Musings On History I've Never Understood (sparked by a song)

This post was originally meant to be part of my post on "The Night They Moved The House". I was going to talk about both songs in one post but when my thoughts on both songs ballooned large enough to be their own posts, I threw up my hands and admitted defeat. So, today I'm going to talk about another new discovery, this one forced into my earholes by my dear brother Eomer, who will quite often come up to where I'm working and be like "you HAVE to listen to this". Not all of his music is my cup of tea, and I didn't think this one was, at first listen, but it's grown on me. (Like moss.) It meets my criteria for music of having a good tune and a (tragic) story in the lyrics. 

(I love the original-ish version (the above is an alternate take of the original), but I also LOVE this cover, so...here's both.) 

Yes, we're talking about "Yankee Bayonet" by The Decemberists. To be honest, given that my brother and the two cousins I'm closest with (Pippin and Gimli) are all obsessed with The Decemberists, I'm surprised that I hadn't actually listened to anything of theirs before. Oops, I guess? I'm not 100% sold on their style, BUT as I said, this one grew on me in the extreme. 

It's the story of a man from the South who has to leave his love (his wife) behind during the Civil War... and I'm not going to spoil it for you, because some of the beauty of listening to it is not knowing what's going to happen. But it's beautiful, and yeah, somewhat tragic.

I wrote a bunch of blog posts to see me through to the end of last year (because no, I do not have time to write four blog posts per month during the school year--I write two per month, and keep track of the ideas I have, and then during breaks, write TONS of posts in a big burst of creativity, and now you know my secret), and one of the posts was about how I've come, as I've grown older, to understand how one can love a place almost like one loves a person. I ended up posting that one in August, and you can find it HERE. I wrote that post a week before I wrote this one, and not too long afterwards, I listened to "Yankee Bayonet" again. 

And I suddenly was like "oh". Because you see, this stanza, in fact, the very first stanza, 

Heart-carved tree trunk, Yankee bayonet
A sweetheart left behind
Far from the hills of the sea-swell Carolinas
That's where my true love lies

hit me right between the eyes, especially the line "sea-swell Carolinas", because while I know that the Carolinas are on the ocean, the line reminded me of visiting the Smokey Mountains with my friends this past spring, and the way the old, old mountains and hills rose and fell, rather more like sea billows than the jagged mountains of the West that I know best. It reminded me of the feeling I had for Tennessee, the feeling of "if I lived here, I can see how I would love you". 

And suddenly, the whole song became about a sense of place, a love of one's native place, almost more than about love of another person. 

Far from the hills of the sea-swell Carolinas
That's where my true love lies
...
Look for me when the sun-bright swallow
Sings upon the birch bough high
...
But when the sun breaks
To no more bullets in Battle Creek
...
For I will be home then
I will be home then
...
When I was a girl how the hills of Oconee
Made a seam to hem me in
...
Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow
I will come on the breath of the wind

And THEN I was suddenly like "I CAN UNDERSTAND THE CIVIL WAR NOW."  

I know this is going to sound kind of silly, but in studying history as a kid, I'd never really understood the motivations of the South. Yes, I knew that they wanted to keep their way of life, and yes, I knew that they resented the North's perceived meddling in their business. (And by their business, I really do mean their business--i.e. their commerce and their state's rights, especially with regards to slavery.) All of this is really fuzzy in my brain, as it's been a long time since I've studied the Civil War, but I really didn't get it as a kid. Like, why would you try to secede?

(^^ if that entire paragraph is an embarrassment to my reputation as a scholar, I accept that with humility. It's pretty bad.)

However! As I've gotten older and read more, I came to realize that at least for the common soldier, it wasn't as much about the politics of the whole thing (which, yes, did revolve pretty centrally around slavery, from all I hear), but it was more about fighting for his homeland. (Wasn't there a general who was anti-slavery, but fought for the South because that was where he was from?) But I still didn't get it. Why would you fight for a side that was obviously in the wrong? Why were there any soldiers who fought for the South? I mean, really? They were fighting for slavery, whether they themselves were pro-slavery or not! 

Then, while I was in Illinois/Indiana at the beginning of summer break, spending a weekend with my friends near Lake Michigan, we watched Gettysburg. I use 'watched' broadly, given that we watched the first half from 10 pm to 1 am, and I was pretty solidly falling asleep throughout the entire last hour that we watched. But one of the scenes came back to me when I was having my epiphany over "Yankee Bayonet". It's a scene where a general on the side of the South is talking to his men (possibly right before Pickett's Charge?), and his final words are "for Virginia!" 

And putting that together with "sea-swell Carolinas", I had my answer to why the common soldier fought. Or at least, an answer that makes sense to me, even if it's my own conjecture. The common soldier fought because the South was his home. They perceived that their homeland was under attack, and they rallied to defend it. Some of them were fighting for slavery, and some of them hated slavery, and probably some of them had yet other reasons, but love of native place drove many of them. I suddenly understood that. They had the same love for the "sea-swell Carolinas", "Virginia!", and everywhere else in the South that I have for Washington, and in a slightly lesser way for Illinois. A love that cannot bear to think of harm coming to the beloved place, nor to the beloved people who live there. 

And thanks to a Decemberists song...I finally get it. The Civil War no longer seems like a completely irrational conflict, but something that is complex, and yes, tragic, but perhaps at least somewhat comprehensible. A nice moment for a knowledge-loving homeschooler. :)

So...tell me truly. How horrendous is my ignorance of the Civil War? But also, did you like the song? Have you ever had an epiphany like that?