Prologue

The Venice air was quiet and clear, invigorating one's spirit by the leisurely atmosphere which was yet infused with energy and briskness. What must seem unreal to so many Americans who have not traveled abroad was quite real to me then in Italy: the incredible gold and azure mosaics facing up the historic old cathedral of St. Marks; the tall tower from which moving figures struck the hours; the pigeons swirling about an old lady who fed them crumbs, and the rich, ruby Dubonnet that moved in my glass as I revolved the stem between thumb and forefinger. What was unreal to me that bright October evening in 1957 was the information a fellow American passed along to me— trouble in Little Rock, segregation, United States Airborne troops dispatched, National Guard units called out
The whole sorry mess of "the Negro problem" had flared up and I began to wonder if somehow this ancient wound, which four years of War had healed in drastic cautery, was about to open up again. Myself, a grandson of a Southern officer (mine was a lieutenant; somebody had to keep the generals from annoying the sergeants), my parents of a Virginia family, I yet felt no such strong sentiments about states' rights when I could also see plainly that some of the rights sought to be retained by the states were ridiculous, archaic. Perhaps too subtly, I telegraphed the Governor at Little Rock, "Have ten thousand Enfields at eighteen. Do you want? Signed, Huse." Facetiously I paraphrased the sort of cables which Caleb Huse, foreign purchasing agent of the Confederacy, was wont to send almost 100 years before. I doubt that the Honorable Governor Faubus ever saw that cable, but it served to point up not only the ridiculousness of many Southrons' attitudes today, but the striking similarities of history and social life which a hundred years ago seemed justified in culminating in open War Today the world has been divided into two armed camps. It is not enough to blame "history" for it, as this is the work of men. Once, too, these United States were also divided. The Union did not fall. Whether it will long endure, is the responsibility of present generations But as what is past is prologue, so a look at the problems of preparing for and fighting a War on the American continent a hundred years ago, may serve to give insight into problems and methods of today. Even in that century past, the United States, both Union and Confederacy, acknowledged themselves to be a part of One World. Hope of the English loan kept the Confederacy in business for years. Ability to ship cotton out to pay, through Fraser, Trenholm & Company, for War materials, kept the Stars and Bars floating over a solvent industrial nation until the last and final accounting at Appomattox. And in the North, which today's history teachers would have us believe was such a beehive of industry and productivity, the troops in blue relied for nearly three of the five War years upon small arms, cannon, ammunition purchased overseas In the South, changes also were taking place, the termination of which by force of Union arms left its mark upon the States of Dixie even today. This change was the transition from a Tidewater agricultural society to one including an active iron and steel industry and all the productivity which that implies. Virginia, among the richest of the states, possessed a large capacity for ordnance and armaments production. At Augusta, Georgia the South built the world's largest powder mill In New Orleans, ridden by "the vomit," yellow fever, and malaria, industry had still managed to gain an ascendancy Until threat of Union gunboats forced their removal, several key ordnance firms were set up in New Orleans, and their cannon and rifles were in use during the War. The burning of Columbia, South Carolina, appears to be the deliberate destruction of competitive commercial capability, rather than the necessary destruction of railroad stock in use for hauling Confederate War materials. After all, the city had been captured by Sherman, and he was marching on. And the mass destruction of Atlanta, both by Confederates fleeing and by Union occupiers, is a record of destruction of factories which could have constituted a serious threat in the market to Northern manufacturers Freeing the slaves was part and parcel of this economic Warfare which underlies many of the battles so glamorously recalled today. A slave was a valuable article; the bank account of the South was in its slaves These black men in bondage were not all jolly field hands singing in the sun. Many were men of great technical skill. It was the slave who forged the weapons of War at the great Tredegar works; it was the slave at C. S. Robinson's Richmond carbine factory who turned out the stubby copies of the popular Sharps for Southern chivalry; it was the slave in the glow of Southern furnaces who poured the yellow bronze to make the howitzers of the Washington Artillery or the Richmond Greys. And side by side worked their white masters: men like Brooke, of the rifled cannon; or the brothers Cook, musket and carbine makers The story of the production and procurement of arms for the South is one of sacrifices and accomplishments The accomplishments are so great that rarely was the South in want of small arms, after the first scramble to sort out the captures at Harpers Ferry. The accomplishment included building up the tons of salvaged parts into thousands of useful rifle muskets at the Confederate States Arsenal in Richmond. The accomplishment included obtaining a complete factory to fabricate, wholly by machinery, on the most approved system, the No. 1 Interchangeable Enfield, standard arm of the South. While the shipment of tools only got as far as Nassau, the letting of this contract and completion of it was one of the War's minor miracles And there were men who never laid file to steel, yet supplied more guns in the space of a few months than their contracting capitalist fellows accomplished in the years of the War. These in the North were "Colonel" Schuyler and Marcellus Hartley—given carte blanche to a million dollars; and their counterpart of the South, Caleb Huse, who managed to send through the blockade from the ports of Europe a steady stream of good muskets, good cannon, and good rifles Today little remains but monuments and battlefield tours to tell of those days and of this ultimate merging of many states into one National Identity. Like it or not, North and South emerged from the battle as one great nation. But upon the relics of those days still lingers the luster of the men who created the swords from plowshares. Today's collector of old guns and edged weapons borrows a little of this glory in the owning and researching of some pistol or carbine from the Civil War period Today, also, we are engaged in a great struggle, to test whether this nation or any nation dedicated to the liberties of man, can long endure. America is an old country today. The New World, in the eyes of many, is past her prime. The nations of Europe are once again new nations: Germany's Constitution since War Two; Italy no longer a monarchy; France lingering in the sunshine of memories of the Great Napoleon yet somehow still strong, still vital; these are the new nations of the world. Ranged beyond them is Russia, a land of revolution still transpiring. America, too, once was a nation of revolutionists. But a revolution that slows down, that dies, is the mark of the end of that revolutionary society. Russia, to all observers, seems to be highballing along with her own revolution working its way with land, life, and people. It is a revolution that differs fundamentally from and sternly challenges the American revolution. Our own was tested many times; most strongly before, by our Civil War So far, we have survived.