Several months ago I wrote about the plans and need for a slavery museum in the United States; to refresh your memory, click here. Unfortunately, it appears that development at the Fredericksburg, VA site has ground to halt amidst growing criticism of former Governor and erstwhile project director Douglas Wilder.
Given that the museum allowed its registration to raise funds to expire last year and that Wilder is evidently not returning calls from the press, perhaps a fresh start is the way to go. Shockoe Bottom, a district in Richmond, VA has apparently voiced some interest in having the project brought there. One can only hope that this endeavor finds not only a location, but a management team that can get it off of the drawing board.
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
So Explain It Already!
The quote from the member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans justifying the enormous Confederate flag flying in Tampa, "we fly it so we can explain it" prompted me to do a bit of research to explore how serious the SCV was about educating the curious about their motivations.
I looked at both the main SCV website and the site for the Florida chapter, the main site makes absolutely no mention of it, the Florida site has a picture of the flag, but no essays, comments, editorials, or illustrative links.
Basically, there is absolutely no thought, content, consideration, or insight behind what they are doing with this ridiculous flag. The SCV Florida chapter is behaving like a screaming child looking for attention by pressing the buttons it knows will get a response. Moreover, the glaring lack of discussion on these sites makes this organization look absolutely foolish.
There's no accurate representation of history anywhere near the SCV, this is just a bunch of chest thumping, a gasp for acknowledgement while society, philosophy, morality, and the world pass them by. Maybe it's not an accident this flag is near an interstate highway, people will just glance at it in their rearview mirror.
I looked at both the main SCV website and the site for the Florida chapter, the main site makes absolutely no mention of it, the Florida site has a picture of the flag, but no essays, comments, editorials, or illustrative links.
Basically, there is absolutely no thought, content, consideration, or insight behind what they are doing with this ridiculous flag. The SCV Florida chapter is behaving like a screaming child looking for attention by pressing the buttons it knows will get a response. Moreover, the glaring lack of discussion on these sites makes this organization look absolutely foolish.
There's no accurate representation of history anywhere near the SCV, this is just a bunch of chest thumping, a gasp for acknowledgement while society, philosophy, morality, and the world pass them by. Maybe it's not an accident this flag is near an interstate highway, people will just glance at it in their rearview mirror.
Look Away
The Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter that hoisted that gigantic Confederate flag in Tampa, Florida is about to get its 15 minutes of fame extended. That 60x90 foot symbol of repression and slavery is going to be flying during the Super Bowl week.
"We fly it so we can explain it" said one SCV member when asked by the press what the motives are in this endeavor. Does that explanation include a discussion of slavery in the United States and its primary role in Southern secession and Civil War?
There is no small amount of irony that this flag was made in China. Whenever the relationship of forced labor and this flag is presented, the SCV tries to separate the two as much as possible. Given that denial, you would think they might want to demonstrate how this flag was made by well-paid, fairly-treated workers, perhaps from the region it represented.
There's just so much wrong about this flag and its display in this manner. The one thing that is not wrong is the group's right to fly it. They have the same freedom to fly it as I have to rip them for being disingenuous in their motives and ignorant of the fact that this flag has many meanings to many people. It may represent some Lost Cause apologia to some, but that doesn't give them the monopoly on symbolism. To millions of others this flag, and other flags of the Confederacy, represent a society built upon the enslavement of others and a rebellion fomented to protect that institution.
We've come so far as a country and the last few months have brought such a sense of pride and energy despite the challenges we face. This flag display could be a detractor, but I say we just leave these agitators in the dust behind us as we move forward. "What they are talking about does not represent the values of Hillsborough County," said Curtis Stokes, the president of the Hillsborough County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "All they want is publicity."
He's right, just absolutely right. While we can't take the flag down and most of the people who helped raise this one are unlikely to extend their worldview, we can turn away, drive away, walk away back to our communities where the values behind this flag have no foothold.
"We fly it so we can explain it" said one SCV member when asked by the press what the motives are in this endeavor. Does that explanation include a discussion of slavery in the United States and its primary role in Southern secession and Civil War?
There is no small amount of irony that this flag was made in China. Whenever the relationship of forced labor and this flag is presented, the SCV tries to separate the two as much as possible. Given that denial, you would think they might want to demonstrate how this flag was made by well-paid, fairly-treated workers, perhaps from the region it represented.
There's just so much wrong about this flag and its display in this manner. The one thing that is not wrong is the group's right to fly it. They have the same freedom to fly it as I have to rip them for being disingenuous in their motives and ignorant of the fact that this flag has many meanings to many people. It may represent some Lost Cause apologia to some, but that doesn't give them the monopoly on symbolism. To millions of others this flag, and other flags of the Confederacy, represent a society built upon the enslavement of others and a rebellion fomented to protect that institution.
We've come so far as a country and the last few months have brought such a sense of pride and energy despite the challenges we face. This flag display could be a detractor, but I say we just leave these agitators in the dust behind us as we move forward. "What they are talking about does not represent the values of Hillsborough County," said Curtis Stokes, the president of the Hillsborough County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "All they want is publicity."
He's right, just absolutely right. While we can't take the flag down and most of the people who helped raise this one are unlikely to extend their worldview, we can turn away, drive away, walk away back to our communities where the values behind this flag have no foothold.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Book Review: "The Bloody Shirt"
Right up front, I'll make something plain; Stephen Budiansky's book "The Bloody Shirt" does not attempt to break new ground about the Reconstruction era. Instead, this book is designed to revive and retell the stories of a few individuals to illustrate the experiences of many. To his credit, Budiansky does not claim to be writing an authoritative study of Reconstruction, his intention is to show the impact that terrorism had in a few places and on a few persons in the South after the war as part of a larger reflection of the post-Civil War South.
He does a good job of not trying to pretend the book is more than it is, and should be regarded as such. Some criticisms of the book I've seen harp on various perceived shortcomings, but this is not Foner, Stampp, or Fitzgerald writing a definitive history of Reconstruction. "The Bloody Shirt" is a storyteller bringing nonfiction to life in the words of those who lived it, with the footnotes and bibliography to prove it.
To that end, the book is roundly successful; the personalities are well-described and evocative, the references utilize primary sources like letters and newspaper clippings, and the stories themselves are emotive, powerful, and sometimes unbelievable.
Where the book is most successful; however, is in throwing water on the idea that Reconstruction is universally understood today as a time of domestic terrorism, subversion, and racism. In his critique of this book, Professor Blum of San Diego State implies that the subject matter of Reconstruction is already well-traveled and universally accepted. Would that this were true!
Budiansky helps us see just how far we still have to go (and how wrong the idea that Reconstruction is well-understood) in the final vignette of the book where he explores an event called "The Massacre at Hamburg". This subject deserves and will receive its own post, but just by bringing it to life in the words of the victims and witnesses, then showing the recurring responses over the decades, including a striking one in 2006, Budiansky has written an important book.
His narrative technique is sometimes a bit jumpy and fragmented, and the chronology gets muddled up, but this does not detract from the larger issues at hand. Budiansky's book is a reminder of the spasms that wracked the post-war South and the racism, violence, and depredations that plagued African-Americans and Republican whites. More importantly, he illustrates how this painful history, despite a recent surge in Reconstruction scholarship, continues to elude common sensibilities. A primary example will be presented in a few days, so stay tuned!
He does a good job of not trying to pretend the book is more than it is, and should be regarded as such. Some criticisms of the book I've seen harp on various perceived shortcomings, but this is not Foner, Stampp, or Fitzgerald writing a definitive history of Reconstruction. "The Bloody Shirt" is a storyteller bringing nonfiction to life in the words of those who lived it, with the footnotes and bibliography to prove it.
To that end, the book is roundly successful; the personalities are well-described and evocative, the references utilize primary sources like letters and newspaper clippings, and the stories themselves are emotive, powerful, and sometimes unbelievable.
Where the book is most successful; however, is in throwing water on the idea that Reconstruction is universally understood today as a time of domestic terrorism, subversion, and racism. In his critique of this book, Professor Blum of San Diego State implies that the subject matter of Reconstruction is already well-traveled and universally accepted. Would that this were true!
Budiansky helps us see just how far we still have to go (and how wrong the idea that Reconstruction is well-understood) in the final vignette of the book where he explores an event called "The Massacre at Hamburg". This subject deserves and will receive its own post, but just by bringing it to life in the words of the victims and witnesses, then showing the recurring responses over the decades, including a striking one in 2006, Budiansky has written an important book.
His narrative technique is sometimes a bit jumpy and fragmented, and the chronology gets muddled up, but this does not detract from the larger issues at hand. Budiansky's book is a reminder of the spasms that wracked the post-war South and the racism, violence, and depredations that plagued African-Americans and Republican whites. More importantly, he illustrates how this painful history, despite a recent surge in Reconstruction scholarship, continues to elude common sensibilities. A primary example will be presented in a few days, so stay tuned!
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The National Park Service, Slavery, And The Sesquicentennial
I mentioned the National Park Service in my post a few days ago about preparations by various organizations for the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. David Woodbury at "Of Battlefields and Bibliophiles" put up an article that illustrates how the NPS has been working on this issue since 1998, and how it started with a doozy; presenting slavery as a primary cause of the war at Civil War battlefield exhibits.
Mr. Woodbury has a very interesting statement in his post that has triggered some thoughts. He writes:
"I don’t get the controversy. It’s just history. The men who fought and died so bravely don’t need us to protect them from the politics of their day – they were unapologetic about it. And if not them, whom do we think we’re protecting? Confederate re-enactors?"
Let's unpack this paragraph together. I like the idea of history as something we can have some tranquility over, to come to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in a place where all can learn, understand, and interpret an untrammeled accounting of this monumental event, good and bad. That's going to be quite a challenge, because a cornerstone of such a discourse is an agreement on the first principles of the history itself. That is something we don't have.
The next point he makes helps us remember why that schism exists. People were unapologetic about the politics of the era, yes, but the caveat is that as soon as that era ended, the apologias began, a phenomenon we have explored in our discussions of the origins of the Lost Cause mythology. When men like Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens surveyed the wreckage of the Confederacy they had helped build and lead, they systematically began to change their story to promote an alternative history, one where states rights supplanted slavery as a primary cause of secession and war, and one that took hold of the national consciousness and historiography for over 100 years.
The power that the Lost Cause mythology has on our memory of the Civil War, slavery, reconstruction, and race relations stretching up to the present is what, to help answer Mr. Woodbury's final question, is being protected. This is over a century of history-making and telling, of teaching and learning, that we're talking about here. The mythology of the Lost Cause, with its rationales, excuses, scapegoats, and heroes, is a much more palatable history for all of us to swallow when considering the debasement and savagery of the antebellum period, the war, and Reconstruction.
We have a responsibility; however, to study history honestly and objectively, regardless of whether the facts may be embarrasing, painful, even disgraceful to some. In order to do that with the Civil War, there are subjects that need to be revisited, difficult though it may be. With a fresh look at primary data, we can scrape away the obfuscation of the Lost Cause, and that's what the Civil War community has been seeing through successful works by McPherson, Gallagher, Foner, et al.
The community that sees and reads these works is small, but the sesquicentennial and the anticipated surge in public interest is going to explode the size of it. It will be an opportunity to undertake this reappraisal, not just in the halls of academia, but for the general public, for the neophyte, for the student who learned about the war decades ago and has their interest rekindled by this anniversary.
As they seek out information and education, it's good to know that things that are easily available and inexpensive, like battlefield tours and landmarks run by the NPS, will provide at least some measure of honesty and allow for more clear and integral understanding.
Mr. Woodbury has a very interesting statement in his post that has triggered some thoughts. He writes:
"I don’t get the controversy. It’s just history. The men who fought and died so bravely don’t need us to protect them from the politics of their day – they were unapologetic about it. And if not them, whom do we think we’re protecting? Confederate re-enactors?"
Let's unpack this paragraph together. I like the idea of history as something we can have some tranquility over, to come to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in a place where all can learn, understand, and interpret an untrammeled accounting of this monumental event, good and bad. That's going to be quite a challenge, because a cornerstone of such a discourse is an agreement on the first principles of the history itself. That is something we don't have.
The next point he makes helps us remember why that schism exists. People were unapologetic about the politics of the era, yes, but the caveat is that as soon as that era ended, the apologias began, a phenomenon we have explored in our discussions of the origins of the Lost Cause mythology. When men like Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens surveyed the wreckage of the Confederacy they had helped build and lead, they systematically began to change their story to promote an alternative history, one where states rights supplanted slavery as a primary cause of secession and war, and one that took hold of the national consciousness and historiography for over 100 years.
The power that the Lost Cause mythology has on our memory of the Civil War, slavery, reconstruction, and race relations stretching up to the present is what, to help answer Mr. Woodbury's final question, is being protected. This is over a century of history-making and telling, of teaching and learning, that we're talking about here. The mythology of the Lost Cause, with its rationales, excuses, scapegoats, and heroes, is a much more palatable history for all of us to swallow when considering the debasement and savagery of the antebellum period, the war, and Reconstruction.
We have a responsibility; however, to study history honestly and objectively, regardless of whether the facts may be embarrasing, painful, even disgraceful to some. In order to do that with the Civil War, there are subjects that need to be revisited, difficult though it may be. With a fresh look at primary data, we can scrape away the obfuscation of the Lost Cause, and that's what the Civil War community has been seeing through successful works by McPherson, Gallagher, Foner, et al.
The community that sees and reads these works is small, but the sesquicentennial and the anticipated surge in public interest is going to explode the size of it. It will be an opportunity to undertake this reappraisal, not just in the halls of academia, but for the general public, for the neophyte, for the student who learned about the war decades ago and has their interest rekindled by this anniversary.
As they seek out information and education, it's good to know that things that are easily available and inexpensive, like battlefield tours and landmarks run by the NPS, will provide at least some measure of honesty and allow for more clear and integral understanding.
Monday, November 10, 2008
James McPherson On Virtual Book Signing
I just finished watching the anticipated (at least by me) interview of Dr. James McPherson on virtualbooksigning.net. He was discussing his new book "Tried by War". What a blast it was, listening in and taking notes along the way to set up this post and also to help cement some of the salient points for my upcoming period of study of President Lincoln. I figure I'll start sometime late next year and into the next in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's election.
So whither McPherson and his new book? The impetus behind this book was the idea that little attention has been paid to Lincoln as commander-in-chief. He spoke about how Lincoln spent inordinate amounts of time studying, evaluating, and prosecuting the war, and how his process as commander in chief mirrored the way he both became and worked as an attorney.
Lincoln was not a great natural strategist, he had to work hard at it, just like he was a self-taught attorney. He spent time reading and cross-examining those around him who were knowledgeable, he could probe to depths of an issue and get to its essence, then utilize probably his greatest strength, his ability to communicate these complex ideas to any person at any level, from his own cabinet to far-flung regions of the Union.
In this effort, Lincoln not only satisfied his stated war aims, but extended the powers of the Executive branch and helped define the idea of war powers. In fact, he was the first president to ever use that term.
It's pretty amazing listening to Dr. McPherson discuss Lincoln and the Civil War. He clearly has an unparalleled command of the subject and also happens to have a great speaking voice. It is little wonder he is such a highly sought-after speaker and professor.
Virtual Book Signing and the Abraham Lincoln Bookstore did a fantastic job presenting this lecture, and of course my signed copy is in the mail. I also think I saw Mr. Triathlon's name in the list of patrons who bought a signed copy of the book. I ordered mine yesterday, so my order fell in the "many others" category. Anyway, if you missed it, it should be archived soon and available for free.
So whither McPherson and his new book? The impetus behind this book was the idea that little attention has been paid to Lincoln as commander-in-chief. He spoke about how Lincoln spent inordinate amounts of time studying, evaluating, and prosecuting the war, and how his process as commander in chief mirrored the way he both became and worked as an attorney.
Lincoln was not a great natural strategist, he had to work hard at it, just like he was a self-taught attorney. He spent time reading and cross-examining those around him who were knowledgeable, he could probe to depths of an issue and get to its essence, then utilize probably his greatest strength, his ability to communicate these complex ideas to any person at any level, from his own cabinet to far-flung regions of the Union.
In this effort, Lincoln not only satisfied his stated war aims, but extended the powers of the Executive branch and helped define the idea of war powers. In fact, he was the first president to ever use that term.
It's pretty amazing listening to Dr. McPherson discuss Lincoln and the Civil War. He clearly has an unparalleled command of the subject and also happens to have a great speaking voice. It is little wonder he is such a highly sought-after speaker and professor.
Virtual Book Signing and the Abraham Lincoln Bookstore did a fantastic job presenting this lecture, and of course my signed copy is in the mail. I also think I saw Mr. Triathlon's name in the list of patrons who bought a signed copy of the book. I ordered mine yesterday, so my order fell in the "many others" category. Anyway, if you missed it, it should be archived soon and available for free.
More Analysis Of "The Peculiar Institution"
I reviewed Kenneth Stampp's seminal treatment of slavery, titled "The Peculiar Institution" here several months ago. I'm pleased to see Rene Tyree, who runs Wigs-Wags, one of the best ACW blogs out there, reading and considering this book. Please take a look at his new post about it, the comment that I entered is below. I'm keen to see his response and please chime in on this issue whether you've read the book or not.
"I was struck, when I read the book, how Stampp used the work “positive” to describe those incentives. I don’t think it was for lack of a better term, I think he used it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. He knew full well how disgraceful it was to treat another human being like this, but managed to keep such editorial comment out of his book, which is one of it’s strengths. In using the word “positive”, I think he’s venting a little bit to show how there’s nothing at all positive about slavery"
"I was struck, when I read the book, how Stampp used the work “positive” to describe those incentives. I don’t think it was for lack of a better term, I think he used it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. He knew full well how disgraceful it was to treat another human being like this, but managed to keep such editorial comment out of his book, which is one of it’s strengths. In using the word “positive”, I think he’s venting a little bit to show how there’s nothing at all positive about slavery"
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The Lost Cause Mythology: Evaluating The Stonewall Jackson Orthodoxy
We spent a few lines last week meeting the General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson of myth and lore, and he is a powerful figure in American memory to say the least. Redressing these ideas is a bit of a challenge, not because of a paucity of data, but because of the strong feelings that are evoked when men like Jackson, Gen. Robert E Lee, et al get a proper historical treatment. Nevertheless, we shall go forward undaunted. There are themes we will discuss that deserve, and have received, book-length treatments; I include them here briefly to add depth to our discussion, if you want more info on any particular point, I would be happy to direct you to any number of resources.
First, a few bits of background. Jackson was born in Virginia and lived there until he went to West Point. He grew up with slaves and later became a slaveowner himself. Per author James Robertson, Jackson believed in the divine assignment of negroes to servitude as his rationalization for keeping humans in bondage. He fought for the United States in the Mexican-American War and was an instructor at VMI when the Civil War broke out. In that moment, he turned his back on the nation he had previously fought and killed for and joined the Confederate Army, where he would become the Stonewall Jackson we read about today.
On his effectiveness as a soldier in the Eastern Theater, there is no dispute that he was bold, aggressive, and sometimes brilliant. He led his troops into the Union rear to capture the Army of Virginia's supply depot before the Battle of Second Bull Run in August, 1862. His flank attack at Chancellorsville still remains his most famous maneuver, and is held in wide esteem.
He could also be neglectful, tardy, and foolish, and his abuses of his men are well-documented. His inability to effectively fight along with his near catastrophic tardiness during the Seven Days Campaign also cannot be disputed. On balance, Jackson was a very effective battlefield commander, but was by no means perfect.
Jackson the man was also an incredibly bizarre and not uncommonly cruel man. It is hard to believe he didn't have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, as he was convinced one leg was shorter than the other, he insisted on only sitting in straight-backed chairs to keep his organs aligned, and he rode with one arm in the air so the blood would drain out of it.
His own troops were subjected to his more brutal idiosyncracies; men who fell out on marches were arrested and often punished, frequently by flogging, sometimes by execution, but Jackson himself was not held to this standard as he rode a horse next to his hard-marching troops, and when he fell asleep and failed to follow orders during the Seven Days Battle, received no censure.
So with this decidedly mixed service history, why was Jackson, among so many other Confederate officers, singled out for legend status. Let us turn to the nickname "Stonewall" as a guide. At the Battle of First Bull Run, Jackson was a brigadier general under Gen Barnard Bee, and during the fighting around Henry House Hill and Matthews Hill, brought his troops up near the front. When Bee saw this brigade, which he had just ordered to move up into the fight, he reportedly said "There stands Jackson and his men, like a stone wall."
There is no way to know exactly what Bee meant when he said this, as he was shot and killed later that day, but at least one witness to the conversation and Bee's statement later said "I'm not the least sure Gen. Bee's remark was meant as a compliment." Questions remain today about Jackson's conduct that earned this sobriquet, and whether it was to be derisive or complimentary. As David Detzer writes in his book "Donnybrook", Jackson's "performance at Bull Run was actually no more courageous or resolute or dogged or unyielding than that of dozens of other officers on both sides." (pg 339)
Regardless, Jackson had a catchy new name, and with it, he went forth into the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862 and proceeded to, in a series of small battles and brutal forced marches, muddle up and defeat three different larger Union forces. (Keep in mind, please, about the admitted bias of the previous treatment of this battle by Tanner). Through these efforts, he garnished headlines and newspapers seized on the memorable nickname he carried, regardless of its origin.
This period of time was a difficult one for the Confederacy on all fronts. At sea, the Union blockade was beginning to strangle Southern shipping and, in the first battle of ironclad warships, the Monitor had been thwarted by the U.S.S. Merrimac. In the Eastern Theater, the Army of the Potomac was launching the Peninsula Campaign, and in the West, the Confederacy was being rapidly overrun with the advance of Grant's army and the Union's chain of victories culminating at Shiloh on April 6th, 1862. The commercial centers of Nashville and New Orleans, as well as large stretches of the Mississippi River were under Union control.
The Confederacy needed a boost and the beleaguered state of Virginia needed someone to rally behind (keeping in mind that Jackson was the highest ranking Virginian in the field as Lee was still behind a desk in Richmond), and in a strike of serendipity, Jackson was leading his men into the Valley and winning battle after battle.
Any potential pejorative connotation from Bee's appellation was forgotten, and this nickname "Stonewall" was thrust into the headlines. As Detzer wrote, "The Confederacy needed heroes. There was also the subtle matter of state pride...Virginians wanted a favorite son of their own." (pg 339) The nickname took hold over the next months, and Jackson rapidly became a favorite son of the Confederacy.
His star was at its apex when he was accidentally shot by his own men during the Battle of Chancellorsville, just hours after his famed flank attack, and died 8 days later. From there the idealization reached higher and higher, and after the war, was used at the expense of fellow Confederate officers who suffered reverses. One of the most prominent of these is General Robert Ewell at Cemetery Hill at the 1st day of Gettysburg, and the controversy over whether Jackson would have charged the Union emplacement and thus won the day for the Confederacy.
Another is the treatment that befell General James Longstreet after the war, which will be covered in a future post.
On one hand in this mythology is the brilliance of the dead Jackson, on the other hand is the besmirching and discrediting of Longstreet (just look at his bizarre monument at Gettysburg to see the culmination of this) The irony is that Longstreet was also shot by his own men at the Battle of the Wilderness. The difference is, he survived his wound, which begs the question if whether in death Jackson escaped the sort of scrutiny that Longstreet received. The post-war treatment of Longstreet is a long and baffling story, please see Piston's "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant" for more.
Because of his successful campaigns and untimely death, Jackson was not only made into a figurehead for the army and an idealized soldier but also as the paragon representative of Virginia and the Southern cause. Attention was not paid to the way he treated his own men or his near-disastrous failings at the Seven Days Battle, nor to his bizarre personality. The South needed heroes and men to rally behind; Jackson became that man.
This idealization has only been amplified over the past decades, especially through the writings of Freeman, Tanner, and more recently, Robertson, who wrote in 1997 that Jackson's efforts should "remain treasured legacies of the American people just as they are inspirations to people everywhere." It also continues in popular culture, most vividly in the depiction of Jackson in the movie "Gods and Generals" If you haven't seen it yourself, believe me when I say all that was missing was a halo around his head. It is also this idealized Jackson that is painted onto canvas, plates, t-shirts, etc. and enthusiastically purchased by fans.
It is clear; however, that when the whole man is examined, that the time for this era has passed, Jackson was a man who owned slaves and used religion as an excuse for it, turned against the uniform he had once worn proudly, and, though a oft-successful battlefield commander, frequently treated the men who made his reputation like dogs.
We should not continue to subscribe to the hero-worship borne of the Lost Cause mythology. We must treat Confederate officers like Jackson and Lee, (as well as their Union counterparts) with respect, and part of that is to be honest about who they were and what they did; acknowledging their strengths, but also to their flaws. In that spirit, we can appreciate Stonewall Jackson's frequent, but not constant, tactical success, but we must free ourselves of the ideas of him as a paragon of virtue, an icon of devotion, and as any sort of hero, for they are neither earned nor deserved.
First, a few bits of background. Jackson was born in Virginia and lived there until he went to West Point. He grew up with slaves and later became a slaveowner himself. Per author James Robertson, Jackson believed in the divine assignment of negroes to servitude as his rationalization for keeping humans in bondage. He fought for the United States in the Mexican-American War and was an instructor at VMI when the Civil War broke out. In that moment, he turned his back on the nation he had previously fought and killed for and joined the Confederate Army, where he would become the Stonewall Jackson we read about today.
On his effectiveness as a soldier in the Eastern Theater, there is no dispute that he was bold, aggressive, and sometimes brilliant. He led his troops into the Union rear to capture the Army of Virginia's supply depot before the Battle of Second Bull Run in August, 1862. His flank attack at Chancellorsville still remains his most famous maneuver, and is held in wide esteem.
He could also be neglectful, tardy, and foolish, and his abuses of his men are well-documented. His inability to effectively fight along with his near catastrophic tardiness during the Seven Days Campaign also cannot be disputed. On balance, Jackson was a very effective battlefield commander, but was by no means perfect.
Jackson the man was also an incredibly bizarre and not uncommonly cruel man. It is hard to believe he didn't have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, as he was convinced one leg was shorter than the other, he insisted on only sitting in straight-backed chairs to keep his organs aligned, and he rode with one arm in the air so the blood would drain out of it.
His own troops were subjected to his more brutal idiosyncracies; men who fell out on marches were arrested and often punished, frequently by flogging, sometimes by execution, but Jackson himself was not held to this standard as he rode a horse next to his hard-marching troops, and when he fell asleep and failed to follow orders during the Seven Days Battle, received no censure.
So with this decidedly mixed service history, why was Jackson, among so many other Confederate officers, singled out for legend status. Let us turn to the nickname "Stonewall" as a guide. At the Battle of First Bull Run, Jackson was a brigadier general under Gen Barnard Bee, and during the fighting around Henry House Hill and Matthews Hill, brought his troops up near the front. When Bee saw this brigade, which he had just ordered to move up into the fight, he reportedly said "There stands Jackson and his men, like a stone wall."
There is no way to know exactly what Bee meant when he said this, as he was shot and killed later that day, but at least one witness to the conversation and Bee's statement later said "I'm not the least sure Gen. Bee's remark was meant as a compliment." Questions remain today about Jackson's conduct that earned this sobriquet, and whether it was to be derisive or complimentary. As David Detzer writes in his book "Donnybrook", Jackson's "performance at Bull Run was actually no more courageous or resolute or dogged or unyielding than that of dozens of other officers on both sides." (pg 339)
Regardless, Jackson had a catchy new name, and with it, he went forth into the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862 and proceeded to, in a series of small battles and brutal forced marches, muddle up and defeat three different larger Union forces. (Keep in mind, please, about the admitted bias of the previous treatment of this battle by Tanner). Through these efforts, he garnished headlines and newspapers seized on the memorable nickname he carried, regardless of its origin.
This period of time was a difficult one for the Confederacy on all fronts. At sea, the Union blockade was beginning to strangle Southern shipping and, in the first battle of ironclad warships, the Monitor had been thwarted by the U.S.S. Merrimac. In the Eastern Theater, the Army of the Potomac was launching the Peninsula Campaign, and in the West, the Confederacy was being rapidly overrun with the advance of Grant's army and the Union's chain of victories culminating at Shiloh on April 6th, 1862. The commercial centers of Nashville and New Orleans, as well as large stretches of the Mississippi River were under Union control.
The Confederacy needed a boost and the beleaguered state of Virginia needed someone to rally behind (keeping in mind that Jackson was the highest ranking Virginian in the field as Lee was still behind a desk in Richmond), and in a strike of serendipity, Jackson was leading his men into the Valley and winning battle after battle.
Any potential pejorative connotation from Bee's appellation was forgotten, and this nickname "Stonewall" was thrust into the headlines. As Detzer wrote, "The Confederacy needed heroes. There was also the subtle matter of state pride...Virginians wanted a favorite son of their own." (pg 339) The nickname took hold over the next months, and Jackson rapidly became a favorite son of the Confederacy.
His star was at its apex when he was accidentally shot by his own men during the Battle of Chancellorsville, just hours after his famed flank attack, and died 8 days later. From there the idealization reached higher and higher, and after the war, was used at the expense of fellow Confederate officers who suffered reverses. One of the most prominent of these is General Robert Ewell at Cemetery Hill at the 1st day of Gettysburg, and the controversy over whether Jackson would have charged the Union emplacement and thus won the day for the Confederacy.
Another is the treatment that befell General James Longstreet after the war, which will be covered in a future post.
On one hand in this mythology is the brilliance of the dead Jackson, on the other hand is the besmirching and discrediting of Longstreet (just look at his bizarre monument at Gettysburg to see the culmination of this) The irony is that Longstreet was also shot by his own men at the Battle of the Wilderness. The difference is, he survived his wound, which begs the question if whether in death Jackson escaped the sort of scrutiny that Longstreet received. The post-war treatment of Longstreet is a long and baffling story, please see Piston's "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant" for more.
Because of his successful campaigns and untimely death, Jackson was not only made into a figurehead for the army and an idealized soldier but also as the paragon representative of Virginia and the Southern cause. Attention was not paid to the way he treated his own men or his near-disastrous failings at the Seven Days Battle, nor to his bizarre personality. The South needed heroes and men to rally behind; Jackson became that man.
This idealization has only been amplified over the past decades, especially through the writings of Freeman, Tanner, and more recently, Robertson, who wrote in 1997 that Jackson's efforts should "remain treasured legacies of the American people just as they are inspirations to people everywhere." It also continues in popular culture, most vividly in the depiction of Jackson in the movie "Gods and Generals" If you haven't seen it yourself, believe me when I say all that was missing was a halo around his head. It is also this idealized Jackson that is painted onto canvas, plates, t-shirts, etc. and enthusiastically purchased by fans.
It is clear; however, that when the whole man is examined, that the time for this era has passed, Jackson was a man who owned slaves and used religion as an excuse for it, turned against the uniform he had once worn proudly, and, though a oft-successful battlefield commander, frequently treated the men who made his reputation like dogs.
We should not continue to subscribe to the hero-worship borne of the Lost Cause mythology. We must treat Confederate officers like Jackson and Lee, (as well as their Union counterparts) with respect, and part of that is to be honest about who they were and what they did; acknowledging their strengths, but also to their flaws. In that spirit, we can appreciate Stonewall Jackson's frequent, but not constant, tactical success, but we must free ourselves of the ideas of him as a paragon of virtue, an icon of devotion, and as any sort of hero, for they are neither earned nor deserved.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Book Review "Bitterly Divided"
I'm thoroughly enjoying doing these book reviews, and am really starting to find and refine my style and approach. There are lots of ways to break down a book, and for an alternative tack that is very effective, please avail yourself of the Civil War Librarian's efforts or those of Brett Schulte at TOCWOC. I've been following these blogs for some time and find the book reviews to be very well done. Onwards to today's effort...
Dr. David Williams new text, entitled "Bitterly Divided" brought with it the promise of a discussion of dissent within the Confederacy and an examination of the effects of this turmoil on the Confederate war effort. This was a topic I felt had been heretofore underserved in my reading and education on the Civil War, and I thus proceeded with great anticipation.
In his introduction Williams asserts "between 1861 and 1865, the South was torn apart b a violent inner civil war, a war no less significant to the Confederacy's fate than its more widely known struggle against the Yankees." So we have a text setting out to not only illustrate southern dissent, but to show how it had a striking effect on the war's outcome. He then sets out to prove this ambitious hypothesis by working through: the battle over secession, the struggle at home and women's revolts, draft evasion by the rich, desertion and Unionism, emancipation and black resistance, and finally, Indian insurrection.
Dr. Williams takes on a substantial task with his premise not only of a Confederacy riven by dissent, but that this same dissent spelled doom for the Confederate effort. He has a tall order to fill, and we are provided with reams of anecdotal data to establish this hypothesis. By anecdotal, I mean letters, diaries, individual quotes, editorials, etc. These anecdotes do a reasonable job of painting a picture of dissent throughout the South, but let us remind ourselves of the import and relative strength of an anecdote.
While it is a primary source, and thus strong in that respect, an anecdote is the isolated opinion or action of one or a handful of people. They can be very emotive and descriptive, and are used to great effect in many aspects of historical writing (not to mention in today's local and even national news broadcasts.) That said, they are not adequate for describing the overall effect or opinion of a larger body, ie, they are not generalizable. We cannot ascribe the opinion or action in an anecdote to an entire army, population, race, etc. To illustrate from another profession; in the medical literature the anecdote is the weakest form of evidence for proving the efficacy of an intervention.
This same weakness is present in "Bitterly Divided." For example, we are given his descriptions of deserters being tortured, maimed, and killed, women rioting over food, troops writing about their reason for desertion. While these anecdotes are provocative, sad, and illustrative of parts of Southern society struggling with itself, there is no way to generalize that behavior across the Confederacy. What is needed is some data collection and interpretation to help prove this general discord. Why not a map of the Confederacy with locations of food riots pinpointed? How about tables showing anticipated muster numbers with discrepencies and numbers of deserters? Show me the research and the hard data, the population studies and large-scale analysis, this is supposed to be an academic effort!
Each of the components of southern dissent addressed carry multiple anecdotes, but we finish each segment not just without the backing of data, but without any link to outcome either. Recall that Dr. Williams' hypothesis is that this dissent had a tremendous effect on the war's outcome; however, he does not tie these events to reverses in the field or seminal, destructive changes in Confederate policy or war aims. Yes, this dissent existed, but a causal link to the final endpoint of Confederate defeat is not established.
To be sure, Dr. Williams attempts to provide this sort of evidence, but time and again, he places an unsupported statement without footnote or reference into the text. That is something I cannot take seriously. An example: on page 55 in discussing absence from General Lee's army, Williams states "thousands of men like Atkins abandoned the army that fall and winter, but few were volunteering to take their place." No reference is given.
But most egregious is not the fact that these bold statements are not just unsupported, they are inconsistent as well. In addressing the issue of southerners fighting for the Union Army we have the following, all without footnote or reference:
"...the Union may not have been preserved, that chattel slavery may not have ended when it did, without the service of nearly half a million southerners in Union blue." (Pg 7)
Then we have this, "In total, about three hundred thousand southern whites joined the Union armies." (Pg 150-151)
Finally, and in the last sentence of the book, Williams writes, "And so the Confederacy was defeated, not only by the Union's military - nearly a quarter of which was comprised of southerners - but also by southerners on the home front." (Pg 250)
Simply put, the tremendous inconsistencies and lack of references in this series of quotes puts the veracity of the whole premise into serious question. (Note: for some excellent examples of how a rigorous academic analysis is done, please see Joseph Glatthaar's article "Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army" in the 9/08 edition of "Civil War History", or the appendix of Gordon Rhea's "Cold Harbor".)
As I moved through the sections and saw these same issues of anecdotal glut and broad, unsubstantiated statements, I was hoping that the final chapter called "Defeated...by the People at Home" could somehow tie this all together. Unfortunately, Dr. Williams managed to send this whole train off the tracks when he wrote, without context, notation, or proof:
"Certainly defeats on the battlefield sapped the Confederacy's will to fight, but those defeats came largely because so many soldiers had already lost their will to fight and deserted the army." (Pg 243)
Dr. Williams doesn't prove his hypothesis with good data, and then launches an absurd assertion in the tail end of his book. All I could say when I read that was "What?!" All Confederate General George Pickett would have said (and did say in regards to the Confederate defeat) is "I think the Army of the Potomac had something to do with it."
This book does give voice to the idea of Southern dissent both in the antebellum period and during the war itself, and it is an important voice. Dr. Williams does demonstrate that the South had significant internal strife to deal with, and this is a worthy topic. His effort would have been much better spent in perhaps linking it to our memory of the South today and the Lost Cause mythology. Instead, he attempts to link it to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy and, on the basis of poor and unsubstantiated data along with some downright bizarre assertions, comes up far short.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Why We Need A Museum Of Slavery In The United States
If you've been following along with this blog for any amount of time, you've surely noticed that the institution of slavery and its ramifications are frequently addressed. There is no single issue in our nation's history since the 18th century that had as intense an effect and more profound and lasting aftereffect that the "peculiar institution". It brought about a civil war that cost 600,000+ lives and demolished the southern United States, it cast a segment of our melting pot into the role of pariah, and it continues to confuse and poison race relations today.
It is this same size and scope that makes it so difficult for us to come to terms with it, to acknowledge it and say it happened, it was a horrible tragedy, how do we make it something to learn from and move beyond?
So I'd like to repeat an exercise I've employed before. Take a moment and think about how you learned about slavery in America. What was the tone presented by your educator? What perceptions did you take away? What books, artworks, movies, etc were used in the process?
If your primary education on the subject was anything like mine, it received a cold treatment, one devoid of responsibility or healing. There was nothing tangible, nothing to look at to bring home the enormity of what occurred, no way to acknowledge how it lingers in our communities today.
This sort of education makes it difficult to come to grips with issues of race in our country, because the single biggest cause of division remains ethereal and a void remains. To provide thorough understanding and tangible acknowledgment, we need a museum of slavery. We need a place to archive and present the infrastructure of slavery, a space to lecture and learn, a chance not only to read, but to sense.
I can give a personal attestation to the importance of such an undertaking. As a Jew, a large part of my religious education was learning about the Holocaust and trying to understand what it means to the Jewish community. Not until I visited The Holocaust Museum, however, did I understand the enormity of this tragedy. It takes this sort of visual, auditory, and emotional immersion to bring such complex events into focus.
So I was well-pleased to learn that The United States Museum of Slavery is under development in Fredericksburg, VA. Spread over 38 acres, the museum will have over 100,000 square feet of exhibition and lecture space. As I perused the website, I noticed that there was no published date of opening available. Financial support and development of the museum seem to be bogging down in multiple issues with, in an ironic and unsurprising twist, race and perception of slavery near the forefront.
The difficulties in getting this museum off the ground underscore exactly why it is needed. The void in our understanding continues to trip us up as a society, and this museum would be a huge step in the right direction. There is an excellent article from the NY Times working through the museum's history and battle to get it off the ground, don't miss the slideshow that goes with it.
So I was well-pleased to learn that The United States Museum of Slavery is under development in Fredericksburg, VA. Spread over 38 acres, the museum will have over 100,000 square feet of exhibition and lecture space. As I perused the website, I noticed that there was no published date of opening available. Financial support and development of the museum seem to be bogging down in multiple issues with, in an ironic and unsurprising twist, race and perception of slavery near the forefront.
The difficulties in getting this museum off the ground underscore exactly why it is needed. The void in our understanding continues to trip us up as a society, and this museum would be a huge step in the right direction. There is an excellent article from the NY Times working through the museum's history and battle to get it off the ground, don't miss the slideshow that goes with it.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Book Review: "Lee Considered" Plus An Examination Of Robert E. Lee In The Lost Cause
When I found "Lee Considered" by Alan Nolan on the shelves of the Adams Avenue Bookstore with a pristine book jacket and plastic cover, I knew I had a winner for the collection. I was optimistic going in that I had a winner for my continued study of the Lost Cause mythology as well. The author of "Lee Considered", the late Alan Nolan, was an expert on this subject with a number of related books and essays to his credit. Now that I'm finished, I'm pleased to say this is an excellent discussion of Robert E. Lee the man, the general, and the tradition.
That said, I'm also a little bit irritated.
Given that this review will also be covering what is known as the Lee Tradition within the Lost Cause mythology, I'm going to fold this into our ongoing discussion of the Lost Cause, and again refer you to my previous posts on the subject to get yourself up to speed. Also this post has some meat to it, so please take your time and hang in there, there is some important stuff at the end.
So here is the Lee Tradition in a nutshell (as an exercise, try to recall what you learned about Lee in school, perceptions of Lee you have, and representations of him you've seen in movies, art, books, etc). He is broadly remembered as an ardent anti-secessionist who only joined the Confederacy because he couldn't draw his sword against his native Virginia and was forced into making a choice, as a man against slavery despite being a slaveowner himself, a great conciliator in the post-war period, and most importantly, one of the greatest, most talented military leaders in history, and certainly the premier general officer during the Civil War. Basically a man who's record and reputation stand untarnished and unchallenged, a great man and brilliant general with his name on schools, buildings, and famous cars on TV.
Sound at all familiar?
Mr. Nolan sets out to demystify the man and explore each of these features of his reputation individually. He starts by explaining the genesis of the title "Lee Considered" instead of reconsidered; that despite piles of books on the subject, no single text has done. Nolan reminds us, in the words of Samuel Eliot Morison to the American Historical Association ,"The fundamental question is what actually happened, and why?..After his main object of describing events "simply as they happened, the historian's principal task is to understand the motives and objects of individuals and groups...and to point out mistakes as well as achievements by persons and movements." His point in writing this book is that this sort of attention has (and I agree) not been given to General Robert E. Lee.
In a stepwise fashion, Mr. Nolan moves us through the different tenets of the Lee Tradition, starting with Lee and slavery. Nolan works through Lee's prewar views, his opinion on arming and enlisting slaves into the Confederate army, and his postwar statements concerning his earlier beliefs. This is a skillful way to break down a difficult question based on the understanding that Lee was born into being a slaveholder and was in a society were it was taken for grant. We read letters from Lee's hand where his level of racism is no different than that pervading most people, North and South. We are also shown how Lee jumped on the post-war bandwagon trying to dissociate slavery as the primary reason behind secession and war. The point of this chapter is not that Lee was a hardened slave driver who forever hated black people, but that the answer is much more nuanced than, as the mythology would have us believe. This chapter really demonstrates well the lack of historical attention paid this man and the complexity of the issues surrounding him.
Nolan then moves to the secession question where the Lee Tradition would have us believe that Lee was against secession to the bitter end, but was tragically and honorably driven into fighting for the South and for his home state of Virginia. Thus, we are told, Lee has no accountability for his actions, that he was subject to "tragic forces". In a handful of pages, Nolan completely debunks this and uses Lee's own writings to show that Lee's loyalty was ambiguous at best. He does this by taking us through the timeline of Lee being commissioned a colonel in the US Army to his resignation 20 days later and accepting the commission of the newly seceded Virginia's commission as major general two days after that. This rapidity superimposed on the timing of the secession crisis and Virginia's secession, shows that Lee knew exactly what he was doing and that he made a conscious decision about where his loyalty lay. The point again is that when rigorously studied, Lee is far more flawed than our popular understanding.
The central section of the book analyzes Lee's war record and massive, rarely challenged reputation as the preeminent Civil War general and one of the best generals in American history.
This is the cornerstone of the Lee legend and one that brings up sharp opinions and feelings. Nolan is smart here in that he doesn't get bogged down dissecting campaign after campaign, or getting into the mire of comparing him to one general or another. He steps back and expands the context in which Lee, and any general officer should be evaluated (and most great ones, Eisenhower, Patton, Schwartzkopf, etc have been subjected to). He examines whether Lee's strategy at the tactical level matched with and furthered the overall strategic goals of the Confederacy.
Lee made his reputation for audacity and aggressiveness, and won fame on fields like Chancellorsville and Second Manassas. Nolan shows how this same tendency not only systematically bled his army white, but how consistently offensive warfare also went in contravention of the South's need to prolong the war as long as possible until the North gave it up (which came very close to happening on several occassions.) The view of Lee as an unfailingly brilliant general does not hold up under this sort of examination, so it follows that another part of the Lost Cause mythology was that, as the name suggests, the Confederacy was doomed to defeat from the beginning of the war, thus Lee was in charge of an army with no hope of victory, and he pushed the Union as hard as possible. Nolan makes his point and shows how the mythology of Lee as a superior general also doesn't stand up to close or broad examination.
The book doesn't fail to address the idea of Lee as conciliator and a quiet gentleman detached from the turbulent post-war period that the mythology teaches us. It is clear that he was quite active not only defending his actions and the actions of the South, but took an active role in writing and developing what would become the Lost Cause mythology; his correspondence with Jubal Early are solid proof of this.
The final chapter of the book, titled "The Lee Tradition and Civil War History" is simply a masterful summary of the Lost Cause, the role of the Lee Tradition within it, and how our perception of the Civil War has been so long and so comprehensively skewed. The fault here is not Lee's, it is those who would pervert his actions to further a goal, and those who would allow it to happen. Again, the question of the history of Civil War history is absolutely fascinating and should be the subject of academic treatment, but I digress...
In the final pages, Nolan writes that "the facts contradicting the Lee tradition...are not newly discovered. They are not obscure." Nolan's point is that for the early writers of Civil War history these facts "are exorcised, disregarded, or rationalized." Nolan then writes:
"The distortions of fact that mark the Lee tradition are not unique in Civil War history; on the contrary, they are suggestive of a larger and more widespread problem. Fiction - in the form of misinterpretation or the form of outright misrepresentation - is endemic to the study of the history of the Civil War...These fictions have ousted teh facts and gained wide currency, so that what is treated as the history of the Civil War is instead a legend, a folk epic told over and over again."
This is a premier study done by a clear expert on the man as well as historical method. It is well-written and challenging, with a great flow and rhythm to it. That said, Nolan has a bad habit of when quoting a primary source, he adds italics to the text and writes afterwards "emphasis added". Also, he continuously brings up the work of Douglas Southall Freeman, to the point where that name leads off more than one chapter.
My irritation I mentioned above comes from the fact that I felt a bit manipulated by all this: there is no need for added italics to prove a point. If you, to borrow a bit of poker parlance, have the nuts, then why jazz it up? There's no room for that in rigorous historiography and few are the authors that do it. The continuous invoking of Freeman, even leading off a few chapters with his name, lent a certain clumsiness to the discussion. Yes, Freeman's books are a substantial part of this mythology, but aren't the sole part. The constant bashing away at one entity was a bit heavy-handed and awkward, like there was some personal grudge being exorcised. The examination was of the Lee Tradition as a whole, not one author's role in building it.
These issues are not major detractors from the overall quality of the book, nor change the facts regarding the Lee Tradition and Lost Cause. The damage done by this mythology is slowly being undone and this text pushes that movement and learning further by leaps and bounds. Highly recommended.
That said, I'm also a little bit irritated.
Given that this review will also be covering what is known as the Lee Tradition within the Lost Cause mythology, I'm going to fold this into our ongoing discussion of the Lost Cause, and again refer you to my previous posts on the subject to get yourself up to speed. Also this post has some meat to it, so please take your time and hang in there, there is some important stuff at the end.
So here is the Lee Tradition in a nutshell (as an exercise, try to recall what you learned about Lee in school, perceptions of Lee you have, and representations of him you've seen in movies, art, books, etc). He is broadly remembered as an ardent anti-secessionist who only joined the Confederacy because he couldn't draw his sword against his native Virginia and was forced into making a choice, as a man against slavery despite being a slaveowner himself, a great conciliator in the post-war period, and most importantly, one of the greatest, most talented military leaders in history, and certainly the premier general officer during the Civil War. Basically a man who's record and reputation stand untarnished and unchallenged, a great man and brilliant general with his name on schools, buildings, and famous cars on TV.
Sound at all familiar?
Mr. Nolan sets out to demystify the man and explore each of these features of his reputation individually. He starts by explaining the genesis of the title "Lee Considered" instead of reconsidered; that despite piles of books on the subject, no single text has done. Nolan reminds us, in the words of Samuel Eliot Morison to the American Historical Association ,"The fundamental question is what actually happened, and why?..After his main object of describing events "simply as they happened, the historian's principal task is to understand the motives and objects of individuals and groups...and to point out mistakes as well as achievements by persons and movements." His point in writing this book is that this sort of attention has (and I agree) not been given to General Robert E. Lee.
In a stepwise fashion, Mr. Nolan moves us through the different tenets of the Lee Tradition, starting with Lee and slavery. Nolan works through Lee's prewar views, his opinion on arming and enlisting slaves into the Confederate army, and his postwar statements concerning his earlier beliefs. This is a skillful way to break down a difficult question based on the understanding that Lee was born into being a slaveholder and was in a society were it was taken for grant. We read letters from Lee's hand where his level of racism is no different than that pervading most people, North and South. We are also shown how Lee jumped on the post-war bandwagon trying to dissociate slavery as the primary reason behind secession and war. The point of this chapter is not that Lee was a hardened slave driver who forever hated black people, but that the answer is much more nuanced than, as the mythology would have us believe. This chapter really demonstrates well the lack of historical attention paid this man and the complexity of the issues surrounding him.
Nolan then moves to the secession question where the Lee Tradition would have us believe that Lee was against secession to the bitter end, but was tragically and honorably driven into fighting for the South and for his home state of Virginia. Thus, we are told, Lee has no accountability for his actions, that he was subject to "tragic forces". In a handful of pages, Nolan completely debunks this and uses Lee's own writings to show that Lee's loyalty was ambiguous at best. He does this by taking us through the timeline of Lee being commissioned a colonel in the US Army to his resignation 20 days later and accepting the commission of the newly seceded Virginia's commission as major general two days after that. This rapidity superimposed on the timing of the secession crisis and Virginia's secession, shows that Lee knew exactly what he was doing and that he made a conscious decision about where his loyalty lay. The point again is that when rigorously studied, Lee is far more flawed than our popular understanding.
The central section of the book analyzes Lee's war record and massive, rarely challenged reputation as the preeminent Civil War general and one of the best generals in American history.
This is the cornerstone of the Lee legend and one that brings up sharp opinions and feelings. Nolan is smart here in that he doesn't get bogged down dissecting campaign after campaign, or getting into the mire of comparing him to one general or another. He steps back and expands the context in which Lee, and any general officer should be evaluated (and most great ones, Eisenhower, Patton, Schwartzkopf, etc have been subjected to). He examines whether Lee's strategy at the tactical level matched with and furthered the overall strategic goals of the Confederacy.
Lee made his reputation for audacity and aggressiveness, and won fame on fields like Chancellorsville and Second Manassas. Nolan shows how this same tendency not only systematically bled his army white, but how consistently offensive warfare also went in contravention of the South's need to prolong the war as long as possible until the North gave it up (which came very close to happening on several occassions.) The view of Lee as an unfailingly brilliant general does not hold up under this sort of examination, so it follows that another part of the Lost Cause mythology was that, as the name suggests, the Confederacy was doomed to defeat from the beginning of the war, thus Lee was in charge of an army with no hope of victory, and he pushed the Union as hard as possible. Nolan makes his point and shows how the mythology of Lee as a superior general also doesn't stand up to close or broad examination.
The book doesn't fail to address the idea of Lee as conciliator and a quiet gentleman detached from the turbulent post-war period that the mythology teaches us. It is clear that he was quite active not only defending his actions and the actions of the South, but took an active role in writing and developing what would become the Lost Cause mythology; his correspondence with Jubal Early are solid proof of this.
The final chapter of the book, titled "The Lee Tradition and Civil War History" is simply a masterful summary of the Lost Cause, the role of the Lee Tradition within it, and how our perception of the Civil War has been so long and so comprehensively skewed. The fault here is not Lee's, it is those who would pervert his actions to further a goal, and those who would allow it to happen. Again, the question of the history of Civil War history is absolutely fascinating and should be the subject of academic treatment, but I digress...
In the final pages, Nolan writes that "the facts contradicting the Lee tradition...are not newly discovered. They are not obscure." Nolan's point is that for the early writers of Civil War history these facts "are exorcised, disregarded, or rationalized." Nolan then writes:
"The distortions of fact that mark the Lee tradition are not unique in Civil War history; on the contrary, they are suggestive of a larger and more widespread problem. Fiction - in the form of misinterpretation or the form of outright misrepresentation - is endemic to the study of the history of the Civil War...These fictions have ousted teh facts and gained wide currency, so that what is treated as the history of the Civil War is instead a legend, a folk epic told over and over again."
This is a premier study done by a clear expert on the man as well as historical method. It is well-written and challenging, with a great flow and rhythm to it. That said, Nolan has a bad habit of when quoting a primary source, he adds italics to the text and writes afterwards "emphasis added". Also, he continuously brings up the work of Douglas Southall Freeman, to the point where that name leads off more than one chapter.
My irritation I mentioned above comes from the fact that I felt a bit manipulated by all this: there is no need for added italics to prove a point. If you, to borrow a bit of poker parlance, have the nuts, then why jazz it up? There's no room for that in rigorous historiography and few are the authors that do it. The continuous invoking of Freeman, even leading off a few chapters with his name, lent a certain clumsiness to the discussion. Yes, Freeman's books are a substantial part of this mythology, but aren't the sole part. The constant bashing away at one entity was a bit heavy-handed and awkward, like there was some personal grudge being exorcised. The examination was of the Lee Tradition as a whole, not one author's role in building it.
These issues are not major detractors from the overall quality of the book, nor change the facts regarding the Lee Tradition and Lost Cause. The damage done by this mythology is slowly being undone and this text pushes that movement and learning further by leaps and bounds. Highly recommended.
What Really Happened At Appomattox
Amazing footage of Lee's surrender at Appomattox just surfaced on Youtube! Let it load all the way, then fast forward to 1 minute 28 seconds. I am not responsible if you watch/get in trouble/are offended by the content preceding or following this history-making film, but I am responsible if you start laughing out loud when you see history come alive.
Thanks to The Jess for the perfect title.
Thanks to The Jess for the perfect title.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Book Review: "The Impending Crisis"
It's been awhile since my last book review, and it's because I was tackling "The Impending Crisis" by David M. Potter. It is a massive and thorough analysis of the years 1848-1861 and the multiple complex issues, ideas, personalities, and events that formed the kinetic and challenging antebellum period. This book is, in short, a masterwork of historical method and covers a huge and complex expanse of our nation's history in a brilliant and staggering way.
There are three principles that Potter adheres to most vigorously as he crafted this tome:
1. a commitment to primary sources and rigorous citation, thus giving credibility and immediacy to the issues under investigation.
2. drawing the reader into the moment being discussed while at the same time keeping the scope of that moment broad, so as to demonstrate the multitude of variables at work.
3. a strict avoidance of editorializing or bloviating, he lets the facts do the talking.
This first point is one that is incredibly striking in nearly every chapter, you are pulled into the moment and the immediacy of the issue because you are reading just what was said at the time. As Walter Cleamons of Newsweek said, "The rejection of hindsight, with the insistence of trying to see events from the point of view of the participants, was a governing theme with Potter...watching him apply it is a revelation." As you are taken through, for example, the Lecompton crisis, you are presented with the records of what was said, by whom, and what the direct effects of each action was, it's as close as you can get to a time machine.
The second point is one that always keeps us in touch with the larger context as minutiae is explored. We are always reminded of the ramifications of an issue throughout the Union and beyond, for example, Potter points out the virulent anger in the Midwest over secession as it would jeopardize access to the Mississippi; find that point in any other text.
By sticking to the third point, Potter is able to maintain his credibility as an objective writer. He does not inject himself or his biases into the discussion, we are left newly informed and free to draw our own conclusions.
With this understanding of his approach, we can really look at how the author structures his approach to the myriad issues in the period. Potter takes the turbulent years of 1848-1861 and breaks them into pieces based upon theme, not time. There are chapters on John Brown, Dred Scott, the secession crisis, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, etc. This thematic structure gives significant chronological overlap, so you really get a flavor for how much people were trying to digest and deal with at any one time, from the farmstead to the White House.
Each theme chapter has a similar structure: Potter sets the context and introduces a few of the primary characters, then skillfully dissects the minutiae of the issue in question. This latter part he does masterfully; he is clearly at the top of the heap in addressing legislative history and Constitutional law. To watch him break down and analyze a legislative agenda (an example being the Compromise of 1850) is really quite incredible. He closes each chapter not by a gray recitation of facts, but by putting us again in historical context, discussing the repercussions of what has just occurred, and setting the stage for the end game.
In taking this approach, Potter builds the suspense quite brilliantly, as we see issues that are disparate in nature slowly being pulled towards a single conclusion through the overlap of time and attitude. Potter shows us clearly how for example the end of the Mexican-American War and the Dred Scott decision, though separated by years, personalities, and issues, were part of the inexorable tide that brought Civil War. We are drawn into the final chapters where we see the election of 1860, secession, and eventual war, and all of the pieces fit together. We are shown plainly and without judgement how the United States came to its darkest years. The chapter entitled "The Nature of Southern Separatism", for example, is a brilliant summary of the Southern attitudes and rationalizations towards the Republicans, Lincoln, abolitionists, and secession and is, for me, the most evocative section of the book.
This is a tremendous book, plain and simple, and paints an amazing picture of this incredible time in our nations' history. Make no mistake, it is a long read and takes time to properly digest, but don't let that daunt you. If you find your way to this book and read it, you will not only have an amazing understanding of the antebellum period, but will have shared in a magnum opus of American history. Highly recommended.
There are three principles that Potter adheres to most vigorously as he crafted this tome:
1. a commitment to primary sources and rigorous citation, thus giving credibility and immediacy to the issues under investigation.
2. drawing the reader into the moment being discussed while at the same time keeping the scope of that moment broad, so as to demonstrate the multitude of variables at work.
3. a strict avoidance of editorializing or bloviating, he lets the facts do the talking.
This first point is one that is incredibly striking in nearly every chapter, you are pulled into the moment and the immediacy of the issue because you are reading just what was said at the time. As Walter Cleamons of Newsweek said, "The rejection of hindsight, with the insistence of trying to see events from the point of view of the participants, was a governing theme with Potter...watching him apply it is a revelation." As you are taken through, for example, the Lecompton crisis, you are presented with the records of what was said, by whom, and what the direct effects of each action was, it's as close as you can get to a time machine.
The second point is one that always keeps us in touch with the larger context as minutiae is explored. We are always reminded of the ramifications of an issue throughout the Union and beyond, for example, Potter points out the virulent anger in the Midwest over secession as it would jeopardize access to the Mississippi; find that point in any other text.
By sticking to the third point, Potter is able to maintain his credibility as an objective writer. He does not inject himself or his biases into the discussion, we are left newly informed and free to draw our own conclusions.
With this understanding of his approach, we can really look at how the author structures his approach to the myriad issues in the period. Potter takes the turbulent years of 1848-1861 and breaks them into pieces based upon theme, not time. There are chapters on John Brown, Dred Scott, the secession crisis, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, etc. This thematic structure gives significant chronological overlap, so you really get a flavor for how much people were trying to digest and deal with at any one time, from the farmstead to the White House.
Each theme chapter has a similar structure: Potter sets the context and introduces a few of the primary characters, then skillfully dissects the minutiae of the issue in question. This latter part he does masterfully; he is clearly at the top of the heap in addressing legislative history and Constitutional law. To watch him break down and analyze a legislative agenda (an example being the Compromise of 1850) is really quite incredible. He closes each chapter not by a gray recitation of facts, but by putting us again in historical context, discussing the repercussions of what has just occurred, and setting the stage for the end game.
In taking this approach, Potter builds the suspense quite brilliantly, as we see issues that are disparate in nature slowly being pulled towards a single conclusion through the overlap of time and attitude. Potter shows us clearly how for example the end of the Mexican-American War and the Dred Scott decision, though separated by years, personalities, and issues, were part of the inexorable tide that brought Civil War. We are drawn into the final chapters where we see the election of 1860, secession, and eventual war, and all of the pieces fit together. We are shown plainly and without judgement how the United States came to its darkest years. The chapter entitled "The Nature of Southern Separatism", for example, is a brilliant summary of the Southern attitudes and rationalizations towards the Republicans, Lincoln, abolitionists, and secession and is, for me, the most evocative section of the book.
This is a tremendous book, plain and simple, and paints an amazing picture of this incredible time in our nations' history. Make no mistake, it is a long read and takes time to properly digest, but don't let that daunt you. If you find your way to this book and read it, you will not only have an amazing understanding of the antebellum period, but will have shared in a magnum opus of American history. Highly recommended.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Federal Apology For Slavery Update
If you recall, we discussed the subject of H.Res 194, a resolution from the House of Representatives which would be the first federal apology for slavery, in a previous post.
Turns out, the day after my post, the bill passed the House by voice vote. Here is a link to the Washington Post story dated July 30th, 2008
Turns out, the day after my post, the bill passed the House by voice vote. Here is a link to the Washington Post story dated July 30th, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The Second Phase Of The Lost Cause Study
The recently deceased Alan Nolan wrote in his essay "The Anatomy of the Myth", that "the victim of the Lost Cause legend has been history, for which the legend has been substituted in the national memory." Therefore, let us rise in the defense of history and continue our analysis of the Lost Cause mythology. The next phase of our study is going to be an examination of the pillars of the Lost Cause. Before we go on and because of the long hiatus in this discussion, I give a series of links to the posts that have preceded this one, but for the full list of associated posts, click on the Lost Cause link in the righthand sidebar.
Lost Cause #1
Lost Cause #2
Lost Cause #3
In these preceding pieces I've attempted to establish the "why" behind the Lost Cause. Now here are a few of the primary tenets that make up this long-standing and widespread mythology.
1. Slavery was not the cause for the lawful secession of 11 states
2. The Confederacy was not defeated, it succumbed solely to the overwhelming quantities of men and materiel generated by the Union
3. Robert E. Lee was an unparalleled leader of men and, as the best general in the war, should be revered with an almost god-like status. Conversely, US Grant, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox, was a drunken butcher who blundered his way to victory.
4. The Eastern Theater of the war, which pitted Lee and Stonewall Jackson's Army of Northern Virginia against the Army of the Potomac, was far and away the most important theater of combat in the war.
I fully recognize that there are many other points that could be addressed here, but I'll focus on these, as they are arguably the four cornerstones of the Lost Cause.
Let's start with the slavery question first. The sheer genius of this construct was making slavery a question in the first place, and this was accomplished based almost entirely on the retrospective histories that I detest so much. The essays, statements, and discussions that laid the foundation for this claim from men ranging from Jefferson Davis to Jubal Early were compiled after the war. Conveniently, statements from the highest levels of Confederate leadership on the sectional crisis and slavery issue before and during the war, of which there were many (please feel free to request references, I will be more than happy to provide), did not make it into the purview of the Southern Historical Society and the like.
Also, it is important to remember that this whole discussion was something of an apologia ex vacuo, an apology in a vacuum. It's not like there were scheduled hearings at any level to review and investigate these issues. This was simply an effort from these men to write the history that they knew would validate their cause, accuracy be damned. The alternative, being labeled as men who started a war and led hundreds of thousands to their deaths in order to protect their right to enslave and profit off of other men, was something they clearly wished to avoid.
Instead, words like, as Robert Durden wrote "liberty, independence, and especially states rights were advanced by countless Southern spokesmen as the hallowed principles of the Lost Cause" What these ubiquitous terms, and I use the term ubiquitous because they turn up in virtually every high school text and many college curricula, fail to define is the right and independence to do what exactly?
To answer this, one must one study the sectional crisis from the early 1800s onwards. In doing so, it is clear that the southern leadership wished to have the right to not only keep slaves (as the Confederate constitution explicitly guaranteed), but expand into new territories (Kansas-Nebraska Act, Ostend Manifesto, Central and South American filibustering, among other seminal issues) and use the federal government to return escaped slaves in the North back to the South without trial or hearing (the Fugitive Slave Act). If you wish to review these items in detail, I recommend "The Impending Crisis" by Potter. I will be writing my review of it shortly, but the weight of evidence clearly supports the hypothesis that the primary southern motivation for secession and war was the issue of slavery.
Along with this apologia ex vacuo, the other technique to minimize the import of slavery in the national memory was to portray it as a somehow benign institution with peaceful and contented laborers. This myth took off like wildfire in both the history books and popular culture; one needs only watch or read "Gone With The Wind" to see it. This still lives on today with Confederate apologists crafting elaborate discussions of slaves participation in the Confederate war effort, I refer you again to Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory for an excellent discussion on this topic.
We must; however, again look back at primary sources to find out what slavery was really like. If you read Kenneth Stampp's "The Peculiar Institution" which I previously reviewed, you would be hard-pressed to maintain that school of thought. Moreover, the reaction in the South to servile insurrection speaks volumes about the volatility of the master-slave relationship and the white fear of massacre and destruction at the hands of liberated slaves. Few men before General Sherman did more to strike fear into the hearts of Southerners, slaveholder or not, than Nat Turner in 1831 and John Brown in 1859.
It is an injustice to history and to the people who suffered under the yoke of slavery to continue to turn a blind eye to the role of this institution as the pivot point on which the ACW turned. When we can finally accurately and comprehensively acknowledge the staggering motivating power and devastating effect that slavery had, we can begin to teach and learn our nation's history and understand its effects on today's culture.
Lost Cause #1
Lost Cause #2
Lost Cause #3
In these preceding pieces I've attempted to establish the "why" behind the Lost Cause. Now here are a few of the primary tenets that make up this long-standing and widespread mythology.
1. Slavery was not the cause for the lawful secession of 11 states
2. The Confederacy was not defeated, it succumbed solely to the overwhelming quantities of men and materiel generated by the Union
3. Robert E. Lee was an unparalleled leader of men and, as the best general in the war, should be revered with an almost god-like status. Conversely, US Grant, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox, was a drunken butcher who blundered his way to victory.
4. The Eastern Theater of the war, which pitted Lee and Stonewall Jackson's Army of Northern Virginia against the Army of the Potomac, was far and away the most important theater of combat in the war.
I fully recognize that there are many other points that could be addressed here, but I'll focus on these, as they are arguably the four cornerstones of the Lost Cause.
Let's start with the slavery question first. The sheer genius of this construct was making slavery a question in the first place, and this was accomplished based almost entirely on the retrospective histories that I detest so much. The essays, statements, and discussions that laid the foundation for this claim from men ranging from Jefferson Davis to Jubal Early were compiled after the war. Conveniently, statements from the highest levels of Confederate leadership on the sectional crisis and slavery issue before and during the war, of which there were many (please feel free to request references, I will be more than happy to provide), did not make it into the purview of the Southern Historical Society and the like.
Also, it is important to remember that this whole discussion was something of an apologia ex vacuo, an apology in a vacuum. It's not like there were scheduled hearings at any level to review and investigate these issues. This was simply an effort from these men to write the history that they knew would validate their cause, accuracy be damned. The alternative, being labeled as men who started a war and led hundreds of thousands to their deaths in order to protect their right to enslave and profit off of other men, was something they clearly wished to avoid.
Instead, words like, as Robert Durden wrote "liberty, independence, and especially states rights were advanced by countless Southern spokesmen as the hallowed principles of the Lost Cause" What these ubiquitous terms, and I use the term ubiquitous because they turn up in virtually every high school text and many college curricula, fail to define is the right and independence to do what exactly?
To answer this, one must one study the sectional crisis from the early 1800s onwards. In doing so, it is clear that the southern leadership wished to have the right to not only keep slaves (as the Confederate constitution explicitly guaranteed), but expand into new territories (Kansas-Nebraska Act, Ostend Manifesto, Central and South American filibustering, among other seminal issues) and use the federal government to return escaped slaves in the North back to the South without trial or hearing (the Fugitive Slave Act). If you wish to review these items in detail, I recommend "The Impending Crisis" by Potter. I will be writing my review of it shortly, but the weight of evidence clearly supports the hypothesis that the primary southern motivation for secession and war was the issue of slavery.
Along with this apologia ex vacuo, the other technique to minimize the import of slavery in the national memory was to portray it as a somehow benign institution with peaceful and contented laborers. This myth took off like wildfire in both the history books and popular culture; one needs only watch or read "Gone With The Wind" to see it. This still lives on today with Confederate apologists crafting elaborate discussions of slaves participation in the Confederate war effort, I refer you again to Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory for an excellent discussion on this topic.
We must; however, again look back at primary sources to find out what slavery was really like. If you read Kenneth Stampp's "The Peculiar Institution" which I previously reviewed, you would be hard-pressed to maintain that school of thought. Moreover, the reaction in the South to servile insurrection speaks volumes about the volatility of the master-slave relationship and the white fear of massacre and destruction at the hands of liberated slaves. Few men before General Sherman did more to strike fear into the hearts of Southerners, slaveholder or not, than Nat Turner in 1831 and John Brown in 1859.
It is an injustice to history and to the people who suffered under the yoke of slavery to continue to turn a blind eye to the role of this institution as the pivot point on which the ACW turned. When we can finally accurately and comprehensively acknowledge the staggering motivating power and devastating effect that slavery had, we can begin to teach and learn our nation's history and understand its effects on today's culture.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Importance Of Primary References
I've mentioned it before, but one of the premier Civil War blogs, captained by a high school history teacher named Kevin Levin, is Civil War Memory. I especially enjoy this blog because a primary focus of it's content is how we think and learn about the Civil War (as the blog title makes quite evident).
There has recently been a fascinating storyline unfolding about slaves in the Confederate army that I encourage you to read up on.
In the fourth paragraph of the post, Mr. Levin makes a most salient and important point about how we must utilize primary resources and avoid postwar resources as much as possible in doing good historical research. This is an issue I've been obliquely touching on in my Lost Cause posts, which I promise I will get back to this week, and is a cornerstone of accurate historiography.
Anyway, I posted a comment to his post, and thought I'd share it here...
Hi Kevin,
Great post! You make a point that I want to expand on just a bit, because it is a tremendously important part of good and accurate historical research. You mentioned staying away from post-war sources as much as possible and this is a most salient point. One can never underestimate the effect that retrospection will have on the thoughts, speeches and writings of those involved in a historical moment, thus, as responsible historians we must strive to find the primary sources and the data as close to the moments in question as possible to formulate our conclusions.
Unfortunately, this was not the approach followed by ex-officers, politicians, and historians on both sides in the decades following the war. Just look at Gen Pope's essay on 2nd Manassas in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War", Jefferson Davis' comments on slavery's role in secession before and after the war, or the multi-volume "Southern Historical Society Papers" These texts are rife with statements collected and recorded after the war and are clearly built around an agenda that was most distinct from that which was present before and during the war. These documents propagated into influential texts by Foote, Freeman, and others, and these inaccurate statements and revised agendas took root. Now, we are left nearly 150 years later not only trying to piece together what really happened, but fixing the extensive damage that these misperceptions wrought.
Now we have a responsibility as historians to be faithful to primary data as we do our research. What we find may be disappointing, painful, surprising, but our own opinions of the findings are not as important as providing a clear and correct interpretation of the data.
There has recently been a fascinating storyline unfolding about slaves in the Confederate army that I encourage you to read up on.
In the fourth paragraph of the post, Mr. Levin makes a most salient and important point about how we must utilize primary resources and avoid postwar resources as much as possible in doing good historical research. This is an issue I've been obliquely touching on in my Lost Cause posts, which I promise I will get back to this week, and is a cornerstone of accurate historiography.
Anyway, I posted a comment to his post, and thought I'd share it here...
Hi Kevin,
Great post! You make a point that I want to expand on just a bit, because it is a tremendously important part of good and accurate historical research. You mentioned staying away from post-war sources as much as possible and this is a most salient point. One can never underestimate the effect that retrospection will have on the thoughts, speeches and writings of those involved in a historical moment, thus, as responsible historians we must strive to find the primary sources and the data as close to the moments in question as possible to formulate our conclusions.
Unfortunately, this was not the approach followed by ex-officers, politicians, and historians on both sides in the decades following the war. Just look at Gen Pope's essay on 2nd Manassas in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War", Jefferson Davis' comments on slavery's role in secession before and after the war, or the multi-volume "Southern Historical Society Papers" These texts are rife with statements collected and recorded after the war and are clearly built around an agenda that was most distinct from that which was present before and during the war. These documents propagated into influential texts by Foote, Freeman, and others, and these inaccurate statements and revised agendas took root. Now, we are left nearly 150 years later not only trying to piece together what really happened, but fixing the extensive damage that these misperceptions wrought.
Now we have a responsibility as historians to be faithful to primary data as we do our research. What we find may be disappointing, painful, surprising, but our own opinions of the findings are not as important as providing a clear and correct interpretation of the data.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
A Federal Apology For Slavery
Hard to believe it's taken nearly 146 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, but it appears that the House of Representatives is on the cusp of issuing an apology for slavery.. While multiple states have issued formal apologies over the years, this would mark the first such acknowledgement at the federal level. Here is a link to the full text of H.Res. 194.
I don't want to waste too much energy blathering about a 146 year delay for what would seem to have been both easy and politically expedious to accomplish many years ago. We should take satisfaction in the fact that current opinion would provide fertile ground for this action to take root, and based upon the resolutions' wording, this is a comprehensive apology. Not only is slavery's destructiveness addressed, but so too is Jim Crow and the racism that underscored both tragedies.
This resolution from the House is the sort of thing that can be built upon, and like the document states, "a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation."
By acknowledging shameful parts of our past at the highest levels, we can stop arguing over them and start moving beyond. When the federal government formally recognizes the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow", it removes the backbone from many a Lost Cause historian and Confederate apologists' argument about slavery being a benign institution. Moreover, in stating that slavery "should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of American history" it gives satisfaction and relevance to the current batch of historians whose work is designed to help us recognize and learn from our past as it actually happened. Lastly, it gives relevance to a particularly sore spot for a large component of the American melting pot.
We can only heal when we can understand the unfortunate parts of our history, we can only move forward together when we start from the same place. Hopefully there can be significant further discussion built from this action; a national museum explaining slavery in America being a great place to start. Regardless, this far-reaching document is a milestone from which we can all take some measure of motivation.
I don't want to waste too much energy blathering about a 146 year delay for what would seem to have been both easy and politically expedious to accomplish many years ago. We should take satisfaction in the fact that current opinion would provide fertile ground for this action to take root, and based upon the resolutions' wording, this is a comprehensive apology. Not only is slavery's destructiveness addressed, but so too is Jim Crow and the racism that underscored both tragedies.
This resolution from the House is the sort of thing that can be built upon, and like the document states, "a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation."
By acknowledging shameful parts of our past at the highest levels, we can stop arguing over them and start moving beyond. When the federal government formally recognizes the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow", it removes the backbone from many a Lost Cause historian and Confederate apologists' argument about slavery being a benign institution. Moreover, in stating that slavery "should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of American history" it gives satisfaction and relevance to the current batch of historians whose work is designed to help us recognize and learn from our past as it actually happened. Lastly, it gives relevance to a particularly sore spot for a large component of the American melting pot.
We can only heal when we can understand the unfortunate parts of our history, we can only move forward together when we start from the same place. Hopefully there can be significant further discussion built from this action; a national museum explaining slavery in America being a great place to start. Regardless, this far-reaching document is a milestone from which we can all take some measure of motivation.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Book Review: "The Peculiar Institution"
I recently completed what is roundly regarded as the seminal work on slavery in America, Kenneth Stampp's classic "The Peculiar Institution". I was looking for a single volume treatment of the subject because, despite being steeped in 19th century American history during my time of study at UCLA, I had never thoroughly grasped the scope of the slavery issue itself. The issues that it provoked have been well-covered in multiple texts I've read, but I wanted to get into the first principles of this unique American tragedy.
Mr Stampp is a Professor Emeritus at UC-Berkeley, with over 6 decades on the faculty, and "The Peculiar Institution" was his first major work. Published in 1956, it was groundbreaking in the way it showed slavery not as paternalistic and essentially benign, as most preceding authors would have had it, but as something alternately gruesome and tragic that was frequently actively resisted by its victims. The book also flew in the face of 1950s-era perceptions of race and slavery in the US, which was still struggling with the burden of pre-Civil Rights era racism.
The book moves systematically through its 10 chapters, with specific treatments on the role of slave labor in the Southern economy, the day to day worklife of slaves, punishment of slaves, family life, slave trading, and slave rebellion, among other things. While the style is sometimes dry, it is absolutely breathtaking in its scope of study. Meticulously footnoted with hundreds of primary sources, the presentation is incredibly compelling and lays to rest any number of long-standing and long-propagated myths about slavery.
More than this; however, is the subject itself. The chapters on the nuts and bolts of the slave economy are most enlightening, but it is the chapters that cover punishment of slaves, slave trading, slave rights (or lack thereof)and the effect all of this had on slave families that are truly staggering. Alternately enraging and tear-jerking, this text brings out the horror of slavery in remarkably vivid way.
Whether it be slaves being beaten to death on a whim, sold away from their family for no reason save financial, children and spouses being forced to watch the beating of a loved one, or slaves having absolutely no rights or protections in any court, there is no mistaking that this institution, and the millions who either participated in it or supported it, stripped entirely any vestige of humanity from those enslaved, they were implements, animals, beasts to be used and cast aside as one would an old shovel.
In contrast to the ghoulishness discussed above, the chapter on slave resistance was pretty remarkable. In the face of shoot to kill mandates, dogs, and the threat of being sold to the Deep South, not to mention the Fugitive Slave Law in the North, slaves still tried to either make good their escape or else throw a wrench in the works.
Clearly, this subject brings out tremendous emotion, and that is to be expected. What makes Mr. Stampp's effort so remarkable; however, is his completely dispassionate treatment of the subject and data. There is no judging, no editorializing, he lets the facts speak for themselves, and they speak loudly. This provides another layer of credibility that no amount of footnoting gives; there is no agenda here save for a clear discussion of fact, and in doing this, Stampp allows the institution of slavery to show its dark heart. Any embellishment on the part of the author would have been unnecessary.
When studying any aspect of the Civil War, one must be firmly grounded in the fundamentals. One cannot have a conversation about the 19th century in America without a firm and unbiased view of slavery and what it did to our country. This text provides a clear and strong interpretation of the former. We shall discuss the latter when I get to my next book reviews in the coming weeks.
Mr Stampp is a Professor Emeritus at UC-Berkeley, with over 6 decades on the faculty, and "The Peculiar Institution" was his first major work. Published in 1956, it was groundbreaking in the way it showed slavery not as paternalistic and essentially benign, as most preceding authors would have had it, but as something alternately gruesome and tragic that was frequently actively resisted by its victims. The book also flew in the face of 1950s-era perceptions of race and slavery in the US, which was still struggling with the burden of pre-Civil Rights era racism.
The book moves systematically through its 10 chapters, with specific treatments on the role of slave labor in the Southern economy, the day to day worklife of slaves, punishment of slaves, family life, slave trading, and slave rebellion, among other things. While the style is sometimes dry, it is absolutely breathtaking in its scope of study. Meticulously footnoted with hundreds of primary sources, the presentation is incredibly compelling and lays to rest any number of long-standing and long-propagated myths about slavery.
More than this; however, is the subject itself. The chapters on the nuts and bolts of the slave economy are most enlightening, but it is the chapters that cover punishment of slaves, slave trading, slave rights (or lack thereof)and the effect all of this had on slave families that are truly staggering. Alternately enraging and tear-jerking, this text brings out the horror of slavery in remarkably vivid way.
Whether it be slaves being beaten to death on a whim, sold away from their family for no reason save financial, children and spouses being forced to watch the beating of a loved one, or slaves having absolutely no rights or protections in any court, there is no mistaking that this institution, and the millions who either participated in it or supported it, stripped entirely any vestige of humanity from those enslaved, they were implements, animals, beasts to be used and cast aside as one would an old shovel.
In contrast to the ghoulishness discussed above, the chapter on slave resistance was pretty remarkable. In the face of shoot to kill mandates, dogs, and the threat of being sold to the Deep South, not to mention the Fugitive Slave Law in the North, slaves still tried to either make good their escape or else throw a wrench in the works.
Clearly, this subject brings out tremendous emotion, and that is to be expected. What makes Mr. Stampp's effort so remarkable; however, is his completely dispassionate treatment of the subject and data. There is no judging, no editorializing, he lets the facts speak for themselves, and they speak loudly. This provides another layer of credibility that no amount of footnoting gives; there is no agenda here save for a clear discussion of fact, and in doing this, Stampp allows the institution of slavery to show its dark heart. Any embellishment on the part of the author would have been unnecessary.
When studying any aspect of the Civil War, one must be firmly grounded in the fundamentals. One cannot have a conversation about the 19th century in America without a firm and unbiased view of slavery and what it did to our country. This text provides a clear and strong interpretation of the former. We shall discuss the latter when I get to my next book reviews in the coming weeks.
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