History Civil War Term Paper

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Aytch: A Confederate's Memoir of the Civil War

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest periods in American History. In contemporary times it has also proved to be one of the most glamorized periods of American History. Films such as Gone with the Wind and Birth of the Nation both attest to this fact. However, for serious students of the period, there remains a wealth of real life testimony from battlefield, the words of individuals who suffered and died in the service of both Union and Confederate armies. The memoir Co. Aytch: A Confederate's Memoir of the Civil War, is a Civil War battlefield account that is neither beautiful nor romanticized. It is a real life dramatization of the despair often faced by members of the 'losing' army in that particular conflict.

Aytch began his Civil War experience as a relatively idealistic young defender of the new Confederacy. Early in May 1861, at age twenty-one, one Sam R. Watkins of Columbia, Tennessee, joined the First Tennessee Regiment, Company H, as a private, to fight for the Southern Cause. He emerged as one of only seven to survive every one of his regiment's battles, from Shiloh to Nashville. This statistical figure alone would be evidence of the tremendous carnage faced by members of the Confederate Army. However, Watkins also included in his retrospective book a number of stories about his comrades who died, and died horribly. This rendered the deaths of these comrades in the eyes of a reader far more poignantly than either the fictional accounts of the Civil War cited above. The individuals who befriended Watkins are depicted in such a human way. They weather both the tedium as well as the glory and heartache of war. This depiction of the Confederate soldiers resonated and remained in the mind even more tellingly such photographic evidence as disseminated through documentaries on the period, such as the PBS series on the Civil War. Also, because Watkins actually lived through the experience he cited in his work, his view history not as a seamless narrative, but as lived experience, made his work far more three-dimensional and detailed than even a photograph.

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Because Watkins wrote from the perspective of a man looking back on his life, he evidently wished to not only record his experience, but commemorate the lives of the individuals lost. "In these memoirs, after the lapse of twenty years, we propose to fight our 'battles o'er again,' he noted in his memoir, with an ironic nod to the reader. (2-3) But Watkins did not take the attitude throughout his work of a man who is reliving his former glory. If he had done so, this memoir would have emerged as a far poorer work that could not 'stand the test of time.' Who would want to hear a Confederate rehash battles from the perspective of a young man, without the benefit of so many years of perspective, living as one who fought for a loosing side?

Watkins also stated to his readers point-blank that he is not a military strategist, and he has no desire to second-guess his generals or the military tacticians who resulted in the losses that closed out the Civil War. This made him more credible as a narrative source. Watkins had no 'scores to settle.' Rather he wished to simply relate what it was like to be tired, hungry, and confused in….....

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