Winter Quarters

You have to hand it to Civil War soldiers. They could be pretty resourceful when they had to. As you all surely know, active campaigning, more often than not, took place during Spring and Summer - when snow and ice was not busy fouling everyone's good time. During the winter months, armies would set up elaborate winter camps and build semi-permanent structures using whatever they could find. Pictured is a mighty fine example of an officer's hut near Brandy Station - with a chimney, log walls, and a pitched roof stretched from what appears to be a tent. They even have a sidewalk out front.

This place is nicer than my first apartment. Huzzah!

K

A Gruesome Relic

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

In an effort to keep up to date with all the Civil War related news, I keep an "American Civil War" Google News search bookmarked - and check it frequently. Events from reenactments to anniversaries to hot-topic debates come up. From time to time, the strange, and yes, gruesome story makes its appearance. This recent article, reporting on a severed arm found in the Sharpsburg area, dominated the other images in a rather macabre fashion.

People come across relics all the time - both by legal means and otherwise - shell fragments, bullets, buttons, buckles, even trash. From time to time, one might stumble upon a bone fragment (as I did once in Shiloh). But according to the article, it is extremely rare to find human remains with the skin intact. This limb in particular had been buried in a field...then stored in a barrel of brine. Specialists are now working to see if this limb is indeed a Civil War relic - perhaps once attached to a soldier who suffered his horrible dismemberment at the Battle of Antietam - one of the over 22,000 killed and wounded on September 17, 1862. Should any more news surface, I will keep you posted.

Peace,

Keith

Literacy in the 1860s

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

It is indeed a great boon to Civil War historians that mid-nineteenth century Americans were - for the most part - a literate society. Census information from 1850 and 1860 suggests that somewhere between 75% and 90% of adult whites were...that's right...literate. Literacy rates were higher in the North, and higher again in urban areas. But in terms of the general population - most white Americans at the beginning of the Civil War could read and write.

Of course, there are degrees of literacy. Reading a tavern sign does not make one a man of letters, as it were...and I have read letters written by people who were just barely hanging on to what we might term "literate." But for the sake of argument, let's just say that we are dealing with a literate society.

This is useful information for two reasons. One: citizens read things - and the technological onslaught of the printing press and the railroad meant that reading materials were disseminated far and wide...to every corner of the nation. Newspapers reached millions - and so did books. By 1860, the good people of the United States were pretty up to date on the issues (Uncle Tom's Cabin, anyone?). So - those who supported and enlisted to fight for their respective causes knew what was at stake. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Two: people wrote everything down. Whether in letters home or in diaries and journals, soldiers and civilians recorded their thoughts, their actions, their opinions...what have you. And thus we now have at our disposal a wide range of testimony from all classes, ethnic groups, and so on.

Now that is some pretty good news. Oh sure, it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming. I mean, where do you stop? There is so much extant written material that it would be near impossible for an army of historians to ever get through it all. But let's rejoice anyway. Our nineteenth-century friends had the good sense to write down what they thought - it just makes figuring them out a little easier.

Peace,

Keith

The Guilty Cause of the Whole Mischief

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

From our perspective, slavery caused the Civil War. This is more or less apparent to anyone who cares to look at the documentary evidence from the secession crisis. Well, this notion is apparent for most of us anyway. There is of course a contingent among the good citizens of the United States who hold fast to the idea that the war was precipitated by some vague notion of protecting state rights - the blame for secession and the ensuing conflict thus resting squarely on the shoulders of tyrannical northern demagogues intent of preventing southerners from carrying out said rights...whatever they might be.

But the rest of us get it. As Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, "All knew that this interest [slavery] was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war."

Fine. But over the past years, many of my students and a host of others have been puzzled by a salient notion: the overwhelming number of Union soldiers did not go to war to put an end to this rather conspicuous institution. If slavery threatened to destroy the country, as it seemed to be doing in a hasty fashion, why, in 1861, were northern soldiers not intent on destroying the cause of this mighty scourge? As the detractors of the "slavery as a cause" argument will happily tell you, (most) Yankees set off to war thinking very little of freeing slaves. Could one then conclude that northerners at arms did not believe that the war was over slavery?

This logic is about as convoluted as it gets - yet I hear it all the time (it's right up there with the idea that the war could not have been about slavery because most Confederates did not own any slaves). While it is certainly true that Union soldiers fought overwhelmingly to preserve the nation (see Gary Gallagher's The Union War on this one), they did so knowing full well (or at the very least - perceiving) that a "slavocracy," as they would have called it, was hell bent on destroying the republic. Abolitionists - those who sought to destroy slavery from the very beginning - were a tiny minority. Generally speaking, as the war went on, soldiers saw emancipation as a means to an end - in effect freeing slaves as a crippling blow to the Confederate war effort. Only when the war was over did Union veterans hail emancipation as (one of) the war's great causes. Their celebratory efforts were full of nods to freedom and Union.

But despite the changing nature of how Union soldiers warmed to emancipation, they could certainly tell you what the war was all about. As Union general Carl Schurtz wrote in his memoirs, loyal soldiers of the republic knew all along that slavery was indeed the "guilty cause of the whole mischief."

Peace,

Keith

Civil War Institute Conference Day One is in the Books - Day Two Under Way

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Day two of the CWI conference is officially under way - this is jsut a quick post before I head to the next talk - this morning we heard from historian Jason Phillips on Civil War soldiers in 1861 and their prophetic imaginations - it turns out (according to Jason) that they didn't necessarily expect a short war after all...food for thought, anyway. But I am not sure I agree. At any rate, the topic is certainly worth further examination.

Last night, we heard from Peter Carmichael regarding the first year of the war. Pete's talk was among the most dynamic and engaging that I have ever heard - if you ever get a chance to hear him speak...by all means, take it! You can check out snippets from his discussion by going to my Youtube page - I will post segments from all the daily talks each night of the conference, so check back regularly. And of course, stay up to the minute by searching the #cwi150 hashtag on Twitter and following me on Facebook.

Peace,
Keith