NO ROOM LEFT TO FIGHT TRADITIONAL CIVIL WAR

(Richmond VA) Historians have been predicting another civil war in this country since half past Appomattox Court House. Yankee academians save their projections for smoky rooms and snifter back parlors. Wide-eyed rebel saga sharers in Dixie lead with the idea of a third American Revolution. This time they come out on top.

While impulsive reenactments boom off tediously thin walls on both sides of the former Mason-Dixon Line, students of the conflict in classrooms and coffee shops, are faced with a stark impediment to resuming the war. Space.

Before we could pick up our muskets and resume canon fire we would have to figure out how to assemble a force the size of the Army of Northern Virginia or The Army of the Potomac anywhere east of the Mississippi. Sure, the battlefields have been preserved as National Parks but the surrounding area has become the resting place for exploding populations, fast food chains, textile mills and suburbs.

“Lee could not have placed his entire army in the field at Chancellorsville,” said Dr. Orem Welldigger, a fellow at Virginia Military Institute. He had 60,000 up against Hooker, the Union general with a noted tolerance for camp followers. Hooker himself had 120,000 troops,” he said. “There is no physical possibility of all of these soldiers fitting into what’s left of the countryside.”

Professor Walter Burnside, of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh agreed, pointing to a newly erected mall near the battle of Chickamauga. At that site in September of 1863 the Confederates won a victory and trapped the Union troops in Chattanooga.

Burnside, claiming direct descent from General Ambrose Burnside, who orchestrated the hopeless attack and suffered a subsequent defeat at Fredericksburg, says the South would not have defended today’s town quite so vehemently.

“The Fredericksburg of today still sits on the Rappahannock which is but a dribble to its past glory. Everywhere interstate highways and franchised food joints zig zag across the landscape,” he said. “Too many people and no vacant land to stage an epic confrontation. At Chickamauga there’s a few tourist shops hosting visitors who think they’re in Civil War Disneyland.”

Arthur Grits, a self-taught enthusiast of the War Between the States suggests that the next conflict could be fought in Nevada, Utah or Northern Arizona…maybe even Canada.

“I just drove through the Great Basin and believe you me there’s nobody out there,” he smiled. “Maybe it’s because there aren’t any bathrooms but I think the reason is actually the lack of water. Imagine if you will Union troops taking the high positions adjacent to nuclear waste dumps while the Confederates charge through the sagebrush and the piñon trees. Now that place has the room to house all the armies since the French and Indian War. Canada has space as well,” he added, but barefoot Rebel troops would be hard pressed to put up much of a fight during the winter months.”

Unfortunately for Civil War purists the Western solution just won’t do. Would the new battle of the Wilderness be fought on the shores of Lake Powell. Would Sherman burn Las Vegas? How could Confederate troops dig trenches in the caliche of the Great Salt Lake Desert?

Travelers chronicling the engagements of the Civil War often discover poorly marked Union and Confederate graveyards dominated by burger outlets, and cannonballs lodged in ancient trees cut down to make room for football stadiums, factory outlets or convention centers.

“It’s that damn Yankee arrogance that has resulted in the rape of Southern culture,” says Welldigger, who refers to the recent sprawl as “the second Yankee invasion of the South”.

“Not only did the Northerners move right in to our better neighborhoods, but they brought with them all of the trappings of federalism including welfare, television, low wage industry and pollution. The Spanish moss, the cotton fields and the magnolia trees are fighting for their lives.”

Burnside disagrees saying that many of the corporate entities slammed by Welldigger had origins in the South.

Look at the biggest cultural disaster, Wal-Mart,” he chided. “That blight began in Arkansas. Look at Colonel Sanders. Does he appear to have abolitionist tendencies? Then there’s the Black-Eyed Pea and Popeye’s.”

Maybe simple physics will deny us the chance to settle unfinished business here in North America. Maybe that’s why we can’t keep our nose out of the Mideast. Is it all that barren land?

“If Pierre G.T. Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter today he’d risk hitting three franchise pizza parlors, an IRS office, two malls, a ring of interstate highways, the corporate headquarters of Mr. Doughnut and some poorly constructed town houses along Charleston Harbor. His politically incorrect behavior might net him a summons for discharging a weapon within city limits and would certainly hurl him into a legion of lawsuits.”

Grits agrees adding that for now sworn enemies will just have to settle for fighting scrimmages in their living rooms and unfurl their blood-letting charges within the confines of video games.

“Just remember,” said Grits, “that just because our cadaverous campaigns are constipated by space restrictions there’s no stumbling block when it comes to blaming each other for the current state of affairs in this nation. – Kashmir Horseshoe