Civil War 150th: Questions Remain
In this third part of BackStory‘s “Civil War 150th” series, the History Guys present a special listener Q & A. The episode picks up on some of the themes of the previous two “Civil War 150th” episodes, and puts a number of new questions on the table. What role did religion play in the lead-up to war? Why did Abraham Lincoln free the slaves in the Confederate states before he freed the slaves in the loyal states? What is the relevance of the Civil War today?
“Why They Fought” is Part III of a three-part BackStory series commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
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Further Reading
Still questioning? The BackStory research team has compiled a comprehensive list of print and online resources for further exploration. Read On.
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Three Civil War Specials | BackStory with the American History Guys :
[...] ago, Americans were absorbed with talk of war long before those cannons fired. In addition to a call-in show composed entirely of your questions, we’re planning two more Civil War specials this year. We [...]
Quote -- January 26, 2011 @ 1:43 pm -
Call in to BackStory’s Civil War Show on January 30, 2011 | TOCWOC - A Civil War Blog :
[...] producer Catherine Moore (cvmoore@virginia.edu) or leave a comment on Civil War Call-In Show page (http://backstoryradio.org/civil-war-call-in-show/). We look forward to hearing from [...]
Quote -- January 27, 2011 @ 9:01 pm -
National Park Service: The Former ‘Unwritten Rule’ on Discussing the Causes of the Civil War « Jubilo! The Emancipation Century :
[...] was over ten years ago. As such, I was very interested to read this comment on another site: The question I have for y’all is about the partisanship of interpretation at national park [...]
Quote -- January 28, 2011 @ 9:55 am -
“Questions Remain” — Transcript | BackStory with the American History Guys :
[...] This is the transcript of “Civil War 150th: Questions Remain,” broadcast in April of 2011. You can listen to the entire show here. [...]
Quote -- April 26, 2011 @ 9:31 am
Greetings! I’m a National Park Service employee who also teaches history at Portland State University. Our volunteer Public History Field School project this quarter is creating a four-year podcasting plan for the National Park Service’s Civil War sesquicentennial commemoration. (We’re also using your podcast in our class: http://hst409509.wordpress.com.) Our goal is to help visitors connect their interests to the meanings in the many NPS sites associated with the Civil War era.
An overarching theme is the value of place, especially in light of the broader thematic context of the Civil War that the NPS has created (with the help of many historians, including Dr. Ayres). Can you discuss the power of place in Civil War commemoration? Is a significant, tangible place necessary to help visitors understand the Civil War? If so, how? Does it provide something of value that can’t be found elsewhere? Does it provide a different path to understanding the complicated history of the Civil War era? What tips do the History Guys have for helping connect people to places?
Thank you for considering my question(s), and keep up the great work. You’re developing a dedicated listening group in the Pacific Northwest!
Cheers,
QuoteGreg Shine
(360) 816-6231
Hi,
I’m interested in hearing more about the sequence of events from November 1860 to May 1861and how they led to an armed conflict. Some specific questions I have:
Initially, South Carolina was the only state to secede, how seriously did Americans at the time take this and was war a forgone conclusion at this point? How much did South Carolina’s secession encourage the other 6 states that seceded before Fort Sumter?
Did South Carolina really need to attack Fort Sumter? If they hadn’t, would the Union have fired the first shot?
Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina waited until April/May to secede, and only after they were asked provide volunteers for the Union Army. If they hadn’t been asked to provide them, would they have stayed with the Union?
And here is the million dollar question, how much did these minor events shape history, as opposed to long term phenomenon like slavery and sectionalism?
Thanks!
Dan
QuoteGreetings!
I’m a big fan of the show and am absolutely giddy whenever a new episode becomes available. The question I have for y’all is about the partisanship of interpretation at national park service civil war sites. I myself am an NPS ranger at the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan, where we tell the story of NYC+slavery. Many of my visitors have told me that the rangers at the actual battlefields tend to teach the civil war in a fashion that glosses over slavery or is actually pro-confederate. I’m curious if this tendency may have arisen from customer demand, equivocation from the park service, or other reasons. The park service appears to be broadening its interpretative model:http://www.nps.gov/hfc/pdf/imi/civwar-reconst.pdf but still I’m concerned that the full horror of slavery or its role as a motivating factor in the civil war is glossed over in favor of ranger guided tours that focus on the specs of weaponry and read like gun-centric pornography.
Yours,
QuoteCyrus Forman
Manhattan
A couple of thoughts off the top of my head, regarding comments above . . .
Dan, I know that in Alexandria, VA, at least . . . and certainly portions of western Virginia (officially West Va., in 1863), support for the Federal government and against secession ran strong. Years of frustration with the state gov’t in Richmond (NOT just an old phenomenon, by the way
. . .), deep ancestral patriotism running back generations to the Revolution, and thoughts about what the Founding Fathers like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason (all Virginians) and so many others had crafted slightly more than a half-century before, all played a role in public commentary and debate. In the critical Presidential election of 1860, Alexandrians voted in largest numbers for John Bell, the Constitutional Unionist candidate who opposed the spread of slavery. As late as May, 1861, when Virginia’s secession ordinance was voted on in a state-wide referendum, residents of Alexandria City voted for it (overwhelmingly), while those in Alexandria County (now parts of Fairfax and Arlington Counties) voted against leaving the Union. Within days, Federal troops occupied the city, which lies within site of the Capitol, and held it as a supply depot and transportation hub for the duration.
So yes, feelings were definitely mixed, and the states that made up the Confederacy didn’t just fall into line behind South Carolina.
Cyrus, asa former NPS ranger myself, I know that the development of interpretive programs at all sites and parks is a very extensive process, and is open to change and re-interpretation over time. In the past, many tours and programs at NPS battlefields of all kinds, not just CW sites, has been heavily focused on military history, frequently to the detriment of social, political, and cultural themes. It’s an issue that the NPS is working to change, and individual rangers are typically given decent latitude to fold in other information that they’ve researched and can make part of a meaningful public program.
Like the field of public history elsewhere, it’s always a work in progress.
Quote(1) For those asking about the NPS, this video, from Dwight Pitcaithley, will be very useful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw8VmqHb9Bo
(2) In your show, I hope you can touch on the following:
o how many contrabands were there, and how did they live (or die)?
o how many slaves acted as impressed labor or did other duties for the Confederacy (ie, not black confederates, but other ways that slaves were used)?
o the way that MD, MO, TN, LA, and WV abolished slavery before the 13th Amendment. Many people correctly site that the EP excluded certain areas from its application. But several of those EP-exempted sates abolished slavery on their own before the war ended. And the EP had a role in that. Also, even though KY didn’t abolish slavery, a not-well-know policy that offered manumission to Union slaves resulted in tens of thousands of slaves gaining their freedom by enlisting in the USA army. That all would be useful to discuss.
QuoteI was ten during the centennial and remember the war was in all the papers in the Sunday papers (I lived in Chicago). That is what started my interest in the Civil War. I was wondering how Civil War scholarship has advanced since then. Computers make information collection and analysis much more sophisticated, but what about analysis of the events?
QuoteSeveral years ago I stopped, by chance, in a bookstore in Savannah, Georgia. In the local history section I pulled out a large, impressively bound book of civil war letters. I opened it at random and the first words I saw were: “…soldier mortals would not survive if they were not blessed with the gift of imagination and the pictures of hope. The second angel of mercy is the night dream…” Henry Graves wrote those words on the battlefield inPetersburg, Virginia, in 1862. He recited a dream so real that he demanded, when he awoke, to know where his beloved was and why she had abandoned him to the stench and noise of battle. I began a search for similar letters for research for a book [not yet published] on The Soldier’s Dream, which led me to archives, published memoirs, geneology websites and poems written from battlefield dreams.
In these dreams from the American Civil War, each letter reflects the personality of its author but also reflects the “sense” of the difference in culture between the north and south. Pragmatism takes precedent over emotion in the dreams of northern soldiers; the dreams of southern soldiers are more evocative and more detailed. The northern soldier speaks of the realness of his family in dreams of home; the southern soldier reaches out and touches the soft cheek of his beloved or smells the peaches in a southern arbor, so real that the soldier finds blasphemous betrayal when he awakes and his love is not there.
This was a time when the American culture – north and south – accepted dreams as a valued indicator of life and death, of hope and sorrow, a precognitive hold on humanity that allowed the soldier to survive horrible living conditions, loneliness, depression, and the bodily depravations of war and prison. These dreams were, as Graves wrote, “angels of mercy” to the “soldier mortal” – as they are today.
Jung believed that soldier’s dreams of home kept them sane on the battlefield and that when dreaming of home ceased, the soldier fought his enemy with less humanity. Even so, are there notable cultural differences in the two sides’ relationships to “home” in the American Civil War?
QuoteTo Wanda,
QuoteI was in the army three and overseas two and a half years. It is very true how real dreams are. When I dreamed of food , I could taste it. After my friend Ski got killed, I could talk with him as if I were awake. It would be a wonderful segment to review the letters with, not so much backround as personal commentary.
Hi David,
I wasn’t sure whether to leave a reply in this box or in “quote.”
There are so many of the letters recording dreams, “so real I could taste” of sitting down to meals with detailed descriptions of the food on the table. One of them tears at your heart – the dreamer is at the table with his parents but they do not see him. This would appear to be a precognitive dream of his death, which occurs only days later. The most interesting dream of food is a recurring detailed dream in which a soldier named McElroy, incarcerated at Andersonville, dreams into a vivid memory of dining at Planter’s House in St. Louis with his father when he was a child. In the dream he again and again visits the tables filled with food and delectable desserts. The dream, in fact, sustains him when he awakens to scraps of moldy cornbread and aides in his survival. He lived through the horrors of the infamous prison.
If you were reading this book, what kind of personal commentary would you like to see? I would be most appreciative of your input.
QuoteRecently, I have been learning a little about the metaphysics of the Confederacy that evolved in the South and lead to session and armed conflict. I would particularly be interested in hearing The Guys talk about the influence of the Methodist and Presbyterian preachers of the time that seemed to offer from the Church the underpinning and persuasive courage to embark on the Lost Cause. As a child of the South, I can also remember that many preachers also offered the same underpinning 100 + years later and perpetuated the most segregated day each Sunday.
QuoteThank You, Blake Caravati
I have a question related to “why we fight.” Family lore has it that a great-great-great grandfather of mine (from New York state) fought on the Union side and served time as a prisoner of war in Sabine, Texas.
This same lore holds that he was treated poorly (as were all prisoners of war there), and as a result did a form of lighting out for the territory shortly after the war’s end, saying that if people treated other people the way he had seen, he was going where there were no people. (He ended up in Oregon.)
I’m interested in the posting from the Pacific Northwest above, on the importance of place. I think a lot of Oregon when I grew up was in fact settled by people descended several generations from the Civil War, so that, while the Civil War wasn’t identified with the west, there was a sense of it *mattering* a great deal–and of the state being divided along north-south lines in which the “northern” part of the state cared about education and equity, and the “southern”–Klamath Falls and Medford–was much more conservative, racially intolerant, and “southern.”)
This may be an unusual query to send to a program based in Virginia, but I am curious about the war experiences of soldiers held in places other than Andersonville. We hear much about that (those that read about the Civil War anyway), but so little about the experience about the places that were not along the Eastern Seaboard. Was the disaffection felt by my great-great common? How much is known about these men?
I posted part of this query earlier in another section, but think it really goes in the “questions” post. This is a fascinating endeavor; thanks for doing it!
QuoteWonderful series on the initial events and developments of the Civil War. Thank you.
QuoteWhen I visited Charleston a few years ago, our guide on the walking tour of the historic district (which I highly recommend) made a comment that if the wave of immigrents that were flooding Boston and New York, and providing the cheap labor that fueled the industrial revolution in the North, had instead been been convinced to enter Charleston and Savannah, there might not have been a Civil War. He opined that the cost of buying and supporting a slave for an entire lifetime far outweighed the cost to hire disposible immigrents, and if the plantation owners had had the oportunity to do hire such short-term cheap labor, just when they needed it, they might well have done so and not gone to war over the institution of slavery. Is there any historical basis for this premise ?
Great series about the U.S. civil war. I could listen for hours longer.
The twitter feature was amusing. Seems like the show spent 2+ hours really getting into the details of how and why the war happened, talking to subject matter experts (including yourselves), and providing insightful and nuanced views of the conflict. You have provided so much more context to this part of american history so that listeners can have a richer understanding of the war. Odd choice to dismiss all of that good work to attempt to sum it up in 140 characters or less. Isn’t that antithetical to the theme of the podcast? If that was meant as a joke, OK. If not, then I think there was an opportunity to discuss how 21st technology can disallow us to think critically, and in more detail than a soundbite.
I do love your show, especially this series. If you’re still taking suggestions, I’d like to hear a show that explores how Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in 1776-1788 may have influenced the founding fathers of the United States as they created the nation, constitution.
Thanks again,
QuoteAndrew
Andrew, thanks for your kind words and suggestion for a show. I wanted to answer your question about the tweet. You are right that tweeting is antithetical to much of what we do on Backstory — especially what Eighteenth-century guy does! But recall, we are a radio show as well as a podcast — that in and of itself forces some limits on us. And my own view is that sometimes creating artificial limits forces us to distill ideas. At times, I have been forced by the discipline of the hour I have to lecture to my students to get to the essence of an idea and that idea emerges more clearly than in a book chapter, where I have more room to roam. So the tweet was part joke, but part experiment. I liked both eighteenth century guy and nineteenth century guy’s answers, even though one was tweet-sized and the other was broadside-sized. Thanks again for writing in. twentieth-century guy
QuoteI’d like to see ‘party’ commentary. By that I mean home celebrations of holidays, anniversaries, births, etc. The memorable ones. I vividly remember having my choice of strawberry or banana creme pie from Strauss’s bakery in my Chicago neighborhood. The pies were made at the bakery. Strauss was an immigrant from Germany like my grandparents and he made ‘old world’ good stuff. Real whipped creme!
QuoteGreat shows!
I just wanted to share a link to the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, with information about their participation in the Civil War:
http://www.oneidanation.org/culture/page.aspx?id=2470
QuoteExcellent question. Strangely, Savannah and Charleston were actually quite diverse ethnically on the eve of the Civil War–far more so than they would be until recently. Immigrants from Ireland and Germany came to these cities, as well as New Orleans and Richmond, in large numbers. Many of them supported the Confederacy but many others proved far more ambivalent.
QuoteI had a question on the units.
A number of the units, both North and South, had the names of states in them (the 54th Massachusetts being one of the biggest ones). Was the raising of Army units a state matter at the time? Did the federal government go to the states and say that they needed to provide so many troops for the war effort? That was what my understanding was but the sources I have looked at are not entirely clear on the matter.
QuoteWanda’s comments about dreams and memories helping warriors stay alive and keep their humanity brought to my mind a passage from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings:
Quote['Do you remember that bit of rabbit, Mr. Frodo?' he said. 'And our place under the warm bank in Captain Faramir's country, the day I saw an oliphaunt?'
'No, I am afraid not, Sam,' said Frodo. 'At least, I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades'…
…stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure [Frodo] robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.]
As memory of life’s simple wonders diminish in Frodo’s mind, he also looses the capacity for pity.
As a combat veteran of the “Great War”, Tolkien may have experienced this for himself and saw it at work in others….
Mark Huber, Richmond.
I followed with fascination, the discussion of how and why the Emancipation Proclamation was not made applicable to the states of Kentucky and Maryland. I look forward to listening for more “Backstories” from the “History Guys.”
I have some questions of my own for which there could be an interesting “backstory.” Today the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), describes certain anxiety and behavioral symptoms that many soldiers who have witnessed the trauma/s of war manifest in someway or another. All too often this is negative behavior that is damaging to the individual, his family, and his ability to become a productive member of the society that he returns to.
Did combatants from the Civil War suffer something like this disorder? If so, did it have a name back then and how prevalent was it? Do we know anything of its consequence on families and society, north and south, trying to pick up after the War? Moreover, as a Viet Nam War veteran, I have particular interest in knowing how Confederate war veterans managed after the Civil War.
From Ken Burns’ great epic, we saw the tragedy and trauma of the Civil War projected through the eyes of frontline soldiers in the open, loving and genuine lines of letters home. While all soldiers in all wars share some things in common, I recall having a powerful epiphany during one episode , , at how uniquely close the feelings of the Confederate soldier, having lost his war, must have been to those of us who lost our war, in Viet Nam. Has there been any study or serious scholarship done on the possible similarity of feelings (noble cause thought to be fighting for at start; anger at human loss expended in vain for a wrong cause that was lost) unique to these two wars?
QuoteTolkien understood dreams and the imagination and understood the depths of darkness and hope, in the presence and absence of which man’s waking moments are so dependent.
Your quote is a great reminder of the necessity of holding onto that which we cannot see for survival of mind and body. A letter written by Henry Graves, cited above, near Petersburg, 1862, evokes the gift of the imagination and dreams in survival but I thought you might like to see more of that particular letter than the brief quote above in my first post:
Quote“…Having been detailed three or four days since on one of my favorite little “working squads” for the purpose of digging trenches, I have not had the opportunity to write you before this. I do so love to dig ditches and spade up dirt, especially when the sun is as hot as it ever gets to be in central Ethiopia! The weather has been intolerably hot here for the past three or four days, the sun pouring down and not a breath of air stirring. Standing with a spade in my hand on top of a big bank of red clay or with a mattock in a deep broad ditch, I would, in order to pass off time, imagine myself at home with my coat off, sitting out in the east end of the piazza at home, enjoying the cool breeze that almost always is blowing fresh through there, with a basket of peaches at my side and all the homefolk around. This is the way I employ myself when I get into an unpleasant place, and, by this means, the time passes much more swiftly and pleasantly. I don’t know what poor mortals and especially soldier mortals would do if they were not blessed with the gift of imagination and the pictures of hope. There are, besides these two angels of mercy, others fully as welcome and kind, which now and then visit the poor soldier.
Night dreams, for instance, are as a general thing much more vivid than day dreams…” Henry goes on to describe the importance of holding onto that which refreshes him and brings him close to those he loves and those who care about him in the night. Even though the reality of the image dissipates upon waking, the sense of it lingers and sustains him through the darkest events of the day.
Ed Tick has written extensively about PTSD and uses a term, “Soldier’s Heart,” which was first coined in the Civil War to describe a condition described then as wartime anxiety disorder that manifested in symptoms that appeared to mimic heart disease but showed no physical change to the physical heart. Jacob Mendes Da Costa began writing about the condition during the Civil War,noticing anxiety disorders and dramatic behaviors in soldiers who came off the Civil War battlefields. Named after him, it was called Da Costa’s Syndrome, colloquially known as “Soldier’s Heart.”
Judith Pizarro, M.A., (along with Drs. Roxane C. Silver and JoAnn Prause), wrote a paper on “Soldier’s Heart” in 2006: “Physical and mental health costs of traumatic war experiences among Civil War veterans,” published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Feb 2006, Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 193-200). Their research determined that nearly two in five Civil War veterans later developed both mental and physical ailments such as heart disease and gastrointestinal problems and that soldiers who enlisted between the ages of 9 and 17 were nearly twice as likely to suffer. Numbers rose for those who witnessed death, handled dead bodies, and for those who lost comrades. In describing her interest in this subject, Judith Pizarro responded: “My great-grandfathers on both sides were both Union Veterans. My mother’s grandfather was in a Confederate prison camp and my father’s grandfather was a 17-year old soldier who participated in Sherman’s march to the sea. My mother’s grandfather was an alcoholic and set off three generations (so far) of alcoholism in that branch of the family. My father’s grandfather deserted my great-grandmother as a result of his PTSD from Sherman’s march. She was left to raise my grandmother and her sister on her own. She was very angry, and constantly told my grandmother how worthless her father was, and how untrustworthy men were in general. That whole experience brought about severe anxiety and migraine headaches in my grandmother, which affected all the children in the family, but most of all, my father.”
In my own research, I have read a number of letters describing soldiers experiencing nightmares and one journal in which a wife pleads for help because her husband has returned home and is no longer recognizable as the same person. His nightmares are violent and extend into the day. He threatens the children and must be tied to the bed so that he does not damage himself or members of the family.
I suspect one would find similar stories throughout written history.
QuoteGuys:
Good luck with the podcast!
My post is in response to your episode ‘Questions Remain’. In specific I wanted to respond to the answer given to the gentleman who called in regarding the freeing of the slaves in Confederate-held states and not in slaveholding Union states.
You gentleman missed the most important point altogether, Lincoln had no legal right to free the slaves in loyal states. And he was well aware of that.
Slavery, at the start of the Civil War, was constitutionally guaranteed. The only legal way to amend the Constitution is by amendment, and the amendment process is well defined. The President cannot change the US Constitution by fiat. Lincoln, as a lawyer, would be well aware of his Constitutional powers and limits… even though he stretched those limits at times, as all wartime CiCs do.
Kentucky and Maryland, while a constant worry for Lincoln, did stay loyal to the Union. Lincoln therefore had no power to limit their constitutional right of slavery.
It wasn’t ‘hypocrisy’ as one of your commentors so distressingly pointed out. Saying so is to fundamentally misunderstand Lincoln and his legalistic view of the war.
The Emancipation Proclamation specifically called for the freeing of the slaves in rebel-held territories because, as Lincoln would argue, as those areas are in rebellion and their governments illegal (from the Union perspective for sure) his war powers gave him the legal grounds to impose Federal control and jurisdiction over them until such time as they could reinstate a constitutionally-elected government.
QuoteIt is as simple as that.
It appears that many in the south are trying to rewrite history. Textbooks written for Texas, and marketed nationally reflect the history they would like to write. They have wealth and corruption on their side. Although corruption on the government level married with capitalistic giant is rampant, what is the history of people being successful in changing history. As you recall the government use to prevent and bust monopolies. Now, mergers that should not exist happen consistently.
Quote