THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

The Tragedy of Friends at War

The bonds of friendship forged by soldiers are some of deepest and long lasting that are formed anywhere.  For American military professionals those bonds are formed in the small rather closed society that is the regular United States military.  They are formed in war and peace, and are marked by years of deployments, isolated duty and combat.  They are part of a culture that is often quite different than that of civilian society. That is the case now as it was in 1860.  When the Southern States seceded from the Union men who had spent much of their adult lives serving together discovered had to say goodbye and prepare to fight each other. Most did so with a heavy heart even though many had strong convictions about the rightness of their region's cause. Those who left the army to serve the Confederate states were often torn by doubt and questions of where their loyalty lay. They wrestled with their oath of office and the costs of perhaps having to face their dearest friends on future battlefields. They were different from the mass levies of civilian volunteers who rallied to the flags of the Union and Confederacy in 1861. The volunteers, most of whom did not have the deep and abiding friendships of the professionals were often motivated by ideological, sectional or religious hatred of the other and went to war with great aplomb. The war of Northern Aggression has many such tales. One of the most remembered is that of Union General Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate General Lewis Armistead. It was key story line in Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Killer Angels was immortalized in the movie Gettysburg which is based on Shaara's novel.

Hancock was from Pennsylvania. He was a career soldier and Infantry officer, a graduate of West Point Class of 1844. He served in Mexico and held numerous positions. In 1861 he was stationed in California as a Quartermaster under the command of Colonel (Brevet Brigadier General) Albert Sidney Johnston. One of his fellow officers was Captain Lewis Armistead, a twice widowed Virginian who also served as a commander of the New San Diego Garrison under Johnston's command. Hancock and his wife Almira became fast and best friends, close as  brothers with the widowed Virginian.

Lewis Addison Armistead was a nephew of the officer who defended Fort McHenry from the British in the War of 1812. Armistead had academic and personal difficulties at West Point including an altercation with Jubal Early in which he broke a plate over Early's head.  Between his academic difficulties and the fight with Early he resigned from the Academy. However, his father helped him obtain a commission as an Infantry officer in 1839. Armistead's career from that point on was similar to many other officers of his day. He served with distinction in Mexico, the Great Plains, Kansas, Utah and California. As the war clouds built and various southern states seceded from the Union numerous officers from the South were torn between their oath, their friendships and their deep loyalty to their home states and families. In the end most Southern officers resigned their commissions, many with mixed feelings and quite often sadness. A minority of southern born officers remained loyal to the Union. The most prominent of these men were General Winfield Scott and Major General George Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga." Likewise Union Brigadier General John Buford's family in Kentucky supported the Confederacy. For those southern officers who remained loyal to the Union to was often at a great personal cost. Thomas's action cost him his relationship with his immediate family who deemed him to be a traitor. He and others were pilloried and demonized in the basest ways by many in the South. Some Southerners who served the Union were executed when they were captured. George Pickett, who called for his fellow Virginian Thomas' death ordered 22 North Carolinians who he captured fighting for the Union in Kinston North Carolina to be executed and he was not alone.

However, for most it was different. As talk of secession and war heated up officers stationed on the frontier debated the issues and asked each other what they would do if war came. In California Armistead and other officers asked Hancock, who was a Democrat and not openly hostile to the South, advice on what he would do if war came. Hancock's reply was simple. "I shall not fight upon the principle of state-rights, but for the Union, whole and undivided"