Northerners and D. W. Griffith's 1915 film: The Birth of a Nation

The game is afoot! After a lot of secondary reading and a peek in to the historical record I am beginning to formulate some questions concerning D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation.

A few things are striking me as curiously glossed over in the literature on the film - things that I believe are worthy of further inquiry. Most scholars tend to reduce the controversy surrounding this film to racial conflict. In many ways, they are absolutely correct. The film's profoundly racist depiction of black people - whether they be boot-licking sycophants, buffoons, or lustful rapists - without question incited animosity among individual blacks, groups such as the NAACP, and progressive whites.

But connected to this racial conflict is the nagging problem of sectional animosities held over from the Civil War. Only 50 years removed from Appomattox, the war was still fresh in the memories of those who had lived through it. Further, the sons and daughters of the Civil War generation remained attached to sectional interpretations of the war's causes and consequences.

Many scholars would have you believe otherwise. Historians such as David Blight and others have insisted that the memory of the war had - by the twentieth century - been reduced to a mutual celebration of valor and fortitude.

Poppycock. It is becoming apparent to me that many white northern Americans in 1915 saw the Confederate cause as an traitorous abomination and a revolt against law and order. It seems quite logical that groups and individuals would condemn a film that celebrated Confederates as patriots and applauded extra-legal organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

In fact - Union veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic led the charge against the screening of The Birth of a Nation suggesting that is was "untrue to the facts of history, [did] gross injustice to prominent and patriotic men of Reconstruction times, [was] insulting to colored citizens, and [tended] to glorify mob law."

This is sectionalism pure and simple. Northerners had fought to suppress rebellion - celebrating it 50 years after the fact seemed distasteful at best. Of course, millions in the North flocked to see The Birth of a Nation - and many were surely amazed at the spectacle of this new medium. But they didn't necessarily agree with the film's message.

At any rate, being one who resolutely believes that sectionalism is a central component in the study of American conflict and American history writ large, I am going to pursue this line of reasoning and see where it takes me. My driving questions: to what degree did the contentions of the Civil War remain in the twentieth-century North? How did the war generation influence subsequent generations? In what ways did The Birth of a Nation fuel sectional fires? And finally, the real nugget...are racial conflicts and sectional conflicts interwoven in American history?

I guess we'll just have to see.
Keith

February 24th 1942 - a date which will live in obscurity: The Battle of Los Angeles

I am not featuring heavy-handed analysis today. You know...I spend a lot of time wading waist deep in academic nitwittery and today I feel like telling an interesting story - just because.

I sort of stumbled upon this story while looking into Los Angeles during WWII. So imagine this. You live on the west coast of the United States. It is February 1942 - on the heels of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The country is at war and excitement is sweeping across the land. Another attack seems eminent. The people of Los Angeles are bracing themselves for the next onslaught...

Did you ever see the 1979 Steven Spielberg film 1941? It starred John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy and other well-known comedic actors of the time. It is a fictional tale of a renegade Japanese submarine commander intent on attacking Hollywood and a group of Los Angeles residents running amok in the first days of war.

Well, 1941 is laden with disturbing racial stereotypes (Hooorrryyyywoooo!!!!!!) meant (I believe) to convey mid-century Americans' perception of Japanese people rather than vulgar racist jabs. But racial analysis aside I think Spielberg did a wonderful job capturing the hysteria that gripped the west coast in the early days of war. And as an added bonus, John Belushi is superb as fighter pilot Captain Wild Bill Kelso. You have to love the scene where he strafes Hollywood Blvd in his P-40! While the film received low marks from critics and audiences alike, I would recommend it nevertheless. It is a first-rate fictional tale and a well put together period piece.

But the truth is, the film wasn't really that much of a stretch. Something along these lines actually (kind of) happened way back on February 24th 1942. It seems that reports of a Japanese air raid sent the good citizens of LA into hysterics. That evening, radar picked up several unidentified objects closing in on the Los Angeles area. After a bit, an artillery colonel reported enemy planes (although the radar blips had vanished) flying 12,000 feet above LA. This prompted coastal defense teams to send up flares and open up with a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. Four enemy planes were reported shot down, including one that was supposed to have crash landed on Hollywood Blvd.

People watched the scene unfold from rooftops and as the excitement persisted...they freaked out. Cars crashed, shell fragments fell on the city, and at least one person had a heart attack and died. But there was no attack, no enemy planes shot down, and no explanation for why coastal defense crews opened fire. Just a couple of unexplained blips, some spotlights, and a whole lot of artillery fire. The next day the Washington Post referred to the "battle" as a "recipe for jitters" and the New York Times simply stated that the event was "expensive incompetence and jitters."

Well, call it what you want. At any rate...it is certainly a good story. I keep finding all kinds of little tidbits about LA during the war. Perhaps a short book is in order....
K

Union veterans, commemoration, and the suppression of treason.

Civil War historians who bother to look to the years beyond the war talk a whole lot about reconciliation. The consensus: veterans whitewashed the memory of the war (excising issues such as slavery and emancipation) for the sake of a peaceful reconciliation. Thanks to shared racism that reached across the borders of North and South, commemoration of the war was was pretty much free from controversy. What historian David Blight argues turned out to be a Civil War memory on "southern terms."

Poppycock. Even a cursory glance at the historical record illustrates beyond any doubt (to my mind) that veterans from both sides were still wedded to this particular divisive issue. But that's a story for another day. Trust me...I'll get to that in another post.

But with all the academic talk (and talk...and talk...and talk...) about race and reunion (granted, a profoundly important topic), something important often gets overlooked: soldiers of the Union enlisted, fought, and died for...let's see if I got this straight...UNION!!!!

Oh yeah, that little thing. And do you think they forgot about it during their peaceful reconciliatory commemorative events? Nope - not even a little. As a matter of fact - and I mean documented fact - veterans celebrated the suppression of TREASON (yes, our friends in the gentile South - you know Ashley Wilkes and the like - committed treason). They gave ex-Rebels a hard time for trying to destroy the country. Veterans suggested that the rebellion was the greatest conspiracy of all times and they were hell bent on preserving that single idea for posterity.





“The Rebellion,” argued Edward McPherson before a gathering of Michigan veterans in 1889, “had not a redeeming feature. It was wholly bad. It was organized as a conspiracy, by stealth. It had its origin in passion, not reason. It was based on a pretense, both false and fraudulent in fact. It was carried on in heat, not with the deliberation which befits a great movement for vindication of rights or redress of wrongs.”

How's that for an uncontested reconciliation? Have you ever wondered what those Union veterans were thinking as they awkwardly shook hands with former Rebels across Gettysburg's stone wall? Here's just a tiny little snippet from my upcoming book on the subject that might give you an idea:

 

'From the perspectives of many Union veterans, Confederate flag waving former Rebels, worshiping before the alter of secession and state rights and paying homage to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and the rest of the Confederate pantheon, were unwelcome additions to the national image. Union men found no places in which the celebratory contributions of their treasonous former enemies could enhance the national commemorative vision with any real validity. After all, according to Union veterans, the appearances of former Rebels, many of whom continued to don Confederate gray and parade in military style, resurrected the memories of a period where Americans had tried to destroy the United States – a cause hardly worth celebrating. The culture of reconciliation, while prevalent, did not dissuade Union army veterans from harsh critiques of their quondam enemies. How could northerners honor any vestiges of the Confederate cause, asked the National Tribune, commemorated by “organizations of the very men who did all in their power to destroy the Government, and whose only bond of Union is comradeship in that terrible disloyalty?”'

So if anybody tells you that Civil War commemorations were nothing but a bunch of grizzled old soldiers with nothing much to say - just remind them...for Union vets, TREASON was a very big deal.

K

Book Pick of the Week: Burying the Dead but not the Past

A decade or so back, the theme of historical memory had developed into a Juggernaut among academics. Well count me in - if there is anything more fascinating than an analysis of how people come to terms with - and remember - their history I don't know what it is. No joke. I have been elbow deep in this corner of scholarship for the better part of ten years, and I don't plan on slowing down at all.

A handful have suggested that the theme has run its course - that there may not be much left to talk about. Perhaps...just looking at all the book subtitles (i.e. "fill in the blank" in History and Memory) one might arrive at the conclusion that the topic has been drained dry.

Poppycock.

I am happy to report that historical memory is alive and well. Thankfully so. But the literature is crying out for a set of revisions - CRYING. From where I sit - there is no final word on memory, so I applaud those who travel down well worn analytical paths to...I don't know, maybe find a few new ones.

Which brings me to the book pick of the week. Burying the Dead but not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause by Caroline E. Janney. If you thought you couldn't possibly learn anything new about the Lost Cause - well then you can just think again.

This is a wonderful book about the origins of the Lost Cause and Confederate memorialization. Janney suggests that rather than the much better known Daughters of the Confederacy in the late 19th century, earlier groups - Ladies Memorial Associations - were the designers of powerful Lost Cause mythology. What's more....and here is the real nugget folks - while upper and middle-class southern white women were not considered political actors in the traditional sense, their work with burials and Confederate Memorial Day activities suggests that they were indeed intensely political, and in fact were some of the chief proponents in keeping Confederate memory alive.

So have at it. And if you are ever in Richmond, be sure to visit Hollywood Cemetery and check out some of the LMAs finest work. They were instrumental in the reinternment of the Gettysburg Dead.
If you want to follow historian Kevin Levin's fantastic blog concerning Civil War Memory, click HERE.

Peace,
Keith

Cosmic America: Book Pick of the Week

Want to learn all about 19th century Americans' ideas of a "good" death? Want to know what these same folks do when they are faced with the deaths of 620,000 young men - who die far from home and family?

Today I am reading a mighty fine book: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. It is the latest from Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University, prominent Civil War historian, and a person with whom I sometimes agree.



Enjoy,

Keith

To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds - Reconciliation Reconsidered

 

Greetings all. This is the first in what will certainly be a series of posts concerning - you guessed it - post Civil War reconciliation. This is a topic that has been very close to my heart for the last decade. Just to open things up, I want to say a few words about the intersection between national reconciliation and the veterans' efforts to commemorate the war.

Commemorative themes have intrigued historians for decades. Their conclusions can best be described by what I have called the reconciliation premise. The premise, in a nutshell, goes something like this: The overwhelming majority of Civil War veterans moved on from the war and let bygones be bygones. The commemorated the war essentially free from controversy and instead, celebrated the mutual valor of all participants. Civil War commemorations were about remembering bravery and fortitude and forgetting divisive issues such as treason and slavery.

Historian David Blight has proposed that reunion rested on the solid ground of shared racism. In short, being able to write the vexing issues of slavery and emancipation out of Civil War memory allowed the veterans to quickly forgive one another and commemorate the war on "southern terms."

Hmmmmm. Well, I can't deny that Civil War veterans, by our standards, shared the racist assumptions of most people in the 19th century. But is this what reconciliation boiled down to? While Blight and his legion of followers make a compelling argument, I believe that they obscure what was really going on.

Reading through the historical records, one can quickly see that veterans left behind a wide range of opinions on the nation, the war, and their former enemies. The proponents of the reconciliation premise would argue that any individual stirring up a sectional fuss was either an Unreconstructed Rebel or a Bloody Shirt Yank - and definitely an anachronism during the reconciliation era.

But here's the problem. Some of the most vehement, the most vocal, and yes...the most sectional, claimed to be reconciliationists at heart. Reconcilationists talked at length about treason, tyranny, slavery, and oppression. And as it turns out, their commemorative efforts were loaded with highly controversial expressions after all.

Maybe then, reconciliation was something altogether different from what historians have led us to believe. I won't give it all away here - you'll just have to stay tuned. But for now, just think of the reconciliationist commemorative ethos as a heated competition.

Most veterans saw reconciliation as a fact. Nothing less. The Union cause had been about reconciling from the very beginning - preserving the Union explicitly demanded it. Former Confederates had little choice in the matter. But the terms of this reconciliation - and how the reunited nation and the world would remember the war - were highly contested. In some ways, this winner of this battle has not yet been determined.

While many historians insist that reconciliaiton was really about forgetting, I disagree. Reconciliation was about remembering - preserving the memories that led them to war in the first place.
Keith

For a couple of books that support the reconciliation premise (books that I argue against), see:
Race and Reunion by David Blight
Ghosts of the Confederacy by Gaines Foster

Bayyyyyyoooooooneeeeeeetttts....CHARGE! The 20th Maine in the film, Gettysburg

Yessiree - films have a powerful affect on us all. I am going to wager that pretty much everyone with an interest in Civil War history has had a look at Ron Maxwell's 1993 film, Gettysburg. I will also wager that pretty much everyone has something to say about it - good...bad...or somewhere in between.

For starters, I have to say that I enjoyed the film (I can't say the same about Maxwell's follow up prequel, Gods and Generals - but that is a story for another day). I saw Gettysburg as a student, and I have shown it to my own students as part of an on-going effort to get at how Americans understand the history of their greatest national conflict.

I am particularly interested in how this film has helped catapult Joshua "don't call me Lawrence" Chamberlain to the upper echelon of Union heroes. As we all know, Chamberlain's unit, the 20th Maine, was positioned on the extreme left of the Union line at Gettysburg on July 2nd, 1863: Little Round Top. Their orders: hold the position at all costs.

Admittedly - this was a precarious situation. While they held the high ground (and thus a tactical advantage) the 20th was up against an Alabama regiment of Confederate General Longstreet's Second Corps (some ass-kicking Rebels) and their left flank was exposed...hanging out in the breeze, really. Failure to hold this position could have essentially threatened the entire Union line - and everybody knew it. Anyone who has been to Little Round Top can plainly see that properly deployed Confederate guns would have been in a perfect position to roll up the Union left flank. The film suggests that this was the pivotal moment in the battle and the war. "If we lose this fight," declares Chamberlain in the film, "we lose the war."

Bummer. So the whole enchilada hinged on the commanding prowess of one man - and a college professor to boot. No worries - Chamberlain and the 20th won the day. A bayonet charge just when all seemed lost pushed the final Rebel advance off the hill and voila - the UNION WAS SAVED!!!

Not so fast. Now I am not trying to retrospectively kick Chamberlain in the nuts here, but let's have a look at the bigger picture. I think, and most would agree, that Chamberlain and the 20th did a splendid job at Gettysburg (and Jeff Daniels did some bang-up work in the film, too). But did one man save the Union? I think not.

So why does this one soldier have such a hold on the American imagination? Well, it works a little like this. No one had heard much about Chamberlain until 1974, when Michael Shaara published The Killer Angels, a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg on which the film Gettysburg is based. Apparently Shaara was taken with Chamberlain's story. A thoughtful college professor of rhetoric with a keen sense of right and wrong and an uncanny ability to master the art of warfare seemingly made for an excellent central character and a wonderful narrator of the Union cause. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and elevated Chamberlain in the eyes of Civil War enthusiasts.

But things really took off in 1990. Ken Burns, the self-proclaimed future of documentary film making, brought the Civil War into the living rooms of millions of Americans with his epic multi-part film, The Civil War. According to Burns, The Killer Angels was a "remarkable book that changed my life." So it stands to reason, then, that Chamberlain and the 20th Maine would hold such a prominent position in the documentary. And if Burns's film didn't prove once and for all that Chamberlain essentially saved the Union, Gettysburg sealed the deal. Historians virtually ignored Chamberlain for the longest time, it took popular culture to shed light on this intrepid savior.

OK Chamberlain fans...you can just relax. I love me some 20th, and Chamberlain was the real deal. Hell, he won the medal of honor for his gallantry on Little Round Top - and deservedly so. Let's just be clear on a few things. He did not win the Battle of Gettysburg and save the Union all by himself.

For one, the 20th held only one end of the line. On the Union far right - Culp's Hill - Colonel David Ireland commanded the 137th New York and held his position against an entire Confederate division. A loss here could have been equally catastrophic for the Union cause. But he is not mentioned in Shaara's The Killer Angels, Burns's The Civil War, or Maxwell's Gettysburg. Too bad for Ireland. His cultural resonance is merely a blip against the Chamberlain juggernaut - even though his work was equally daunting, equally crucial, and was executed with equal fortitude and gallantry as Chamberlain's.

But my quibbling with Chamberlain's role in Gettysburg really leads me to my bigger point. The film has helped instill the idea in the greater American narrative that the war all came down to one battle. It did not. The Gettysburg as "high tide" of the Confederacy story really did not take hold until after the war, when analysts and historians looked retrospectively for the moment when the Confederacy had its greatest chance to secure independence. From this perspective, things went steadily downhill for the Rebels from July, 1863 to Appomattox. This is a powerful idea in many ways - but believe me, very few (if any) people in 1863 saw Gettysburg as deciding things one way or the other. Citizens of the Union were thrilled by the news of victory, citizens of the Confederacy were devastated by defeat. But the war went on for nearly two more years - and the people from both republics looked to the armies in the field for news of victory that would bring them closer to securing their respective causes.

The film suggests otherwise - and no one understands this better than our hero, the sagacious Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Gettysburg leaves the viewer with the knowledge that Gettysburg would have been the decisive battle for Confederate victory and, thanks to Chamberlain, this victory would not take place. Thank God that one colonel had the cajones to make the crucial decision to order a last ditch bayonet charge at the most critical moment in the battle. The film thus falls in line with one of the greatest misconceptions regarding the war: that Gettysburg was the war's turning point. And this is ultimately what the Chamberlain story tells us. But misconception or not - Chamberlain is today among the top ten Civil War cultural icons...right up there with Lee and Lincoln. After all, you can't find a David Ireland t-shirt for sale at any Gettysburg gift shop. This may be the most devastating fact of all.

Of course, that's just my opinion - judge for yourself...

The Killer Angels
The Civil War
Gettysburg

peace,

Keith