Civil War warrior asks, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’

As a person who has occasionally been accused of hardheadedness and annoying certitude (when you're right, you're right!), maybe I'm not the best person to call for peace, understanding and compromise in these troubled days.

But a revelation came upon me this past week, a voice from my past that exhorted me and others to tone it down a notch, to quit being so damned sure of ourselves where politics and ideology are concerned.

Here's the message:

"But what good is to come to the country from partisan utterances on either side? My own well-considered and long-entertained opinion, my settled and profound conviction, the correctness of which the future will vindicate, is this: that the one thing which is 'wholly and eternally wrong' is the effort of so-called statesmen to inject one-sided and jaundiced sentiments into the youth of the country in either section. Such sentiments are neither consistent with the truth of history, nor conducive to the future welfare and unity of the Republic. The assumption on either side of all the righteousness and all the truth would produce a belittling arrogance, and an offensive intolerance of the opposing section..."

This and similar statements are included in the Memorial Edition of "Reminiscences of the Civil War," a memoir published in 1904. The author of this book, which can be read online where it's been scanned at the University of North Carolina, was General John B. Gordon, one of the premier fighting generals of the Confederate Army during the Civil War (and later a distinguished senator and governor in post-war Georgia).

Oh and did I forget to mention? Gordon is an ancestor on my maternal side.

Aside from my deep familial interest, the book holds up on its own as a fascinating first-hand account of most of the important battles of the war, including the first battle of Bull Run, Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Antietam (Sharpsburg), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Petersburg and Appomattox, among others. In many of these battles, Gordon commanded a brigade, often in the center of action.

Intertwined in the riveting first-hand accounts of these massively bloody battles are Gordon's homespun tales of bravery, humor and whimsy both on the battlefield and off; knowing portraits of many of the South's main military figures; and profound and optimistic perspectives about Americans of both sides, post-war reconciliation and other topics of interest. (Some of my favorite passages chronicle the good-humored relations between soldiers on each side, in the calms between battles, for instance even trading tobacco, coffee and other items between each other.)

At Sharpsburg, while commanding a single line of Southern troops defending against a frontal Union attack, Gordon, who up to this point in the war was considered miraculously lucky to have escaped injury, was hit five times by Minie balls. Blood gushing from his wounds, his arm hanging by threads of skin and sinew, he raced up and down the Confederate lines, exhorting his troops to make good on his earlier promise to Gen. Lee that "These men are going to stay here, General, till the sun goes down or victory is won." Gordon finally collapsed when a ball struck him square in the face (he only survived from drowning in his own blood, when the blood leaked out of his cap through a bullet-hole). He was back commanding a brigade six months after these massive injuries.

Despite his wartime experience, or maybe because of it, Gordon, in his post-war life, became a great advocate for reconciliation between the North and the South. In later years, while on the one hand holding a lifetime appointment as commander of the United Confederate Veterans, he maintained close friendships with many of the Union generals whom he fought against, including Gens. Grant, Meade and Hooker.

The bad news, and there's no way to sugarcoat or excuse this, is that as an educated Southerner, Gordon supported the institution of slavery, and he and his family owned slaves. While he waxes eloquently about the South's sacred duty to defend its constitutional principles, the bottom line, of course, is that the main constitutional principle at issue, states' rights, allowed slavery to persist all across the South. This was long after the rest of the civilized world had done away with it.

The point I'd like to make - and the excuse that I've manufactured to brag on Cousin John in this column - is this: If one of the most decorated, respected and war-hardened Confederate generals of the American Civil War - a man who held together the center line at Antietam while gallons of blood flowed from multiple bullet wounds - can preach conciliation and bipartisanship, why can't modern-day Americans lower the volume and try to work out this country's considerable problems?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against carrying strong opinions, and fighting for them. But at least I'm willing to compromise. That's not something that I've seen from the Tea Party side of the political equation in America, nor the Republican leaders sucking up to them. Sarah Palin has been in attack mode since her first words at the GOP convention in 2007, and the hate-mongers on right-wing radio wouldn't know cooperation if it danced naked in front of them.

As Stephen D. Lee wrote in an introduction to Gen. Gordon's book, "At Appomattox, after the surrender of Lee's army, (Gordon) gathered his weeping heroes around him, and his patriotism in that dark hour was prophetic and grand. He told his comrades 'to bear their trial bravely, to go home in peace, obey the laws, rebuild the country, and work for the weal and harmony of the Republic.'"

He was talking about the whole country, not just the South, or his state, or his party. (Well, the whole white country, anyway.)