Civil Warriors

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) frequently organizes workshops for that bring together secondary school teachers with major historians in various areas of specialization. The historians’ presentations are given to the teachers but are simultaneously webcast.

Here’s the FPRI’s most recent anouncement:

Lectures by four renowned historians, including two Pulitzer Prize winners, will be webcast on Saturday, May 17, on “America in the Civil War Era.”

The webcast is free and open to the public but online registrations is required. Online participants will be able to participate in Q&A.

The four lectures are part of a weekend-long History Institute for Teachers sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Carthage College.

To register for any and all of the webcast, use this link. You may need to disable popup blockers.

The webcast schedule appears below. All times listed are Eastern Time.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

12:00 noon Eastern Time

Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer Prizewinning historian will discuss his latest book Throes of Democracy: America in the Civil War Era. McDougall is co-chair of FPRi’s History Institute for Teachers and Professor of International Relations at the University of
Pennsylvania.

2:00 p.m.Eastern Time

Daniel Walker Howe will discuss his book What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America. This book just won the Pulitzer Prize for history. Howe is Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA and Oxford.

3:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Michael Johnson, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, will discuss “Teaching about Slavery.” The fourth edition of his two-volume set on Reading the American Past was published this year.

5:00 p.m. Eastern Time

Maury Klein, professor of History at the University of Rhode Island, will discuss “The Technological Revolution.” His latest book is The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and
the Men Who Invented America.

FPRI’s History Institute for Teachers is chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall. We have accepted 43 teachers from 19 states to participate in the weekend. All the lectures will be posted as videofiles on our website subsequently for free access to all. For information about the weekend, visit America in the Civil War Era, 1829–77: A History Institute for Teachers.

FPRI’s History Institute for Teachers is supported by major funding from the Annenberg Foundation.

For information about FPRI, contact:
Alan Luxenberg
Director, FPRI’s Wachman Center
lux@fpri.org
(215) 732-3774 x105

April 26: Up early, fighting what is now evident jet lag compounded by a little too much travel.  Arriving at the conference center at the Massachusetts School of Law, I discover two things.  First, the place is packed with cameras.  The MSL is recording this event, as is C-SPAN.  Second, I learn that my mission has changed … although no one had thought to tell me.  I was under the impression that I would give a ten-minute overview of the ups and downs of Grant’s reputation as a historian, followed by an interview with Larry Velvel.  But when I see the finalized conference program, well, there I am in a session on failed presidents (Grant and Harding), and I see that the other speaker has prepared a full paper as well as a Powerpoint presentation.  Well, I can’t whip up a Powerpoint right now (no laptop), but I can whip up a longer set of remarks, and so that’s what I do in the morning, even as I listen to the panelists and even ask some questions during the q&a portions of the program. 

Lunch comes, then a session, then my session.  Everything’s fine, until out of the corner of my eye I see a famous political scientist trying to catch my attention.  He’s pointing furiously to his watch.  Now, he’s not part of the panel; I’m well within my time limits; indeed, I’m just about to turn to the last page.  But his circus act proves distracting enough for me to fumble for a moment and render less lucidly that I might have desired an important point about the dilemmas Grant faced in 1875 when it came to Reconstruction policy.  I end, followed by another speaker, who has also been asked to whip up something on the spur of the moment as a sort of commentary … I had finished my notes early enough to enable me to get a photocopy of them to him, so he’d have a slim idea of what I had just decided I’d have to say.  Then comes the q&a, which proceeds in uneventful fashion until a gentleman asks about the role of corruption in shaping the evaluation of presidencies.  He cites Credit Mobilier as an example of corruption in Grant’s administration.

That’s a mistake.  The events of Credit Mobilier happened during the administration of Andrew Johnson: it involved members of Congress taking stock without paying for it.  Although it was revealed during the Grant administration, in truth it can’t be counted as evidence of corruption in the Grant administration, since it was something that took place in another branch of government before there was a Grant administration.  This allows me to hold forth on the ignorance with which many people discuss the issue of corruption in studying the American presidency (Grant’s administration is notable, not because of the level of corruption, but because it coincided with the first big wave of postwar muckraking journalism, which reported said corruption, and the subsequent emphasis placed on the issue by critics and historians).  Whether the lesson sticks is a question for another time.  Back to the hotel, then dinner, then up to a restless night in bed.  I think I caught a bug at the Senate cafeteria, and it is now making its presence felt.

(Continued)

This item appeared in The Onion back in 2003, but as they say of TV reruns: “if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you.”

LOS ANGELES—CBS executives announced Monday that they have begun filming Antebellum Island, a new “alternate reality” series in which 12 strangers compete for $1 million while isolated on an island still under Confederate rule.

“Set to air in the spring of 2004, Antebellum Island gives us the unique opportunity to play with both social dynamics and recorded history,” CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves said. “The contestants on Antebellum Island will spend 60 days braving the elements, each other, and the unfamiliar customs and practices of a 21st-century Confederate States of America—all for a chance to win a cool million.”

Added Moonves: “That’s one million in Union dollars, of course!”

Moonves said contestants will be isolated on a sun-drenched tropical island, where they will participate in competitions designed to emphasize teamwork and interpersonal friction in the rigidly stratified alternate-universe society.

Complete article

As indicated in my previous post, I headed off to Ogden, Utah, two weeks ago to attend the Society for Military History’s Annual Meeting. I remarked, “We’ll see if that produces anything worth discussing here.” Well, it didn’t produce much, at least not for the Civil War enthusiast specifically. There were only a few papers on Civil War topics, all of which I missed due to other duties.

The three papers I commented on in the session on “U.S. Nationbuilding” were all interesting, though, and, in light of the lively subsequent discussion, I think I gave the audience and presenters some decent feedback. The session on the “U.S. Military since Vietnam” in which I presented a paper was the last of the conference but was nonetheless still pretty well attended. The commentator gave me some fairly complementary feedback (it was a history of CGSC from 1981 to 2006 and he said it squared with his own experiences as a student at CGSC and SAMS during that time), but most of the discussion involved the paper on SOF-Conventional integration my colleague Joe Fischer presented.

As Mark indicated in a long-ago post on WarHistorian, the panels are almost secondary at these conferences, although I did attend quite a few, to their social component and the networking with friends and publishers in the book exhibit. On these counts, it was also a very productive conference for me. I saw old friends from West Point and elsewhere, and even had dinner and spent time hanging out with this guy from Ohio State University who will be spending a year at Carlisle and apparently has written a thing or two about the Civil War. In addition, three of my comrades from the Department of Military History here at the staff college (which was far better represented than I think any institution or department in the world at this conference, both in terms of participating on panels and fulfilling duties as officers in the organization) who were also on the program took a morning off from the conference with me to take the one-hour drive up to Golden Spike National Historic Site.

It was a pretty cool trip, made the more so because someone I worked with when I was a park ranger at the Truman Home in Independence, MO, is now out there and it was good to see and talk with her. I also got my daughter a train whistle as a gift, which fortunately for my ears and sanity, she has already gotten tired of. The picture is of Joe Fischer, Brad Wineman, Terry Beckenbaugh, and myself on the spot where they drove in the Golden Spike. There was no champagne to mark this occasion (Joe and I had papers to present later that day, after all), although we did have lunch afterward at the Golden Spike Diner in Corinne, Utah.

Thursday, April 24:  I leave Phoenix just after noon on a flight to Washington, D.C.’s Reagan/National Airport.  I feel crammed into my seat.  I’m not expanding, but it seems the room available is shrinking.  Must be the Lewis Carroll effect.  Playing on badly-tinted monitors is National Treasure … Indiana Jones, Historian.  As the plane approaches Washington, I take in the views of northern Virginia, the Potomac, and Washington itself, including the Mall.  I really enjoy Washington, although this time I’ll be in Boston within 24 hours, so I won’t be able to do more than taste a hurried sample.

At the airport I eat at Legal Sea Foods (perhaps the best airport restaurant I’ve ever visited), then make it to the Metro station.  Note to self: they no longer credit your travel pass with an extra dollar when you put twenty dollars in the machine … I’ll have this pass for a while.  Then it’s on to Capitol Hill South, the station of choice when working in the Library of Congress, and I check in at a local hotel.  It’s a pleasant night, so I decide to take a walk over to the Capitol.  It is now a well-guarded fort with much construction for a visitor’s center: the last time I entered the building itself was at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment trial.  My, how things have changed.  Then it’s on to the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, one of the most impressive pieces of statuary I’ve ever see.  The Grant figure reflects grim determination; the view is wonderful; and the cavalry leader’s sword is intact for once (it’s often snapped off by vandals).  The manifest police presence makes me feel unusually safe.

As I return to the hotel I see a fellow dragging along a suitcase.  He looks exhausted.  It’s been a long day.  Then I look again.  It’s Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC.  I follow him into the hotel and decide not to give him advice, although the advice I would have given him turns out to be the advice he shortly offers both Democratic candidates.  Upstairs, I review my paper for tomorrow and retire for the evening.

Friday, April 25:  I get up, get dressed, check out, and make my way over to the Hart Senate Office Building, where I will speak to the United States Capitol Historical Society on the caning of Charles Sumner.  I learn two things: first, C-SPAN has bowed out at the last second (not that infrequent an occurrence), and I will speak in the afternoon, not the morning, due to schedule changes.  The conference takes place on the ninth floor, with a beautiful view of Washington to the west, including Arlington.  After taking lunch down in the Senate cafeteria, it’s off to tell once more the story of how Representative Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor on May 22, 1856, days after Sumner delivered a biting two-day speech that contained some rather slashing comments about South Carolina Andrew P. Butler, Brooks’s kinsman. 

(Continued)

Timothy Burke, for my money one of the most thought-provoking historians in the blogosphere, has a terrific post on Easily Distracted. It begins:

I tell my students that all good research projects and analytical writing have to provide an answer to the question, “So what?”, a justification for the project or the essay. One student asked me if history as a discipline had any stock or standard answers to that question.

I started to list a few that I could think of, and then a few more. I thought I’d try out the results here, to see if readers could knock a few down or add some more.

Many historical monographs answer the question “So what?” in relationship to an established historiography first and foremost. If I publish a new interpretation of state formation in 18th Century Southern Africa before the rise of the Zulu Empire, I may justify my work largely as a response to other scholars who have written about the mfecane and the rise of Shaka’s new Zulu state. However, that historiography as a whole has many more sweeping “so whats” embedded within it, in relationship to contemporary South Africa, to models of state formation within Africa, to arguments about the relationship between environmental and political change. A historian who makes a new claim narrowly directed at a given historiography is often indirectly trying to shift arguments about the larger significance or relevance of the history under review.

Here’s the list I came up with on my first pass.

Tim then offers 16 basic ways in which historians have addressed the “so what” factor, with prominent works that illustrate each one. None are Civil War books — Tim is himself a historian of Africa — but Civil War titles to fit most categories come readily to mind. It’s particularly interesting to think of the categories represented most strongly in the literature of the conflict for, say, the past thirty years (and yes, I still plan to complete the series on the OAH round table).

I won’t steal Tim’s thunder by giving his categories here, or spoil the fun by giving you my take on the ones that dominate Civil War historiography. I’ll save that for another time. For now, have a look for yourself.

This coming weeked I’ve decided to celebrate the 186th anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant by doing a little traveling (although not to Grant’s Tomb).  On Thursday I go to Washington, DC, where on Friday I speak at the United States Capitol Historical Society’s conference on “Congress and the Crisis of the 1850s.”  I’ll be speaking on the caning of Charles Sumner, which someone rendered as follows:

Then it’s off to Massachusetts (Sumner’s home state), where on Saturday I’ll be interviewed by Dean Larry Velvel on the changing reputation of President Grant at a conference entitled ”Chasing Success or Courting Failure: an In-depth Look at the Attributes an American President Must Possess for Success” at the Massachusetts School of Law in Andover.

I’d venture that some historians used to treat Grant’s presidency much like Representative Brooks treated Senator Sumner.  They might rely upon the notions advanced by none other than Henry Adams, whom as a boy idolized Sumner, that the progression from Washington to Grant upset Darwinian notions of evolution or that a great soldier might make “a baby politician.”  In the last two decades certain Grant biographers and students of the Grant presidency have challenged those dearly-held conceptions of a bumbling idiot who presided over eight years riddled with corruption and nepotism, to say nothing of sheer executive incompetence (the only debate being whether Grant was a fool for supporting Reconstruction or a knave for abandoning it).  That said, what I have found most interesting (and perhaps disturbing) about these cries for revision is that some of the historians and biographers involved have taken it upon themselves to raise Grant’s reputation in those polls assessing presidential performance, as if scholarship on American presidents has become history’s version of the BCS to rank college football teams.  I have found somewhat less disturbing the fact that people who claim to want to know a great deal about the Civil War tend to be less concerned about the road to secession and war and the path followed by Americans, black and white, northern and southern, after the war.  That may be because I’m resigned to that result: one way for people to get around contemplating disturbing issues about the war is to pass by those areas in their haste to recount the exploits of leaders and soldiers as they retell campaign and battle narratives.  That Bleeding Kansas or the massacre at Colfax, Louisiana, are just as much battles as are Gettysburg or Antietam — and as important in shaping the course of events between the 1850s and the 1870s — seems to elude some people. 

But I accept that, however unwillingly.  What I don’t accept are scholars posing as pollsters who see their mission as improving Grant’s image with an eye to kicking him up a few notches in those exercises known as presidential performance rankings.  Forgive me for suggesting that historians are supposed to help explain and understand the past, not don cheerleaders’ outfits. 

So we’ll see how this goes.  I’ve spoken at the Massachusetts School of Law before, most memorably in October 2003.  My speaking engagement coincided with the American League Championship Series that year between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.  On the afternoon after I spoke, we adjourned to Dean Velvel’s home, where we saw this:

As you may recall, the Yankees went on to win that game, and eventually the series.

I had a talk to present the next day, and as I walked to the podium, I smiled … then I reached behind me and donned the Yankees cap I had brought with me in anticipation of its possible use.

Fortunately, I did not suffer the fates that befell either Senator Sumner or Don Zimmer.  And given that this was Andover, the home town of my prep school arch-rival Phillips Andover Academy, this may have been even more remarkable.   

And thus endth another post that brings together history, professional sports, and popular culture in always seamless fashion.

Brooks and I have already given our prepared remarks for the session (see here and here). The third panelist was Lesley Gordon of the University of Akron.

She began by noting that in the popular imagination, the dominant interpretation of the Civil War is still the one reflected in Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels (1974). The novel’s attraction for many readers — including many historians (like Lesley herself, for whom it was an important early influence) — is that it avoids troubling motivations or causes and largely downplays slavery. “Instead, what triumphs is a celebration of pure military courage, sacrifice, and historical exceptionalism.”

The Killer Angels gave new life to a metanarrative already well established in Civil War military historiography, and a great deal of books, both academic and commercial, have reinforced it. But Lesley emphasized the existence of a “counter movement” of works that did not reflect this comforting “American Iliad” perspective and, at times, directly challenged it.

Lesley went on to focus on three themes in particular: the burgeoning literature on the common soldier of the Civil War, the steady stream of community studies that directly connected the war and the home front, and the ongoing interest in the public memory of the war and how it was constructed.

At the end of the 1970s, two books dominated the literature on the Civil War common soldier: The Life of Johnny Reb (1943) and The Life of Bill Yank (1952), both published by Bell Irvin Wiley. Both are classics that remain in print today. Together they offered not just the first but seemingly the last word on the subject. Historians did not really extend his explorations until the 1980s, when numerous important works emerged in quick succession, among them Michael Barton’s Good Men (1981); Gerald F. Linderman’s Embattled Courage (1987); Reid Mitchell’s Civil War Soldiers (1988), and Joseph T. Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle (1989). The trend continued in the 1990s with the publication of The Union Soldier in Battle by Earl J. Hess (1997); Lee’s Miserables by J. Tracy Power (1998); and two studies by James M. McPherson, What They Fought For (1994) and For Cause and Comrades (1997).

Wiley had concluded that Civil War soldiers were, in Lesley’s words, “everyman, humorous, profane, dependable, and quietly heroic, who fought because they had to, but were not driven by deep and complex ideologies.” The ideological divisions of the Vietnam War error rendered less plausible the apolitical nature of the Civil War soldier, while John Keegan’s The Face of Battle (1976) influenced historians to take a closer look at the brutalizing experience of Civil War combat.

Lesley noted the emergence of a clear divide between historians of the common soldier that remains unreconciled. On the one side, historians like Gerald F. Linderman in Embattled Courage (1987), portrayed Civil War soldiers as animated by a constellation of values he called “courage,” not political awareness or commitment, and that by mid-war this ethos of courage had broken down, resulting in soldiers who became increasingly disillusioned with the war and with the civilian communities they left behind. On the other, a number of historians, notably James M. McPherson, Earl J. Hess, and Steven E. Woodworth, directly challenged Linderman’s conclusions, finding instead that Civil War soldiers were indeed politically aware and politically committed. This dialog has borne fruit in other works that have extended our understanding of Civil War soldiers as “whole and complex human beings who changed their minds and motives over time.” Lesley mentioned two in particular: Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s edited collection, The View from the Ground (2007), and Chandra Manning’s What This Cruel War Was Over (2007). Manning’s book — which won this year’s Avery O. Craven Award — “in particular presents an extremely rich and nuanced portrait, backed up by exhaustive research, where she convincingly stresses the role of race and slavery as motivators to both sides. Hers is a long awaited corrective. And yet I would still argue that there is room for more, especially in appreciating differences between soldiers of differing regions and states and armies.”

Lesley went on to note “an explosion of home front studies and a refreshing attention to how the war came home to civilians. Works by Daniel Sutherland, Stephen Ash, Michael Fellman, Jonathan Sarris, Jacqueline Glass Campbell, just to name a few, have highlighted communities and regions directly touched and often torn asunder by the war as much by the armies themselves.” Southern and ‘border’ communities have gained the greatest attention; she called for a better appreciation of how the war affected northern, and notably Midwestern communities. It did not necessarily require the passage of an enemy arm through a community to create fear, despair, and panic. Just the extended absence, let alone the death, of a male family member, could have dire and bitter ramifications, and were no less important to understanding the war’s impact.

Finally, Lesley sketched the emerging literature on Civil War memory, exemplified by David Blight’s Race and Reunion (2001) but also by the work of numerous other historians, including William Blair, Gaines Foster, Carol Reardon, and Kirk Savage, who have helped us to see how the popular memory of the conflict was “deliberately created,” at first by influential participants and later by historians themselves. The most prominent example of this public memory is the one enshrined in Shaara’s The Killer Angels: a memory that removed the politics of slavery from the struggle, emphasized white valor on both sides, pushed African Americans to the background, and created “a sanitized story of a heroic war that has settled into the fabric of American culture.”

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 (coming)

At Last, a Gettysburg Redress

With Its New (but Old-Fashioned) Visitor Center and A Plan to Restore Sightlines, the Battlefield Honors Its Past

By Philip Kennicott

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2008; Page C01

GETTYSBURG, Pa. If you stand on the low rise known as Cemetery Ridge, above the killing fields of Gettysburg, you command one of the most important “what if” promontories of American history. It was here, on July 3, 1863, that the course of the famous Civil War battle might have turned. It was here that the Confederacy — or the rebellion — reached what became known as its “high-water mark.” It was here that the entire direction of the war might have changed, if Pickett’s Charge had decisively broken the Union line, if the election of 1864 had consequently gone against Lincoln, if the North, humiliated by a Confederate victory on Union soil, had sued for peace.

Generations of military men, amateur historians, little boys with dreams of glory and tourists of all stripes have stood on this site and wondered: What if? But a new set of questions and a new set of priorities have come to Gettysburg. The high-water mark, with its sweeping view of the mountains, its stone forest of memorial markers, its little copse of old trees that may, perhaps, be descendants of the original trees that once served as a focal point for the Confederate attack on Union lines, is again on the front lines of history.

Might be the theme song for Civil Warriors this month, what with Mark’s recently foray to Carlisle and my own recent trip to Virginia. During this trip I was able to combine a speaking engagement at Liberty University’s Annual Civil War Seminar with a staff ride of the 1781 Yorktown Campaign for the folks at Fort Lee. As always, I had a good time at the seminar. I gave a brief talk on Meade at Gettysburg the first night, combining themes from my book on Meade and recent essay in North and South, and made a point of leaving plenty of time for Q & A, which is the part of these presentations I always enjoy most. Speaking the first night had the virtue of allowing me to relax the rest of the seminar and just enjoy myself, although being the last speaker after a long evening of activities was somewhat tough. The fact that I got a chance to meet some really great people (including Rea Andrew Redd, who has said some nice things about some of my writings on his Civil War Librarian blog) and Steve Woodworth was on the program, with whom I had a lively debate over the virtues of Joe Hooker, certainly played a large part in making this a good time. In addition, all the talks I heard were excellent, especially Thomas A. Desjardin’s lecture on this guy named Chamberlain. I was disappointed, though, that Eric Wittenberg, through whose efforts I was invited to be on the program wasn’t there, as I hoped we could continue the dialogue on cavalry we began a few months ago. I also took advantage of the trip to explore Lynchburg a bit, especially the sites associated with the 1864 engagements that were part of Hunter’s Valley Campaign.

After the seminar, I headed up to my parents’ house near Harrisonburg for a couple days, during which I sat in on a class on Virginia history my mom is taking at James Madison University. The instructor was David Dillard, with whom I have crossed paths many times in recent years at various conferences, and it was good to catch up with him. Then, it was off to Richmond to pick up two colleagues from Fort Leavenworth who had spent the day battling the elements in Chicago and always cooperative airlines to make it to Richmond—only to find some luggage had been lost. Consequently, one of them had to do the recon on 1 April in the same clothes he had traveled in, during which we had lunch with our department chair, who happened to be in the area for a conference at Fort Monroe. Fortunately, his luggage arrived at our hotel that afternoon, sparing us a shopping trip to Williamsburg that evening.

The photo above is of Joe Fischer, our department’s Revolutionary War expert and author of A Well-Executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois, July-September 1779, and myself during the staff ride. It was taken by our colleague Steve Bourque, whose books include The Road to Safwan: A Cavalry Squadron in the Persian Gulf War and Jayhawk! The VII Corps in the Persian Gulf War. Of course, the gun we are standing by is posted on the section of Cornwallis’s inner defensive line (which was torn down after the British surrender, only to be reconstructed by the Confederates eighty years later) right next to the Yorktown Battlefield Visitor Center.

Next week I am off to Ogden, Utah, for the Society for Military History’s Annual Meeting. I am presenting a paper, serving as a commentator for a panel on nation-building, and carrying out my duties as a member of the SMH Awards Committee. We’ll see if this produces anything worth discussing here.