Compromise!

Bit of finals week fun from the University of Kentucky that shows some ideological continuity between 1861 and 2009 in the Commonwealth. My intro to U.S. students had a short essay question as follows:

Who’s to blame for the Civil War, and how did we get there, between 1840 and 1861?

Now, this should prompt the students to air the grievances of both North and South, taking into account the litany of events that drove us toward conflict for twenty years. Historiographically speaking, I'm looking for a "blundering generation" sort of answer, which is perhaps debatable, but seems to cover the material well enough for non-majors. However, I was pleased to see this from a student still, it would seem, steeped in the anger and frustration that proslavery Unionists in Kentucky felt during the secession crisis.

The Confederates are to blame for starting the Civil War. Just because you’re not getting what [you] want doesn’t mean you need to succeed [sic] from the Union and start a war with them. They should’ve just kept calling congress into session until they reached compromise and if they didn’t get their states rights, then they could have succeeded [sic] from the Union.

Legacy of H. Clay much?

Killer Angels and neo-Confederate Multiculturalism

Looking over the first page of the Introduction to The Killer Angels, I am -- no surprise here -- displeased with Shaara's characterization of the two armies.

Of the Army of Northern Virginia, Shaara writes:

They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually
self-equipped. ... It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though there are many
men who cannot read or write, they all speak English. They share common
customs and a common faith...

Of the Army of the Potomac:

It is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men,
fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and
many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen
upon the planet. ... They are volunteers: last of the great volunteer armies,
for the draft is beginning that summer in the North.

Aside from beating these two descriptions up with big sticks of scholarship that, admittedly, have come largely since Shaara wrote, I have another important question. Would the modern neo-Confederate movement agree with this characterization of the Confederate Army anymore?

I pose this stemming from Jonathan Sarris' lovely characterization of the neo-Confederate movement's recent obsession with finding -- creating -- "Black Confederates" as an effort to find a "multicultural" Condfederacy and thereby counteract their well-deserved stigma of racism. Has the Anglo-Saxon Protestant A.N.V. been replaced by the equally mythological enlightened paradise of a rainbow coalition army fighting for libertarian values?

My my, What would the old boys think?

Parks, the Public Sphere, and Preservation

I had a thought during a discussion last week on the contentious issue of mountain top removal coal mining (MTR) when someone mentioned that the Romantic views of sweeping mountain vistas that were the backdrop for an anti-MTR film looked like something out of a National Park Service site video. "Ha," I thought, "true enough." But it also got me thinking about the symbolism of the National Parks, specifically the seal and patch I have emblazoned on a sizable percentage of my clothing: an arrowhead inverted with a buffalo grazing in the foreground in front of a majestic redwood and a mountain rising in the background.

Does the NPS identify itself with things lost or vanishing, Indians, indigenous plant and animal species, and geological formations, all of which have found themselves the target of modernization? Is the NPS to be the curators of America's zoo-of-the-past when we have finally rid ourselves of these beautiful inconveniences? Does the government preservation of space only encourage the exploitation of places not designated sacred, beautiful, or otherwise special?

And here's where I think Jurgen Habermas' idea of the public sphere, a space outside formal politics where citizens can communicatively debate issues concerning the body politic, is so vitally important to a new role for the NPS and for Americans generally. I attended the National Council on Public History conference this weekend where Dr. James Brewer Stewart's keynote address, “Abolishing Slavery in Lincoln’s Time and Ours: The Legacies of American Slavery and the Challenges of Human Trafficking,” envisioned a new -- but at the same time very old -- role for historic sites. Speaking specifically about those that dealt with slavery in the past, Dr. Stewart encouraged sites to use their roots in historical slavery as a platform to launch discussion about modern day human trafficking, to smash the concept that slavery ended in 1865 (a concept that Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement cast into doubt anyway) by showing that ending only American slavery did not end the phenomenon worldwide. He encouraged, too, a dialogue between the public and interpreters about how the issues of the past continue to affect our world today.

As public land, why should a National Park site not be the site of public sphere debate among concerned citizens?It seems to me that NPS sites have always been tied to public debate. To whit: Chickamauga or any other Civil War battlefield was the site of a debate over the meanings of citizenship, freedom, equality, race, class, gender, and a host of other issues when the armies met there in 1863. Perhaps 34,000 casualties was not Habermas' ideal of communicative action, but it nevertheless is an extreme example of debate over vital issues outside of formal politics. Later, in the 1890s and onward, the battlefield became a site of commemoration and (white) North-South reconciliation. Themes of shared sacrifice and valor were played up, while the "emancipatory" legacy of the war was largely redacted. The monuments on the field attest to this revisioning of the war as an unfortunate but glorious national Iliad. This understanding continued through the 1960s commemoration of the war's 100th anniversary, which employed Confederate memory as a banner to rally anti-Civil Rights support in the white South. With the 150th anniversary of the war approaching, the NPS has a chance to use its Civil War sites in a new way, as a public free space to encourage civil dialogue (Incidentally, this is the reason I was at the conference, participating in a panel of public historians discussing themes and strategies for the CW 150th). There will be resistance from many, saying that entering "politics" could bias the site. But by recognizing and discussing the fact that these places have -- in one way or the other -- always been spaces for social-political debate, how is employing that space for the same purpose today any different? That legacy of debate, being a bandbox for the playing out of the politics of memory, is the very reason these spaces have become places invested with cultural meaning.

In my opinion, the parks-as-free-space model of use will have to take hold if we are to positively preserve Civil War battlefields. As the country moves farther away from the Civil War being a "felt history," as the Civil War becomes a shrinking part of America's historical consciousness, and as general public interest in history declines, continuing the tradition of civic dialogue in these spaces will demonstrate to a new generation of Americans the continuing lessons that can be drawn from these places, these memories. It will increase public awareness of these sites as important, as relevant, as vital to our national identity. By demonstrating that relevance and usefulness we can create a new set of "stakeholders," people emotionally invested in the continued preservation and appropriate use of these places, and thereby -- hopefully -- preserve their lessons for another generation.

Forrest....Again

Bedford Forrest still makes it into a lot of newspapers. Here is a story from last week about the Wizard.

Memphis' Forrest Park on National Register of Historic Places

Designation puts efforts to change name on hold
By Linda Moore, Memphis Commercial Appeal Thursday, March 19, 2009

Forrest Park has quietly been added to the National Register of Historic Places, and efforts to rename the park or disinter the bodies buried there have, for now, been laid to rest.
The park at Union and Manassas where Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are buried received the honorary designation this month from the National Park Service.
The park has long been a point of racial controversy in Memphis, with local officials and other groups periodically rallying to rename the park and remove the statue of Forrest, a revered cavalry leader in the Civil War who also was a slave trader and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

The nomination was submitted by the Forrest Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

"It's just a great honor to have the park and the statue recognized as a historic place," said Lee Millar, the camp's public affairs officer. "We're very happy for fellow historians and the city and county to have another site listed on the national register."

Although not involved in seeking the designation, the Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy also was excited by the news. "I'm very happy, basically because it's just a part of Memphis' history that needs to be preserved for future generations," said president Audrey Rainey.

Attorney and former Shelby County commissioner Walter Bailey tried to quash the nomination but says continued protests will be put on hold.

"I think we're at a point where until such time as we see some concern by our city leaders, we have to continue to pause," Bailey said.

And he doesn't blame the Forrest supporters for their success.

"It seems to me the responsibility and the blame rest with our city leaders for being so passive about it," Bailey said.

Last fall, the nomination went before the Tennessee Historical Commission. Initially approved, the vote was rescinded after about a dozen Memphians, including Bailey and state Rep. G.A. Hardaway, protested, arguing that the park had been created to pay homage to a slave trader. The Sons of Confederate Veterans withdrew the nomination, regrouped and successfully appealed the state commission's decision to the park service, which administers the register.
Despite the successful bid, the designation is an honor, not a shield.

Because Forrest Park is owned by the city of Memphis, the city has the authority to rename it or have the graves moved unless the project involves federal dollars, said Bill Reynolds, spokesman with the National Park Service in Atlanta.

"If the city makes changes to the site in some way, shape or form that would or could cause a potential review of the status of the site, it could cause it to lose its designation if the historical integrity of the site is compromised in any way," he said.

The 8-acre park was established in the early 1900s and was designed by famed park and landscape designer George Kessler. The sculpture of Forrest was done by Charles H. Niehaus, whose work can be seen at the Library of Congress.

St. Patrick Cleburne Day

Sorry for the little play on words there. Today is Patrick R. Cleburne's 181st birthday and since it is so often listed as being tomorrow, St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would reflect a little about Memory and Patrick Cleburne. It is curious to see how his popularity has increased over the last couple of decades, without a movie or major novel to propel him into popularity. This October there will be a statue of him errected in Ringgold, GA, site of his defense of Ringgold Gap. Cleburne now rivals N.B. Forrest for popularity among Western Theater Civil War buffs and may eclipse Forrest eventually. So why? I think it has a lot to do with him being clean of the taint of slavery and white supremacy that Forrest is linked to, Cleburne never owned slaves and is even on the record saying that he "cared nothing for them", and now Cleburne's proposal to arm slaves is being blown to bigger proportions, even though it directly contradicts the notion of Black Confederates. Now, I admit I am a great admirer of Cleburne, I bought Cleburne and his Command and Pat Cleburne" Confederate General when I was a teenager and literally wore both copies out, but that actually predates the modern surge of popularity, so back to the original premise of this post, is it now that Cleburne is more appealing due to being clean? or is it a great general finally getting his due? I think a study of Cleburne and Memory may be a new project for me.

Confederate Veteran on "How The Confederacy Armed its Soldiers"

Thanks to Kaelin for alerting me to this interesting article about Confederate industry from Confederate Veteran XXX, no. 1 (1922).

I was teaching my classes the other day about reading material culture as a primary source. For instance: a sun-faded, hand-sewn, jeans Confederate jacket can speak to raw material shortages and the labor of women behind the lines; an Atlanta arsenal cartridge box containing rounds from the Selma arsenal with powder from the Augusta works can tell us why Billy Sherman was so determined to stop the flow of supplies from the Confederate industrial heartland. Interesting, then, that we see in the pages of CV "How the Southern Confederacy developed a great industry in the manufacture of firearms and munitions while handicapped by the demands of active warfare is brought out in this article from the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, published while the World War was raging."

What's fascinating to me is that the CV would even publish such a thing. It smacks of the pride of the New South Men who sought capital and industry to restore the region to prominence while retaining the more conservative social structures of the Old South: racial, gender, and class hierarchy. I've always been of the opinion that if Gaines Foster is correct about the UCV being an town/urban professional phenomenon then we would see a significant amount of overlap in those professing the New South Creed and the shapers of Confederate memory.

" We began in April, 1861," wrote Gen. Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance of the Confederate army, in a monograph to President Jefferson Davis, "without arsenal or laboratory, or powder mill of any capacity, and with no foundry or rolling mill except in Richmond; and before the close of 1863, or within a little over two years we supplied them. During the harassments of the war, while holding our own in the field defiantly and successfully against a powerful enemy, crippled by a depreciated currency; throttled by a blockade that deprived us of nearly all the means of getting material or workmen; obliged to send every able-bodied man to the field; unable to use slave labor, with which we were abundantly supplied, except in the most unskilled departments of production; hampered by want of transportation of even the commonest supplies of food; with no stock on hand even of such articles as copper, leather, iron, which we must have to build up our establishments—against all these obstacles, in spite of all these deficiencies, we persevered at home as determinedly as our troops did in the field against a more tangible opposition. ... Steam was put in at the Charleston arsenal. The Mount Vernon institution was moved to Selma, nearer the district where the hardest cast iron in America was being turned into gun bores. Ancient field pieces of 1812 were replaced by new cannon from the Tredegar iron works in Richmond. ... Lead at the rate of nearly 80,000 pounds a month came in from the mines near Wytheville, Va., to be smelted in the new government plant at Petersburg. Battle fields were combed for gunstocks, bores, and bullets, with excellent results.

Notice how Gorgas downplays the potential contribution of slaves, pointing to their presumed inferiority and incapacity for skilled work, and without batting an eye can later point to Tredegar's contributions to the CS war effort while not acknowledging the slave labor that enabled that installation's success. But despite the racial assumptions which are largely inescapable from any source written in the 1920s, this remains a fairly sound introduction to Confederate industry. The conclusion is what I really enjoyed.

The Confederacy fell not so much because it had not been able to make arms, as because all the places where the arms were made fell before the Union armies.

Indeed, Harper's Ferry, Nashville, and eventually Atlanta would all suffer that same fate. But let us also keep in mind William Freehling's contention that the Confederacy had already lost the industrial war when it did not bring the manufacturing and transportation might of Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis into its ranks in 1861.

Forrest High Follow Up

Here is a follow up to my previous post about the controversy over Forrest High School in Jacksonville, FL. As a side note, the local middle school is named afer JEB Stuart.

Forrest High will keep its name after two years of controversy, school board votes 5-2 to leave the name.

By TOPHER SANDERS

The Times-Union Nathan Bedford Forrest High School's name will remain unchanged. The Duval County School Board voted 5-2 Monday to leave the name of Forrest High School, which honors the Confederate general, slave trader and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The decision ends two years of controversy over a possible name change. The vote to change the name of the majority black school split down racial lines, with board members Betty Burney and Brenda Priestly Jackson, the board's only black members, casting the two votes to change the name.Priestly Jackson and Burney said the school was named after Forrest in 1958 as a slap in the face to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Board of Education to integrate schools. "It was done to slap in the face integration and now the school itself is almost all African-American," Burney said. Board members voting to keep the name said energy surrounding the issue and the resources it would take the change the name are better suited to helping the school improve its academics. Forrest received an F on the most recent Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.Board member Kris Barnes, who wrote the agenda item recommending the rejection of the name change, said she had a problem that the issue was raised by the community instead of the students going to the school. Barnes said she wouldn't be able to understand the pain the name may cause blacks, but said she was frustrated so much time was being spent on a name of a school. "I would like the see it go through a process started by the student body," Barnes said. Board member Vicki Drake said she was displeased by the number of people who showed up at Forrest's School Advisory Council meetings to voice their concerns about the name change, but wouldn't come to the meetings to help the children at the school succeed. "The children didn't ask anybody to change the name of their school, the children asked for help to read and write," Drake said.Board member Tommy Hazouri agreed with Drake and Barnes. "For me in my heart, I think the great concern today is moving that school off the F chart," he said. "I believe that we should leave the name where it is. "The board voted after listening to more than two hours of public comment. About 100 people concerned about the name change attending the board meeting. The public's statements featured dueling histories and opinions of Forrest and his life. Opponents said removing Forrest's name was a step toward erasing Southern heritage and called Forrest a civil rights advocate and a good man

Historical Fiction and the Civil War

Two recent events here at UK (trying now to put effigies aside) have got me thinking about the role of historical fiction and the Civil War. A couple of weeks ago, University of Georgia emeritus Dr. Charles Hudson gave a talk on the role of historical fiction in illuminating the often obscure world of Indians in the pre-white-contact South. An anthropologist by training, Hudson uses fictionalized dialogues between Spanish priests and Scottish backwoodsmen and the Indians whom each encountered (the Coosa in the first instance and the Cherokee in the latter). Hudson argued that historical fiction can fill in gaps in the historical, anthropological, and archaeological record, allowing a skilled author to illuminate a "history of a far older South" than the one normally associated with the Civil War era.

I relate this to understanding the Civil War because, well, I relate everyhting to the study of the war. But the real catalyst was that my US History to 1865 classes are reading The Killer Angels, perhaps the most popular piece of Civil War fiction and certainly so in the latter twentieth century. Not having read Shaara for a few years, I was struck at his characterization of North and South when I went back over it recently. Of the Army of Northern Virginia he writes, "It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though there are many men who cannot read or write, they all speak English. They share common customs and a common faith..." The Army of the Potomac, on the other hand, "is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon the planet."

But is that correct? Is that a fair assesment of the armies? Would Joseph Glatthaar agree with Sharra's assertions? I don't think history supports these generalizations. The bigger question is: what happens when historical fiction no longer patches a skeletal documentary record, but contradicts scholarly understanding of the past? Hudson spoke to this during the Q&A. As the fiction is built upon the bedrock of scholarship, he said, when the understanding of the past changes, the "truth" of the fiction must therefore change.

But at the same time, as a work of art, of literature, historical fiction endures as a representation of the era that produced it. Hudson read a selection from one of his books, relating the story of the burial of the two stone idols at Etowah. He explicitly, he said, moved away from the documentable theories on their destruction and spun a mythological tale through the narration of The Raven, a Coosa priest. The Coosa, Hudson said, would not have remembered an academic analysis of the socio-political upheaval that caused them to abandon their gods, but would have instead remembered the emotion of it, the story of it, through their oral tradition. His brand of social anthropology which seeks to understand people as they understand themselves -- not as they are understood by others -- produces more of an impressionistic watercolor than a high-def photograph.

So too, I think, with Civil War memory. Postbellum generations of Americans (Northern and Southern) remembered the emotion, the feeling, the watercolor rather than the hard details which are being born out through historical research. So, then, is the study of Civil War memory history or anthropology? Art history? What does an 1880s memoir or a 1920s work of history tell us more about: the Civil War it discusses or the ways in which later peoples understand thier world and their past? Does the fact that The Killer Angels mischaracterizes the warring armies diminish its value? Or does the fact that it struck a chord in American society reflect its "truth" as percieved by many Americans? Which is more real today: historical reality or modern perception of reality? Which will prompt people to act? Do historians have a duty only to observe this cultural phenomenon or to realign the perception?

My classes will have the option to write on this theme in a short paper, and I'll be interested to see their responses. In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear any of your own.

Forrest Still Making The Headlines

Although covered recently by Kevin over at Civil War Memory, here is another story about the Forrest High courtesy of the AP.

Confederate general’s name may come off Florida school

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Nathan Bedford Forrest was a millionaire slave trader, a ruthless Confederate general, an early Ku Klux Klan leader — and the namesake of what is now a majority African-American high school.
After almost a two-year delay, the Duval County School Board next week will consider whether to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School to Firestone High, after the street it sits on. The board joins other Southern districts that have hotly debated whether to strip Confederate leaders’ names from schools and other buildings.

The squabble is part of the modern South’s never-ending soul searching over the Civil War and its legacy, a discussion that often finds Forrest at the center.
“This guy was a brutal monster,” said Steven Stoll, an adjunct sociology instructor at Florida Community College who is white and supports changing the name of the high school. “Why would you want to keep honoring a person like this? It is an insult to black people.”
Forrest is hardly the lone Confederate hero whose name adorns streets, buildings and other public projects, or used to.
But efforts to strip Confederates’ names and take down memorials to them have mostly been thwarted throughout the South, often after being denounced as part of an effort to remove all references to the Confederacy. In Hampton, Va., for example, attempts to rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School and Jefferson Davis Middle School failed.
Some say Forrest’s deeds have been exaggerated and have to be considered in the context of the Civil War.
“Forrest was revered all over the world and his tactics are still studied today,” said Lee Millar, president of the General N.B. Forrest Historical Society in Memphis, Tenn. “He became a hero to all.”

Born poor in Chapel Hill, Tenn., in 1821, Forrest amassed a fortune as a plantation owner and slave trader, importing Africans long after the practice had been made illegal. At 40, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate army at the outset of the Civil War, rising to a cavalry general in a year.
Some accounts accuse Forrest of ordering black prisoners to be massacred after a victory at Tennessee’s Fort Pillow in 1864, though historians question the validity of the claims.
“He did not order a massacre. He did order wholesale killing, but I do believe he lost control of the battle and there were people killed who should not have been killed,” said Brian Steel Wills, a professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, who wrote a biography of Forrest.
In 1867, the newly formed Klan elected Forrest its honorary Grand Wizard or national leader, but publicly denied being involved. In 1869, he ordered the Klan to disband because of the members’ increasing violence. Two years later, a congressional investigation concluded his involvement had been limited to his attempt to disband it.
After his death in 1877, memorials to him sprung up throughout the South, particularly in Tennessee.
Forrest High School in Jacksonville opened as an all-white school in the 1950s, getting its name at the suggestion of the Daughters of the Confederacy. They saw it as a protest of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that eventually integrated the nation’s public schools.
Now, blacks make up more than half of the student body.
Two 17-year-old seniors at the school say the consensus among students is to leave the name alone.
“As students, (the name is) not a big deal to us,” said Jamal Freeman, a black student who noted it would cost a lot to change uniforms for the band and sports teams, nicknamed the Rebels.
Sabrina Lampp, a white student, said a change “takes all the memories away.”
Jacksonville has three other schools named after Confederate generals, none as sensitive as Forrest.
“He got a bad rap,” said L.A. Hardee, a member of the board at Jacksonville’s Museum of Southern History. “He was an honorable man. People don’t take into consideration the times. It’s a Southern thing. They ought to keep the name.”

Co. Aytch Recap

As Lee's last post noted, the 145th Anniversary of the battle of Chickamauga was celebrated this weekend. And it was celebrated in two distinct ways, on and off the Military Park. At the NPS site, all of your intrepid bloggers were employed in presenting a bang-up weekend of interpretive programming that our increased visitor traffic enjoyed. Down the road, however, the "big show" reenactment took a nosedive for the worse when nationally known neo-Confederate and advocate of the myth of Black Confederate soldiers, H.K. Edgerton took top billing in the "education" portion of the event. It was beyond a sham. Out of curiosity, I stopped in on one of H.K's sermons (for really I don't want to call them lectures or talks... scholars give those), and was unsurprisingly disgusted before a full five minutes were up. The contrast between the scholarly and professional character of the NPS events and the circus-like atmosphere of the reenactment was even apparent to many park visitors who we found were leaving to come be educated with the NPS. It truly was a fantastic weekend.

For my part, as Lee has also said, I put together a little living history event. I've still got many lessons to unpack from this one: which I think means it was a success. But here is a brief AAR. We started out intending to go far beyond the boundaries of living history at a Park that has had one of the strongest traditions within the NPS Civil War community. We sought to recreate the famous Co. Aytch in age, physical condition, "look," and attitude. And, though our numbers may have been small, we succeeded in all of these these regards. The small numbers, though, were an extreme benefit for us, as we were able to bring our audience up close to see exactly what a platoon of that famous company looked like. What it looked like in its entirety:

Essentially, we argued that if we are to tell the full story of Company H, 1st Tennessee Vol. Infantry then we must look beyond Sam Watkins' famous book. Though it is a fine starting point, it is and must be understood as a product of a particular race, class, and worldview unique to the 1880s. Drawing from other scattered writings by and about the 1st, we claimed that discussing the soldiers who volunteered and about whom Sam wrote was only telling a fraction of the story. Underlying every story about every character in Co. Aytch are the stories that Sam consciously excluded, hoping they would become lost. What about the men who didn't volunteer? We know that of the more than 1,000 men in the 1st Tenn. there were at least 50 slaves who accompanied them into the field. Of the 50, we know the names of just 3, one of whom, Sanker, belonged to Sam himself. Where did their narrative go? Why are they not in Co. Aytch? We made the contested claim that Sanker's, Wash Webster's, and Uncle Ike's stories deserve equal footing with those of Tennessee Thompson, Billy Webster, and Alf Horsley.

I can truthfully say that the most stunning part of the event -- for me at least -- was Emmanuel Dabney's presence in the role of my body servant. It was a presence that has not been seen on that field since 1863. That simple presence in the -- or more properly outside of the -- ranks of Co. Aytch was the first step to re-finding these individuals who were fully participant in the events that made up Watkins' narrative but that would be lost to time if we rely on Watkins' postwar memory. Reflecting on the programs we did this weekend with some other long-time Chick-Chatt'ers we agreed that this was the first time that an African American voice had been heard on that battlefield, certainly all the more important that it was one from the Confederate side, too. With the "big show" down the road playing host to H.K. Edgerton's sketchy (at best) claims, it was a high note for scholarship in the parks. The contrast couldn't have been greater, and that is exactly what we need our National Parks to provide.

Aside from the many lessons, fine programs, and hilarious times we had this weekend, there will be two related moments which will stick with me forever. Both involved reinforcing -- to me and hopefully to the audience to whom we were speaking at the time -- the basic inhumanity of slavery. One, as I was delivering a tactical talk and it came time to drop knapsacks I unslung mine and let it fall to the ground. Before I could finish my sentence and place it in the stack with the platoon's, Emmanuel had walked up -- eyes down and hands folded -- and moved it before I could say a word. I instantly knew that I had an opportunity to demonstrate the institution's cruelty here, and so I did not acknowledge his act, did not thank him for it, did not make eye contact, did not stop my talk. My own cruelty -- even to make a teaching point to the audience -- made me shudder inside. In another talk, as I paced up and down in front of the audience I took off my kid gloves and held them behind me for Emmanuel to take. Again without looking back, without saying a word, without acknowledging him in the least, I demanded his service and his loyalty. I denied him the choice of taking my gloves or not; I required that he did. And as I felt those gloves leave my hand, and as I continued my talk without missing a beat, I was sickened.

The point is not that Emmanuel was more than willing to do these things during our programs; the point is not that we dispensed with our master-slave roles once the crowds left. The point is that we got to the essence of living history this weekend. We demonstrated for the public the horrifying nature of that master-slave relationship that the battlefield had not seen since 1863. But this time we were not fighting to maintain it. We were fighting to educate a public that often does not -- can not -- grasp the basic dehumanization that that relationship forced. This time we were fighting to give these invisible characters their shot at making history at Chickamauga.

The question now is, how do we make this an every day experience for visitors at our National Park Service sites? How can we make these lessons not for special events, but for each and every visitor who walks through our doors?

Update: 2 things.
Link to my Co. Aytch research blog
Link to Authentic-Campaigner thread to see other participants' reactions.

A Few D--D Fools Came Through

Recently, some of the blog staff were taking a tour of Elm Springs in Columbia, home of -- among others -- A.M. Looney, the original Captain of Co. H (Aytch), 1st Tennessee. Now, it is the SCV's headquarters and open for social events and touring. Well, we weren't expecting much out of the tour and were not disappointed, but in talking about the Maury Grays, our tour guide mentioned that "over 200 of them left and only a handful returned." And I called B.S. I had done some work with them in the CSRs and knew perfectly well that that was untrue. Untrue still -- or at least half true -- is how Sam Watkins wrote about the end of the regiment.

The day that we surrendered our regiment it was a pitiful sight to behold. If I remember correctly, there were just sixty-five men in all, including officers, that were paroled on that day. ... It was indeed a sad sight to look at, the old First Tennessee Regiment. A mere squad of noble and brave men, gathered around the tattered flag that they had followed in every battle through that long war.

Of course, Sam himself didn't see the end of the regiment, he stayed in Middle Tennessee after the disastrous winter campaign and took the oath in Memphis. But even the way the above is phrased is disingenuous. It implies that the rest of the unit were all killed or disabled, which , we find, is actually far from the truth. Running through the CSRs we find the real "what happened" to the men of Co. H. Of the 111 1861 Maury Grays we can see that by far the greatest source of attrition is being detached to other assignments and transferring to other units (and usually getting promoted in the process). This is followed in number by men being discharged usually for disability. Interesting among the discharges are those done in accordance with the Conscript Act of 1862, the famous "20 Negro Law" that exempted the family members of large slaveowners from military service, ostensibly to serve as pattyrollers guarding against the feared servile insurrection.

Note that those things that SRW rails against: men getting put in "bombproof" positions and going home on the "20 Negro" bill are prevalent among his 1861 comrades.

Then nearly half of the army was detailed for "corps" of some kind: "signal corps, engineer corps, ordinance corps, infirmary corps, sapper and miner corps, etc., etc., and when the private soldier saw all these corps put on detail and left him to do the fighting, he felt that our cause was lost. It made him sick of war, boys that had volunteered with him all get some kind of positions and left him to bear the brunt of battle. The first year there were eight in my mess. At Corinth...seven were promoted...

No wonder that Sam felt "the common soldier" was left to fight the war alone, because he himself saw a disproportionate number of his fellows leave the firing line during the war. Compared to the men who leave the line through transfers, relatively few of the men of Aytch actually get killed, wounded and disabled, or die of disease. For all the fights they were in, the losses of the company were slight. In the revised edition of Aytch, we see that Sam was starting to recognize this. I think these sentiments come out as a result of some alienation from his old comrades and a big falling out in the late 1880s, but they speak more to the truth.

Now, what became of the original 3,200? I can tell you. They were all promoted to Captains, Colonels, Generals, Commissaries, and staff officers, scouts, spies, special details, and a few d--d fools came through.

Yep.

We look at the men who join the unit later and find a changed picture indeed from the original MGs. Few of them can use elite family connections to get transferred away from the main line. We can see, though, that they don't stick with the fight to the end. A huge chunk of the conscripts desert the army, most of them in the Spring of 1863 after being conscripted in Febuary of that year. Though the later men were only 1/3 of the company's total strength, they make up nearly 3/4 of the company's desertions. One of the Maury Gray deserters, it must be remembered, is our own Sam Watkins. Look also at how many more of the later additions per captia were captured in battle, leading to questions about how willing they were to go over to the enemy.

There are some fascinating trends here that I want to explore further. Use the comments section to point out any you see.

"A True Story of the Ku Klux, White Caps and Happenings in the South"

I thought I'd share with you all some excerpts from a typescript from the collection of the Chattanooga History Center. Written by E. G. Carroll, a Rossville, Georgia attorney between 1920 and 1930, this record of extra-legal violence provides a fascinating insight into the postwar environment of Northwest Georgia and Southeast Tennessee and the ongoing act of memory making that made Klansmen and White Caps into heroes who upheld morality, racial order, and law.

Today's excerpts:

"This is a true story of the activites of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps in North Georgia, and teh incident that led to the destruction of the White Caps. I have gotten my information in regard to the Ku Klux Klan from men who belonged to the organization and women who lived through those terrible Carpetbag days. Most of the information that I have gathered in regard to the White Caps was given to me by the late Steve Shackleford of Gordon County Georgia, who lived in a community where most of the men belonged to the organization.

I find that most people think that the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps were the same organization but they were not. The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization that operated in the South during the Carpetbag days immediately after the Civil War. The White Caps were the outgrowth from the original Ku Klux Klan and operated in North Georgia until sometime in the nineties. They wore the same disguise and probably started out under the same laws and regulations as the Ku Klux Klan, but they were not the same organization."

..... "Of course we have no written records of what happened in those days, this is the Klan kept no records of what they did. I have gathered what little information I have of Klansmen and conditions in those days, from talking with men and women who were there. Those old Klansmn were very stingy with their information. My father T. B. Carroll of Marion County, Tennessee, was a Confederate soldier and a Klansman, but he would tell me very little about the organization. He did tell me about some of the things Uncle Bill Smith did over in Marion County. I don't suppose there is anyon in Marion County Tennessee, who remembers one arm Bill Smith. Uncle Bill and his company used to come over and do the hanging for the Chattanooga Boys. They hung some carpetbaggers down on the river one night to the beams of an old building. There was no chance to charge that hanging to the Chattanooga Boys, for they made it convenient to be seen on the streets at the time of the hanging. It seem[ed] to be a rule of the Klan to never make a raid in their own community."

Copyright, Chattanooga History Center, 2008

Happy 4th of July from the 72nd Indiana

With the recent work looking at motivations of soldiers and other aspects of the mind of the Confederate soldier it should not be forgotten that there were United States soldiers who would display some of the same views and attitudes, in this case I'm refering to a diehard hatred of the enemy, similar to my previous post on the matter. The following is a good example of that, A special thanks to Chickamauga and Chattanooga NMP Historian Jim Ogden for bringing this to my attention this morning, the account is from the History of The Seventy-Second Regiment Indiana on July 4th, 1863, "We gathered in the afternoon at headquarters and Col. Kirkpatrick, who was the only politician in the regiment, was called out for a speech. He responded in one of his happiest efforts. When he spoke of the 'dear old flag, the stars and stripes' in a grand burst of eloquence he said, 'they should wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave when the last mother's son of the rebellion should be dead and rotten, damned and forgotten.' We cheered him to the echo...This occasion was an oasis in the many dreary days of our service."

The Emasculated Postwar South

April 1865, the end of the Civil War, must have been an unfathomable blow for many Confederates. I think we may underestimate the psychological impact of defeat on the Confederate soldier (particularly Jason Phillips' young "diehards"). Not only had they lost the war that they had been fighting and dying in for four years, but their society was in ruins. Sure, there was physical destruction, but their social worlds were turned upside down as well. Slavery, which had brought with it both economic success and social stability, was torn out from under the white South. White Southern soldiers had been whipped on the battlefield, their efforts to protect home and fireside had come to naught, and they had failed to defend their way of life. Bertram Wyatt-Brown notes the shame and dishonor that this failure brought down on the heads of Confederates. What's more, slavery's end meant that citizenship, and the manhood that came with it in the 19th c., was open to African Americans. As Confederate soldiers returned home, found themselves no longer in control of their local political (and racial) structures, unable to make a decent living for their families, and insulted by their former slaves' assertions of citizenship and the rights of men, 1865 was a psychological crisis for Southern males.

All of this came flooding back when I was in Nashville on a research trip earlier this week. In the War Memorial Plaza near the capital sits a 1926 monument to the women of the Confederacy. The monument depicts "Fame supporting the wounded and exhausted Confederate soldier with her left arm while with her right hand she is placing a wreath upon the head of the Southern Woman, whose every nerve is vibrating with love and sympathy for the soldier and his cause, as expressed by the palm she is trying to place upon his breast, thoroughly unconscious that as her reward a crown is being placed upon her own head."(1) Alright, but aside from the fama gloriaque patriae, I was most struck by the unusual tip of the flag being drug down by the defeated soldier. Good God, it's limp!

Indeed, cutting through all the neo-classicism here, there is indeed a powerful statement on how the white South saw the end of the war. As Anne Sarah Rubin points out, the white South was a poltically, economically, and socially shattered nation The Confederacy's fall was an irrecoverable blow to the honor, pride, and manhood of some who slid into alcoholism, fled to Brazil or Egypt, or sank into deep depressions for the rest of their lives. The language of Reconstruction and Redemption is couched in terms of manhood lost, manhood asserted, and manhood reclaimed. Former Confederates lost that claim to masculinity when they were shut out of the political process, blacks claimed a share of that manhood themselves when they first began serving in the Union Army during the war and began to vote after it. Whites lashed out against this assertion of masculinity, too. Kuklux night riders at times castrated lynching victims, and often used accusations of rape (a decidedly masculine crime) as pretext for racial violence. In my own work on post-Fifteenth Amendment racial violence in Kentucky, we see organized anti-black militia activity in the state began as blacks began to vote, amid exaggerated rumors of a "Negro Kuklux" that was to fight back against the white Klan's own excesses, essentially challenging white men's role of "defenders" of the community. In reasserting control of their own communities during the era of Redemption, southern white males successfully reclaimed their shattered -- even limp -- manhood as well.

The UCV, who approved the design, apparently remembered that stinging shame of emasculation well, even in the 20th century. Yet again, beneath the veneer of Lost Cause glorification lurks some nuggets of the raw reality of the war years.

A Rovin' We Shall Go

This summer, the staff of your favorite Western Theater blog (this one...right?) have been taking a series of research trips on our days off. There are some quality posts that are due to be written stemming from these, but I thought I'd share one of the lighter ones. Last week while headed to Montgomery to the Alabama Dept. of Archives and History, we stopped in Jacksonville, AL, the hometown of our own Chris Young. Now, Jacksonville at the time of the War was a regular metropolis, the transportation hub of the northeast (in the pre-Birmingham days), and the county seat of Calhoun.

Now it is none of those things. It is home to a fine regional university, though, and more important to our readership is the resting place of The Gallant Pelham. I know, I try to keep our posts centered on the war in the West, but I figure that since he is buried in an area that Eastern Theater partisans rarely travel to (i.e. outside the I-95 corridor) it deserves some illumination (I kid, I kid). The Gallant Pelham's memory still hangs heavy on the good people of Jacksonville, the main drag through town, the one that used to lead right to the courthouse has been renamed for him. The cemetary, too, cannot seem to move beyond his dashing Confederate legacy. The pedestaled statue of the Major dominates the cemetery, and is placed, curiously, on the edge of the cemetery, looking over the town. It struck me as the Feudal lord, surveying his lands and serfs; Pelham, Earl of Jacksonville, Defender of the Cause.

And the local SCV (Pelham Camp, go figure!) has contributed in its own way to further the cult of the glorious Cause. Their marker for some CS unknowns who died in the hospitals in the town sums up so much about the romanticization and glorification of the Confederate soldier that has taken place over the intervening years. "Carved out of the endurance of granite God created his masterpiece -- The Confederate Soldier."

Even the grave of a local reenactor (and yes, it did mention that fact quite prominently) abandons traditional imagery of death, mourning, and grief to have laser-carved Lost Cause images from Mort Kunstler's playbook. What does it mean to define your own life, and your lasting footprint on this physical world, not for any feats that you yourself have attained, but instead to define yourself in relation to an historical event? Honestly, this is not even defining yourself in relation to a historical event, but instead to the constructed memory of that event, the Beau Ideal of the Lost Cause that the sacrifice of the young, dashing, Gallant Pelham over across the way did so much to establish in both life and death. Do the people of Jacksonville still live to serve the Cause? Can't we say something else about Mr. Carter other than "He was true to the 'ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods'?"


All this stands in marked contrast to one small section of the cemetary, not far, incidentally, from the Pelham monument. The graves of the servants of the Hoke, Forney, and Abernathy families (some of the best names in the antebellum town, I'm told). "In memory of their faithful servants: Ellen, Sallie, Nancy, Jemima, Mary, Judy, Harriet, Alfred, Johnny, and others." And others? There were better than 35 "others" in that plot. The families don't know enough to name more than the handful, don't care how many there are, don't mark them with more than a rock. Those "faithful servants," apparently, should just be happy they got to be buried with their whitefolks, and in such close proximity to that dashing young artillerist who died to perpetuate their inferiority. Of course, in contrast to those CS unknowns, there isn't a Sons of Former Slaves group to come back and place nice stones on the graves of these people. They receive no eulogy, no one to tell how their own endurance must have been carved out of granite. Instead, they remain nameless, faceless, nearly forgotten. Even when remembered, these people are seen not as icons of the past whose lives we should emulate but as faithful witnesses to the Old South, as those good ol' darkies whom the paternalistic Confederacy was fighting to "care for." I don't mean to downplay the physical sacrifice of the Confederacy or of its fighting men here, but what are we to think of these slaves, of American citizens of all colors today, if the CS soldier was indeed "God's Masterpiece?"

Imagined VS History

A short post to note about a strange incident today. I was called regarding one of our living history programs and was asked if there would be tents, after explaining that historically the two armies in the Chickamauga Campaign didn't really have a lot of tentage and that we discouraged their use, to be asked again if there would be tents, and when told no, they hung the phone up on me. Just very odd.

Memoirs and the Adventure of War pt. 2

A bit ago I started musing on why Confederate veterans in their postwar memoirs always seemed to go seeking adventures in '61, as John Jackman of the 9th KY put it, like so many Romantic Don Quixotes. Part One explored some of the instances when the "fun and adventure" motivation could have motivated soldiers, but here I want to show why I think this is a postwar creation as part of the glossing over of the war's causes.

What’s the point of understanding who the postwar memoirist was in 1861? It is to say that the postwar memoirist came from the set of men who had the most on the line in 1861. He was the one who was completing his studies, apprenticeship, or clerkship and was looking to start a business for himself soon. He was the one looking to get married in the next few years and start a family. He was the one who wanted to take advantage of the cheap land and need for professional men in the western territories. He was the one who wanted slavery extended into those territories so that he could make a profitable living there. He was the one whom Lincoln’s election (with its promise to corral slavery in the states where it already existed) most threatened. The memoirist was from a set of men that were fire-eating secessionists, who held secession rallies in towns and on college campuses, who joined militia units in the wake of John Brown’s raid, and who enlisted to fight for the Confederacy in the hopes that they might be able to extend their property rights into the Southwestern territories. The memoirist and his comrades fought for slavery, no two ways around it. Slavery’s prosperous expansion was both an Enlistment Motivation for the memoirist as well as a Sustaining one. If the Confederacy failed, his world would be turned upside down. His father’s economic security would crumble, their own plans to expand West, be fruitful, and plantation-ize the territories would go up in smoke. The memoirist can write about the entire war from wire to wire because he fought the entire war, wire to wire. The memoirist was a diehard because his old life was over if the war was lost. Memoirists like Marcus Toney didn’t give up the fight in 1865 either...he became a Kukluxer.

So, in the late 19^th century, the memoirist found that having fought for slavery (and implicitly personal economic and social stability in their future lives) was politically inexpedient. It did not harmonize with the tone of sectional reconciliation that was currently being pushed by the UCV, the Southern Historical Society, et al. Hence, one of his underlying Enlistment motivations and one of his Sustaining Motivations, the expansion and preservation of slavery, was swept under the rug. The substance of the war, the pretext for the adventure, and the motivation that sustained them long after their thirst for martial glory was slaked, was quenched.

What has this done to our understanding of the Confederate soldier? Just like the rest of the Lost Cause interpretation that has whitewashed the war’s causes in favor of highlighting the military events. We understand the young Confederate enlistee not as a forward-thinking, big man on the make but as youthful innocents, too besotted with starry-eyed dreams of heroism to know what they were getting into. We forget the two years of military training that many of them had had in the wake of the Brown raid, we forget the filibustering experience of their older brothers and their officers, we forget the decade of growing conflict brewing as these men came of age. They become hollow allegories, representing lost youth. It’s a tearjerker and a tragedy, we are to feel sympathy for the South’s “Lost Generation” who willingly sacrificed themselves. An understanding like this flattens the Confederate soldier. He is no longer a complex human being with plans for the future, fighting to make a place for himself in a competitive world, but instead a fatalistically Romantic child-hero, free from sin and reproach.

Did the memoirists need to remember their fallen comrades as such? It likely helped ease the burden of their own survivors’ guilt. But in a larger sense, removing the political and racial issues of 1861 from the table promoted national (white) reconciliation, goodwill and amiable respect between North and South. It was this respect and removal of Republican oversight that allowed those same memoirists and their comrades free reign to rewrite state constitutions and pass legislation in the state houses and deny justice in the courts. The memoirist and his youthful, adventurous literary character helped usher in the era of Jim Crow. It took the country another half-century to reverse the legal segregationist course that the aging Civil War generation set us on in the 1890s as these memoirs were at the height of their popularity.

Unfortunately, it has taken historiography even longer. In recent years, historians have begun to cut through the mythology and see the carefully constructed memoir’s hero for what he was: a postwar creation of Jubal Early, Marcus Toney, and Sam Watkins that served the contemporary political and social ends of the white South. Today, those who continue to promote the “fun and adventure” thesis live in a past as false as Gone With the Wind. In one respect, by consuming, digesting, and promoting that image of the antebellum South, they participate vicariously in and implicitly support the post-Reconstruction campaign to reestablish the antebellum Southern power structure and disenfranchise blacks. Can we look past the “fun and adventure” now?

You Are No Brother Of Mine...

One aspect of the Civil War that is ingrained in our popular imagination is the tragic brother against brother aspect of the war, that men could be friends on the picket line and the next day they would try to kill each other. However, how true was this mindset? For some soldiers in the Army of Tennessee the notion of a brother's war was laughable. Captain Thomas J. Key of the Helena (AR) Artillery would note in his diary on August 5th, 1864;

"From Camp Sumter I received a letter from one of the Yankee prisoners whose name is Leroy L. Key, Sergeant in Company M, 16th Illinois Infantry, addressing me as his brother, He evidently has a brother with the same initials as mine, and his relatives are in the South, though he has betrayed all these and enlisted under the black banner of Abolitionism. He speaks of his mother and sister, and one, Lucy, of near Cahaba, Alabama. Leroy L. Key, you are no brother of mine, and if you were I would disown you; therefore I cannot correspond with you."

Leroy Key might have considered himself lucky to have been captured and not killed, On May 30th, 1864, the Macon Telegraph published a report from the Army of Tennessee, dated May 27th,

"Few prisoners were taken. Indeed, it is a subject of remark that the entire number taken since the first gun was fired in front of Dalton is surprisingly small. Truth is, the men are tired of taking them. They know the time of enlistment will soon expire, and the Yankee authorities would be slow to exchange for them veterans who are enlisted for the war, and are now smarting
under the indignities and cruelties which have been heaped upon them in prison, and chafing with impatience to be once again in the field. The intense hatred which we sometimes see expressed in the newspapers for Yankees is beginning to be felt by the entire army, rank and file, and they begin to feel that it is idle to take them prisoners and to divide rations with them."

Even though there were moments of charity, such as the truce that occured at Kennesaw Mountain, following the assault of June 27th, to remove the wounded and bury the dead, there were ugly moments. Captain B.J. Semmes noted, "Our men of Maney's Brigade, hearing their piteous cries for water, filled their canteens and advanced to give them water, and some were wounded by the enemy. One of my old brigade, Vaughns, was killed by a wounded Yankee officer whilst he was giving water to a wounded Yankee colonel, whereupon our men commenced firing upon their wounded and killed all in reach except those who crawled to our lines." Examples like this should make us reconsider exactly how civil combatants were to one another.

Memoirs and the Adventure of War pt. 1

Was the “just for fun and adventure” justification for joining the army a postwar concoction? Did the memoirists writing in the 1880s and 1890s use this excuse as a way to get around discussing the real reasons they went to war in 1861? When we accept “adventure” as a valid reason for men to go to war in 1861, do we also accept the program of Lost Causeism and sectional reconciliation that helped obscure the underlying issues of race and slavery that drove the nation to war?

John Jackman of the 9^th Kentucky told of his instant decision to seek the romantic life of a man-at-arms, and his narrative is similar to many veterans’ accounts.

I walked down to the Depot...to get the daily papers, and as I was passing in, W[illiam] S[toner] said to me, “Let us go to Bloomfield to-night, and join the party going through to Dixie!” or something to that effect. I had scarcely thought of such a thing before; but in an instant my mind was made up, and I answered, “All right.” ... Taking nothing but a traveling shawl, I mounted and joined W.S. at his home. We were soon on the road, two modern Don Quixotes starting out to seek adventures.

My concern for the “fun and adventure” thesis is that – as many veterans today and yesterday will know – war stops being fun very, very quickly. To couch that in McPherson’s terms, adventure can be a fine Initial or Enlistment Motivation that gets men into the ranks but is far from a Sustaining Motivation that keeps them there. When the novelty wears off, the soldier had to have something to keep him in the service. Now, usually that something is “small group cohesion,” the loyalty to comrades built over time by combat veterans. But Civil War memoirists will universally note that they were not in combat before the rosy shine wore right off military life. There has to be something else, some bigger picture they were fighting for, that kept these men in the ranks.

We must note that when soldiers talk about yearning for the glories of the soldiering life, they couple those sentiments with discussion of public pressure. The small communities from which the Civil War soldier was drawn leaned heavily on its young men to serve in the military to prove themselves men. Military service was a natural rite of passage for a new generation of townies. So, Marcus Toney of the 1^st Tennessee wrote that “The young ladies were as enthusiastic as the young men; and if they found a fellow lukewarm, he was threatened with a petticoat and was not allowed to hang up his had in their father’s hall.” Young men were supposed to crave the adventure of military service because proving themselves in that adventure would secure their place as marriageable men in the community. The “fun adventure” of military becomes much more meaningful and important to a man’s future when seen through this light.

But concern about your own marriageability and welcoming military rites of passage speak to a larger picture of the Confederate volunteer of 1861. Generally speaking, the postwar memoirist hailed from a very narrow antebellum demographic. He was in his early twenties in 1861, was well educated, was solidly middle- or planter-class, had great exposure to slavery (i.e. lived in a slaveowning household if not owning slaves himself), and enlisted early in the war. The older, married small farmer of the late 1861 and 1862 regiments did not usually write after the war, nor did he participate in memory-constructing groups like the United Confederate Veterans, which Gaines Foster has shown to be an urban, professional-class organization that included many memoirists and contributors to veterans’ magazines in its ranks. In many ways, that older man -- who, if anyone, can claim to have enlisted for protection of farm and family from invading Union armies -- has had his voice drowned out by the younger set who wrote more prolifically during and after the war. (This is not surprising, as Glatthaar has recently shown us that the 1862 volunteer was poorer and less educated than his 1861 counterpart)

So, what did the memoirist and his relatively affluent 1861 cohort have on the line that caused them to be the first in to the army and the last out? What is he obscuring when he talks only about desiring the grand adventure of war in his writings? How have these memoirs tainted our understanding of the 1861 Confederate volunteer?

Leave your answers in the comments, and see my own in in Part 2...

Morgan's "Ever Faithful" Mammy

One of my last official acts before leaving Kentucky for the summer was to take a stroll through the Lexington Cemetery, a mecca for those interested in the Commonwealth's Confederate contingent. The Hunt and Morgan family plot is, unsurprisingly, noteworthy for its high concentration of names familiar to students of the Western theater. The graves are arranged in semi-circles, all surrounding big daddy and golden-age Lexington millionaire John Wesley Hunt.

Among these resting places of one of Kentucky's first families, I noticed one marker standing out of place, in the middle of two rows (arcs?) of graves. You can see hers in the bottom right corner of the picture, behind the first arc of Hunt and Morgan graves. The small stone was marked "Bouviette James (Col.) Ever Faithful." Intrigued by this odd placement of a loyal family servant in the family plot, and hoping to find some evidence of postwar paternalistic benevolence, I did some digging.

Aunt Betty, as the Morgans called her, was the mammy of the house, caring for the children including young John Hunt Morgan. During the war, it is said that she was so loyal to the children that she became an ardent supporter of the Confederate cause, and likely mourned the family's losses along with the household's whites. When she died in 1870, the family buried her in their own plot with some of the surviving Morgans and Basil Duke as her pallbearers. So devoted to the family, was Ms. James, that her ghost is still said to haunt the house in Lexington, and was often seen with children when the residence was still occupied. Neat story, and one not unlike many of the "loyal slave" stories throughout the wartime and postwar South. It may even be seen as rather touching that the family would consider a former slave such an integral part of their household.

Undoubtedly, the relationship between family servant and white folks was close, even affectionate at times, but the relationship was always understood to be unequal. Black was always and unquestionably subservient to white, and the knowledge of this distinction was present in every daily interaction. In the case of Bouviette, her status within the household carried over into death as well. The Hunts and Morgans could not even write her name on her tombstone without reference to her skin color lest some future visitor mistake this (colored) woman for one of the "real" family. Further separating her is her placement within the plot. While Aunt Betty was buried with the family, hers was the only grave not arranged in one of the semi-circles around John Wesley Hunt. She was inside the household, to speak, but was never nor never would be part of the (quite literal) family circle. Her marker, smaller than the rest of the family, also highlights her inequality. Though she was of advanced age when she died in 1870, James received the same sized headstone as the Morgan children who died in infancy or pre-adulthood. Implicitly, then, Aunt Betty was in life and was to be in death a perpetual child, a racial other, and an inside-outsider in the Morgan family.

I find it most amazing that the Morgans perpetuated this master-servant domestic relationship beyond the grave. The permanence of Bouviette's outsider, unequal, childlike status is reinforced even though the post-Emancipation world had destroyed the legal framework of that relationship. Bouviette's unequal situation is particularly interesting in light of the political situation in 1870, the year she died. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 meant that blacks in Kentucky would vote for the first time in that year. When black men were beginning challenging Kentucky's antebellum political and social racial caste system through political participation, when black and white seemed closer to equality than they had ever been, when the slaveowning Hunts and Morgans feared their world was turning upside down, they buried their loyal old Mammy inside but ever outside the family circle. They showed their credentials as caring, paternalistic masters while at the same time demonstrated their idea of the proper station of African Americans in the Commonwealth.

A few feet from Bouviette, in one of the Morgan semi-circles, lies Francis K. Morgan, little brother of John H. Frank enlisted and served as a Private in Co. I of Morgan's and later Duke's 2nd KY Cav. during the war, and in 1870 joined the Citizens' Guards, a Lexington militia company raised amid white claims that the advent of black suffrage would lead blacks to claim full social equality with whites. Old antebellum fears of insurrection, race war, and miscegenation were trotted out to scare Kentucky whites into action against the state's newly-energized Republican party. Instead of "defending" the "threatened" white citizenry, though, the militiamen of the Guards and four other companies led by former Union and Confederate officers in the city would beat, shoot, intimidate, and harass blacks trying to vote or hold political rallies during elections from 1870-1873 (those companies and their violent reassertion of white supremacy, incidentally, were the subject of my recently completed MA thesis).

In the context of Frank Morgan's and other white Lexingtonians' struggle against black political and social equality in the early 1870s, Bouviette's "Ever Faithful" epitaph is a lesson for Bluegrass African Americans in their "proper" status: loyal, submissive, and unequal. Far from doing her honor by burying her "with" the family, Bouviette's peculiar interment in the Lexington Cemetery is a head on a pike, a hanged pirate in the harbor, a lesson, warning, and threat to African Americans no longer bound by slavery but still bound by the Commonwealth's antebellum racism and violence.