Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Killer Angels, Chapter 1 - Michael Shaara


Chapter 1

Chapter 1 begins with a spy, a would-be actor, spying the movements of the Union Army. He is bringing this information back to Lt. General James Longstreet, right hand man to General Lee. The spy is not liked by Longstreet, and he is initially doubted, but eventually Longstreet takes him to Lee to communicate the information he has.

What comes through in this chapter is how feckless the spy, who the chapter is named after, is and how anxious and worried Longstreet seems to be:

If the spy was right, the army was in great danger. They could be cut apart and cut off from home and destroyed in detail, piece by piece. If the spy was right, then Lee would have to turn, but the old man did not believe in spies nor in any information you had to pay for, had not approved of the money spent or event the idea behind it. And the old man had faith in Stuart, and why in God's name had Stuart sent nothing, not even a courier, because even Stuart wasn't fool enough to let the whole damned Army of the Potomac get this close without word, not one damned lonesome word...

It seems that Lee believes in his standards but this is war, and Longstreet recognizes that to win a war, you have to do things that violate one's standards. On the other hand, we get a sense that the spy's commitment is less to the cause of the South and more to his own desire to act. Still, his commentary on how he acquires information is interesting:

The spy chatted amiably. He seemed to need to talk. He was saying, "Strange thing about it all, thing that bothers me is that when you do this job right, nobody knows you're doing it, nobody ever watches you work, do you see?...This current creation, now, is marvelous. I'm a poor-witted farmer, do you see, terrified of soldiers, and me lovely young wife has run off with a drummer and I'm out a-scourin' the countryside for her, a sorrowful pitiful sight I am. And people lookin' down their noses and grinnin' behind me back and all the time tellin' me exactly what I want to know about who is where and how many and how long ago, and them not even knowin' they're doin's it, too busy feelin' contempuous. There are many people, General, that don't give a damn for a human soul, do you know that? The strange thing is, after playing this poor fool farmer for a while I can't help but feel sorry for him. Because nobody cares."

One the one hand, the spy articulates in the last sentence the same sentiments that Rick in Casablanca does when he tells Ilsa that this crazy world doesn't care a hill of beans about the problems of three small people. It's war. Who cares about a farmer looking for his runaway wife when the war is in everyone's front yards. And it is hard not to understand where he is coming from with that.

On the other hand, this guy is able to get self-righteous about their lack of care even while he is taking advantage of it and "betraying" them with the information he is gathering. He's a spy. He's at risk, true, but one is somewhat able to understand why he is looked down upon by military folk because his way of fighting the war it is all about subterfuge and obfuscation. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how he feels superior to those that he perceive feel superior to him since he is precisely trying to take advantage of their normal human feelings.

The chapter ends without the spy, but with Longstreet and Lee discussing the information that they have, especially the news that Meade has been named the general of the Army of the Potomac. And the discovery that the town on the map that they will concentrate their forces on is Gettysburg.

1 comment:

JaneGS said...

I'm enjoying your blog, Suzanne. It's really a great book.

I find the relationship between Lee and Longstreet particularly interesting--with Jackson dying shortly before Gettysburg, Lee was really at a loss and Longstreet couldn't fill the gap that Jackson left. There's a great book--Partners in Command by Joseph Glatthaar, that goes into this idea in depth, as well as exploring the relationships of other commanders on both sides and how that helped shaped the outcome of the war.