CLIFTON FORGE - Renowned Civil War historian and Virginia Tech Professor Dr. James I. “Bud” Robertson Jr. addressed members of the Covington-Hot Springs Rotary Club and the Alleghany Highlands Chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association during the groups’ third annual Blue and Gray Banquet.
The banquet, held Thursday night at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College, featured Robertson as the speaker. He has spoken at all three banquets.
Robertson is an Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virgina Tech and serves as the Executive Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies.
A native of Danville, Robertson received his undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon College and his Ph.D. from Emory University and is the author of several award-winning books about the Civil War.
He has been the recipient of every major award given in the field of Civil War history.
He recently produced a three-hour documentary, “Virginia in the Civil War,” for students and teachers throughout Virginia.
He teaches the largest Civil War Era class in the country, averaging 300 students per semester. He was also the chief historical consultant for the Warner Brothers movie “Gods and Generals.”
“The Civil War is the only field that is saturated by the written word,” Robertson said, noting that over 80,000 books about the Civil War have been penned.
Despite the mountains of books, Robertson said four essentials of the war have been ignored – the emotions of the war, the weather, the health of the soliders, and the horses during wartime.
“If you don’t understand the emotions, you will never understand the war,” he said.
He added that strong emotions of patriotism and freedom from both the North and the South led to an “uncontrollable destructive force.”
“Youth and innocence lay at the heart of such emotion,” he said.
In a country where the average lifespan was 46 years, he said young people reacted in extremes no matter the breadth of depth of their vision.
“They thought with their mouths and that will get you in trouble at any time,” Robertson commented.
“With such emotion, then war follows as sure as day follows night,” he added. Many chose to fight in the war merely due to the writing on a poster.
He said soldiers were “filled with a sense of honor propelled by boyish dreams.”
Speaking of weather, Robertson said in 1862 it rained every day “and the countryside was a sea of mud.” The mud was so severe, Robertson said, General McClelland’s Army was capable of moving 800 yards a day.
Of the mud, Robertson said a soldier wrote, “It is like flies making a pilgrimage through molasses,”
In addition to mud, the dust was stifling. He said in April through September 1864, the dust was as much as 10 inches deep.
Civil War physicians would discharge soldiers with a diagnosis of tuberculosis when in reality, the dust was the cause of the rampant respiratory illnesses.
He said winters then were much more severe. “The present winter, of course, excluded.”
He said the Civil War was a three-sided fight, the North, the South and Mother Nature.
Regarding health, Robertson said all advances in medicine are recent. None were known during the time of the Civil War.
“I think how well a man feels has everything to do with how they react,” Robertson noted.
He said such notables as Jefferson Davis, who walked with a limp, suffered from neuralgia, migraines and insomnia; Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from paralyzing bouts of depression; Robert E. Lee, who suffered a broken arm and a sprained wrist from falling from a horse.
He said while health issues may not have caused battles to be won or lost, they were “strong extenuating circumstances.”
Of the horses, Robertson said they were in a Catch-22 situation.
They were needed for the army, yet they were needed just as much for food production on farms.
Horses were indispensable for the artillery, quartermaster, and food production.
Contrary to what people see in the movies, soldiers were not necessarily the primary target in battle.
“The first thing you do is shoot the horse, that will bring him down to your level,” Robertson said.
The horses pulling the cannons were shot first in order to stop the movement of the artilleries.
“No one ever said war was nice,” Robertson commented.
Over 1.5 million horses and mules died during the Civil War.
Robertson noted that Robert E. Lee only lost his temper four times during the war – two of those times were when he observed someone being cruel to horses.