My Diary North and South wrapup

I used this as bus reading, so it took a little longer than usual. BTW, 4 pages in that are unreadably blurry. And the ocr scan is nightmarish. The book's pages were a little browned and spotted, and the ocr software frequently went nuts.

Read My Diary North and South for a more-or-less neutral take on the run-up to and beginnings of the Civil War.

Russell is not terribly fond of Americans in general, or American cities in general, or American attitudes in general, though he finds a number of pleasant people and places anyhow. For that matter, you or I probably wouldn't care for the streets in Washington DC at the time--nor those of London.

The newspapers of that day were even greater fabulists than those of today, and every bit as partisan. Wild boasting by officials and common citizens alike ("England will come crawling to our support; cotton is king!" "We can whip the Sesseshers and England and France as well if they get in our way!") tried Russell's patience.

The next-to-the-last straw was his honest report of the retreat from Bull Run. As the (English) bearer of bad news he was blamed for it as though he had caused it. And, though the generals didn't mind his traveling with the army, in the end as the war progressed, he was unable to get permission from the high-ups, and gave up and went home. He was there as a war correspondent, not for amusement.

In the South he observed that, at least publicly, everyone was vehemently for secession, and despised the North and especially New Englanders. The New York elite was, at least until Fort Sumter was shelled, in support of anything that that opposed the hated Republicans (some things don't change much, do they?). He didn't seem to have much conversation with lower classes in either region. He doesn't dwell on it much, but he saw egregious favoritism in army supply, and in which officers got promoted and why. He was not impressed with McClellan, or with the Union armies he saw.

Interestingly, in both North and South, women were more strongly partisan than the men.

He touched on the violence of Southern society, and prevalence of duels (at least one Northern officer died in a duel, so it wasn't limited to the South). I've heard "an armed society is a polite society," but I'm not quite sure about that. If you restrict "society" to a class, perhaps it is. Or perhaps if the society stays relatively sober, it might be.

He arrived after passions were already flaring. He watched as the anger grew after Sumter. I wonder if some of that, in the mouths of former Northern supporters of secession, was from a sense of betrayal.

I think it useful to read of a time when hatreds were even worse than now.

And, given those hatreds, I think we can be grateful for men who were magnanimous in victory, and magnanimous in defeat.