Untitled Document

09 April 2004

Stillness at Appomatox

War Department, Washington, D.C.,
April 9, 1865- 10 o'clock P.M.

Ordered: that a salute of two hundred guns be fired at the headquarters of every army and department, and at every post and arsenal in the United States, and at the Military Academy at West Point on the day of the receipt of this order, is commemoration of the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to Lieut.-Gen. Grant and the army under his command. Report of the receipt and execution of this order to be made to the Adjutant-General at Washington. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War.

That telegram was sent nearly one-hundred and forty years ago tonight. After four years, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, the war ended in the parlour of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town of Appomattox Court House , Virginia. The McLeans had selected the sleepy little corthouse town as a remote haven from the conflict that started on his farm four years before.

They owned a farm near Manassas then, close by the Bull Run, and the opening battle of the great conflict was conducted partly on his property. He wanted to get as far away from combat as he could. At the end of the day, there was finally a stillness at Appomattox.

That is the way a lot of people are feeling today and it is not working out. Everyone is hunkering down, or preparing for strong statements in Iraq. The Marines are trying a strong statement in Falluja. They are brave kids, but I wonder how a force reported as 1,200 men can surround a city of 150,000.

The violence has leaked out over into Kut and Karbala, the names familiar to me from the target list in the first Gulf War. There is another disturbing development in the unpleasantness. Three Japanese civilians appeared in a video broadcast on Al Jazeera. They are blindfolded and menacing black-garbed captors threaten them with the weapons of another age: knives and swords.

There is a statement from another in the endless parade of previously unknown groups. This one is calls itself the Mujahedeen Brigades. They are giving the Japanese government three days to withdraw their its 550 troops from Iraq before the hostages are to burned alive, presumably on tape.

The Japanese have publicly demurred. But like the bombings in Madrid, the radical Islamists apparently believe their can influence the affairs of the nation-states. Maybe they are right. There is much to be sorted out.

I would comfortably emulate the Maclean family and move as far away from CNN and al Jazeera as possible. But this is a world of ubiquitous communications. And flight would not change anything more than it did for Wilmer and Virginia Mclean.

It is, of course, Good Friday. I am not much of a Christian, and the urgency of Faith is an alien concept to me. I appreciate the history of the Church and its sects and schisms as the West expanded and strode across the world. I also am intrigued by the resurgence of Islam, and the urgency of the Faithful. I am a student of history. It is about everything that is interesting in the human race: sex and lust and violence and money. It always has something to tell us about the future.

The way Grant treated the Army of Northern Virginia is an anomaly. Most wars end with more drama. Since our foes like to think about the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and consider it relevant to their campaign, perhaps we should take a lesson from the expansion of the Faith.

Constantinople links us to the old Eastern Empire, and through Byzantium, to the glory that was Rome.

Byzantium's story spanned a millennia. It fell for the usual reasons. Wars abroad and wars at home. Depleted recourses, loss of much needed aid and support, internal social strife, and economic concerns. The official end of the Byzantine Empire is usually attributed to the Turkish conquest over Constantinople in 1453.

The most popular image of Istanbul are the graceful minarets and the massive dome of the Blue Mosque. Until the conquest, it was the great church of Saint Sophia. The last Christian mass of a thousand years was crowded, and said by Orthodox and Catholic priests to serve the needs of the besieged city. People sang hymns, some wept and cried at the propsects of what was to come. Others asked each other for forgiveness. In the crowd was seen the last Hellenic Emperor .

The Greeks have a lament that speaks of the time when the Bosphorus was a Greek lake, about the fall of the Polis, The City:

They took the City, they took it, took Salonica
They took St. Sofia, too, the great monastery
Which has three-hundred semandra and sixty Two bells...

I was drinking and smoking with some Turks a yar or two ago. We were outdoors because of our shared vice, on the deck of a lovely home near the Dulles Access Road. I tried a joke with them. "The problem between the Greeks and the Turks," I said slowly "Is about the capital of Greece."

"How so?" asked one of the Turks, a journalist who interprets America to the people back home.

"The capital of Greece is Constantinople."

He took my point and smiled the ironic smile of the victor. It is fact, history. Like the fall of Baghdad a year ago. But some things are meant to endure, and some things are meant to be remembered. The end of the great Greek city was accomplished by the sword, and by fire, and by slaughter.

The war to end wars. The first war was one that actually ended the empires of Europe. But I like that phrase, hollow as it sounds these days. One could march off to something like that. We lack a slogan and a cheery song for the adventure in Iraq.

I will not be whistling through this good Friday. I have some things to accomplish. There are the taxes to complete, and some papers I need to retrieve. The ex keeps calling me up about the insurance. That was one of the provisions of the settlement that ended the War Between the Socotras. I was to transfer title of the insurance on my life to her. As such, I am worth more dead than alive. In exchange, I was allowed to take my sidearm and my steel horse and the lawyers stood by as I stacked everything else. And left the field to the victors.

At the end of all this there will be peace, just as it is at Appomatox today.

I wonder about the insurance thing, though. Does somebody have plans for me?