{"id":1812,"date":"2014-01-14T17:35:31","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T23:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2014-01-12T14:59:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-12T20:59:13","slug":"vicksburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html","title":{"rendered":"Vicksburg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Cathy and I visited the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg<\/a> on our recent trip.\u00a0 We both have an interest in history and although we had driven through Vicksburg on several occasions we had never stopped \u2013 so this time we did.<\/p>\n

In the visitors center, we stood in front of a map that lights up to show troop movements and fighting engagements (is there a name for that kind of display?).\u00a0 An audio recording told the story of the Battle of Vicksburg.<\/p>\n

Vicksburg was the last obstacle to the Union controlling the entire Mississippi River.\u00a0 Unable to take the city directly, in May and June of 1863 General Ulysses Grant laid siege to it.\u00a0 After 47 days of hunger and other suffering, the Confederates surrendered on July 4.<\/p>\n

As I listened to the end of the narrative, I was struck with a feeling of sadness.\u00a0 Beyond the tremendous costs of war, beyond the horrible reason behind the war, there was sadness in the recognition of defeat.\u00a0 We lost.\u00a0 We<\/em> lost.<\/p>\n

This feeling was quite unexpected and I\u2019ve been trying to understand it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On one hand, much of my life has been surrounded by the relics of the Civil War.\u00a0 I grew up in Tennessee near the sites of some of the key battles:\u00a0 Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain.\u00a0 I\u2019ve hiked, biked and run all over Chickamauga \u2013 the site of the second bloodiest battle<\/a> after Gettysburg.\u00a0 When I lived in Atlanta I worked in Stone Mountain and I hiked, biked and ran through Stone Mountain Park.\u00a0 I studied Civil War history in school and I\u2019ve done a bit of reading on it, though none recently.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On the other hand, I\u2019ve never been obsessed with the Civil War and I\u2019ve certainly never had any favorable feelings toward the Confederacy.\u00a0 Growing up I never heard anyone describe slavery as anything short of abhorrent or the Civil War as anything short of necessary to end it.\u00a0 While certain Confederate generals were spoken of admirably, the idea of the Lost Cause<\/a> was never mentioned, and in any case never carried any weight with me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never identified with the Confederacy before and there\u2019s no reason why I should now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Am I feeling the pull of my ancestors?\u00a0 While statistically it\u2019s likely at least one of my eight great-great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War, I don\u2019t know if they did or not.\u00a0 I was never shown a picture of Great Uncle Somebody in a Confederate (or for that matter, a Union) uniform. \u00a0The few ancestors I know about from that era were poor farmers who would have had little desire to fight for plantation owners\u2026 though a lack of personal interest has never kept ordinary people from getting caught up in the march to war.<\/p>\n

Am I feeling the pull of the land, to defend it against an invader?\u00a0 My experience with the spirits of the land<\/a> is that they don\u2019t much care which band of humans occupies their ground.\u00a0 And while I have a strong affinity for the land where I grew up, that\u2019s back in Tennessee, not 400 miles to the West in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Am I feeling the pull of the tribe?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 Perhaps my roots in the South are are deeper than I think.\u00a0 Perhaps my instinct to favor us<\/em> over them<\/em> is strong enough to break through my revulsion at what we<\/em> were fighting for.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always thought of myself as an American first and foremost, but perhaps an identity as a Southerner and as a Tennessean was forged in ways I never noticed.\u00a0 Some tribes we get to choose \u2013 others we\u2019re born into whether we fit well there or not.<\/p>\n

Perhaps.\u00a0 I honestly don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I do know this \u2013 I\u2019m glad the South lost.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad the Confederacy was defeated and I get blood-boiling angry when people invoke States Rights.\u00a0 Even though I\u2019m happy we\u2019re making progress towards marriage equality state by state, the idea that Americans have fewer rights in some states than others is offensive to my sense of justice.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what life in a 21st<\/sup> century Confederacy would be like but I doubt it would be very pleasant for me, to say nothing of what it would be like for my friends of African heritage.\u00a0 I\u2019m very glad the South lost.<\/p>\n

But on a rainy day in Vicksburg, I was also a little sad.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
the cost of war<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A visit to the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi brought some unexpected feelings I\u2019m still trying to figure out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":1815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[248,36,247],"class_list":["post-1812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-civil-war","tag-travel-2","tag-vicksburg"],"yoast_head":"\nVicksburg<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A visit to the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi brought some unexpected feelings I\u2019m still trying to figure out.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vicksburg\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A visit to the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi brought some unexpected feelings I\u2019m still trying to figure out.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-14T23:35:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-01-12T20:59:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/01\/Vicksburg-Dec2013-02.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"512\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html\",\"name\":\"Vicksburg\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-01-14T23:35:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-12T20:59:13+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\"},\"description\":\"A visit to the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi brought some unexpected feelings I\u2019m still trying to figure out.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/01\/vicksburg.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Vicksburg\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"description\":\"Musings of a Druid, Pagan, and Unitarian Universalist.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Beckett\"},\"description\":\"I grew up in Tennessee with the woods right outside my back door. 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