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By Alec

It feels odd to say that I enjoyed the Nelson reading, since her vivid descriptions and imagery of the havoc wreaked by both sides of the American Civil War were often quite disturbing. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I am thankful for the reading, since it opened my eyes to a darker and more harrowing side of a war that was already painted pretty bleak in my mind.

Nelson writes that many Americans struggled to comprehend the destruction left behind by Union and Confederate soldiers because they “believed that such ruins belonged to Europe of the past, to the ‘ancients’” (22). Reading this chapter, I actually found myself in something of an opposite position, in that I so directly associate images of ruin with my own era (terrorist attacks, natural disasters, nuclear explosions) that it was jarring to be reminded that mass destruction is by no means a 21st-century invention. Of course, I learned in high school and middle school about the Battle of Antietam (bloodiest in the war) and Sherman’s March to the Sea, but my ability to conceptualize these centuries-old events is pretty pitiful compared to the images seared in my mind of more recent catastrophes, like photographs of post-Katrina New Orleans or video clips of 9/11. In other words, my own understanding of and the gravitas I assign to distant historical tragedies is distorted and diluted by the presentness of more recent events.

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/secessionville/maps/secessionville-sc-battle-map.jpg

Part of this feeling of disconnect surely has to do with this generation simply having the technological means – video cameras and high-def, color photography – to create more vivid and realistic representations of destruction (and history in general). But I think there’s also something to be said about the types of sources used to talk about the Civil War. My own history textbooks, at least, tended to feature maps tracking troop movement, not descriptions of “fire [that] lifted clothing, wood, bricks, and furniture (and reportedly one unfortunate small child) into the air” (Nelson 32). To some extent, this is a fault of most maps, and of the capabilities of the medium – they prize accuracy and summary, not sentiment. As a result, maps of major battles or death toll charts tell rather sterile histories of blood-soaked events. Only certain maps (one could even argue only certain digital maps), such as the one Kurt mentions in his recent blog post, “come to life” through their inclusion of images, primary sources, and descriptions. Nelson seems to recognize this deficit, and capitalizes on the capabilities of her own medium – the book – to offer a grim yet enlightening narrative of Civil War ruination.

One final, kinda dorky, note: my post title is a reference to a song of the same name by a band called Branches. It’s a good (and relevant) one! The song came to mind as I did the reading and this post.

Cited:

Nelson, Megan Kate. Ruin Nation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Print.