Civil Warriors

With the 148th anniversary of the battle approaching, I thought I would share these images of the Ox Hill (Chantilly) Battlefield. The first was taken over twenty years ago (1987, I think), when I was taking an undergraduate Civil War course at Northern Virginia Community College with Charles Poland. At the time West Ox Road was transforming from the two lane rural road with large lots on both sides it was when my school bus travelled on it every morning to what it is today with Monument Drive just having been built. The second picture was taken two weekends ago, when I was in the area doing work on the Manassas guide for the This Hallowed Ground series Mark and Brooks edit with Steve Woodworth for the University of Nebraska Press.

It is sad how little of the battlefield is preserved, but the Fairfax County Park Authority deserves kudos for doing a very good job with what is left in developing the park a few years ago. You certainly get a better understanding of the battle today than you did when all I remember there being was a trail leading to the Kearny and Stevens monuments and Kearny stump. Plus, you can now honor the men who fought there by grabbing a burger, catching a movie, and stocking up at Bed, Bath and Beyond just across the street. I’m pretty sure that’s what Stonewall and Kearny would have wanted.

By COL (Ret.) Charles D. Allen

The academic year at the U.S. Army War College begins with a course entitled Strategic Thinking, intended to introduce (or re-introduce) students to an assortment of intellectual tools by which to make sense of what is known around the war college as the “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA)” environment of national security at its higher levels.  There are blocks of instruction on critical thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking, and so on; also a block on the uses of history.  The final day of the course–its integration phase–takes the form of a staff ride to the Gettysburg battlefield 30 miles south of Carlisle Barracks.  The entire class–some 400 students–descends upon the battlefield in ten buses, each “commanded” by a faculty member tasked to walk them through the events of the battle.

The student body consist primarily of U.S. colonels, with a leavening of senior civilian leaders from other government agencies (e.g., the Department of Homeland Security).  But it also contains over 50 “International Fellows”: colonels from foreign countries, ranging from Brazil to Poland to Saudi Arabia.

COL (Ret.) Chuck Allen, a professor in the U.S. Army War College’s Department of Command, Leadership, and Management, offers a vignette from this year’s staff ride.

To paraphrase, “a day on the Gettysburg battlefield beats any day in the seminar room.”  Of course for our U.S. Army War College trip, the seminar room was the battlefield.   Over the years, I have been privileged to observe several student groups vicariously experience the great national contest of wills that was our American Civil War. It is advantageous for our students that contest came to be realized in central Pennsylvania.

I am not sure what students expected after a night of reading about the strategic setting of the campaign and then taking the 45-minute morning bus ride from Carlisle to Gettysburg.   History buffs in the class may have had unbridled anticipation while the rest of the students may have dreaded a day in the hot sun hearing about a battle that occurred nearly one and a half centuries ago. The questions in many student minds may have been, “what can this battle teach me” and “how is this useful to me in the current operating environment.”

From the first stop on the battlefield, the focus was not on the tactics and dry, sterile facts of unit names, locations, and size (which can be overwhelming in a hurry).  The historian talked about the people in command of the formations on the field, their personalities, critical events in their lives, and their relationships with other key leaders both on and off the field.  The historian engaged students to think about the challenges, stresses, and myriad other factors that would influence the decisions of the day.  Proceeding from one historical position to another, it became clear that those tactical events would have operational and strategic effects for our nation.

The measure of the long day came at our final stop on Cemetery Hill where we gathered at the base of the statue of Union General Winfield Scott Hancock.  As the historian provided the soliloquy to wrap up the day, I looked around at the group of students as they nodded their heads in reflection of what happened on that battlefield over the three days.  Perhaps they thought of the enduring themes of leadership, and, maybe even, considered lessons that could be useful in future conflicts.

That would have been enough, but then I spied two students seated on the ground in the cooler shadow of the statue.  That in of itself was unremarkable except that they were two international fellows.  Both officers were from different faith groups (one Jewish and the other, Muslim) and this scene would have been implausible, apart from being USAWC students this year. These international fellows were from nations that have a long history of conflict (both internal and external) and have been the focus of international attention for many years.  It would have been informative to hear how they viewed a civil war that lasted a mere 4 years and was the only challenge to the existence of a nation since its founding.

But there on an American battlefield and in an educational setting, seeing those two groups of students—American and International—I envisioned hope. Maybe it lies in studying and extracting the lessons of the past to provide promise for the future.

Over at Civil War Memory Kevin Levin’s offered information on what the National Park Service hands out to visitors at Governors Island in New York.

I would enjoy seeing the evidence and the sources upon which this description is based.  Let’s see what happens with your tax dollars at work.

I must admit … after seeing the NPS work so hard to bring professional historians to help discuss their interpretation of sites, this is an eye-opening event.

The second half of “Sherman’s Armies in 1864:  A Study in Organizational Culture,” a paper I gave at the Society for Military History annual meeting in May.  (The first half is here.)

The origin of the organizational culture of the Army of Northern Virginia corresponds more closely to the second wellspring identified by Schein:  the learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves.  Unlike McClellan, Gen. Robert E. Lee did not create the Army of Northern Virginia.  Although he gave it the name by which it became famous, the army itself had existed nearly a year before he took command in June 1862.  Lee nonetheless profoundly shaped that army through his consistent promotion of commanders who showed aggressiveness and his quiet but ruthless weeding out of officers who proved cautious or incompetent.  Put in terms of the literature on organizational culture, Lee’s consistent pattern of paying attention to, and rewarding, the behaviors he considered most valuable constituted an “embedding mechanism.” Lee crafted the Army of Northern Virginia’s legendary boldness not just by modeling that boldness himself, but by systematically rewarding subordinates who displayed it and discarding those who did not.

Turning to the Armies of the Tennessee and the Cumberland, we find that as Sherman embarked on the Atlanta campaign, he emphatically believed the two armies had contrasting organizational cultures.  Although it was the smaller of the two, he was convinced that the Army of the Tennessee was the more responsive and aggressive of the two forces and whenever possible utilized it for the most critical maneuvers of the Atlanta campaign.  The Army of the Cumberland he regarded as “dreadfully slow.”  Six weeks into the campaign he complained to Grant that “a fresh furrow in a ploughed field will stop the whole column, and all begin to entrench…. We are on the offensive, & yet it seems the whole Army of the Cumberland is so habituated to be on the defensive that I cannot get it out of their heads.”

Not unreasonably, many analysts have assumed that Sherman’s appraisal of the two armies reflected chauvinism more than reality.  Sherman had served in the Army of the Tennessee for most of his Civil War career and had briefly led it before being vaulted to command of the Military Division of the Mississippi (which encompassed most Union forces between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River).  He is also thought to have had greater confidence in McPherson, his protégé, than Thomas, the chief of the Army of the Cumberland, notwithstanding the fact that Thomas was tried and tested in army command, whereas McPherson was new to the job.  But was Sherman correct in perceiving that the two armies had contrasting organizational cultures?  If so, to what did he ascribe it?  And was he correct in assuming that the contrast made a difference?

(Continued)

Curious about Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, but lack the time or inclination to read the book yourself?  Check out its entry in Wikipedia. (HUGE spoiler alert!)

(Hat tip to Joe Schweninger)

Check this out:

One Progressive’s Nat’l Scheme To Burn Confederate Flags At Tea Party Rallies

A pseudonymous liberal blogger in Washington state hopes that progressives across the country will show up to tea party rallies on September 12 and — if it’s legal — light up a confederate flag so tea partiers can watch it burn.

“I think that it would start a great conversation about race and about how it’s being used for political gain right now,” the blogger, who preferred to be identified by his online handle, “General J.C. Christian,” told me Monday. “I can imagine people showing up at the tea parties, which I’ll do at my local one, and the tea party backers will start explaining why [the flag] is about state’s rights, not slavery, and all that and basically hang themselves.”

“I think that will be one of the messages that come out of the tea party events if my idea works out and people actually embrace it,” he added.

General JC Christian, who writes the satirical anti-conservative blog Jesus’ General, says he’s serious about Burn The Confederate lag Day, which he announced Sunday night on Facebook and the web. And while there’s no sign so far that Burn The Confederate Flag Day will spread across the nation, the idea seems sure to at least ruffle some tea party feathers.

Link to the full article from Talking Points Memo is here.

(Hat tip to Terry Beckenbaugh)

The 54th Annual Missouri Valley History Conference will be held March 3-5, 2011 in Omaha, Nebraska. The Society for Military History sponsors a full slate of sessions at the MVHC and also will again be sponsoring a “huddle” for Society for Military History participants. Individual proposals and session proposals are welcome. For individuals, send a one page proposal and short c.v. (only c.v. if volunteering to chair/comment). For sessions, send one-page session proposal, one-page proposal for each paper, and short c.v.s for all participants. Please include e-mail address. Deadline for proposals is October 31, 2010.

Send proposals, c.v.s and inquiries for contest rules to: Connie K. Harris, PO Box, Grasston, MN 55030 or send by e-mail to ckharris1@juno.com. The Society for Military History and the First Division Museum Cantigny sponsors the Kevin J. Carroll award for the best graduate student paper in Military History. This prize is valued at $400 dollars. In addition, the Society for Military History and the First Division Museum Cantigny sponsors a paper prize for the Best Undergraduate Student paper in any area of History which is valued at $200. For information on this prize please send inquiries to Charles King at cwking@mail.unomaha.edu.

The Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University plans to launch a blog next month, and is requesting input concerning what potential readers would find most useful in terms of content:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

My name is Sean Trainor; I’m a graduate student at Penn State University. I’m writing on behalf of the Richards Civil War Era Center to inform you of a new resource the Center will begin offering later this summer. Starting in August, the Center’s new blog will begin online publication, offering a variety of Civil War-related resources to those interested in the American Civil War-era.

Prior to the August launch, however, I would like to ask you to participate in a brief survey that will help us understand what you, our target audience for this new resource, would find most helpful in a Civil War-era blog. Please respond to the questions below by recording your responses in the reply to this email.

Question 1: Please rank the value of the following blog services:
(Please rank the services listed below in order of their value to you, with 1 being the most valuable and 4 the least.)

__ As an aggregator of web content (i.e. as a collection point for Civil War-related news, re-postings from other Civil War-related blogs, etc.)
__ As a news feed highlighting new developments in Civil War-related scholarship
__ As a forum for scholarly debate and conversation
__ As a directory of online Civil War websites and scholarly resources

Question 2: Would you be interested in receiving a brief monthly newsletter, featuring highlighted content from the previous month’s posts?

__ Yes
__ No

Thanks in advance for your participation, and please feel free to pass this email on to friends, colleagues, graduate students, or anyone else that might be interested in our project. Please also feel free to respond with more specific suggestions for how we might make our blog a more valuable resource.

Regards,

Sean Trainor

To provide your opinion, Sean asks that you contact him via email.

Back in May I gave a presentation at the Society for Military History annual meeting entitled “Sherman’s Armies in 1864: A Study in Organizational Culture.” The paper was well received, as far as I could tell. All the same, I decided it was a mistake to limit it to Sherman’s armies–even in the paper I made frequent reference to other armies. Still, here’s the paper as I gave it:

This presentation is part of a larger project—an edited volume that will explore the role of culture in affecting specific military operations. Because of the focus on specific operations, the eventual essay will deal with the two principal field forces with which Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman conducted the Atlanta campaign: the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, and the Army of the Cumberland, led by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. But this morning, although I will be examining these two armies, I want to explore the idea of using organizational culture as a tool with which to evaluate Civil War armies.

Organizational culture operates in two principal ways. On the one hand, it is created: leaders and managers actively sculpt the values, structures, routines, rules and norms that come to guide behavior within a given organization. But on the other hand, once created, culture takes on a life of its own, constraining behavior even when leaders attempt to change it.

Most students of the Civil War have a sense that the major Union and Confederate field armies possessed discernible “personalities”: the overcautious Army of the Potomac, the stolid Army of the Cumberland, the adroit Army of the Tennessee, the audacious Army of Northern Virginia, and the hard fighting but hard luck Army of Tennessee. These personalities approximate what is meant by organizational culture. Rarely are these personalities investigated in any sustained way. Nonetheless, a few historians have taken the issue seriously and have come up with impressive, though necessarily somewhat speculative explanations.

These divide roughly into three categories. The first emphasizes the societal cultures that allegedly influenced the armies. In 1978, Michael C. C. Adams argued that Northerners in the Atlantic seaboard had a pronounced image of white Southerners as barbaric but militant and warlike, and that this image intimidated the Army of the Potomac, whose officers and men came chiefly from eastern states. It did not influence Northerners from western states, and therefore these armies performed better. A few years later, Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson argued that the Celtic heritage of many white Southerners fostered an automatic and ultimately ruinous cult of the offensive.

The second emphasizes the nature of Civil War armies, which were ad hoc organizations slightly leavened by officers with experience in the pre-war Regular Army but whose rank and file were citizens in uniform whose principal allegiance was to their regiments. Gerald J. Prokopowicz has advanced this thesis most directly and convincingly in his 2001 assessment of the Army of the Ohio of 1861-62, the pre-cursor to the Army of the Cumberland. “The reason that the Army of the Ohio (and by extension other Civil War armies) fought as it did in 1861-62,” he writes, owed nothing to senior leadership or weapons technology, but rather “the way in which it was recruited, trained, and organized. Assembled out of a collection of independent and fiercely clannish companies and regiments, the Army of the Ohio resembled a strong but ponderous beast whose component units could absorb enormous punishment on the battlefield without breaking, but which lacked the agility to execute the maneuvers necessary to destroy its enemies.” Hints of this thesis appear in Joseph T. Glatthaar’s 2008 General Lee’s Army.

The U.S. Army War College (and for that matter several other senior service colleges) has adapted studies of organizational culture in a bid to better understand how military organizations work and particularly, how to get them to change effectively in response to new situations. Most of the literature on organizational culture draws heavily on the contemporary business world, although its proponents maintain that their findings apply to organizations of all kinds. The Army War College studies adapt this literature so as to understand contemporary military organizations, particularly those of the United States. My presentation attempts to extend this literature to Civil War armies: armies that preceded the rise of the United States as an industrialized, self-consciously organizational society and armies that, unlike today’s professional armed forces, were ad hoc organizations created in response to a civil war that was largely unforeseen—certainly in its duration and scope—and which were dissolved upon the conclusion of hostilities. It is therefore frankly speculative. Nonetheless, I have found it an interesting and illuminating way of looking at Civil War armies, and I think it holds some promise for future explorations of their organizational cultures.

This presentation draws most heavily upon the work of Edgar H. Schein, a pioneering and highly influential figure in the field of organizational culture. Schein argues that cultures basically spring from three sources: the beliefs, values and assumptions of founders of organizations; the learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves; and new beliefs, values, and assumptions brought in by new members and leaders.

The Army of the Potomac is perhaps the best known example of the impact of the founding leader in creating and shaping the culture of an organization. Although the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac undoubtedly identified with their specific regiments, as Gerald Prokopowicz suggests, they also identified heavily with the army of which they were a part. This was a function of three factors: first, the early formation and stability of that army, so that its component regiments began military life within, and for the most part remained within, the Army of the Potomac; second, the fact that the Army of the Potomac spent nine months encamped together before its maiden campaign, so that it carried out its initial training together; and third and most strongly, the fact that throughout its early months its commander was Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, an officer acknowledged even today as possessed of charisma and outstanding organizational ability. McClellan remained in command for seventeen months, longer than any commander except Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and his hallmark traits—a suspicion of the Lincoln administration, a strong involvement in Washington politics, a cautious approach to military operations, and a tendency to overestimate the size and prowess of the enemy forces—characterized the organizational culture of the Army of the Potomac throughout its history. This was exacerbated by the fact that each of McClellan’s successors was promoted from within the army. Even Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who located his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and often micro-managed it, could do little to affect its organizational culture.

Part 1 – Part 2

For part one, click here.

After lunch in Front Royal, Mike, Tim, Sam, and I headed south up the Shenandoah Valley to Rockingham County. After getting off I-81 at Harrisonburg we proceeded to Cross Keys to begin our study of the battles of 8 and 9 June 1862 that closed the campaign. The initial plan was to first stop at Chestnut Ridge just east of Harrisonburg where Col. Turner Ashby was killed in a 6 June rearguard action. But at that point we were running behind schedule, so we decided to skip that stop and go straight to Cross Keys.

As chronicled a few years ago on Civil Warriors, this was not my first visit to Cross Keys. However, in the time since my last visit in June 2007 the owner of the property adjacent to the Carrington Williams Kiosk had made it decidedly unwelcoming to battlefield visitors. Fortunately, when he learned that I was putting this trip together, Brig. Gen. (ret.) John Mountcastle put me in contact with Dr. Irvin Hess, the owner of the Widow Pence Farm, which is located near the right-center of the Confederate line at Cross Keys. It was also where Brig. Gen. Isaac Trimble’s brigade of Maj. Gen. Richard Ewell’s division saw heavy fighting with the Federals at Cross Keys. Dr. Hess not only invited us to stop by to see the Pence Farm, but generously offered to serve as our guide to Cross Keys and Port Republic.

Upon our arrival at the Pence Farm, Dr. Hess took us into the house, which he has restored and made into a truly outstanding site. (He actually lives a few miles away just across the river from Port Republic.) After a few minutes looking around the house and all of the artifacts on display in it (the first photo on the right is of Sam Watson, Mike Pearlman, Dr. Hess, and Tim Nenninger on the front porch of the house), we went over to the barn, which Dr. Hess has filled with a magnificent array of even more displays and artifacts related to the war in the Shenandoah Valley. Not the least interesting of these is a huge table-top diorama of the Cross Keys battlefield, which Dr. Hess used to provide us with an excellent overview of the 8 June engagement before taking us around the actual battlefield.

We followed this by going over to Union Church, which marked the approximate location of the Confederate left and Union right at Cross Keys, then drove along Battlefield Road, which roughly parallels Mill Creek, behind which Ewell posted his command, passing the point where Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont’s forces came closest to actually piercing the Confederate line.

Dr. Hess then led our caravan over to Port Republic, where our first stop was Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters at Madison Hall. There we discussed Jackson’s close shave on the morning of 8 June when, with the engagement over at Cross Keys then developing, a mixed force of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery commanded by Col. Samuel Carroll—the vanguard of Brig. Gen. James Shields’s column as it advanced up the Luray (or Page) Valley east of Massanutten Mountain—suddenly charged into Port Republic and caused quite a bit of consternation for the Confederates. We then headed over to the site of the old bridge over the North River (where Dr. Hess, Sam, and Tim are standing in the second photo on the right) Jackson used to rather narrowly escape the chaos in Port Republic before his men were able to drive Carroll’s men out of the town.

We then finished the ride by going over to the Lewiston Coaling to see the site of, and discuss the Battle of Port Republic on 9 June 1862 between Jackson’s Confederates and Brig. Gen. Erastus Tyler’s Federals. We then followed in the footsteps of Brig. Gen. Richard Taylor’s Louisiania Brigade by storming the Coaling to take in the excellent view of the battlefield it provides.

After Port Republic, Tim and Mike headed off to Lexington, while Sam and I made a quick stop at Chestnut Ridge to see the Ashby Monument. That is, once we found it, as there had been considerable road construction around it in the three years since I had last visited it that resulted in the parking area being relocated. Once we finally figured out where it was, Sam and I made the short hike over to the monument to the “Black Knight of the Confederacy”, where he made a point of expressing his customary reverance for the Lost Cause and its heroes on camera before we finally took off for VMI and the SMH.

The big news today of course is the removal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal from command in Afghanistan, with the inevitable comparisons to the two previous Macs who had problems with their commander in chief.

George Will kicks off his commentary on the matter with reference to Dugout Doug here.

Doris Kearns Goodwin provides a decidedly predictable and unenlightening connection to Lincoln’s handling of Little Mac here.

Too bad T. Harry Williams is no longer around to offer his two cents.

A few months ago, Michael Pearlman, author of Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown and Warmaking and American Democracy: The Struggle over Military Strategy, 1700 to the Present , and a former colleague here at CGSC, asked if I would be interested in leading a staff ride of the Shenandoah Valley in the days prior to the opening of the Society for Military History’s Annual Meeting in Lexington, Virginia. I agreed and on Wednesday, 19 May, Mike, Tim Nenninger of the National Archives, Samuel Watson of the U.S. Military Academy, and I spent a very full day studying the 1862 Valley Campaign. Mike asked if we could work in Cedar Creek and some of the other 1864 operations, as he was tired in his prep reading of the Yankees playing the role of the Washington Generals to the Confederate Globetrotters, but that simply proved impracticable. In any case, I told him we would get to see the Yankees win one at First Kernstown.

We started out by rendezvousing at the parking lot for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park on Cavalier Heights. Because the shuttle buses were not yet running down to the town, we had an excuse for combining into a single car, and driving to Lower Town. After finding parking on Potomac Street, we went to the Point where the Shenandoah River flows into the Potomac and discussed Harpers Ferry, the Valley, Jackson’s early command at Harpers Ferry, and the Federal “lockjaw” operation in which Nathaniel Banks’s command occupied Harpers Ferry in early 1862, as well as Federal plans for 1862 in Virginia and how Banks’s and Jackson’s forces figured into them.

After spending about an hour in Harpers Ferry, we returned to Cavalier Heights, got in our cars, then proceeded up the Valley to Winchester to study the Federal victory at First Kernstown on 23 March 1862. We started at Opequon Presbyterian Church just south of Pritchard’s Hill. The first two photos to the right provide a view looking north toward the Pritchard-Grim Farm from the church parking lot, where an unreconciled Sam made a point of calling attention to the part of the sign that clearly indicates this was, at least in 1862, a Union victory. (The 24 July 1864 Battle of Second Kernstown–also fought on the Pritchard-Grim Farm–did not work out so well for the Federals.)

We then went over to the Pritchard-Grim Farm, the 315-acre section of the battlefield that is owned and managed by the Kernstown Battlefield Association. A call in advance ensured the KBA would have someone on hand to open the visitor center (pictured on the right) when we arrived, and we began our visit by seeing the exhibits. We then went up to Pritchard’s Hill where the Federal commander at Kernstown, Nathan Kimball (James Shields having been wounded the day before), posted his artillery and had his command post during the battle.

The bottom photo on the right was taken near the military crest of Pritchard’s Hill and is looking west toward Sandy Ridge. It was on Sandy Ridge that Jackson’s attempt to turn the strong Federal position on Pritchard’s Hill was turned back, setting the stage for the rout of his command. It was also on Sandy Ridge where Richard Garnett made the decision to withdraw the Stonewall Brigade without orders that led to his relief from command and court-martial.

After Kernstown, we backtracked to Winchester. The First Winchester battlefield has been lost to development to the point that, while it is possible to do a pretty good tour of the battlefield and see where the significant actions took place, the sight lines are not particularly great. Thus, given our fairly limited time, we did not bother going up to the Federal line on Bowers Hill and Camp Hill. Instead, we just stopped at the Winchester Visitors Center at Abram’s Delight, which is just off the road along which Richard Ewell’s command on the Confederate right made its attack on Camp Hill during the 25 May rout of Banks’s command at First Winchester. There, in addition to taking advantage of the facilities and bookshop, we used the large maps of the Shenandoah Valley on display to discuss and trace the course of the campaign from First Kernstown to McDowell (the latter an absolutely wonderful battlefield that distance, of course, it made impracticable for us to visit on this trip) to Front Royal and First Winchester.

We then headed south and east on the old Winchester-Front Royal Road to our next stop at Cedarville a few miles north of the town of Front Royal and the confluence of the north and south forks of the Shenandoah River. It was at Cedarville that the closing engagement of the 23 May Battle of Front Royal between Jackson’s command and a force of about a thousand Federals commanded by John Kenly occurred. The battle that began south of the town and saw Jackson’s men overwhelm a series of positions from which Kenly tried to vainly fend off the Confederates and saw the First Maryland Confederate do battle with the First Maryland Union. Here we discussed the course of the decidedly uneven battle at Front Royal and its consequences. The most important of the latter, of course, being President Lincoln’s decision to compromise Federal operations against Richmond on the York-James Peninsula in order to deal with Jackson. We then went into Front Royal for lunch before heading south on I-81 to study the operations in Rockingham County that closed the campaign in June 1862.

About two months ago, one of my fellow alumnus of the 1999 West Point Summer Seminar, Dr. Nick Sarantakes of the Naval War College, threw out the question, “What mistakes did Lincoln make?” Here is part three in the series of points that were debated.

Mistake No. 3: Decision to allow West Virginia to secede from Virginia and bring the Confederacy back into the Union, one piece at a time. This, along with the Emancipation Proclamation, guaranteed that the war would be fought to a bitter end.

My response: As my good friend Mark Snell of the George Tyler Moore Center (whose annual seminar, scheduled for 24-27 June, will be studying Petersburg this year) this has observed, the mistake was the naming of “West” Virginia. The loyal western Virginians should have claimed the title Virginia and made the secessionist section of the state rebrand itself as East Virginia, Chesapeake, Treasonistan, or something else. And, given the federal nature of the system and the way secession had happened, there was no constitutional or practical alternative to restoring loyal governments in the South province by province. Also, cause and effect are more complicated than suggested in the statement about the Emancipation Proclamation. That its symbolism made the South fight harder is without question; indeed, that was McClellan’s objection to it. But the Emancipation Proclamation was also the product of a realization–probably correct–that by July 1862 (due to the defeats in the Shenandoah Valley and perceived reversal on the Peninsula reviving Southern morale) Northern hopes that the war could be won quickly would not be realized and the South was ALREADY determined to fight harder than anticipated. Thus, tougher measures were perceived to be needed. Lincoln’s big botches came in his handling of the military operations that produced the setbacks that revived southern morale.

Response: First off, be careful what you say about WVa! I agree with what you say about making the western part of the state the true seat of government, but that is not what happened. Plus, Lincoln is in the midst of efforts for Reconstruction, attempting to bring Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee back into the Union; yet, why hack off a piece of Virignia? On the issue of changing the nature of the war with the Emancipation Proclamation, I am sure that we all have views and opinions on this, not to mention a slew of books already written on the subject. I am always struck by the timing and wording, just before the 1862 mid-term elections and giving the Confederates the option to come back in by Jan. 1. Why give them the option if tougher measures are needed? Was Lincoln going to forget everything and keep slavery? Probably not.

What do you think?

In the last two decades the scholarly study of how Americans remember the American Civil War has become something of a cottage industry in the profession.  I admit that at times I grow a bit skeptical about it, even as I am intrigued by some of the findings.  It’s not as if other historians have not written about memory before: the work of Merrill Peterson and Norman Cantor comes to mind.  At times some studies simply employ in rough fashion the process of deconstruction evident in literature studies, and at times the conclusions reached in some of these studies seem to belabor the obvious.  Indeed, it may well be time to take a step back in order to see how this field is progressing, and to do so with a little care and discernment, instead of rushing heedlessly ahead to find something else to dissect.  That said, what I thought was obvious may strike others as new, and in any case I like that more people are approaching sources with a critical eye.

That said, there’s still a good reason to study how Americans remember the Civil War era, including the decades leading up to the war and the Reconstruction period.  That’s because today we see people engaged in the misuse of the past to justify present political beliefs and some rather deplorable prejudices.  Take, for example, this little affair, which Kevin Levin brought to my attention on Civil War Memory:

Some still mad about Founders speech

VALDESE — A church pastor’s speech at the Founders Day Festival outraged some listeners who remain upset nearly a week after the event.

According to eyewitnesses and from others who heard about the speech from their children or grandchildren, the Rev. Herman White of Archdale made racist remarks, asserted that slaves before “the War of Northern Aggression” had more rights than African Americans have today and disparaged the Gettysburg Address as “political garbage.”

School and town officials said they have fielded dozens of complaints. However, one of the event’s organizers said he received only one complaint and an official in the organization that recommended White as a speaker said he thought it was “a pretty good speech.”

A woman who answered the phone at White’s residence said the minister would not comment until he spoke with festival officials, because he was their guest speaker.

White’s audience included hundreds of eighth-grade students from the Burke County schools. In what has become an annual excursion, each paid $1 to attend the 2½-hour-long festival that commenced with White’s speech.

One student was Leatrice Taylor’s grandson, Chris Rutherford, who said he started paying attention to the speech after another student’s mother called White a racist and took her child and left. Chris said he heard White saying things like black people should still be slaves and that the races should not mix. None of the students talked about it afterwards, Chris said, but some talked about it on the bus he rides home from school.

His grandmother wondered why teachers and school officials didn’t take the students away immediately.

“To me, it was irresponsible and dangerous,” Taylor said.

(Continued)