Much Ado About Revisionist History

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

As you must surely know by now (as I mention this often), I spend a lot of time scouring the Internet for people discussing the Civil War. Youtube and Twitter are of course my favorite virtual forums - they never disappoint.

I have noticed something that, as a historian, I find really really really interesting. The word "revision" seems to carry a negative connotation. And individuals all over the place hold the so-called practitioners of "revisionist history" with the greatest contempt.

Now this comes from both ends of the political spectrum. Those who finger point and accuse don't necessarily fall into any easily defined category.

But the way I understand things, people who are screaming about revisionism are kinda missing the point. The words "revision" and "revisionist" have simply been reduced to a code for information that disgruntled would-be historians disagree with. (Bitter??? Table for one).

Here's the deal my angry f-bomb dropping friends. Revision is what historians do (and lots of others, too). If we didn't revise, there would be one book on the Civil War. We would all read it, and that would be it.

Oh sure - historians can write with a bias, and what they write can certainly be a reflection of the times in which they live. But is this by definition a bad thing or something that we simply must come to terms with and be aware of? What we learn about history and historians can tell us a lot about ourselves as interpreters of the past. If you really want to impress your friends at parties - get in to historiography. Now that's some revision we can talk about. Are there noticeable differences in books written before and after the Vietnam era (to use one sorta obvious example)? You betcha.

But all of that aside, I believe that revision is the essential ingredient to reconstructing the past. New evidence always surfaces somewhere, differing analysis produces thoughtful conversations, new insights lead us to reconsider something we may have thought we knew...but didn't.

In other words - you can get all bent out of shape if someone challenges your precious beliefs. But instead of dismissing that person as a "revisionist" in derogatory fashion, why not just have a look at what they are saying, weigh the arguments in terms of credibility, see if their evidence holds water. Do you really want to learn anything - or do you just want to hold fast to what could very well be long outdated?

I am open to critique...so fire away.

Peace,

Keith

The Brothers' War - Some Scholarly Origins.

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Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I spend a great deal of time talking about reconciliation and the problematic treatment of the era by recent scholarship. In some ways – many see the common bonds between former enemies as a given and then work backwards from there to try and figure out how that could have possibly happened - more often than not, they wind up obscuring the tense sectionalism that remained in place after the war.

The scholarship concerning the forgiving nature of former enemies follows logically from an argument suggesting Civil War soldiers embraced a mutual respect for their enemies during the war - despite an unparalleled profusion of blood. In 1943, Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy departed significantly from historiographical trends emphasizing high command, such as Douglas Southall Freeman’s massive four-volume treatment of Robert E. Lee, R.E. Lee: A Biography, by accenting the sentiments of the Confederate private soldier. Wiley identifies a variety of factors that pushed the southern soldier to kill his former countryman.  Further, he detects a hatred “deep-seated [that] had been accumulating from the time of [the soldiers’] earliest recollections,” constituting Confederates’ perceptions of a “godless and grasping society.”  Testimony from the opening pages of one chapter suggests that Confederate soldiers anticipated carrying hatred beyond the war. One twenty-three-year-old remarked, “May God avenge us of our infernal enemies – and if I ever forgive them it is more than I expect.” Another wrote his wife, “Teach my children to hate them with that bitter hatred that will never permit them to meet under any circumstances without seeking to destroy each other. I know the breach is now wide & deep between us & the Yankees let it widen & deepen until all Yankees or no Yankees are to live in the South.”

Although testimony fueled by anger stands out in Life of Johnny Reb, Wiley’s emphasis quickly shifts to one of the cornerstones of the brothers' war argument. His conclusions lend credence to the postwar respect accorded all Civil War soldiers embedded in the triumphal celebrations of Union. The tendency of enemies to fraternize between battles characterizes his overall view. “The war of the sixties has been called the ‘polite war,’” states Wiley, “and in a sense, the designation is apt. Men of the opposing armies when not actually engaged in a shooting fray were wont to observe niceties that in twentieth-century warfare would be regarded as absurd.” The pervasiveness of Wiley’s characterization of fraternity among soldiers has far surpassed any ideas regarding sectional animosity.

Bruce Catton, among the most popular Civil War historians of the twentieth century, adds his observations regarding fraternal feelings across the killing fields. “Men would shoot and kill when the time came. Yet there was a familiarity and an understanding, at times something that verged almost on liking.” Although Catton discusses animosity engendered by regional loyalties, elements of ill feeling are overshadowed by a brotherly respect throughout his works. In illustrating this idea, Catton relies primarily on stories depicting Confederate and Union soldiers meeting between lines during informal truces. One example describes how a meeting between and Rebel and a Yankee led to talk of the 1864 election. Before long, the Rebel referred to Lincoln as a “damned abolitionist, this immediately brought on a fistfight, and officers had to come out to break it up. Still, men who felt enough at home with each other to argue about politics and fight with their fists over it were hardly, at bottom, sworn enemies estranged by hatred.”

All of this is compelling work - and both Wiley and Catton deserve the respect accorded them then and now. But alas their conclusions are shortsighted - written in a haze of mid-century triumphalism that looked past section in a world where the United States was emerging within the context of a worldwide conflagration. Section was hardly their concern or their focus - and thus was obscured.

Peace,

Keith

The Best Book Ever - That I Disagree With: Race and Reunion by David Blight

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

A former student asked me to elaborate on exactly why I disagree with David W. Blight's  Race and Reunion. Fair enough - I talk about disagreeing with it all the time. Perhaps a little explanation is in order.

But first, I would like to say that this is an important work in the field of Civil War memory - maybe the most important (at least right now). It is beautifully written and about as captivating as a history book can be. I just think that Blight has missed his mark. Here is my thinking on what I term Blight's (and others') "reconciliation premise" - paraphrased from a yet-unpublished manuscript on the subject of veterans and national reconciliation.

Blight, while curiously overlooking northern efforts to commemorate the fight to preserve the Union, examines how participants at events geared toward reconciliation, such as the 50^th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg in 1913, ignored the principal issues leading to war and the Union war aim of emancipation. At these events, mentions of slavery or emancipation were conspicuously absent. Blight reasons, together with white supremacists, reconciliationists “locked arms” and “delivered a segregated memory of the Civil War on Southern terms.” He concludes, “Forces of reconciliation overwhelmed the emancipationist vision in the national culture [and] the inexorable drive for reunion both used and trumped race.”

Scholars can and should agree that Civil War veterans from both North and South shared in their racist sensibilities; they can likewise condemn them for their actions. But while the participants were undoubtedly racist, emphasizing veterans’ reconciliatory impulses solely as efforts to commemorate a “white only” war runs the risk of obscuring veterans’ intentions. Did veterans calculatingly contribute to historical amnesia along racial lines in the name of reconciliation? There is relatively little evidence pointing to this conclusion. It is true that from the point of view of most veterans, reconciliation seemed the soundest course of action. Yet the memories that informed the terms of reconciliation suggest that Civil War veterans acquiesced to reaching across the bloody chasm only so long as their former enemies accepted their respective arguments – a scenario that seldom transpired.

Even a cursory look at the historical record reveals that the memories of slavery, emancipation, and the trials of freedmen coupled with other contentious issues such as treason and the right of secession loomed large for former soldiers from both North and South. In fact, questions concerning race functioned as a leitmotif throughout the reconciliation era. Whether veterans celebrated the demise of slavery and saw emancipation as a worthy component of their cause, or viewed slavery as an incident rather than a cause of the war, race and the plight of black Americans functioned as a central narrative in the battle to write the terms of reconciliation.

Evidence suggests (and I have examples to spare – just ask) that Blight’s efforts to illustrate the memory of the war as a “white only” “southern terms” affair miss the bull’s-eye by a Confederate mile. The terms of reconciliation were – and still are for that matter – undecided, hashed out, and fought over...at least on a national scale. Slavery, emancipation, and black people in general were central to this post-war conflict over memory. Neither Union nor Confederate veterans let the citizens of a reunited nation forget their positions on this volatile subject – a subject that has remained among the most divisive generations after the conflict. But as always - I suggest you read Race and Reunion and judge for yourself.

Peace,

Keith