Some of you have already played around with Wordle. Today I decided to give it a shot by using the text from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. For those of you not familiar with this program, Wordle generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
This talk was presented today in Philadelphia at the 2008 Meeting of the Society of Civil War Historians. The panel was titled, "Gearing Up For the Civil War Sesquicentennial in the High School Classroom" and included, James Percoco, Ronald Maggiano, and Andy Slap.
When it aired in 1989 Ken Burns’s epic documentary about America’s Civil War garnered the largest audience in PBS history. Viewers who had little interest or knowledge of the Civil War were attracted to the powerful images and sounds as well as the narration by David McCullough and commentary by Shelby Foote - the combination of which served to introduce a heroic and tragic story to a national audience. While historians have spent considerable time analyzing Burns’s documentary as historical interpretation, little attention has been given to the ways in which the film can be utilized in history courses on the high school level.1 All too often the film is used as a launching pad to other classroom activities or simply shown with little student preparation; such an approach renders students as passive observers rather than engaging them in trying to better understand the choices that went into the film’s script along with how the various elements come together to tell a coherent story.2 More importantly, students fail to see the film itself as a product of long-standing assumptions about the war that are embedded in our popular imagination and often guarded as sacred. The beginning of the Civil War Sesquicentennial in 2011 will provide a unique opportunity to introduce questions of memory and interpretation in our high school history classes. In the time that I have today I would like to talk briefly about how I engage my students with questions of memory and interpretation through a careful viewing of Burns’s The Civil War.
Continue reading "Using Ken Burns's "The Civil War" in the Classroom" »
Fellow Civil War blogger and author, Richard Williams, seems bewildered by some of the responses to the proposed statue of Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber by the SCV in Richmond. [Read the Richmond.com article here.] It's impossible to know which academics he is referring to, but no doubt he read my earlier post on the subject, which included a number of objections. Williams's objections are all over the place and for the most part make little sense. First, let's dispense with his whining about the legality of the Lincoln-Tad statue. Williams is indeed correct in pointing out that the organization responsible for the statue is having some difficulties with the IRS and have recently lost their status as a tax-exempt organization. I'm not sure why this is important, but let's admit it and move on.
Second, Williams refers to the Museum of the Confederacy's year-long program to commemorate the life of Jefferson Davis. No doubt, the MOC should be engaged in such programs and I only wish that other organizations were able to muster the resources and interest to mark the bicentennial of Davis's birth. That said, it is not the case that the MOC is "celebrating" Davis's life as Williams points out. Anyone who visits the MOC knows all too well that their mission is to present exhibits and public presentations which reflect the best in Civil War scholarship. Their line-up for a recent symposium on Davis's life included, William Cooper, Joan Cashin, William C. Davis, and Donald Collins. I've read all of their books on Davis and Mrs. Davis and I can state with confidence that they are not engaged in celebrating. Again, it is hard to know what this has to do with a proposed monument to Davis at Tredegar. Finally, Williams suggests that Gary Casteel, who has been hired to sculpt the statue, is a sufficient reason to approve the final product. Williams is "confident [that Casteel] will produce a beautiful and historically accurate statue.
Not once does Williams comment on the design. I have absolutely no problem with another statue of Davis in Richmond; the question, however, is whether this particular design, which acknowledges Davis's relationship with Jim Limber, is appropriate. [Background on this story can be found here.] I am willing to grant that everything in that story is true, though Davis scholars have noted that some of the details are sketchy.
The question that I would like Williams to address is whether he believes that a statue depicting Davis holding hands with his adopted black child reflects his broader views on race. I understand that race relations were incredibly complex in the antebellum and wartime South, and it is important to understand the context and background for this particular decision on the part of the Davis family. I wonder, however, whether this is the best way to proceed since so little has been written about this incident. What do you think Mr. Williams? More to the point: What message does Williams believe that visitors with little background in American history will walk away with? Does Williams and the SCV believe that this statue reflects Davis's overall beliefs about race? Will visitors know that Davis was a large slaveowner, president of a government whose expressed purpose was the preservation of slavery, and that he remained committed to a racial hierarchy to the end of his life? Does the SCV plan to include some kind of plaque that will assist visitors in their attempt to understand this statue?
As I stated in the earlier post, it is easy to see what is behind this particular statue. The SCV is engaged in a conscious effort to distort the history of the South and the Confederacy to a point where issues of slavery and race are moved to the background. Their world is inhabited by friendly slaveowners and loyal black slaves and soldiers. This self-gratifying view of the past comes at a heavy price, however.
One wonders what Jim Limber or one of Davis's own slaves would think of such a statue. Unfortunately, in the hazy world of the SCV such questions have little weight.
[Hat-Tip to Sam Wheeler at Lincoln Studies]
I tried to watch this interview when it first aired a few weeks back. After 20 minutes of Thomas DiLorenzo babbling on about scholars who he characterizes as members of a "Church of Lincoln", along with other vague references to history and historians, I lost interest. I have a great deal of respect for Brian Lamb, but it would have been nice to see someone with a bit more insight into Civil War history and historiography challenge some of DiLorenzo's more outlandish claims. Lamb seems to be more interested in DiLorenzo's background than with what he has written.
Reminders of defeat could be found throughout Virginia, from the burned-down business district of Richmond to the leveled countryside of the Shenandoah Valley and northern Virginia. A London Times correspondent reported that “the once fertile fields,” between Winchester and Martinsburg, “are lying barren, for their owners have lost all their means, their negroes having fled and their horses and money having been carried off.” As if the physical destruction were not enough, he went on to note that the “graves are scattered by the roadside.” This reporter would have had just as much to report had he traveled east over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the area between Manassas and Alexandria. The constant movement of armies along with the two major battles near Manassas left miles of entrenchments, scores of naked chimneys, and few trees standing; one observer described the area south of Alexandria along the railroad as a “prairie.”
While the physical manifestations of war painted a bleak picture of the immediate future, news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14 presented ex-Confederates with the possibility of more severe retribution from the federal government as well as more immediate threats amongst a saddened and vengeful Union army. Edgar Warfield learned of Lincoln’s assassination while waiting for a steamship in Richmond for the final leg of his journey to Alexandria. He stood amongst a large crowd of white and black (“but mostly black”) Union soldiers: “A feeling of uneasiness crept over us as we momentarily expected something unpleasant to happen.” The passion & excitement of the crowds," in Washington, D.C., according to Edward P. Alexander, "were so great that anyone on the street, recognised merely as a Confederate, would have been instantly mobbed & lynched." News filtered throughout Virginia slowly and was filled with rumor. Not until April 20 did Samuel Howard learn Lincoln had “been shot & killed his son wounded, and Seward desperately wonded [sic].” Although William Grove’s diary entry of April 15 includes a note indicating Lincoln had been shot and “Seward mortally wounded” as late as April 25 he was contemplating more recent news that both Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley had been assassinated. It is almost impossible to find an accurate account of events in Washington among returning soldiers. This is not surprising given the state of communications in the immediate postwar period. It is important, however, to understand that Lincoln's assassination was an ongoing event for these men, the scale of which could not be properly understood. In the most extreme cases men walked home under the impression that the president, vice-president, secretary of state, and highest ranking general had all fallen victim to Booth's conspiracy; simply stated, for these individuals there was no federal government.
Although many white Southerners agreed that Lincoln's actions since 1861 were best understood as those of a "tyrant" they remained ambivalent about his murder. John Dooley observed that "people don't know whether to rejoice or to be sad." "And the reason," Dooley went on to state, "appears to be that they are not sure whether it be better for the South that Abraham should be king, or some Successor." For those with access to more reliable news, that successor would be Andrew Johnson. A farmer in Nelson County expressed grave concern for the future of the South with Johnson assuming the presidency:
We had hopes that such terms would be offered us as would not degrade or absolutely ruin us, but a sad blow has been given to their expectations by the wicked and cruel assassination of Mr Lincoln on the 14th April by a man named Jno Wilkes Booth. Son of the famous actor and himself an actor it is said by profession. On the same night an attempt was made to assassinate Seward also, but he is said to be recovering from his wounds. Booth has since been pursued and killed! What awful tragedies has this war produced! and what frightful scenes may yet be in store for us. Should Andrew Johnson pursue a harsh and oppressive policy. Johnson is a Southern man a Tenesseean [sic] by birth but a renegade a low vindictive demagogue from whose foul passions and hatred of gentleman the South has every thing to fear. The awful sacrifices of the South to result only in subjugation are frightful to think of oceans of blood and millions of treasures. Wide spread ruin every where. Emancipation of course is the first step which carries ruin with it to many myself among the number.
This farmer gave voice to the hopes of many by speculating that, "Providence has some wise and beneficent purpose which will be revealed in his own good time."
I was diagnosed as "type 2" bipolar (aka, manic depressive) in 2007. This is a progressive biochemical disorder from which I've evidently suffered for a very long time, perhaps even since adolescence, and which had reached a grave critical mass in recent years. I am currently under treatment, on meds that my doctor and I are fine-tuning, and I am slowly learning how to cope more efficiently and constructively than I have in the past. (In the meantime, I continue to pick up the shattered pieces from one of my last great, extended hypo-manias.) I only mention the bipolar issue because I approve of the movement of sufferers who are "outing" themselves, discussing the disorder, and thus working to remove the stigma that surrounds it.Information about bipolar disorder can be found here. This crime comes with a maximum 10-year prison sentence, but I do hope that given the circumstances the court will be lenient.
Most of you have no doubt heard that Sotheby's has auctioned a letter by Abraham Lincoln for $3.4 million. The letter in question was written on April 5, 1864 in response to a request by a group of students for Lincoln to free the slaves. He addressed the letter to their teacher, Mrs. Horace Mann:
Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.
I don't know about you, but I am struck by Lincoln's sensitivity to their request and I love that reference to the students as "little people". First, he takes their request seriously by acknowledging their emotional convictions, but at the same time manages to point to his own limits as president. In other words, Lincoln is saying that it is unfortunate that the issue of slavery cannot be decided based on "generous sympathy" alone. In addition, Mann's students learn that their president is not all-powerful, but constrained by the Constitution. The reference to God's will perhaps would have sounded familiar if their teacher had introduced Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in the classroom.
I am sorry to hear that the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana has decided to close its doors this coming June.
The local museum faced the same struggles many non-profit historical museums face as tight finances force schools to reduce field trips. Plus, the museums face competition from other education venues that offer interactive displays. In 1996, about 12,000 children visited the museum, [Priscilla] Brown [vice president and chief brand officer for Lincoln Financial Group] said. In 2006, the number had dropped to 7,500. Overall yearly attendance at the museum is about 40,000, Brown said. Museums in larger cities often boast six-figure attendance figures.
Given the content of the article it is difficult to believe that the decision was not made for financial reasons. Read the article here.
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