A Shot in the Dark

My students never quite trust me when I teach the US Civil War. I suppose I deserve their distrust. I have two dark secrets that I feel compelled to disclose every year.

Before I reveal those secrets to you here, a little background is necessary. I teach in the Deep South, a region with strong feelings but often little knowledge about history. I have lived in Cobb County, one of Atlanta's many suburban counties, for the past thirty-two years of my life. Like much of the Atlanta area, it is a county that has undergone a rapid change as its rural heritage has been replaced by a typical suburban mix of homes, shopping centers, and Starbucks. These days, it actually makes the papers when an old family farm finally gives way to the never-ending need for neighborhoods that only recall their heritage in names like Brook Field, Morgan Farm, and others too many to mention.

But it is not only the county's rural heritage that has been under assault. The entire Atlanta region has seen its southern heritage watered down by an influx of hordes of Yankees. Sherman came in the 1860's. Lockheed came in the 1940's. IBM and many other companies came in the 1970's. I am not sure which has been more destructive of the local southern culture. It is not uncommon to go to a pro-sports event in Atlanta and see the hometown fans matched or exceeded in numbers by fans from places like New York or Chicago. Nearly every Civil War battlefield is now under a parking lot, apartment complex, or Starbucks.

The transition has not been without its tensions. I well remember my own high school history class debating the Civil War:
Yank transplant: "Who won the war?"
Local Rebel: "Who won most of the battles?"
Yank transplant: "Lee owned slaves!"Local Rebel: "Grant was a drunk!"
Yank transplant: "Who won the war?"
Local Rebel: "Who won most of the battles?"
You get the idea. I don't remember it going any deeper than that. I don't recall joining the debate. I didn't know which side to join. My soul was deeply conflicted by the fact that one of my dark secrets is that I was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. My dad worked for IBM and was transferred to Atlanta when I was five. Our neighborhood, named Bunker Hill in honor of the Bicentennial and, perhaps, to make us Yanks feel more welcome, was filled with Yankee transplants.

I was conflicted as soon as I began attending elementary school. I had been in the habit of calling my parents simply, "Mom" and "Dad." I soon picked up the habit of referring to them as, "Maya-me" and "Daya-de" until my dad told me quite vehemently to stop talking like that.

My students are always shocked to discover that I was born in the North. Some of them doubt that a place named “Poughkeepsie” actually exists. In a desperate attempt to reestablish my southern credentials, I explain that I was only born there by a fluke of timing. My mom is from Arkansas and my dad is from North Carolina. They reply, “Yeah…NORTH Carolina!” or “Arkansas? Isn’t that where Clinton is from? She’s a New York Yank!” Okay, I might be exaggerating, but my students’ conception of who their teacher is has been shaken. I continue to explain my true heritage by telling them that my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather came to Virginia in 1636. I tell them that I love sweet tea and will eat anything fried. In fact, my mother, at her wit’s end in her struggle to get me to eat vegetables, battered-up every vegetable fit to fry and dropped it in boiling oil. I ate fried okra, squash, zucchini, not to mention the fried chicken hearts and gizzards I got for a treat. I don’t volunteer that I find grits repulsive. It is all to no avail. I cannot now be trusted to teach the Civil War with any measure of objectivity.

It is usually at this point that I drop my second bombshell secret. My great, great grandfather may have been the one that killed Stonewall Jackson. As you may or may not know, Jackson was reconnoitering the battlefield at Chancellorsville at the end of a day that many say was his finest hour, when a group of North Carolina infantry challenged him in the half-light. Thinking Jackson and his staff was a force of Union cavalry, the North Carolina infantry opened fire. Jackson was hit once in his right hand and twice in his left arm (whatever you say about their judgment, at least the North Carolinians were good shots). His left arm would be amputated, but he would die from complications due to pneumonia on May 10, 1863, reportedly saying, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” Lee was devastated by the news and remarked, “I have lost my right arm.” Indeed, when Lee needed Jackson later that year at Gettysburg, Jackson was not there, and Lee failed when he might have had his greatest victory. Lincoln would have never given his famous address, the Confederacy would have won the war, and all of American history would have been drastically different. I might be exaggerating again but who can tell?

According to a clipping from 1899 saved by my father’s family, “Mr. W.I. […], of near Bethel, an old Confederate, was in town Wednesday and told us a little about the part he took in the volley that killed Stonewall Jackson. He was in the brigade to guard the road with orders to let no one pass. Having just driven Hooker into his defenses at Chancellorsville, Gen. Jackson was very anxious to follow up the fruits of the battle and reconnoitering at night, and refusing to halt as demanded, was fired into by his own men and mortally wounded, on the night of May 2nd 1863, dying the 10th. Mr. […] was in the Brigade and fired at Jackson. Who hit him can not be known.”

I have replaced the last name of Mr. William Ivey with ellipsis to protect my family. He was my great, great grandfather. My students think he was Yankee spy.

I don’t know if revealing my secret Poughkeepsie-born, Stonewall Jackson-killing past makes it anymore difficult for my students to accept my criticisms of the South or not, but I hope they know I love the South and would like to see all that is good about the South preserved.

Peace