal power that came to erode a proper constitutional balance between state and national government. This theory sees the Confederacy not as radicals but as preservers of a truly American vision.
3. Both of the previous theories have good guys and bad guys (in the first, the South is the bad guy, in the second, the North), but there is another approach to the war that does not see good guys v. bad guys, what I will call ‘The Cultural Opposition Theory’ of the conflict’s origin (if nothing else, the name makes me sound smarter than I really am :).
This theory sees both sides drawing upon the founders vision. We tend to think of the founders in 1787 having one coherent vision for the country, but this was not so. The North latches on more to Alexander Hamilton’s idea of the U.S. having a strong national government with a manufacturing base. The South adopts Jefferson’s vision of limited national power with an agricultural base. Thus, both sides were right in a sense in claiming to be the inheritors of what it meant to be “American.” These different ideas produce different societies that have different values, practices, and cultures. These opposing cultures each have their merits, their strong and weak points. But — they would inevitably come to blows at some point. In this view the war doesn’t have a good guy or bad guy. The conflict started because one of these visions had to win out in the end, though neither vision was “right” or “wrong” per se.
To the best of my knowledge these are the theories with the most prominence among historians. There are a few others, such as those that historically see conflict inevitably associated with territorial expansion (in this case, the Civil War had its roots in the huge expansion after the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War) or those that use economics as the key to explaining human behavior. If students are not satisfied with any of the suggestions I offered, they are welcome to come up with their own.
After making a case for the war, students then need to link the cause with how the war was fought, and then link again the fighting to the eventual Union victory. This means that they have to synthesize what they know from 1800-1865 and create a unified narrative. This is a challenge, but I hope that students will enjoy that challenge and rise to the occasion.
As always, students are welcome to show me any rough draft or outline of their thoughts before the test.
The author knows he is writing about something arcane and of little general interest. He does little to spruce up the writing — he at times seems to wallow in the details, perhaps getting a secret laugh out of boring his readers. My eyes glazed over more than once.
The book is thorough, but still brief enough for someone with just enough interest to glean some tidbits. I am far, far from having any comprehensive knowledge about Rome, but I wanted to read this to test a theory. Gibbon puts the fall of Rome essentially beginning after Marcus Aurelius. Others, like Toynbee put it far earlier. I tend to see it happening sometime after the 2nd and before the 3rd Punic War, and I wanted to see what Cheesman analysis of the Roman army had to contribute to this debate.
Early on Cheesman makes some interesting observations, namely that the imperial army was more versatile and specialized than any army of the Republic. This probably has do with the fact that they encountered different cultures and fighting styles as they expanded. They added cavalry (one may recall the serious weakness of the Roman cavalry when they faced Hannibal), usually getting them from far flung conquered provinces. But no one would think that the Imperial armies were superior to say, those under Scipio Africanus ca. 210 BC. In other words, increasing complexity and specialization may not have been a sign of strength, but subtle weakness. The increased specialization shows they had too many burdens in too many places around the globe to maintain a coherent fighting force with a fixed identity.
Also, Cheesman points out that many of the recruited ‘auxilia’ (auxiliary troops attached to the legions, recruited from conquered provinces) often rebelled against their new masters when stationed near their home territory. This could be fixed by shipping them elsewhere, but this created awkward burdens and costs involving transport. Surely it also lessened the effectiveness of these auxiliaries, as they had to fight far from familiar territory.
The fact that Rome faced so many rebellions within its ranks tells me that Rome lost its mojo long before Marcus Aurelius, contra Gibbon. These rebellions came despite the fact that some emperors fast-tracked the path to rights and citizenship for many auxiliary regiments. They were being more ‘progressive’ in a sense, but it made no difference — things were not working as they used to for Rome. One need only recall the general solidity of their alliance system during the much greater stress of the 2nd Punic War to see this happening.
With more knowledge of Imperial Rome, more patience, and more military background I might have gleaned more from this work. Still, one always likes their theories backed by neutral observers! So, my gratitude to G.L. Cheesman for his somewhat tedious, partially sleep inducing, yet still occasionally quite insightful book.
For our discussions this week, we looked at three different generals. . .
First we looked at Lee. Though not a supporter of slavery or secession, he believed himself bound to defend his friends and his home of Virginia. One might say that he did not fight for a ’cause,’ but for his friends. Clearly he was a man of integrity and faith, an inspirational leader. He also was able to size up opponents psychologically to a remarkable degree. One sees in his eyes intelligence, melancholy, and a deep fire.
For the first 100 years or so after the war, scholarship on Lee remained entirely favorable to him. For most, the South was doomed to defeat from the beginning. Only Lee’s brilliant generalship staved off disaster, and in fact, even got them close to pulling off a “miracle” victory.
But recently many historians have taken a much different view of the South’s chances, and see the Civil War as one that they had every chance of winning. This shift has led to a reevaluation of Lee himself. If one believes that the South could have won by using a “bend, don’t break” approach, then we need to ask why Lee employed the strategy he did, and what its impact was.
Military historians have taken Lee to task for his offensives into MD and PA, both of which cost the South dearly. Lee let himself be drawn into other broad ranging offensives actions, that even when successful (like Chancellorsville) came at great cost. Some see more than just a tactical mistakes. Some see Lee as a good general, but not a great one, a man bound by the honor dictates of the South’s culture. Some see this sense of honor manifesting itself not only in his “need” to attack, but also in the vague deference he showed his subordinates. Those who may be familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg know that for the first two days of the conflict, Lee did not have his top cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, who spent time away from the army gathering supplies. But Lee bears some responsibility for this himself, as we can see if we look at the orders he gave Stuart as the army prepared to march into Pennslyvania.
Lee’s Orders to Stuart before Gettysburg
‘If you find that Hooker is moving northward, and that two brigades can guard the Blue Ridge and take care of your rear, you can move with the other three into MD and take position on Gen. Ewell’s right, place yourself in communication with him, guard his flank, keep him informed of enemy movements, and collect all supplies you can for the use of the army.’
General Longstreet took an opportunity to perhaps add some clarity to Lee’s intent of having his cavalry stick close by:
‘Lee speaks of your leaving Hopewell Gap and passing by the rear of the enemy. If you can get through by that route, I think you will be less likely to indicate your plans than if you pass to our rear. You had better not leave us therefore, unless you can take the proposed route in rear of the enemy.’
But the next day another set of orders arrived from Lee, which muddied the waters yet again. . .
‘You will be able to judge if you can pass around their army without hindrance, doing them all the damage you can. In either case, after crossing the river [Lee presented two options to him of where to cross] you must move on and feel the right of Ewell’s corp’s collecting information and provisions.
Lee’s lack of clarity to Stuart about exactly what his job was may have been the reason for his absence at Gettysburg. But that’s not all. Many lament that General Ewell did not seize the heights during the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. But Lee’s Orders to Ewell regarding the heights show the same ambiguity that he communicated to Stuart:
You are to take the heights, if practicable, but avoid any general engagement until the arrival of the others divisions of the army.
You may notice a certain deference in these orders. Lee was a gentle man at heart. But the ambiguity could be misinterpreted. Was Stuart to get provisions, or stay close to his flank? Longstreet,notice, speaks with more directness on what his priorities should be. Should Ewell take the heights, or avoid a general engagement? We enjoyed debating the merits of Lee’s offensives, with some students agreeing with recent critics of Lee, and others arguing that the South needed to try some kind of offensive to win, and they might as well have used Lee.
U.S. Grant had none of the dash or style of most important commanders, not even an impressive mustache like the Union’s Joshua Chamberlain. He seemed every inch the average man from Ohio. Rumors said he drank too much. Strategically, he displayed little creativity. Yet he had a tenacity and single-mindedness that most other Union generals lacked. As Lincoln said of him, ‘I can’t spare this man. He fights.’
Grant stands in stark contrast to the elegance and pedigree of Lee, and in that way mirrors Lincoln. Nothing about his bearing or manner spoke of anything to do with flash. His tactics reflected his straightforward, methodical nature. But to my mind there must have been something maddening about fighting Grant. Never brilliant, he had tremendous consistency. He kept moving, which demanded that you (his opponent) never slack. He had an large reservoir of patience, and tended to see not what he lost in battles, but in what he gained. His men believed in him. Lee, for all his gifts, could not beat him.
While Grant is best known for wearing Lee down at the end of the war, many consider his most impressive campaign to be his taking of Vicksburg in July 1863. As the map indicates, he had to travel far and wide, but in the end, simply would not let go of his objective. The capture of Vicksburg ensured Union control of the Mississippi and allowed them to choke the life out of the Confederacy.
3. At one point during the war William T. Sherman was out of the army, depressed, and even contemplated suicide. Volatile and somewhat unpredictable, he got another command and began to earn the trust of Grant. After taking Atlanta in September of 1864, he had the idea of taking his army and marching it to Savannah, away from supplies and communication, targeting wealthy southern properties for destruction. Many thought the idea foolhardy, but Sherman thought otherwise:
His army was composed mostly of men from the midwest, which was at that time the ‘west.’ These were independent minded and self-sufficient troops.
He believed that just these independent minded men might be especially motivated to ransack the property of wealthy southerners.
He also believed that this would help drastically shorten the war. For Sherman, it was not so much the supplies that the South would not have, but the psychological impact of the property destruction. The South, he believed, went to war to defend their property. If he proved they could not defend what was most dear to them, the Confederate cause would lose legitimacy and promote desertions in Confederate armies. Slaves, too, would leave their masters and again, this would hasten the collapse of the Southern cause.
Many controversies surround Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea.’ Those in favor of him would probably argue the following:
Sherman’s actions did shorten the war and saved lives in the process. His campaign was much less costly than any of Lee and Grant’s battles. It is much better that property be burned than men killed.
Sherman’s army liberated directly or otherwise, thousands of slaves
Sherman was simply more far-sighted and innovative than other generals. Don’t blame him for doing things no one else thought of. If you are against his targeting farms, than you have to be against our destruction of civilian areas in World War II, which culminated in our atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Those against him might say:
Sherman started the idea of ‘total war,’ which would lead to so many horrors of 20th century warfare.
Sherman’s targeting of civilian property was simply wrong and violated the ‘rules of war.’
Many starved in the south in the aftermath of his attacks
If the ultimate goal of the North was reconciliation with the South, Sherman worked against this. His humiliation of the South lingered in their minds for generations and produced a bitterness that in some areas has still not gone away.
If Lee’s picture shows his aristocratic roots, and if Grant’s belies a plain pugnacity, Sherman’s face shows us all of his brilliance, all of his craziness, and the fact that he just doesn’t care. I wouldn’t want to face him.
They make a rational, thoroughly scientific, argument for the existence of Atlantis, located in the Atlantic (right where Plato said it was) destroyed cataclysmically somewhere around 9000 B.C. (apologies to one of my favorite ad campaigns).
I have written before about the likelihood of advanced civilizations that existed long before their so-called beginning around 4000 B.C. But it is so much easier to propound vague ideas then to make a concrete case for a specific civilization, let alone one for which we (seemingly) have no evidence for except Plato’s account in one of his dialogues. And then you realize that one of the more credible arguments for the existence of Atlantis was written by Otto Muck . . . who invented the U-boat schnorkel for the Germans in W.W. II. Yes, he came over to the U.S. like many other former German scientists after the war, but still, it does not help the case that he worked for the Nazis.
But first, Muck reminds us that Plato discussed Atlantis in two dialogues, not one, the Timaeus and Critias. Plato has Socrates relate many myths throughout his work, but he speaks of Atlantis in strictly factual terms. Like many others, I suppose, I had never actually read the full account of Atlantis in the dialogues and Muck makes a good point. Plato, at least, seems to believe in the historicity of Atlantis, or certainly, Critias does, and he gives a lengthy description filling at least 15 pages of its size, location, topography, plants, and the like. Critias talked about how the Greeks first learned of Atlantis from the Egyptians, still considered quite wise by the Greeks even in Plato’s day, via the great legislator Solon–Athens’ George Washington. Plato invests a lot of heavy-hitters in his account of Atlantis.
It makes perfect sense to me to believe in a cataclysmic flood, as it is spoken of in every major religion of the ancient world. I expect to find, along with Graham Hancock and others, the existence of civilizations that long predate the fertile crescent of 4000 B.C. I delight in Jon Anthony West’s interpretation of Egypt’s history, for example, and find it persuasive. But I cracked the cover of Muck’s book skeptically. I don’t approach questions like this even primarily scientifically, let alone entirely so. Still, with Atlantis, even I needed something to hold onto besides stories. With other sites, you have megalithic architecture, for example. For Atlantis, I need more than Plato’s account.
I give Muck credit. He understands skepticism as a scientist and confronts head-on, piece by piece, in methodical fashion. Some of what Muck wrote I found very intriguing, and other stuff, not so much.
To begin, Muck asks where the Atlantic ocean got its name. Well, obviously from the Atlantis story, but this means very, very little. Slightly more intriguing is Muck’s examination of the very similar phonetics between the god Atlas (apparently spelled out ‘Atlants’), who stood at the middle of the world upholding it, and the name “Atlantis” and its topography, which Plato tells us had a large mountain. Well . . . ok, but . . . ?
He moves on.
If we look closely at Plato’s description of the topography he tells of a huge variety of plants and food that one could find there. It seems almost fantastical. We assume the variety couldn’t really exist, given the size and location Plato mentions. But if we consider the gulf stream moving across the Atlantic, then match it with the mountains described by Plato as well as the location, it matches. You would have warm air from the south-east, with a large mountain in the center impacting the Arctic air, and the variety described by Plato is possible. What makes this more intriguing is that Plato probably did not have the biological and topographical knowledge to make this up.
More interesting is the Gulf Stream itself. If you compare latitudes for northwestern Europe and its overseas counterpart, you know that Europe is a lot warmer than the upper reaches of North America. The Gulf Stream makes this possible. But we also know that thousands of years ago Europe was much colder. Then, around the time of Atlantis’ supposed destruction, it started to warm up. What if the Gulf Stream did not always flow across to Europe, but instead was diverted by a continent in the middle of the ocean? That could account for the temperature difference at first, and the shift after.
Perhaps the most bizarre, yet intriguing, argument Muck makes involves the habits of eels.
Apparently, a breed of eels exists that spawns in the Sargasso Sea (located just to the east of Atlantis on the map above). For the longest time scientists could never understand why these eels undertook a long and dangerous migration across the Atlantic. The females find European rivers, the males sit and wait in the ocean while the female eels fix their hair. Ok, ok . . . observers discovered that the females can only come to sexual maturity in fresh water, hence their need for rivers. But why travel east across the Atlantic. It makes much more sense, from an evolutionary perspective and every other perspective, to go west from the Sargasoo. The existence of Atlantis, however, would explain this. For who knows how long the eels would go east for only a short distance from the Sargasso to the rivers of Atlantis. The destruction of Atlantis did not alter their genetic memory. They still swim east, and no doubt suppose that when they hit the coast of Europe they are back in Atlantis, more or less.
Plato considered Atlantis a bridge of sorts between land on either side of the ocean, and Muck explores some of the connections between the Americas and the world of Plato’s day. He considers possible racial connections, considering that the typical look of the Basque people would fit well for a possible Atlantean type, since that “look” could fit in the western parts of Europe, north Africa, and Meso-America–the old sphere of Atlantean influence. Muck makes you think hard throughout his work, but I think this the most ridiculous of Muck’s arguments. Maybe I am just squeamish when an ex-Nazi helper-guy talks about race, but it seems that if the Atlantis story is true, 10,000 years of post-Atlantis destruction intermarriage would dilute the racial stock.
Perhaps more interesting are the ancient pyramids built by the Egyptians and Meso-Americans. Muck seems to argue that both cultures acted as preservers of some kind of Atlantean legacy even thousands later in the post-apocalyptic reboot of civilization. Perhaps the pyramid shape was meant to recall Atlas and Atlantis’ great mountain. This is more convincing than the racial argument, but I still think it fairly weak. Both cultures built their structures thousands of years apart, and it seems they had different purposes in mind. Muck’s earlier arguments about climate, topography, and the gulf stream stand on much more solid footing. His analysis about the mapping of the ocean floor of the Atlantic indicates the possibility of an Atlantean like form still lying on the ocean floor.
As for the cataclysmic end, Muck has an answer for that as well. Plato’s description has Atlantis lying right around the mid-Atlantic ridge, a potentially volcanic region. The diagram below right shows the ridge shows the newest ocean floor crust in red:
Muck believes that a very large asteroid struck earth right around 9000 B.C., which matches remarkably with the chronology offered by Plato’s account. Here is one of a variety of articles on the subject, with impact dates ranging between 10,000 to 13,000 years ago. Some argue that this asteroid or comet struck the polar ice caps. Muck argues that it struck somewhere around the mid-Atlantic ridge. If Atlantis existed, and if a very large asteroid struck near the mid-atlantic ridge, you could easily have had a gigantically massive subterranean volcanic eruption that literally could have had Atlantis sink into the sea in a single night.
Muck doesn’t need the asteroid to hit the mid-Atlantic ridge necessarily. If it did strike the polar ice-caps, it would have caused the destruction of Atlantis in a global deluge not overnight, but within a week or so at the most.
I have left out a great deal of technical information Muck includes, and must content myself with a general summary.
Muck knows he cannot absolutely prove his case one way or another.
I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt’s work with Heterodox Academy, which encourages more ideological diversity on campus. Haidt readily acknowledges his liberal beliefs–he has never voted Republican–but even he agrees that the situation has gotten dangerously imbalanced in many departments across many campuses. He has discovered some interesting links, not surprisingly, between religious belief, psychological temperament, and political affiliations. You can take various fun tests at his link here.
Just as political leanings often come from moral and religious beliefs, I think what one thinks of Muck’s book will depend on a variety of factors that go a bit deeper than the evidence itself.
If you look to disagree with Muck, most likely . . .
You are a committed ‘gradualist’ in all things geological
You are strictly scientific in deciding about the past and would hardly value Plato’s account as evidence of any kind.
You probably hesitate in part because you don’t want to be associated with various new age crazy people who believe in the existence of Atlantis for all the wrong reasons.
You need “hard” evidence like clay tablets, pots with markings, the stuff that archaeologists would find, before you would acquiesece to Muck
If you look to agree with Muck, most likely . . .
You are a contrarian by temperment
You weigh lots of different kinds of evidence much more equally than those committed to a particular field
You think it would be “cool” if Atlantis once existed (an attitude most abhorred by the strict scientific type, who would see this feeling as meaning absolutely nothing. I think they are right, but only about 90% right in their approbation of this attitude).
You admit the possibility of great catastrophe’s altering the fabric of human history as well as geology.
I fall in the latter category, but hope that I have been fair to the former. Again,some parts of Muck’s book I found nearly persuasive, and others not so much.
To illustrate some of the above differences, we can examine Jon Anthony West’s work in Egyptology. He got famous/infamous for suggesting that erosion patterns on the Sphinx suggested that it was much older than was commonly believed, and was likely built by a civilization that predated Egypt perhaps by a thousands of years. Dr. Robert Schoch, who earned his Ph.D in geology at Yale, analyzed the Sphinx and agreed with him. You can see the video–narrated by Charlton Heston!:)–here.
When Schoch presented his findings at a conference, Egyptologists present could say little about the actual data he presented. But one retorted, “Well, you say that the Sphinx was built thousands of years before, but if another civilization built it, where is the evidence? Where are their tools? Where is their writing?” Schoch could only stare back rather dumbfounded. Hadn’t he just presented evidence in the form of the Sphinx? Perhaps they did not accept the fact of the Sphinx itself as evidence because it did not fit into their preconceived notions of what constitutes evidence, which has to be in the form of writing, pottery, etc. Of course, if a highly developed civilization did exist somewhere around 10,000 B.C., it would have suffered catastrophic collapse as a result of the asteroids that struck Earth around that time. If they did have a written language and if they made pottery, it would have been washed away almost immediately.
We see how these different areas of belief work together.
So I say, let the Germans go nuts. Let them make far-fetched claims. It beats some other avenues they have taken in the past . . .
You will notice some dated references, as this post was originally written in the fall of 2020. The original is below . . .
****************************
I enjoy athletics, but since the lockdown last March I have watched zero hours of live sports. One might think that televised sports would act as a lifeline for people like me during these strained times, but my interest has markedly declined. But it’s not just me, apparently. Ratings have plummeted for live sports across the board. Here are some statistics:
US Open (golf) final round: down 56%
US Open (tennis) was down 45% and the French open is down 57%
Kentucky Derby: down 43%
Indy 500: down 32%
Through four weeks, NFL viewership is down approximately 10%
NHL Playoffs were down 39% (Pre Stanley Cup playoffs was down 28% while the Stanley Cup was down 61%).
NBA finals are down 45% (so far). Conference finals were down 35%, while the first round was 27% down. To match the viewership, activity on the NBA reddit fan community is also down 50% from the NBA finals last year.
So it’s not just the woke politics in some of our major sports that are driving people away. The above statistics are from blogger Daniel Frank. He suggests a variety of reasons for this decline, including the rise in mental health issues and political uncertainties that eliminate our bandwidth for consuming sports. He has other reasons, all of them thoughtful and possibly true, but I think he misses the heart of the matter.
My thoughts below should be, as Tyler Cowen states, filed under “speculative.”
Sports occupies a very large place in our civilizations bandwidth. The growth of the importance of sports, and the money associated with sports, accelerated on a national scale as a few different things happened over the last 50 years:
Growth of technology allowed people across the country to discover sports hero’s from other locales.
Beginning around the 1960’s a dramatic moral shift happened that eroded certain key foundations Tocqueville and others cite as necessary to support democracy, such as shared trust and a robust family structure.
Perhaps we can also cite the growth of suburbia as a factor eroding another key facet of healthy democratic life cited by Tocqueville–local neighborhoods and local institutions and customs.
So as things start to erode on a local and particular level, they homogenized on a national level. Sports benefitted from this, but its growth was necessary, in a sense, to account for the above trends. We lacked local means of conflict mediation on front porches, coffee shops, etc. Sports stepped into that void. Fundamentally, we can understand sports as a highly ritualized, liturgical, and controlled means of combat. For those two hours we can “hate” the team wearing the other jersey, but we know that we don’t really hate them. The liturgy of competition creates a parallel world where we can control conflict. We have all played games against friends–for a time they function as the “enemy,” then real life resumes. Bad sportsmanship means in part the inability to come back to the real world from the parallel world. Whether at cards, basketball, or the like–our competition serves as a way to mediate/navigate our relationships.
Without shared trust, without real communities, we need sports now more than we did 50-100 years ago.
But then–why did the ratings plummet for sports at a time when a need for controlled conflict mediation seems quite high?
If sports serve as a parallel liturgy of rivalry, we can see that this “conflict” gets resolved via sacrifice. Athletes, then, function in certain ways as priests of this liturgy. We expect them to “sacrifice” for the team, their time, their bodies, etc. Thus, they serve as “victims” in some ways of the liturgy. But in addition, at least our star athletes also control the liturgical space. They ask us to cheer, we cheer. When they complain to the ref, we join in with them–the ref’s call was obviously wrong–and so forth.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If you have a materialist-leaning view of the universe, the answer is an obvious ‘yes.’ You can ‘prove’ your point by recording the event with no one around, and then listening to the recording. You hear the tree falling and presto, you have your answer. But if you have something of an ‘idealist’ view of the world, as did Bishop Berkeley,* you answer in the negative. Is there “sound” on that recording? Can you carry around “sound” that you do not hear? It seems to me that for reality to be Real it requires perception.
This idea closely relates to the dictum in both Catholic and Orthodox churches (and perhaps others) that no priest can celebrate the sacrifice of the mass alone–though of course certain unusual exceptions allow for it. Many reasons exist for this restriction, but briefly:
The sacrifice of the mass is always for the people–the body of Christ, and not merely the priest.
The priest, representing Christ, cannot be the sole ‘beneficiary’ of the mass, just as Christ did not “benefit” from His own death (of course He does “benefit” in the end, but I trust all take my meaning).
The “power” of the sacrifice has to “land” to take form and reality. Without this “landing” the sacrifice has no power and no life to give.
The Head (Christ) must nourish the body. Just as we take in physical nourishment through our mouths, so too–what is the point of the sacrifice of food (for all food was once alive and now has died that we might have life) if we have no body? The food–which has already undergone death, will not be transformed into life for us, but rather, stay “dead” as it falls out of our throats onto the floor. Or to put it another way, maybe Berkeley was right about trees falling in forests all by their lonesome.
All well and good, but this fancy talk, some might say, forgets that the televised sporting events do have witnesses, both in person and at home. Most watched at home anyway in the first place before the virus hit. Very little has changed about how the vast majority of us consume sports now except the immediate social factors Frank listed above.
Well, I concede partially. But just as virtual church is not church, and a virtual concert is no real concert–a virtual sporting event is not a real sporting event. Anyone who has watched on tv senses this. The viewers themselves sense it, which is why teams pipe in crowd noise. It is a trick meant to fool those watching at home more than the players, I think. The “sacrifice” of sports needs a place to land within the “church”/arena. If it disappears into the ether, its power disperses with it.**
The ratings decline in sports confuse us only if we fail to see connections between liturgical worship and sports.
Dave
*I do not claim to understand more than the bare outline of Berkeley’s premises, and could not defend his general philosophy even if I wanted to.
**We can also consider the sudden collapse of Rome’s gladiatorial games in the mid-4th century. No question–one main factor had to be the rise of the Christian ethic. But the growth of the games themselves also had something to do with it. When one man fought one man in front of 50,000, whatever took place would be witnessed and participated in by all. But as the games grew in importance they grew in scope, and the cruelty of the games grew more random and bizarre. As the games (unknowingly) neared the precipice, dozens of men fought other dozens of others more or less randomly.
At that point, if you were a gladiator you could not be sure that anything that happened would be directly seen by anyone. One could kill or die with honor and dignity and who knows who witnessed it? If nothing is affirmed, nothing glorified, then why fight at all? With no glory possible, only chaotic death remains. Why would a Roman citizen want to witness a “nothing?”
Many often declare that since, “To the victor go the spoils,” so too, that, “Victors write the history books.” This pithy phrase assumes that historical narratives boil down to power, a concession to postmodern theory that I am loathe to make. Aside from the debate over the theory, however, history itself will not confirm the statement. Several examples exist to prove this point:
The Athenians exiled Thucydides but we read of the war that helped bring about his exile almost exclusively through him.
Athenian Democracy “won” by executing Socrates, but subsequent generations of readers learned Athenian democracy primarily through Plato’s eyes.
The triumph of the “imperial” system over the Republic in Rome became a fact of life after Augustus, but we think of that triumph foremost through the writings of Tacitus, a significant critic of most of the emperors.
The North won the American Civil War, but the Confederacy had a variety of champions shortly after the war and a variety of sympathizers today,
and so on.
As Tocqueville noted, mere physical force can control the body but often has the opposite impact on the soul. The examples above demonstrate also that, contra the mundane postmodernist, shaping how we see the world has much more to do with our imagination that rote political force.
Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Excellent Empire disappointed me overall. He is likely one of the few who could have possibly made a history of Christian doctrine an exciting read, and he did just that in his four volume work The Christian Tradition. In The Excellent Empire he flashes his ability to deftly dance from text to text, but seems to get trapped into the detached tone of his main subject, Edward Gibbon, whose The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire forms the backdrop of this book.
I give Gibbon much credit for his labors, his erudition, and for having a defined point of view. Alas, he writes like a know-it-all, and I cannot buy into how he frames his narrative. Pelikan seems to accept Gibbon’s perspective (or–is just playing a scholarly game, or am I too dense to notice something else?), and discusses how GIbbon’s perspective relates to Christian thoughts at the time from Sts. Jerome and Augustine, as well as a touch of Salvian and Orosius.
Gibbon’s work is an interesting examination of who gets the last laugh.
Roman contemporary critics of Christians viewed them as a drain on the Roman state, and in many ways enemies of the Roman state. Jerome saw the collapse of Rome in the most starkly apocalyptic terms, and in the most anguished. He compared Rome’s end to various passages from Revelation. He saw Rome as ripe for judgement. Yet, he grieved over their fall, seeing their end as the end of all things as he knew them. Augustine took a more cerebral approach, which gained him some more penetrating insights. He conceived of a Rome built upon shaky foundations from the start. In one brilliant passage from Book 3 of The City of God he writes,
First, then, why was Troy or Ilium, the cradle of the Roman people (for I must not overlook nor disguise what I touched upon in the first book(2)), conquered, taken and destroyed by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped the same gods as they? Priam, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon.(3) Then it is true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. For the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his bargain. I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his pay. And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what was to happen. For he is introduced by Homer(4) (who lived and wrote before the building of Rome) as predicting something great of the posterity of AEneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer says, Neptune also rescued AEneas in a cloud from the wrath of Achilles, though (according to Virgil (1))
“All his will was to destroy
His own creation, perjured Troy.”
Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless people.(2) There may be some doubt whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be gods, than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself did not give full credence to the story for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the story implies that both were offended by that fraud. If, therefore, they believe their fables, let them blush to worship such gods; if they discredit the fables, let no more be said of the “Trojan perjury;” or let them explain how the gods hated Trojan, but loved Roman perjury. For how did the conspiracy of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a city, find so abundant a supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a living by perjury and civic broils? What else but perjury corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators? What else corrupted the people’s votes and decisions of all causes tried before them? For it seems that the ancient practice of taking oaths has been preserved even in the midst of the greatest corruption, not for the sake of restraining wickedness by religious fear, but to complete the tale of crimes by adding that of perjury.
Such analysis gave medieval Europe a whole new foundation of political and religious ideology on which to proceed.
Rome attacked Christians for not giving themselves fully to the well-being of the state. For the Romans, this might have taken the form of not giving due sacrifices to the emperor, or not joining the army. Gibbon pointed out as well that the best men in the Church gave themselves to the Church, and not Rome. Imagine a Rome where Athanasius, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, etc.–with all of their energy and intelligence–served as provincial governors instead of bishops.
Jerome and Augustine responded variously with how Rome had doomed itself to destruction via its sins, or how Christians were in fact the best citizens of Rome. Their analysis won the day. Monastics, for example, appear on the surface at least, to not contribute anything to the well-being of civilization. But monastics would be honored in the west for the next 1000 years. Their presence made no sense to either the Romans or to Gibbon. The “social triumph of the church,” as Pelikan calls it, gave the Church the power of interpreting Rome’s history. But I gathered that Pelikan thought Augustine and Jerome thieves, to a certain extent.* Perhaps for Pelikan, Gibbon restored Rome’s vision of itself back to the stream of history.
Augustine and Jerome appeared to be the victors in the 5th century A.D. and beyond, as the Church had a strong hand on shaping the next millennium. But historical spoils can be slippery things. In an irony that perhaps not even Gibbon might have foreseen, today’s Christians, having abandoned much of the otherworldliness of the Church of the 5th century, may find more congeniality with Gibbon’s interpretation as opposed to Augustine’s. What modern mega-church leader, for example, would tell anyone to become a monk? We have our eyes set on this world and have no concept of how to patttern ourselves after the heavenly realms. Some may applaud this. But without the worldview of Augustine and Jerome we may find ourselves wishing, along with Gibbon, that St. Augustine had served as proconsul of Alexandria.
DM
*I could be totally wrong here. Part of the difficulty I had with this book was I felt that I was reading a different Pelikan than the one I encountered in The Christian Tradition. I had assumed that The Excellent Empire was written before this series, because its tone seemed more distant to me, less committed to the idea of truth than The Christian Tradition. I knew that Pelikan had converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1998. But I had somehow thought (how I thought this I’m not sure) that The Christian Tradition was written during/after his conversion, when in reality the early volumes stretch back to 1973, and the last volume predates his official reception into the Church by eight years.
This could mean that
I have misread Pelikan entirely in The Excellent Empire
Pelikan is deft at hiding his particular point of view from the reader and is simply examining certain points of view in a more detached way.
He does admire Gibbon (which is understandable) and agrees with Gibbon that Christians really did bring down Rome from the inside out. This stance is not Augustine’s or Jerome’s, but it is certainly not an anti-Christian idea in itself. Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream may hint at this (Daniel 2). Perhaps I am too ingrained in my distaste for Gibbon’s pompous Enlightenment attitude to see that, despite this weakness, he may have been right after all about the Church’s relationship to Rome.
This week we began the actual battles of the Civil War. In previous years we tended to look at battles as isolated incidents unto themselves. Last year, I wanted to begin to broaden their understanding of conflict at a deeper level. We started to do this somewhat when we looked at Napoleon towards the end of last year, and we continue to deepen our understanding as they go farther in the rhetoric stage of learning.
I wanted the students to consider the following:
Who had the most important advantages in the conflict? The traditional view usually argues that the North, with its larger population, established economy, and industrial might had the edge. The picture below, for example, shows the differences in respective railway capacity:
Recently, however, scholarship has tended to see the South as having the strategic edge. After all, they merely had to ‘not-lose.’ The Union not only had to win, but win to such an extent that the South would not consider secession again. The South also had a huge amount of territory, along with the psychological edge of defending their ‘homeland.’ A quick glance shows us that the Civil War had some of the same dynamics as the Revolutionary War, with the Americans playing the role of the Confederacy (to some extent) and using their advantages to victory in that conflict. The North certainly had its hands full.
These respective advantages did not come about via magic, but by the accumulation of various conscious and unconscious choices made by each society. The South, for example lacked industrial capacity in part because they wanted to avoid the inevitable cultural and political changes that come with industry.
Related to the idea of cultures, I wanted the students understand a few of the dynamics present in the conflict.
For the South:
We discussed that the South’s main advantage was that it could play on the defensive, play up their psychological ‘home field advantage,’ and merely, ‘not lose’ the war. They would also have to be careful with resources. They would not want to cede ground in this area to the North, as the North could easily overmatch their industrial production.
So far, so good. But one of the tensions in this conflict would be how this strategy would fit with the notions of honor usually prevalent in more aristocratic, honor oriented societies. De Tocqueville reported a conversation that surprised him in his travels in the South in the late 1830’s. Even for a Frenchmen, the sense of honor he encountered surprised him. While on a train, he asked the following of a gentlemen next to him. . .
Q. Is it true, then that people in Alabama are as accustomed violence as is said?
A. Yes, there is no one here who doesn’t carry weapons under his clothes. At the slightest quarrel he’ll have a knife or pistol in his hand. These things happen constantly, the state of society is half-barbarous.
Q. But when a man kills another like that, isn’t he punished?
A. He’s always brought to trial, and the jury always acquits. I don’t remember a single man who was at all well-known to have to pay for his life for such a crime. Besides, I’m no better. Look at all these wounds [showed the traces of 4-5 deep scars].
Q. But surely you lodged a complaint?
A. My God, no! I tried to give back as good as I got!
For the North:
No one doubts that there immense advantages of men and material, coupled with the need not just to win but really pulverize the South, should have committed them to a long term ‘anaconda’ like strategy.
But Lincoln, initially at least, eschewed this path, largely because of how he saw secession. He believed that secession resulted from the manipulation of a wealthy elite — that the average southerner wanted back in the Union, but had been temporarily deluded. He felt, therefore, that he needed a quick and dramatic victory to prevent the concrete of secession from settling, so to speak. This victory would also serve as a kind of smelling salt to wake up the south, and bring them back into the fold.
Union General Irwin McDowell told Lincoln that the army stood nowhere near ready for offensive operations, but Lincoln’s political beliefs pushed McDowell to go for a quick victory. “If you are green, so are they,” he reportedly told McDowell. But of course, offensive maneuvers are always much more difficult than defensive ones, and the disaster of the Battle of Bull Run ensued, when the Union forces crumbled into nothingness.
Lincoln misjudged the South badly here. Secession, as we saw last week, was supported by most Southerners, and one victory would not have swung the tide in any case. Victory, if it came, would have to mean a longer, more rigorous, and grinding conflict.
Bull Run shows that the outcome of battles almost always has deeper roots than the fighting itself, and I hope the students saw this in class.
The President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, also wanted compromise at the beginning of the war. For example, he offered mid-western farmers the use of the Mississippi and pledged them access to New Orleans. He, like Lincoln, figured that the Union did not really want to go through the trouble of war, and one quick victory would show them the folly of their ways.
But Davis, like Lincoln, misjudged his opponent. For many in the North the issue went beyond economics or jilted pique. Many felt at the time that democracy itself would be considered an international and historical failure if secession worked. If Constitutional democracy meant one leaves the moment things don’t go your way, democracy had no future. Secession would only serve as the first step in a broader conflict that would only serve, in time, to make America just like Europe, where wars broke out at regular intervals. The misperceptions of both sides meant in part that the early phase of the war had little overall strategic effect.
When we remember that both the Puritan revolutionaries in England, and the more Enlightenment oriented philosophes in France, both entirely failed to bring about constitutional democracy, this attitude makes more sense. In 1861 only England, of all European nations could claim some kind of viable democracy.
From the beginning then, Lincoln had a “cause,” or a grand ideal to fight for, but it was abstract. In time, he would seek to transform the war even more, turning the nation’s eyes toward the slavery question. This will give the North something more tangible to fight over. Next week we will examine this as well as Lincoln’s attitude towards the Constitution.
A Stick in the Mud 