Youtube Presents - Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War

While doing my usual Youtube scan-and-search-for-Civil-War-stuff exercise, I came across this snappy little series from the University of Georgia Press promoting some of their latest releases. This one features Megan Kate Nelson's Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War - a book I enjoyed very much. Have a look, particularly if you have an interest in an analysis at the intersection of environmental and cultural history.

K

What Civil War Book Most Influenced You?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I speak often about the many Civil War books that I have found compelling over the years. Of course, there is Bruce Catton's body of work - my introduction to Civil War history, and David Blight's Race and Reunion - the very best book I have ever read that I disagree with. I keep these books on my short list for a variety of reasons.

But if there is one book that most influenced my thinking - at least when it comes to Confederate nationalism, Confederate identity, and how the Confederate States of America finally succumbed to defeat, I would have to give the nod to Gary W. Gallagher's Confederate War.

Before I thoroughly engaged this book, I considered Confederate defeat in terms of internal divisions. Popular national support (or lack thereof - for a multitude of reasons), popular connections to the institution of slavery, and the disconnect between civilian and military leadership all seemed problematic enough to suggest that maybe...just maybe the Rebels did themselves in.

Gallagher's book did not change my mind on the spot - but it got me thinking about the Confederate cause and how the Confederate people persevered for four years despite these things. Further investigation convinced me that the Rebels had internal troubles to spare, but were profoundly committed to independence and a slave-holding republic and were willing to sacrifice nearly everything to get it. You don't need to take my word for it - just read the book...have a look at the evidence in comparison to other works discussing Confederate defeat (Robinson's Bitter Fruits of Bondage would be a good start) and decide for yourself.

And in case you were wondering about my current thoughts on Confederate defeat - I am going to have to go with George Pickett: I am pretty sure the Union army had something to do with it.

Peace,

Keith

The Bitter Fruits of Bondage by Armstead Robinson

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

There is an interesting story behind the book, Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy. Civil War scholar Armstead Robinson passed away in 1995. He had been working on this book for years but never completed it. Since his death, a number of scholars pieced together the manuscript and selected evidence and arguments (from diverse and often conflicting segments) to make this book the best representation of Robinson’s voice as possible.

By the time it was finally published in 2005, Robinson's book was far out of date, even though Edward L. Ayers’s jacket blurb says otherwise. This book is a child of the 1980s – when social historians were searching for the internal divisions that destroyed the Confederate States of America. Their efforts sought to disprove Lost Cause arguments suggesting northern superiority in men and material did the Confederacy in. Had Robinson published his book back then, it would have been a monument in the historiography. As it is now, it is a window into the past, but not useful to advance the understanding or challenge more recent scholarship on why the Confederates lost.

The point of this book is simple enough: The southern way of life was unable to provide the support necessary to sustain a war effort – specifically, slavery sapped nationalism from the very beginning.

Robinson highlights the class tensions between slaveholders and increasingly bitter yeomen and other nonslaveholders. This is a familiar tale (see also William Freehling’s The South vs. The South on internal dissension) of a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. Slaveholders duped everyone else into waging war, and it then became apparent (because of substitutes and 20 slave laws) that the nonslaveholders were fighting to maintain a system that only benefited rich whites – all the while the very same rich whites were weaseling their way out of the army.

Meanwhile, slaves were fleeing to Union lines in great numbers, denying the CSA their labor and handing it over to the US war effort. This served to exacerbate growing tensions between the white classes. Bread riots at home and huge desertion rates suggested that Confederate soldiers and civilians were not behind the war effort – particularly an effort conceived on the premises of a “slaveholders republic.”

Arguing that an internal class conflict eroded the white southern will to sustain a bid for independence is to confront directly the heritage of the Lost Cause Many things: the peculiar configuration of Confederate mobilization, the genesis of popular discontent with the war effort, the failure of agricultural adjustment, the birth of state rights ideology, the halting attempts by Jefferson Davis to cope with rampant internal dissention, the disintegration of Confederate society – all of these stemmed from the Confederacy’s failure to preserve stability on the home front. The Civil War south discovered that it could not sustain wartime slavery and simultaneously retain the allegiance of the nonslaveholding majority – and thus…the Confederacy was destroyed from within.

Now I disagree with this argument entirely – I believe that the overwhelming majority of white southerners supported the cause – despite the grumblings that take place when a society goes to war. They supported independence and slavery - even the nonslaveholders had a stake in the system. But I suggest reading this book – it is a great time capsule of sorts. And although published early in the 21st century…it is a nice window into the historiography of the 1980s.

Peace,

Keith

Continuity and Change in the Civil War

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

And good evening to you where ever in the world you might be. Great news! Thanks to the nice people (especially Joseph and Ravi) at the Apple Store in the Grove in Hollywood, my computer is back up and running...better, stronger, faster - and all for no charge. You gotta love these guys when it comes to customer service.

Today I have been reading Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front by J. Matthew Gallman. The title is a shade misleading because it is (mostly) about Philadelphians at war, who I suppose are indeed northerners, but not any more northern that the good citizens from Boston, New York, Cincinnati, or Milwaukee. So the book - a collection of essays - is not so much about all northerners, just some. But while I have a tendency to pick nits about nearly everything, I would also like to point out that this is a very good book. Buy it - you won't be sorry - especially if you have more than a passing interest in the City of Brotherly Love.

Northerners at War has got me thinking about a puzzling question: did the war act as a great catalyst for change in the United States or did things end up pretty much the same in 1865 as they had been in 1860 and before? The question in and of itself is not what I find so puzzling, but rather, why it is framed in this manner. Gallman, by the way, stresses continuity. Case in point from the opening essay: yes - northern (from Philly) women moved in to the public sphere in new ways through their work in the United States Sanitary Commission and in other capacities during Philadelphia's Great Central Fair in 1864. But, as Gallman points out, their work was circumscribed by prevalent gender roles. They did many of the things that mid-nineteenth century women did, they just did them outside the home - in public...and in the press. So it seems that gender assumptions made no great leaps during this period. Continuity prevailed (at least in Northerners).

I can't say with any degree of certainty that I have all the answers here, but I will ask this: does framing a historical inquiry in the "either it changed or it didn't" manner only present a sort of flimsy dichotomy? From a northern perspective, the Civil War broadly defined was an effort of continuity from the very beginning - restore the Union. And that they did. And they did so by harnessing the available resources - including the work of those who had seldom before (or in limited ways) entered the realm of public  - and dare I say....traditionally political - activity. I can get behind Gallman's focus on continuity. But his juxtaposition against change leaves me hanging a little. Is that really all there is to it?

Many other historians have a tendency to look at the war as a great transitional event - particularly when it comes to peoples' self image as citizens  - or in terms of assumptions about race, class, gender...you name it. I am going to go way out on a limb and challenge this. But not in a way that simply accents the absence of transition. Looking at United States history as an unfolding of a series of transitions from one thing to another (the Civil War being the most apparent example of this) assumes a near teleological  - and almost always triumphal - trajectory.

While transitions certainly took place during the war (just ask the 3 million former slaves in 1865...), we could say transition (or change or whatever you want to call it) happened in an effort to get back to something that many Americans in 1860 thought could be slipping away. So northerners fought (and won) the war. And in so doing opened some doors for people who had suffered from the imposition of custom - but in an additive rather than transitional way.  We might even say that change assumed a conservative tone.

Have I simply confused the issue further? Good. At any rate, these are just a few ideas that I have been toying around with lately - so I would like to thank Matt Gallman for his thought provoking words.

Peace,

Keith

The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I have thinking quite a bit these days about the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief, and the legacy of emancipation during the sesquicentennial. I recently revisited a very good book - The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views, by Harold Holzer, Edna Greene Medford, and Frank J. Williams.

Fittingly, the authors choose to open their absorbing study of the Emancipation Proclamation with the words of Frederick Douglass – one of the most compelling figures of nineteenth-century United States history – to illustrate the varied reactions to a document that has traveled a “bumpy historiographical road.” Praising Abraham Lincoln’s (preliminary) Emancipation Proclamation as a “righteous decree” while questioning the president’s “hesitating and forbearing” caution, Douglass was both admirer and critic – a reaction that the authors suggest presaged the “complicated, almost schizophrenic, response [the document] has elicited.” As the authors point out, since 1862, analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation has developed into two opposing camps – one highlighting the document as the crowning achievement of Lincoln the Great Emancipator, the other focusing on the proclamation as an act of wartime desperation issued from the pen of a racist president.

To their credit, the authors do not simply argue from the comfortable (and well worn) position of one side of the historiographical debate or the other. Rather, they tap into contemporary reactions issued from diverse groups, including, significantly, those who were the subject of Lincoln’s decree – slaves – to illustrate the importance of the widely ranging series of responses, interpretations, and efforts of commemoration. While the subtitle of this book could imply a sustained debate contesting the contemporary meaning and legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation, the three contributors to The Emancipation Proclamation provide complementary arguments - each individual analysis accenting a particular context.

Edna Greene Medford examines how black Americans derived meaning from a document beyond the author’s intentions and seized every opportunity as active agents in freedom, Frank J. Williams argues that Lincoln’s genius for the law provided the means to maneuver around the inherent conflict between his constitutional obligations and his hatred of slavery, and Harold Holzer maintains that the “central document” of Lincoln’s administration gained prominence not during his lifetime, but through artistic representation and Lincoln iconography in the post-war realm of public memory. The overall result is a single volume that both admonishes reductionism and eschews present-minded critique.

Holzer, Medford, and Williams, together with eminent historian John Hope Franklin, who provides the foreword, should be applauded for collaborating on this succinct, well documented, and thought provoking study. Perhaps, a more nuanced analysis discussing the varied responses of “common” Civil War soldiers would further strengthen this volume by illustrating how the issues of slavery and emancipation reached white America beyond the upper echelons of politics and the military. This criticism aside, students of the era will greatly benefit from a collection of essays that illustrates how the Emancipation Proclamation was, in the words of Lincoln, “the great event of the nineteenth century.”

Peace,

Keith

Gary W. Gallagher's The Union War

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

At long last my much promised look at Gary W. Gallagher's latest, The Union War. If you recall, a few months back I met with Gary and briefly discussed this volume. As you probably guessed, The Union War is a Companion piece to his 1997 publication, The Confederate War, in which Gallagher argues persuasively that the rebs did not pursue the war knowingly against impossible odds. They thought they could win, almost did on more than one occasion, and in the end...held on as long as they possibly could.

In The Union War, Gallagher argues against today's preoccupation with emancipation as the only noble and worthy Union cause. This, he offers, obscures the importance of Union for the wartime generation. The overriding motive for North was restoration of Union, not emancipation.

Now, I think it is safe to say that Americans today want the war to be about emancipation. But as Gallagher points out, even though Union soldiers knew that slavery was the war's cause, only a tiny fraction of the white northern populace hoped to use the war to eradicate the institution. The freeing of slaves, a reality as the Union armies maneuvered in Confederate territory, worked generally as a means to undermine the Rebel war effort. Thus, as a means to preserve the Union.

Detractors have, and will, argue - as has Eric Foner - that The Union War places undue emphasis on the Union Army's role in emancipation. One could indeed question exactly what kind of Union the war was being fought to preserve - and that slavery, the most troubling issue on the table in 1860, was foremost on the minds of the party in power. Unwilling to bend on the prevention of slavery's expansion into the western territories and even with gradual emancipation up for discussion, the waging of war against the seceding states had to mean that a new vision of Union - free from slavery - must have been a principle motivating factor - indeed the only "noble" one, considering that a Union with slavery intact seemed morally reprehensible to the beacon of democracy. After all, Lincoln could have easily preserved the Union by giving in to southern demands in 1861, which he did not.

Now Gallagher admits that emancipation became, as the war progressed, a viable solution to the problem of preservation...one which would have been unnecessary had the war reached its conclusion with Union victory in 1862. But with all of this in mind he reminds us that "Union" has lost its meaning to modern observers. In the 1860s, loyal United States citizens embraced Union above all as paramount - the defining word of American exceptionalism. And so The Union War - using letters, newspapers, and diaries - reviews the centrality of Union in the mid-nineteenth century - a centrality that motivated millions of loyal citizens to rally around the banner...and save the best hope for democracy in the world.

Of course, after the war - as Gallagher mentions - the nobility of emancipation became increasingly popular, at times mirroring the celebration of Union. But this, as I have pointed out ad nauseum (and it seems that Gallagher agrees) was part of a moralizing self-righteousness that swept the nation in the postwar years. During the war, emancipation punished the enemy - in peace, it punished the vanquished.

Peace,

Keith

Guess What Just Came In the Mail...

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Well - it has finally arrived: my very own review copy of Gary W. Gallagher's new book, The Union War. Yes indeed - it came in the mail yesterday...and to my surprise - I made it in to the acknowledgments! How freakin' great is that? (Answer: pretty great)

So am all ready to have at this one. If you remember, a while back I did a video interview with Gary concerning this very work. You can check it out HERE.

I promised a review and Harvard University Press took notice and graciously supplied the book - so stay tuned. Give me a few days to do a close read and I will fill you in. I have a sneaking suspicion that The Union War will set the record straight on how the loyal people of the United States understood the Civil War.

Until then....

Peace,

Keith