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 Little More Fiber in the Diet.....

This post comes to you with a special thanks to Dr. Keith Bohannon.

William Coffin, 39th Iowa, to wife, [3 miles north of Kingston, Ga] May 20, 1864
“what dead and prisners [of the enemy] I have seen seem to be pretty wel clothed and their haversacks wel filled with corn bread and meat their tirds along the road looks like coon tirds in roastenyear time there is a goodeal of brand mixed in . . . “

So for any reenactors out there you might want to increase your fiber intake before your next event for a truely authentic experience.

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?"

Eww, Military History?

There was a recent discussion on one of the Civil War reenacting boards I read that asked about reenacting's and reenactor's reputations in academia. Now, there were the standard responses that living history should be taken more seriously because the physical experience of soldiering is something that cannot be experienced in a library (which, having done a bit of reenacting, I might be inclined to agree with), and that the sensory experience connects with the visitor in ways that books cannot (which, as a NPS interpreter I have to admit is the case). And for these reasons, living history (which I feel is distinct from the typical "sham battle" reenacting) is a quality tool that can be used by both academic and public historians to enhance public education.

But, straddling as I am with legs on both sides of the fence, I draw the line between the interpretative technique of "living history" and battle "reenacting" for one reason: battle reenactments haven't moved forward with military history. By and large those that participate in battle reenactments have not moved "beyond the battlefield" to understand how the military experience meshed with society, culture, and politics. Reenacting, to my mind, takes a beating from academic historians for the same reason that academic military historians are sometimes viewed with mistrust by some of their colleagues: there aren't great lessons to be learned in the minutia of military actions. Since the coming of social history, women's and African American studies, and a host of beneficial historical fields since the 1960s, academia has justly seen pure military history as an exercise in historical self-gratification, one that serves only the historian. But this is not new; it was being identified even by some veterans of the Civil War themselves. One of my tours this summer at Chickamauga dealt with noted advocate of racial equality and Lt. in the 105th Ohio Infantry, Albion Tourgee. In the unit history of the 105th, he commented on just this same thing...

The causes from which events result are often of greater consequence than the events themselves. Nations and peoples, like individuals, act always from motives; and collective motives, like personal ones, may be either good or bad. ... It is because of this that the comparative importance of historical events depends very little on their physical extent, but almost wholly upon the motives of the actors or the sentiment they represent.

The who-shot-who doesn't matter when there are the deeper issues that brought the belligerents onto the field in the first place to be explored. Today's academic military historian must make the case -- to both the university publishing houses and to their various departments -- that they reach beyond the battlefield and connect military events to broader trends in society, culture, politics, economics, etc. (it is for this reason that I identify myself as a social historian of the military). In Tourgee's terms, they have to examine those motives for which men went to war. Of course, Tourgee had thought that this would have come about much sooner. He didn't foresee how much the Lost Cause movement's focus on the battlefield would delay the onset of this broader military history that has only come in the last 25 years. He believed it would come much sooner. Nevertheless, he was correct in his observations and predictions on the eventual direction of military history...

History, in the past, has concerned itself with aggregations and events. It has told us how

"The King of France, with twice ten thousand men,
Marched up the hill, -- and then marched down again."

The history of the future will be more concerned to know why the "twice ten thousand" followed the crowned braggart "up the hill," than in the reasons that inclined them to march "down again," -- it will deal with the causes rather than with events.

Reenacting has not followed the academy into the "history of the future" or the "new military history." Reenactors are understood at large as gearheads, drillheads, and consumers of tactical trivia. Is that a fair judgment on everyone in the community? No. Does it apply to the vast majority? I think so. When reenactors start dealing intelligently "with the causes" (i.e. consuming the latest trends in academic scholarship, not cowboying your own explanations for why men fought the war) "rather than with events;" when they start asking "who" and "why" instead of "what" and "how" then they will start to get a place at the academic table. Until then, they are a relic of an earlier academy.

The photo is of yours truly (right) and fellow author Chris Young (left) doing living history at Chick-Chatt earlier this summer. He as a regimental adjutant and I a line officer. Ain't we dandy!