Picaresque

Ahh, album reviews! Seems like ages since I've done one! Here we are, my review of Picaresque, by the Decemberists. And man, is it long. I spent way too much time on this.

Picaresque by the Decemberists

9.5/10

A Picaresque novel is a story of a young roguish character who gets by based on their wits. If that’s the case, then where is that theme on the album Picaresque? The album is filled with narrative-based songs, with only two exceptions, and none of them fit the title.

But that doesn’t matter. What does matter are the lyrics, compositions, melodies, and overall quality of the album. Many Decemberists fans declare it their best album. Does it hold up to this reputation? Personally, I prefer The King is Dead, but it’s still incredibly well put together.

The music on Picaresque varies widely. The opener, “The Infanta,” is bold, loud, and grand. Then the songs change their dynamics, from the muted “Eli the Barrow Boy” to the dreary “For My Own True Love.” One interesting track is “The Sporting Life,” which bears little resemblance to the rest of the album in both lyrical themes and sound; its percussion takes the lead. Perhaps the most interesting song in terms of composition is the mammoth 8 minute “Mariner’s Revenge Song,” with mandolin, violin, upright bass, and various other instruments falling in step behind accordions and guitars. It churns forward, constantly changing, enhancing the narrative it presents. The album’s conclusion is the brief “Of Angels and Angles,” which is a short arpeggio-based song with nothing but acoustic guitar and Meloy’s vocals.

However, this is a Decemberists album, so the focus is on the lyrics. Every song on the album constructs a scene, narrative, or explicit message.  Every song on this album is dark. From monarchs to suicide pacts to personal failure to lost love to government conspiracies to personal struggle, there is not one cheerful song on this album. That’s not to say that every song paints a dreary picture, or that the album is overly depressing. The songs focus on much more than depression. Colin Meloy is a fan of historical narratives (“Decemberists”, wonder where he got that!), and he sets several songs in the 1800s, such as “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and “We Both Go Down Together.” Some, like “The Bagman’s Gambit,” are set in semi-dystopic settings. “16 Military Wives” is an all-out protest song. However, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” has the most intense story of all, with an 8-minute narrative of revenge against a conman. While the stories widely vary, and can seem jarring at times (a story of how boy commits suicide is juxtaposed with a song about a boy who falls down at a sports game), sometimes they blend beautifully(a song about a widow is juxtaposed with “16 Military Wives”).

The album is dense, dark, and hard to get into, but if one is committed enough, you won’t ever put it down.

1. The Infanta – 8/10 A loud and intense opening with middle eastern elements. It describes a royal procession, focusing around a child monarch, the titular Infanta.

2. We Both Go Down Together – 9/10 Set in the 1800s, this song follows a young couple as they form a suicide pact on the cliffs of Dover. The song has a swift tempo and violins drive the verses, which lead into soaring choruses. The song goes into expository detail: the boy was rich, the girl was poor, his parents forbade it. It ends with them leaping off the cliffs: “We fall, though our souls are flying.”

3.  Eli the Barrow Boy – 10/10 This song is depressing. Incredibly depressing. A quiet acoustic song, it only has Meloy’s voice, an accordion solo, and the guitar. The lyrics follow Eli, a young poor boy who pushes a wheelbarrow into town to sell coal. He is trying to buy a dress for his lover when she dies. Eli commits suicide, though his ghost is said to still push the barrow. The song works extremely well with its quiet atmosphere. The guitar and Meloy’s vocals are unnerving, and the vocals feature a female harmony. One of the highlights of the album.

4. The Sporting Life – 8/10 A bit jarring, really, to come to this song. It’s a percussion based song, with most of the instruments taking back seat until the chorus. It has a driving riff below the drums, giving them an extra rhythm. The lyrics describe a boy who has fallen down on the playing field of his championship game. He sees his humiliation and laments that he’s entered the “sporting life” Something tells me that Meloy has personal experience with this.

5. The Bagman’s Gambit – 10/10 This is a very interesting song. The lyrics tell the story of a young woman who kills a plainclothes cop and is tortured by the federal government. It is told from the perspective of a government agent, who remembers an affair they had. It doesn’t seem to be set in the real world, favoring a more dystopic feeling for the government, and it clearly takes place in D.C. The song has two distinct sections. The verses are quiet and acoustic, with dyads on the high E and B strings. The choruses, by contrast, are loud and full, with a wall of sound and emotion. The song climaxes with a distorted cry from Meloy, lost in a sea of distorted violins. It’s very intense and confusing. The coda is in the style of the verses and concludes the story like an epilogue.

6. For My Own True Love – 9/10 This is a dreary little depressing song. A woman lives alone in a small town. She constantly asks the postman for a letter, one from her own true love, lost at sea. This is likely a dig at the song “Please Mr. Postman,” which has very similar lines about waiting for letters from your lover; the difference is wonderfully dark. The song is composed in C minor, and has a very recognizable repeating melody. It’s slow, repetitive, and carries a great deal of emotion. Paired with the lyrics, it works beautifully.

7. 16 Military Wives – 10/10 The only non-narrative song. This song is a protest song, directing its anger at both the American invincibility: “America can, and America can’t say no” and the media response to Iraq: “And the anchor person on TV goes la-di-da-di-da.” It’s a little hard to pin a genre on it. It’s got saxes and trumpets on it, as well as organs and an upright bass. It’s fast, loud, and focused. It also fits well after “My Own True Love,” as 5 of the 16 wives lose their husbands.

8. The Engine Driver – 11/10 My hands-down favorite song on the album, and a very fun song to play on the guitar. This song is a little puzzling. The lyrics describe professions and loss, and the narrative seems to follow characters who seem frustrated at stagnation, with the whole song being tied together by the chorus: “I am a writer, a writer of fictions.” This makes the song seem to be one character, describing personalities he writes trying to rid his former lover “from my bones.” The song is composed in E minor/G major, and follows a simple progression of minor chords-major chords, reversed for the bridge, and shuffled for the chorus. This gives it a consistant and stable sound, but keeps it dynamic, despite the song lacking major changes. With the melody, lyrics, and its general catchy sound, it’s my favorite by far.

9. On the Bus Mall – 10/10 This song is very well written. The lyrics describe two teenagers from broken homes. They find each other in the streets and alleys, and build a life for themselves. It’s pretty clear that the couple are gay, as there’s the hint of male prostitution and the lack of femininity to the song. That being said, it is ambiguous, as no pronouns other than “you” are used. The song’s composition is well put together. The song’s verses trade back between two chords with electric guitar riffs in the background, and the choruses keep the same mood while building beautiful melodies. The song is set at a moderate tempo, and at 6 minutes, it’s long. However, the song does not drag. It has motion, and the narrative is engaging. Many people consider this the best on the album, and for me, it’s definitely a highlight.

10. The Mariner’s Revenge Song – 10/10 I love this song. It’s over the top, loud, engaging, and extremely interesting. At 8:45, it’s long. LONG. But every note of it builds up a narrative, conveys emotion, and makes it seem like the audio to a play. The story is the most fleshed out of the entire album. It starts with two mariners in the belly of a whale, and one relates to the other how their histories are connected. The other mariner married his widowed mother, swindled her, left the family destitute. His mother dies, telling him to take revenge. Years later, the narrator gets a job at a priory, where he learns that the man is now a captain with privateers after him. He joins a privateer to hunt him down, and when he finds him, a whale comes up and destroys their boats. Here the two men find themselves together, and the story ends with the narrator declaring his mother’s last words at the man. The song is incredibly well written. It starts with an a minor chord on the accordion, setting a dark scene. Then the song builds slowly, the instruments coming together for mood underneath Meloy’s vocals. The best examples of how the music adds to the story come from the bridge, which comes during the narrator’s voyage with the privateer, and the cacophony of screams and chaos as the whale attacks.

11. Of Angels and Angles – 11/10 A quiet acoustic closer to the album. The lyrics seem to recall “We Both Go Down Together” – two lovers are drowning. The lyrics aren’t explicit about anything; this makes the song sound pleasant instead of haunting. The composition is based around arpeggio-esque patterns that flow up the strings as Meloy sings. It would give a haunting affect if it didn’t sound so calm and pleasant. It’s another favorite, and it’s an excellent end to the album.

Evolution Test

I was coasting the Blogosphere, as I often do, when I went into some of Pharyngula's archives. There was a post about a site I remember seeing a few years ago back when I was first getting into my bile addiction to Creationist tripe. The wonderful Missing Universe Museum!
This site is the crown jewel of creationist stupidity. It is beyond unreasonable; it lacks any modicum intelligence. It reads like something an idiot would preach back when Darwin first published Origin of Species. Now, there's a case for everything on it, and I've gone through them all and refuted them in an old essay, but I think that the best (and by that I mean stupidest) one of all is the "Evolution Test," for ages the #2 or 3 spot on FSTDT's Top 100. It's stupid and insipid beyond rational thought, so let's go through it with overly detailed answers! It's an insult to my intelligence, but that doesn't mean I don't get to answer it with undeserving intelligence.


Students, give this test to your teachers. When they fail it, ask them why they are teaching this nonsense!
Back in Freshman year, I did just that. My biology teacher, who was an evolutionary major, was left speechless because, of course it easily and handily debunked his entire college education!

Teachers, give this test to your students if you really want them to know the truth about evolution! 
Needless to say, he refused this part, citing his fear that doing such would destroy millions of innocent brain cells.
1. Which evolved first, male or female?

Both of them obviously evolved at the same time. The first organisms, the primitive archeabacteria, did not use sexual reproduction; they were asexual. The usage of gene shuffling began likely as it does now: plasmids. Sexual reproduction, when it emerged, requires both sexes to exist at the same time.

2. How many millions of years elapsed between the first male and first female?

This question fully exposes the author's blatant stupidity. To assume that there is a gap of millions of years between the first female and male is such an egregious misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, the author decided that it was shitty enough to put as one of the main questions on his site as the header. Of course, the question is ludicrous because, as stated above, sexual reproduction requires two partners. There is no possible way that one gender could have evolved before the other.

3. List at least 9 of the false assumptions made with radioactive dating methods.

Nine false assumptions? I'm no expert on this, but clearly you are. Unfortunately I'll have to skip this one, mostly because I have no clue what he wants.

4. Why hasn't any extinct creature re-evolved after millions of years?

Ugh. The stupid. Alright, blockhead, this is why. Whenever a new species emerges,  several pieces of its genetic code are wildly different from other organisms. These new genes may be passed down, or they may not be, and they aren't in your example. However, traits bearing similarity to extinct ones or traits found in different animals does happen. This is called convergent evolution, which is when two species fit similar niches with similar adaptations. But convergent evolution works on two different species in two different environments/niches. As a result, the convergences will never line up to anything approaching the shadow of the silhouette of the mirage of the fantasy of another species. For example, let's take my favorite sea-bound creature, the cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are on an entirely different phylum from humans, mammals, reptiles, and the like, yet they have complex eyes. This is convergent evolution: eyesight was needed for them as it was for members of the phylum Chordata, so it was developed. Now look at yourself, then at a cuttlefish. That's about as close as convergent evolution will come.

5. Which came first:

...the eye,

...the eyelid,

...the eyebrow,

...the eye sockets,

...the eye muscles,

...the eye lashes,

...the tear ducts,

...the brain's interpretation of light?

The brain's interpretation of light. Duh. Look at how you add on the complexities. Evolution starts with simpler traits that add complexity as they develop to fit their respective niches. While "start simple, end complex" is far from a perfect rule of thumb for evolution, with something as mapped out as the eye, it should be beyond obvious.

6. How many millions of years between each in question 5?

Likely, there was a large gap between the brain's interpretation of light/the eye to the rest. How separate these two are is very hard to discern, due to them being quite similar. Could you consider a collection of photoreceptive cells to be an eye, or do you mean a complex thing like what humans have? The rest of the traits came around the same time, I would imagine, in the Cambrian Explosion, with the exceptions of tear ducts, eyelashes, and eyebrows. Tear ducts evolved with land-based animals, and eyebrows/eyelashes came with mammals.

7. If we all evolved from a common ancestor, why can't all the different species mate with one another and produce fertile offspring?

My cerebrum is screaming at me right now for letting it undergo such mental torture. Allow me to calmly explain why what you just said was so FUCKING STUPID.

A new species is created when two communities have allowed their genes to differ far enough from each other that there is now no more possibility of reproduction, or at least, fertile reproduction. That is the difference between a breed and a species, and that is the definition of species. How you show so much stupidity in that short sentence is beyond me.

8. List any of the millions of creatures in just five stages of its evolution showing the progression of a new organ of any kind. 

While not a new organ, I can best describe the brain in humans.

a. Australopithecus aferensis had simpler, smaller, chimplike brains.

b. Homo habilis had significantly larger brains.

c. Homo erectus had more cognitive brains due to the recession of the occipital lobe.

d. Homo neanderthals, while not our direct ancestors, still show the development of the brain.

e. Finally, we have Homo sapiens.

9. Why is it that the very things that would prove Evolution (transitional forms) are still missing?

Transitional fossils are not missing by any stretch of the imagination. We have fossils of all the forms above. We have fossils of countless forms from the Cambrian explosion. Hell, you can say that any fossil is transitional because it represents the change in form in any species. The only reason that this is a question on your test is because your ignorance is willful and blinding.

10. Explain why something as complex as human life could happen by chance, but something as simple as a coin must have a creator. (Show your math solution.)

Math solution? Are you insane? How would this even apply? What math could you use? Why are you so infuriating in your obvious idiocy?

Anyways, this is the watchmaker analogy, which is easy to refute. You are comparing two non-exchangeable items with different properties. Let's say that I had a bunch of rocks and a small bowl. Not one rock perfectly fits the bowl, so I conclude that therefore, a rock that can fit the bowl is designed. Liquids, however, fill the bowl perfectly every time. Therefore, I conclude liquids are designed. See how that fails? Your analogy compares something known to be made by humans with something known to have natural causes. 

11. Why aren't any fossils or coal or oil being formed today?

They are, actually. The process is so mindbendingly slow that your empty little mind obviously cannot handle it. Not only that, but humans have disrupted that a bit with all our peat mining. 

12. List 50 vestigial or useless organs or appendages in the human body.

50!? 50. Wow. The reason that there aren't that many is simply because the forms that evolved with these traits died off often, or the organs gradually disappeared. I can, however, list a few.

•The classic example: the appendix. Not needed. We cannot digest cellulose.

•The gallbladder is approaching this status. It serves too many functions, most that we do not need.

•The inner ear muscles. You know that weird kid who could move his ears in elementary school? Well, it these weren't vestigial, then that would be seen as a shocking disability.

•The tailbone. Why bother? Tails have long since left human biology.

•Junk DNA. 

•The vestigial eyelid.

•Wisdom teeth! Yeah, those asshole teeth that disrupt your life have no real purpose.

13. Why hasn't anyone collected the millions of dollars in rewards for proof of evolution?

Moving the goalposts. Whenever sufficient evidence comes along, you'll pick up the goalposts and move 'em with glee. This is human; everyone does it and it really proves nothing.

14. If life began hundreds of millions of years ago, why is the earth still under populated?

Underpopulated. REALLY!? Find one square meter of this planet that does not contain any life. Not even the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the icy plains of Antartica, or the dry dusts of the Atacama are not without their microbes. Unless you mean that not every inch of the planet is covered in large, complex life, this statement is bullshit, bullshit, bull-shit. And even then, how would that be possible!? You're such an idiot! Such an idiot!

15. Why hasn't evolution duplicated all species on all continents?

Alright, dammit, last one. Whenever a new species emerges, several pieces of its genetic code are wildly different from other organisms. However, traits bearing similarity to extinct ones or traits found in different animals does happen. This is called convergent evolution - wait. Why am I answering this again!? Good god, the stupid has caused me memory loss! Augh!


Well, that was fun. Brought back a bit of the stupidity nostalgia that I get whenever I see these things again, like watching the Bananaman video or the wonderful Kent Hovind lectures again. Anyways, that's enough of the stupid. I need culture. Art. Intelligence. Most of all, BRAIN BLEACH.

An Overly Long Summary of the Civil War

Last week, I was given a simple assignment: answer six questions, in paragraph form, about the civil war. Being a civil war buff, I was finally relived to cover a part of history I knew too much about. I began to write them down, but soon I grew impatient of writing in such confines, and decided to write out a massive summary. Here it is in its five-page glory.
Note that all quotes are paraphrased, as I did this all from memory without looking at any sources.
That being said, it helps to have access to Ken Burns.

In 1861, the Union had come apart. The North, with its immense power and advantages, sought to destroy the Confederates with a 90 day war. The Confederates felt that they could kill 10 Yankees for every Southern death. Both sides expected a short fight.

That summer, the Army of the Potomac, which had been built up by General Irvine McDowell, marched under his command across the Potomac and into Northern Virginia, bent on destroying the Rebs. In their wake was a massive crowd of spectators, who wanted to see the first battle in what they assumed would be a short and cheerful affair. A rebel force under Joseph E. Johnson and P. T. Beauregard came up to counter them outside the town of Manassas in Virginia. The two armies clashed, and at first it seemed that Union victory was a guarantee. But as time went on, General Thomas Jackson proved to hold enough courage to stand up against the army, “like a stone wall.” The Confederates counterattacked. Terrified, the Union forces fled. Left on the battlefield was disgruntled Manassas resident Wilmer MacLean, who decided to move to avoid the war. The battle was sobering, costing the Union thousands of casualties and shocking the nation, but it was nothing compared to the bloodshed that would follow.

In 1862, as George McClellan was hired to command the Army of the Potomac, a General Ulysses S. Grant was winning battles in spite of everyone else losing. He won several small skirmishes, then attacked Fort Donelson, surrounded it, and declared unconditional surrender. It would become his nickname. Soon, Beauregard and a (different) Johnson were waiting to attack Grant when he drew near enough. Johnson saw his chance when Grant stopped near Pittsburg Landing to regroup. The Confederates drove Grant’s forces back in Shiloh, the first truly bloody and brutal battle of the Civil War, where more men fell than in the Revolution. Grant’s forces were saved due to the Hornet’s Nest, a group of soldiers who refused to retreat, even killing Johnson himself. Grant was soon reinforced by Buell’s Army, which quickly made work of the Confederate forces. Shiloh was won.

Following the rigorous training of his army, McClellan landed on the James River peninsula and sluggishly creeped to Richmond. Joseph Johnson, soon to be replaced by Lee, came to counter him. In a brilliant move, the general at Yorktown convinced McClellan that he was horrifically outnumbered. McClellan demanded more troops, and Lee saw his chance. In the 7 Days, he lost four battles, yet won against the timid McClellan. The failure of McClellan led one of his officers to declare him motivated by “cowardice or treason.” Lincoln replaced McClellan with John Pope, who quickly lost the Battle of Manassas on the same battlefield as Bull Run. Lincoln begrudgingly replaced him with McClellan.

 George McClellan now held the army around Washington, keeping his troops training and preparing. Lee, seeing his chance, invaded the North with the intent to put Maryland in the Union. However, one of his clumsy aides lost the battle plans, and a Union scout discovered them lying in a field. Order 191 gave McClellan the perfect tool for fighting the Confederates, and in a stunning show of his military genius, he waited almost a day until he put them in action. When he finally did, the battle would take place along a meandering creek outside the Maryland town of Sharpsburg known as Anteitam. It was the bloodiest day in American history.

Lee attacked in three forces. The first was repelled in a cornfield. The second mowed down troops from a sunken road until artillery zeroed in on it and blew it to pieces. The final fight took place along a stone bridge, where Union troops defeated the Confederates after an entire day, only to be repulsed by evening. It was not a victory for either army, but it was demoralizing enough for Lee to retreat and for Lincoln to free the slaves.

President Lincoln had been waiting for such a battle to declare the Emancipation Proclamation in order to prevent it from being seen as an empty threat. Once declared, the proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederacy, not the border states. But what it meant took precedence over what it said. It made the fight change from Union and States’ Rights to being about the peculiar institution. This worked wonders on the war. While regiments in the North deserted and the South painted Lincoln as an anti-Christian demon, the proclamation confirmed that Europe would stay out of the war and that Black soldiers would be a likely asset.

In 1863, with the proclamation now in effect, Lincoln went about arming the Blacks. The 54^th Massachusetts was formed as the first regiment. Many other regiments soon followed, with multiple cavalry and infantry division to soon bear a great deal of the fighting. The 54^th Massachusetts would be pulverized at Fort Wagner, but their heroism in the battle was a major morale boost to the other Blacks. By the war’s end, 10% of the North’s military was African-American. For perspective, the North had fewer than 4%.

Anteitam had another effect on the war. General George McClellan was removed from command, permanently. Lincoln was furious with his lack of exploiting Anteitam. Instead, he hired the commander who had valiantly fought at the Bridge at Anteitam, Ambrose Burnside. Burnside invaded Virginia, searching for the Confederates. He soon reached the Rappahannock River and decided to sack Fredericksburg, a vital railroad link. Unfortunately, Lee soon found him and reinforced Mary’s Heights above the city. 14 hopeless charges later, the Army of the Potomac, crippled and exhausted, withdrew and Burnside was removed from command.

In his place, Lincoln found “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker, who had seen action in various battles before. Hooker came up with a predictable strategy: feign an attack and attack from the rear. Lee saw right through it. In a stunning move, Lee divided his army. Hooker’s forces ran right into one section in the hamlet of Chancellorsville. Hooker then went from being overconfident to downright stupid and refused to push back the Confederates, convinced that it was only a small force. Lee, sensing Hooker’s confusion, then divided his army again and sent Stonewall Jackson around Hooker’s left. Jackson’s men tore through the unsuspecting Union forces and tore the army apart. It left, battered and broken. The Confederate victory came at a price, however. Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own men while preparing for a night attack. He would die several weeks later, whispering, “let us rest under the shade of the trees.”

Lee, now overconfident from the two absolute victories, invaded the North again, pushing for Philadelphia. He entered Pennsylvania and was going towards Harper’s Ferry when there came a report of shoes in Gettysburg. It would be the largest battle in the Western Hemisphere. As units converged, the Confederates took the town while the Federals took a ridge behind a gate that read, “Any persons carrying firearms in this area will be prosecuted.” On the second day, the Union successfully repulsed attacks on Culp’s Hill, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain rose to national prominence for his daring bayonet charge on Little Round Top. On the third day, it all came crashing down on the Confederates when Lee ordered George Pickett’s division across a mile-wide field. Half of it was slaughtered. When asked to rally his division, Pickett bitterly told Lee “I have no division.” The next day, on July 4, Lee retreated in a steady rain. With that defeat came another, with equal importance: Vicksburg.

General Grant had won Shiloh, captured half of Tennessee, including Memphis, and seen Admiral Farragut advance up the Mississippi to take New Orleans without firing a single shot. Now, he needed the “key” to the river. The town of Vicksburg, high up on a series of bluffs, prevented any ships from passing via a volley of cannon fire. Grant wanted it taken. In a daring move, he crossed the Mississippi, hacked his way through swamps, sacked the Mississippi capital, and surrounded Vicksburg. For months he poured fire into the city, forcing the inhabitants to live like “prairie dogs.” Finally, on July 4, without word of Gettysburg, the commander of Vicksburg surrendered. Both battles ended Confederate hopes, nearly for good.

In the fall of 1863, Confederates under Braxton Bragg clung to eastern Tennessee, attacking the Unions sporadically. General William Rosecrans was ordered to stop them. In a series of brilliant flanking maneuvers, he drove Bragg all the way to the city of Chattanooga, which he quickly fortified. Bragg slipped back to Chickamauga Creek, where Rosecrans, urged by his men, attacked. The battle was a bloody, murderous fistfight that ended in disaster when Rosecrans opened a gap in his lines. The battle was salvaged by General George H. Thomas, whose actions would gain him of the “Rock of Chickamauga.” Lincoln replaced Rosecrans with him, and soon sent Grant over to end the war in Tennessee. Following Chickamauga, the Army of Tennessee held the high ground outside Chattanooga, known as Lookout Mountain. Grant ordered it taken. His men did so in spectacular fashion, then destroyed the Confederates the next day on an adjacent ridge. Chattanooga was won, and would serve as the launch pad for Sherman.

For this excellent victory, Grant was summoned to Washington to gain the rank of Lieutenant General. He now had control of the entire US Military, and he quickly set a plan in motion. Sherman would sack Atlanta. Sheridan would burn down the Shenandoah. And Meade and Grant would carve out a crescent of blood in Virginia. The plans were set in action.  Sheridan tore through the Shenandoah, burning crops, looting towns, and destroying Jubal Earle’s cavalry. Sherman cut a path of destruction through Northern Georgia, but stalled outside Atlanta. Grant, meanwhile, was overseeing the most vicious campaign of the war.

Operation Overland was a nonstop battle between Grant and Lee along a thirty-mile crescent. Grant employed the same tactic: move by the left flank. So did Lee: bunker down and reinforce. The two armies first clashed in the vicious Battle of the Wilderness. Fought on the Chancellorsville battlefield, it was the most horrifying battle of the war. The “Wilderness” was a thicket of trees laden with skeletons of Chancellorsville. The fighting was hand-to-hand, and companies got lost and fired on their own men. At nightfall, the entire landscape caught fire, scorching men alive while both armies listened to their screams. General Grant, horrified with the battle, broke down and wept in his tent while the flames soared through the woods.

However, there was not stopping the army. Grant pushed on, despite the losses and horrors. He moved onto the next battlefield; a region known as Spotsylvania, where the two armies crippled each other. Then came the cavalry attack on Yellow Tavern, where JEB Stuart was killed. Next came the most one-sided fight, Cold Harbor, where Lee’s troops dug into an embankment and mowed down Grant’s troops, killing 7,000 in 15 minutes. It was the only mistake Grant ever admitted to. At last, Grant outwitted Lee. He feigned an assault towards Richmond, but then attacked Petersburg. Lee got there too, and the two bunkered down for a Trench Warfare siege.

It was now 1864, and Lincoln was facing a dilemma. Sherman was stuck outside Atlanta, and Grant was stuck outside Petersburg. The general populace, appalled by the Overland Campaign, was sick of war. And a man who held a grudge against Lincoln now sought election. George McClellan, the old general, ran against Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln had been attacked in the political arena for the entire war, weeding out Copperheads and being savaged by the press. Now, with his armies stalled, he feared that he would be badly beaten.

Yet fortune would soon change. McClellan’s message of peace was so uninspired, dull, and incoherent that even his beloved army voted for Lincoln. Sherman, who had been stuck outside Atlanta, finally defeated John Bell Hood and took the city. And Sheridan’s reign of terror in the Shenandoah was going exactly according to plan. McClellan, not Lincoln, was badly beaten in the election.

Sherman’s army now was let loose in Georgia. He ransacked Atlanta, burned it to the ground, and then set out for Savannah and the sea, pillaging as he went. Along the way, his men ran into several POW camps. Enraged at what they saw, Sherman’s men turned the pillaging up to 11. The army cut a swath of destruction ten miles wide. Hood, furious that he had been defeated at Atlanta, sought to distract Sherman. He invaded Tennessee, attacking supply columns, but failed to distract Sherman. “Let him go to Ohio if he wants,” Sherman mocked. “I’ll serve him rations when he gets there.” The Rock of Chickamauga, George Thomas, refused to let Hood get farther than Nashville. At Franklin, his Army of the Cumberland thoroughly savaged Hood’s army, tearing it apart after Hood made a series of disorganized charges. Hood resigned in disgrace, and the once-proud Army of the Tennessee was reduced to a mob.

Sherman’s army reached the sea, and the general presented Lincoln the city of Savannah as a Christmas present. They then rolled into South Carolina, declaring that “This is where secession began, and here it shall end!” They hacked through swamps, ransacked towns, burned Columbia, twisted rail lines, and taunted the Confederate civilians. Eventually the march reached North Carolina, where Sherman finally ended his march.

Meanwhile, Grant had finally won at Petersburg. Lee had made a desperate night attack on an earthwork. It was repelled and a counterattack broke the lines. Lee sent a letter to Richmond to evacuate the government. Chaos soon followed. The once-proud Confederate capital was looted and burned by ex-slaves, civilians, and finally, the Union troops. With the city taken, Grant now resolved to end Lee, once and for all.

Lee fled up the Appomattox Creek, with Grant right behind him. Finally, he reached Appomattox Court House, a tiny hamlet where disgruntled Manassas resident Wilmer MacLean now lived. Grant declared that Lee surrender, and met Lee in MacLean’s house. The Army of Northern Virginia was defeated.

The war was over. Jefferson Davis was captured in Mississippi. Robert E. Lee’s house was turned into Arlington National Cemetery. Joseph Johnston surrendered to Sherman. And Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Following the war, the brotherhood sentiments that Lincoln had tried so hard to put in place were replaced by Johnson’s disastrous Reconstruction Plan. With slavery abolished, an exodus of Blacks from the South ensured that the landscape would stay forever changed. Bile and hate would rise to new levels in the South. Nathan Bedford Forrest would found the Ku Klux Klan, which would terrify the South until Grant, now president, would send in troops to quell the violence.

However, the Civil War ensured that the United States would continue to exist. It ensured that the nation would live up to what was written in the Constitution, though it would be long after the war that it finally was realized. Most importantly, the war defined the United States as one single united nation.

“Before the war, people would typically say that the ‘United States are…’ But then after the war, and still today, people will say ‘The United States is…’ And that’s what the war did. It made us an is.”

-Shelby Foote