Civil War Memory

The Crooked Road To Civil War

I am currently making my way through Nelson Lankford's new book Cry Havoc!: The Crooked Road To Civil War, 1861.  The book is essentially a micro-study of the days following Fort Sumter.  In some ways the book can be seen as a companion volume to his previous book Richmond Burning, which took a similar look at the final days of the Confederate capital.  [Click here for my H-Net review of this book.]  The first few chapters set the stage for the incident for Fort Sumter with chapters 6 through 17 focusing on the period between April 12 - 25.  For those of you already familiar with this period there is very little that is new.  What is impressive, however, is the extent to which Lankford is able to integrate recent scholarship on the secession winter and the Upper South by Daniel Crofts, William Freehling, Charles Dew, and William Link.  And he manages to do this within a narrative that is beautifully written.  There is nothing worse than reading books geared to the general public that are written by people who have no sense of the relevant historiography.  It makes for poor history and all too often it reinforces long-standing assumptions that can no longer be justified.  Yes, it turns out that good history is revisionist in the sense that we continually add to our understanding and in turn hopefully understand better.

Like his earlier study, Lankford relies heavily on contingency.  He places his reader in a narrative space where they can appreciate the role that perception played in the continually changing political shifts and subtle misperceptions in Virginia in the days leading up to and following Sumter.  In doing so Lankford reminds us that Lincoln's election in November 1860 and even the establishment of the new Confederate government in February 1861 did not necessarily lead to war.   

This is the story of the unfolding of those events as Americans experienced them, not knowing the outcome any more than we can know the outcome of events in our own day before they happen.  Long-running discord over slavery and sectional rights prepared the way.  That antipathy long predated Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis and all the other actors of 1861.  Perhaps by then the war could not have been avoided.  But the particular way that it began was in the hands of individuals, not impersonal, irresistible historical forces. (p. 7)

Lankford actually takes this one step further as he argues that even the bombardment at Sumter did not necessarily have to end in war:

"And the war came."  So Lincoln would famously reflect in his second inaugural address, tersely eliding complexities of cause and motive.  But that cryptic remark four years later conflated events terribly.  In April 1861, no one could see where the furious cannonade woud lead.  For several tumultuous weeks, in fact, many Americans still hoped and worked to avert a full-scale civil war.  For all the hostility, noise, and anger released in Charleston Harbor, the shape of the prospective disunion of the country, like Edmund Ruffin's fate, still lay hidden in the unknowable future. (p. 83)

Lankford's language clearly echoes recent work by Ed Ayers based on his Valley of the Shadow project. I highly recommend this book.  Even for those of you who are familiar with this time period I am confident that you will enjoy it.   

Civil War Memory 101

Since this site has experienced a very sharp increase in the number of visitors over the last few weeks I thought it might be helpful to introduce the overall focus of this blog with a series of questions that I am preoccupied with. 

Robert Penn Warren: "When one is happy in forgetfulness, facts get forgotten."

1. How have Americans at different times chosen to remember the Civil War and how has that collective memory been shaped by a need to forget certain aspects of the war?

2. What are the important lessons to be learned about our Civil War and how should those lessons be taught in our schools and other public spaces?

3. Why might it be important to step back and analyze the way nations have chosen to remember their history? 

4. What is the relationship between history and political power?

5. What is it about the Civil War that explains its continued presence in our culture and its strong tug on our imaginations?

6. What was the Civil War's most significant result?

7. What explains the continued popularity of Lost Cause themes throughout the country? 

What Constitutes A "Gaping Hole" In The Literature?

The other day Eric Wittenberg commented on what he sees as a "gaping hole" in the literature on the Gettysburg Campaign.  The specific hole in question has to do with the amount and quality of the coverage of the Second Battle of Winchester which took place between June 12 -15, 1863.  According to Eric, the two studies currently available to readers differ in overall quality; one of the two is a White Mane book, which is no doubt of little use.  The one book that is given some credit is part of the Battles and Leader series published by Howard Press:

The books in the Battles and Leaders Series are especially hit and miss. Some of them are quite good. Some are simply atrocious. The book on Second Winchester is solid, but its battle narrative is only about 85 pages long, meaning that there’s not a great deal of depth there. 

I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about this battle beyond what I've read in a number of books covering the Gettysburg Campaign.  I've always thought that I understood enough to make sense of how the battle fits into the campaign and specifically in connection to the movements of the two armies north towards Pennsylvania.  What I don't understand is how a more detailed study would constitute the filling of a gaping hole.  What is it about the 85 pages that is insufficient?  Is it simply a matter of knowing much more detail about the movement of soldiers or will it allow us to see something new about the campaign?  I am skeptical.  In other words, why can't we just say that here is an engagement that can be fleshed out in more detail on the tactical level.  However, we wouldn't be missing much if no one ever got around to writing it. 

Seems to me that a study which fills a "gaping hole" must help us understand something in a new way.  It's not that we simply end up knowing more about the subject but that we know it better.  For example, Jennifer Weber's Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North provides us with the first detailed study of the most conservative wing of the Democratic Party.  It's important because it reminds us that as Union armies struggled through the summer of 1864 the North continued to struggle with deep political divisions.  Now this book fills a gaping hole.

In the comments section to Eric's post Art Bergeron suggested that the individual battles that constituted the Petersburg Campaign can be classified as gaping holes.  Now, I actually agree with this assessment.  In agreeing, however, I want to be clear as to why.  As many of you know I've been working on a book-length study of the Crater.  The first chapter of the book is an overview of the battle, but it is not a detailed tactical study.  And I should say that there is only one reliable book-length military study which was authored by William Marvel and Michael Cavanaugh back in 1989.  It is part of the Howard Series and is 120 pages in length (minus the tables and references).  I guess there is room for a more detailed study, but it seems to me that this wouldn't add much to our understanding of the battle.  In my overview I concentrate on how Confederates evaluated the battle and connect their accounts to the broader issues of morale, nationalism, and race. 

My point is that the Petersburg Campaign constitutes a gaping hole because there are important questions that need to be answered beyond the tactical and strategic facts on the ground.  More detailed and proper analysis of the military will help us answer important questions.  Given that our tendency is to see the war in terms of an inevitable Confederate decline following Gettysburg we need to know much more about how soldiers viewed the progress of the war on both sides.  How confident were Union soldiers compared with Confederates as they made the best of life in the trenches?  How poorly off were Confederates in terms of supplies?  What did morale look like and were there continued signs of Confederate nationalism?  And of course we need to know much more about the interconnectedness of the battlefield and the home front and politics.  I've read through most of Jason Phillips's article "The Grape Vine Telegraph: Rumors and Confederate Persistence" which appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of Southern History.  Phillips does an excellent job of analyzing how Confederates perceived the war and how they generated rumors to assuage their concerns about the progress of the war throughout the final year.  Phillips provides a great deal of coverage of the war in Virginia.  We clearly know more about this period from the Confederate perspective, but we still need to look more carefully at the Union war machine in Virginia.  I am thinking of something equivalent to J. Tracy Power's brilliant study of Lee's army. 

I am not trying to nitpick with Eric's preferred choice of study.  What I am suggesting is that lack of coverage or too few pages does not constitute a sufficient condition for historical study or a gaping hole in the literature.

Where History and Myth Meet: Winnie Davis

I am just about finished with Joan Cashin's new biography, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War (Harvard University Press, 2006).  It is well written, includes just enough analysis, and is based largely on manuscript sources.  This is the first modern scholarly biography of Varina Davis.  I was struck by Cashin's analysis of Winnie Davis, who was popularly known as the "Daughter of the Confederacy."  This was due to her decision to accompany her father on a trip through the South beginning in 1886 to take part in celebrations of the Lost Cause.  What most people don't know is that  the identification of Winnie as the embodiment of everything that was noble and pure about the "Old South" and the Confederacy was manufactured.  From Cashin's biography:

The title was factually correct, since Winnie was born in Richmond in 1864, but she did not remember the war and actually knew little of the South.  In many respects she was scarcely an American, having spent almost half her life abroad before she returned to the States in 1881.  In Karlsruhe [Germany, where she attended school] she kept a scrapbook with numerous mementos from such figures as Bismarck and Moltke, and a few images from her native country, including the Confederate flag.  She was fluent in German and French, and her accent when she spoke English was mittel-European.  Sometimes Winnie had to look up words such as gingham in the dictionary, and she made mistakes in usage, as if she were trying to translate German noun constructions into English.  She is best described as a transnational figure--unlike her mother, an American who was drawn to European culture, or her father, who felt homesick in the Luxembourg Gardens. (pp. 247-48)

What is interesting and ably argued for by Cashin is that not even Varina Davis would have provided for a more honest vindication or confirmation of the Lost Cause mantra.  Her support of the Confederacy was challenged throughout the war and her decision to reside in New York City following the death of her husband alienated and upset many white Southerners.  She even published a very positive account of Ulysses S. Grant in a New York City newspaper.  This was a complex woman who was born in Natchez and was educated in the North and later studied under a private tutor from New England; in addition, she maintained contact with Northerners even during the war and after it had been deemed illegal by the Confederate government. 

What Kinds Of Civil War Studies Should University Presses Publish?

I just received the latest issue of the Journal of American History (September 2006) and was perusing through the Book Reviews when I came across an interesting review of Scott Walker's Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia: Survival in a Civil War Regiment.  The book was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2005.  The review was mixed.  [By the way UGA now has a blog site.]  Before continuing I should point out that the JAH is published by the Organization of  American Historians so it stands to reason that most of the people who read this particular journal are professional historians. 

On the one hand the reviewer complimented Walker for his ability to tell a good story and his focus on the experiences of the soldiers themselves.  The criticisms, however, centered as much on the publisher as the lack of analysis contained in the book.  Here are a few excerpts from the review:

Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia deserved to be published, but not by an academic press because the author failed to engage in a single scholarly debate about the common Civil War solder.  Soldier motivation, desertion, the psychological trauma of combat, and Confederate nationalism are issues discussed, but they are not interpreted in a broader historiographical framework....

Popular history deserves to be published by academic presses as part of a broader scholarly offensive to reach a wider audience.  We should not, however, dilute our standards when it comes to what constitutes "good" popular history.  We must insist on deep analysis and thorough research, as well as a readable narrative.  In many cases, this book fails to meet such standards.  Most of the chapters are sparsely footnoted, manuscript research is minimal, and the author did not consult the voluminous regimental resources at the National Archives.

I read the book and had some of the same concerns that were expressed above; however, I did not question whether it was an appropriate study for an academic press.  The book clearly did not rise to the level of Earl Hess's Lee's Tar Heels (UNC Press) or Mark Dunkelman's Brothers One and All (LSU Press).  Notice that the reviewer is not suggesting that academic presses should not publish non-professional historians; the concern is the content of the study itself.  It should be noted that the books jacket reviews are written by professional historians who are or were connected with universities and other research institutions.

"The letters, diaries, and other information Scott Walker located and utilized on the soldiers and families of the 57th Georgia infantry are among the finest I've ever encountered. He has done complete justice to these superb primary sources by writing a narrative that is richly descriptive yet focused and restrained. Walker allows the soldiers and their families to speak for themselves while placing their words and deeds in a clear and meaningful context."
—T. Michael Parrish, Bowers Professor of History, Baylor University

"Civil War regimental histories are thick on the ground now, but Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia is a different sort of creature, a penetrating look at the inner world and lives of men who marched, ate, slept, fought, and died together. Not so much a unit history as a 'family' portrait of men bound by the war, Scott Walker's book offers a glimpse of the personality and inner world of almost all Civil War units, North and South alike. This is the part of regimental history that too many regimental historians overlook."
—William C. Davis, Director of Programs, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech

"Scott Walker has produced history that is at the same time very old and quite new. He relies upon a rich trove of letters and diaries to focus his narrative upon the coming-of-age experiences and vivid observations of men and boys who served in the Fifty-seventh Georgia Infantry Regiment. Walker also offers a species of the 'new' military history—a drama set in blood and mud instead of command posts in which common soldiers instead of generals are the principal characters. This is an excellent book."
—Emory M. Thomas, author of Robert E. Lee: A Biography

This is an interesting question and hits at the divide that separates the general reading public along with the historians who write their books and the academic world which is interested in a more analytical-type study.  I honestly don't know where I stand on this one. 

Inside the Confederate Nation

The following review is scheduled to appear in Civil War Book Review.  I should say I assume it is set to appear as I sent the draft off a few weeks ago and have not heard anything from the editor.  The review did not make the most recent issue of the magazine.  The main reason I agreed to write the review was that this was the only way I would be able to get my hands on a copy since the book lists for $65.  Those are some "righteous bucks dude."

Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas, Edited by Lesley J. Gordon and John C. Inscoe (Louisiana State University Press, 381 pp., ISBN 0807130990, $65.00 hardcover)

Recipients of a festschrift or honorary collection of essays are a rare breed. They are not simply an acknowledgment of scholarly accomplishments, but recognition of exceptional teachers who impart their own understanding of the past without limiting the imaginations of their students. Such is clearly the case in regard to this present volume, titled Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas edited by Leslie J. Gordon and John C. Inscoe. The contributors are former graduate students, professional colleagues, and notable historians and their essays reflect a wide-range of the application of Thomas’s core ideas which are contained in his seminal studies, The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience and The Confederate Nation. While the essays reflect both agreement and disagreement with elements of Thomas’s ideas, collectively they are rooted in the rich interpretive landscape of Thomas’s Confederacy. While all the essays are worth a close reading, time permits only a brief overview.

At the heart of Thomas’s scholarship is the idea of conflict and change within the Confederate experience. While the goals of the Confederate government were to preserve the South’s antebellum racial and political status quo, the experiences and uncertainties of war forced white Southerners to question and challenge received ideas surrounding gender and familial relationships as they negotiated and weighed the relative significance of state, regional, and national identity. It was the presence of women in the hospitals and factories along with the late approval of limited emancipation that reflects the extent to which white Southerners were willing to sacrifice for the purposes of Confederate independence and the maintenance of their national identity. This question of Confederate nationalism has attracted the attention of a number of historians over the past few decades. Unfortunately, the debate has all too often been framed around the question of whether Southerners created a collective national identity or whether their failure to do so constituted the backdrop for an inevitable failure. Problems abound for this debate, including the relatively dry question of how to conceptually analyze nationalism and what constitutes sufficient nationalism.

Fortunately, the eight essays that constitute the first and largest section of this volume on nationalism concentrate on the empirical question of how Southerners identified with the Confederate nation. Brian Wills examines the morale and nationalistic sentiments of the residents of VirginiaSuffolk and southeastern. Even during periods of Union occupation, according to Wills, residents of the area remained defiant in their refusal to take loyalty oaths and in their disruptions of an attempt to hold elections for the U.S. Congress in late 1862. Keith Bohannon explores the reenlistment option that was open to soldiers in the Army of Tennessee in early 1864. According to Bohannon, “Some soldiers saw reenlistment as not only a reaffirmation of their loyalty to the Confederacy but also a public statement to southern civilians and the enemy.” (123) While Emory Thomas’s dissertation and first book focused on the transformation of Richmond during the war, David McGee applies his distinction between internal and external revolutions to the wartime transformation ofRaleigh, North Carolina. The internal revolution that followed the secession of the state included a “massive shift in the economy, government interference with private property, slaveowners discussing the possibility of slavery ending, public participation of women in political affairs, and increased involvement of the state and local governments in everyday life.” (54) The shifting of focus from the national to local perspectives highlights the complexity and constantly shifting identifications that waxed and waned in response to such conditions as the demands from Richmond and the presence of Union armies. Taken together the essays tell us much – in the words of historian Gary Gallagher – as to how the Confederacy managed to survive four years of bloody conflict.

Four essays examine the transformation of the family and gender relations during the war. Lesley Gordon explores how nationalism permeated the relationship of an elite young County, couple. Through a close reading of over a hundred letters between Bobbie Mitchell, who served in the army, and Nellie Foundren, Gordon concludes that a strong identification with the Confederacy fueled their relationship, which in turn encouraged their continued support of the Confederate nation. Jennifer Gross traces the increased attention on the part of the legislatures of the states ofThomas Georgia Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia to the growing welfare needs of widows and the children of those who had died while serving in the Confederate army. While the demands were initially directed and debated by state governments by 1864 the Confederate Congress had moved in to take responsibility. Gross contends that this shift in responsibility reflected “southerners’ beliefs that the national government should be responsible for their welfare and their suffering.” (219) The wartime experiences of those families who suffered the loss of a father or husband shaped the postwar debate concerning the amount and kind of public assistance that was due those who suffered the most on the home front.

Arguably the war brought about the sharpest disagreements and discussions over the issue of race. The Confederacy was established to protect its “peculiar institution,” however, the changing face of war moved the fault lines closer to positions that few could have imagined just a few short years before. The question of arming slaves and limited emancipation was one such debate. Philip Dillard investigates the debates in both Lynchburg, Virginia and Galveston, Texas; the former community expressed support while the latter resisted. He concludes that the difference lay in the proximity of Union armies and their identification with the war effort. Residents of Lynchburg were directly threatened through much of the war by Union armies and were more closely connected to Virginia’s bloody battlefields. The level of approval of plans to arm slaves, according to Dillard, “show that weary men and women who had seen destruction all about them were willing to make any and all sacrifices that might lead to victory.” (328)

The question of how someone like Charles Francis Adams along with the rest of the North came to perceive Robert E. Lee as a symbol of both reconciliation and reunion is explored by Nina Silber. Although Lee’s biography included traits that went beyond “the typical elements of white southern manhood,” (350) according to Silber, by the turn of the century he had come to be seen as the embodiment of the Victorian concepts of manhood and manly virtue. Adams’s 1907 speech at Washington and Lee University in which he praised Lee as the embodiment of “gentlemanliness” served to help construct the “marble man” image that historians, including Emory Thomas, have worked to correct in recent years.

This is an exceptionally strong collection of essays. They succeed in honoring the scholarship of Emory Thomas by exploring his own ideas even as the contributors apply those ideas to new and fruitful avenues of research.

Cradling Your Wife

The other day I commented briefly on Glenn LaFantasie's new biography of William C. Oates, but noted that I would not have time to read it until some point over the summer.  Unfortunately Fortunately I decided to read on - although I have very little time to read apart from my research - and I have not been able to put the book down.  Once I start a good book I find it very difficult to put it down so everything else is temporarily dropped.

LaFantasie is an excellent writer and does a fantastic job of situating Oates in both the culture of honor and violence in the Antebellum South and in providing the relevant political/economic background to better understand his decision to enter the law profession and eventually the Confederate army.  My only complaint is that the author has a habit throughout the chapters on the war of constantly reminding the reader of the transition from Limited to Hard War.  It's not that it is unimportant, but LaFantasie constantly references this transition to bring home the psychological toll that the war was taking on both Oates and the rest of the men under his command.  Readers hoping for detailed coverage of the battles will be sorely disappointed as LaFantasie concentrates mainly on July 2 at Gettysburg.  This is no surprise, but the author also wants to make the point that Gettysburg was the most important event in Oates's life. Oates called for the recruitment of black soldiers relatively early in the war and fathered a child with a black servant after his wounding along the Darbytown Road during the Petersburg Campaign.

At some point I may want to comment on the way the author deals with Oates's continued adherence - even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - to his claim that Union General Elon J. Farnsworth killed himself on July 3 at Gettysburg and in the presence of Oates.  I find LaFantasie's treatment of this incident to be very interesting.

Back to the reason for this post.  Many of you probably know this story, but I thought it was worth sharing for the rest.  Oates was wounded during the Chickamauga Campaign and eventually found his way to the Roseland plantation which was owned by the Toney family and located in southeastern Alabama.  Oates convalesced there for three months until he rejoined the army in Virginia in March 1864.  Oates apparently enjoyed the chance to relax and especially enjoyed the little children, including Sarah Toney who was born on September 28, 1862.  One day Oates was holding little "Sallie" on the porch when Mrs. Toney is said to have commented: "Who knows but that you are holding in your arms--your future wife." (153).  Oates did indeed marry Sarah Toney in 1882 - she was nineteen and he was forty-eight.  Now that's what I call rockin' the cradle. 

This is an excellent book and I highly recommend reading it.  I look forward to getting through the chapters on the postwar years over the next few days.

Reviews in Civil War Memory

There are three excellent reviews of titles which fall into the memory literature over at H-South.  Susan- Mary Grant reviews Fitzhugh Brundage's Southern Pasts: A Clash of Race and Memory.  Derek Firsby reviews John Coski's The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem.  (Coski's book is now available in paperback.)  Mattew Barbee reviews K Michael Princes's 'Rally Round the Flag, Boys!: South Carolina and the Confederate Battle Flag. I've read and highly recommend both Brundage's and Coski's  books.

David Herr offers a few words on history and heritage that relate to the issues discussed in these studies:

So, the question remains, what can Southerners with Confederate interests and connections do to commemorate their heritage? The _Boston Globe_ addressed that question in part recently, with Peter Canellos remarking that, "the complicated history of the Confederate flag is a family-only discussion in the South. . . . Only those inside the Southern family circle can truly understand the region's complicated relationship with its own history."[1] To our sensibility, this is exactly the opposite of how the debate needs to happen, for it is only within the _American_ context, not merely the Southern, that the debate over the flag, and over the heritage question in general, has to proceed. In truth of course, as academics that is exactly how we have proceeded, but the popular vernacular seems not to have kept pace. As Canellos reports, Senator George Allen's past affection for his Confederate heritage might tarnish his presidential aspirations, but is there some way that a future George Allen can celebrate his heritage in such a way as to not destroy his credibility on a national stage?  Have historians' recent efforts to consider memory, its role in history and its predominance in public, popular understanding of the past, provided any insight into this issue?