Civil War Sacrilege

One of the most controversial Civil War books of the past 15 years is a thoughtful 1991 treatise on Robert E. Lee by the Indianapolis attorney, Alan Nolan. Controversial in that it caused many of the best historians of our time to choose sides on its merits. There did not seem to be much middle ground in the discussions, which ranged from the notion that it was about time someone built upon the iconoclasm of Connelly’s Marble Man, to furious denunciations of Nolan for perpetrating a hit job.

Me? I thought it was pretty fascinating. Back on February 13, 1997, I invited the then 74-year-old Nolan to field questions about his book in CompuServe’s Civil War Forum. Here are some of the questions and answers from that day regarding The University of North Carolina Press’s, Lee Considered: Robert E. Lee and Civil War History.

Q. (Civil War Forum): Few titles have generated as much discussion and controversy in Civil War circles as your Lee Considered -- Civil War enthusiasts of every stripe are still critiquing your work, and prominent historians have weighed in on both sides of the matter. All of this confirms one reviewer’s conclusion that it is a book which "cannot be ignored." How has the response to the book been from your perspective, from reviews, and from engaging the public at speaking events?

A. (Alan Nolan): The response has been extremely gratifying. I frankly did not start out to write a book to shock or provoke, but it turned out that it did shock or provoke. It had extremely good sales, it was a main selection of the History Book Club—which is of course is advantageous to a book—and the review treatment of it was very interesting to me. It certainly had mixed reviews. There were some reviewers who, by God, did not like it. But it got a good many favorable reviews in the useful media, such as the New York Times, New Republic, American Heritage, and a number of academic publications, and one of the things that interested me was that there were many favorable reviews in the South. There were some unfavorable reviews in the South by old-line neo-Confederate writers—the Freeman school—but a lot of the young Southern historians liked it. And I thought the review treatment of the book, all in all, was extremely favorable. 

If you add it up and weigh it all based on reviews, it was favorably received. And I could tell from Round Table invitations that there was a lot of interest on the grass roots level, among Civil War buffs. It's just gone into paperback, and there's also a 3rd printing in hard back. The press doing the paperback is hopeful that it will be adopted by college professors teaching Civil War history, and I know Gary Gallagher at Penn State has included it on his reading lists for Civil War classes.

All in all it's been a good experience. If I've hurt anybody's feelings, I'm sorry, and I know I have . . . but I also think it's historic, and the people whose feelings are hurt are romantic. I belong to the non-romantic school about the Civil War. I think of it as sort of the American holocaust, and the idea that it was somehow glorious, or that leaders like Lee were somehow glorious, seems to me to be mythological.

Q. (Civil War Forum): I think you neatly dispel some commonly-held conceptions about Lee, such as the idea that he was offered command of all Union armies by Winfield Scott. Perhaps the most provocative section of Lee Considered, however, endeavors to show that Lee continued fighting the war long after he knew it was pointless. Could you summarize that argument for us here, and what you based it upon?

A. (Alan Nolan): Yes, I can summarize that. Lee—and I quote this in the book—in a letter to Jefferson Davis on June 10th, 1863 (it's in the Official Records) expresses deep pessimism about the future of the war. That's before Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and surely he must have realized the significance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. He had said a number of times that if his army was ever besieged, it was only a matter of time before they'd have to surrender, and he found himself besieged at Petersburg in June of 64. His official letters during the early weeks and months of the siege of Petersburg were extremely pessimistic, almost desperate, so I think that he knew at least 10 months before Appomattox that there was no way that his army was going to survive—he was going to have to surrender it.

And then of course in September of 1864 he wrote a letter that said he thought it was going to be impossible to keep Grant out of Richmond. And in November 1864 is Lincoln's reelection, and I think that everyone knew in November, 5 months before Appomattox, that the ball game was over. There wasn't even a miracle left. And he kept on going, had huge casualties in those months—the killed and wounded in the Appomattox campaign itself were 6200 people, in addition, of course, to thousands of captured. That book [Lee Considered] as a whole is a response to the deification mythology about Lee, and one of the things he has been glorified about is his dogged pursuit of the war. 

My point, based on the analysis I've given here, is that that is not glorious. I'm more concerned with the common soldier in his army, and the union army, who were killed after he knew it was over. If you believe that Lee did the right thing when he surrendered at Appomattox, for the reasons he stated, which was to avoid the useless slaughter of his men, then inevitably you have to ask if there was an earlier time when slaughter became useless, and I think the answer is yes. So he deserves to be criticized for that. I think he clearly had the authority to surrender his army at any time that he thought that it was hopeless. He thought that at Appomattox, but he also thought that at least five months earlier than that.

Q. (Civil War Forum): As you did your research, what surprised you the most about Lee, in comparison to the mental image you had of him before you began?

A. (Alan Nolan): I think that I hadn't realized how sort of Rholier than thouS he was. It seemed to me that he was enormously self-serving, always giving himself credit for what he termed his "honor." I didn't realized he was such a psalm- singer about himself. I also didn't realize how strong a believer, or advocate of slavery he was.

Q. (Civil War Forum): You speak of unfavorable reviews from neo-Confederate Southerners, but objection to your book as an attack on Lee comes from others too. How do you account for the power of the Lee mythology among people who do not have a historical or genealogical tie to the Confederacy, and whose political opinions are reasonably mainstream today?

A. (Alan Nolan): Well I think we've been bathed throughout my life, and I'm 74, with the sainthood of General Lee. It's something you're taught in school as a kid, and a lot of people have accepted that. That's why I named my book Lee Considered, instead of Reconsidered, because I don't think most people had considered the truth of such stories about his opposition to slavery, his seceding was an honorable thing, that he was such a magnanimous man. I think the people who accepted the myth of Lee are the ones who have the greatest admiration for him. And I respect those people, but I think they're mistaken. I disagree with them.

Q. (Civil War Forum): With regard to the point you raised about Lee's failure to surrender earlier, do you think Lee felt he had the authority to take such a momentous decision, given that the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia would have effectively finished the Confederacy? Could we not equally say his perseverance was a tribute to a belief in the supremacy of his political masters in such decisions?

A. (Alan Nolan): That is one of the defenses, and I addressed that specifically. Lee definitely did believe in civilian political supremacy. On the other hand, when he did surrender, he did so without authority. He simply advised Davis after the fact. There's an appendix in my book discussing his authority. As a matter of military law, he had the right to surrender his army without express authority of his government, and in point of fact, that's exactly what he did.

Q. (Civil War Forum): We've been studying Antietam here, and debating Lee as a tactician. Do you have any opinions on his overall qualities as a field commander, whether any of his genius was luck or the decision of others or whether the myth is operating in this area too?

A. (Alan Nolan): I think Lee was a very successful tactician, a very successful combat general, Antietam being one of his finest hours in that respect. I fault Lee as a soldier because I don't think he understood the grand strategy of the war.

Q. (Civil War Forum): You mention both Thomas Connelly's The Marble Man and William Garrett Piston's Ph.D. thesis and the book that came from it, Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant, in your book. What impact did these "heretical" works have on you in evaluating the Lee hagiography?

A. (Alan Nolan): Well, they made me feel that in reacting against the hagiography, that I wasn't alone in the world, or entirely crazy. As I mention in the introduction, Connelly wrote a book critical of Lee, and lived, and that was reassuring to me. But in terms of their ideas, they weren't necessarily the same as mine.

Q. (Civil War Forum): Given the limitations you've identified in Lee's character, how do you account for his enduring popularity with all ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia? Was this based solely on his ability to deliver victory, or is it another misconception?

A. (Alan Nolan): I think Lee, after the war, was sort of canonized by the South in the South's effort to come out of the war with something. Lee was built up by Jubal Early systematically, and by the public at large not systematically. And when you create a hero, amongst the whole lost cause myth, I think that the soldiers who had fought for that man are themselves dignified the more dignity he is accorded, so they go along with it. Napoleon is still a military hero in France, even though he was ultimately defeated, and his casualties, like Lee's, were horrendous. But he has been glorified in French history.

Q. (Civil War Forum): Was post-war Lee the apolitical figure, preaching reconciliation and forgiveness, that he is usually portrayed?

A. (Alan Nolan): My answer to that is no. He certainly on occasion could be very conciliatory, but his ordinary position was that of a defeated Southerner. He was very resentful of the North. He was very resentful of black people. He felt that the South should be readmitted to the Union with no conditions, and no delay—he wanted the U.S. to act as if the war had not taken place, 600,000 dead people were neither here nor there. He was a classic southern partisan after the war.

Q. (Civil War Forum): Jim McPherson in Drawn with the Sword refers to Civil War buffs as being relatively uninterested in history and more interested in the war almost as a grand sporting event or game. I know you're on the spot, but what do you think of buffs, Round Tables, reenactors, forum members, etc.?

A. (Alan Nolan): Well, I'm interested in Civil War history in all ways, and I take seriously anybody who shares that interest, even if their particular activity may or may not be one I personally engage in. I do think that most Civil War buffs are unusually interested in the blood and guts, battles and leaders, more interested in that side of it than the many other facets of it—the political and social history of the war is not as interesting to the typical buff as is the warfare.

Mapping for Stonewall: THE CIVIL WAR SERVICE OF JED HOTCHKISS

revisiting a favorite book


a Q&A with Bill Miller
Excerpted from an interview on September 4, 1997

William J. Miller is the author of Mapping for Stonewall: The Civil War Service of Jed Hotchkiss (winner of the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award), and is author or editor of several other volumes, including, with Brian Pohanka, An Illustrated History of the Civil War. A former editor of Civil War magazine and one-time English teacher at James Madison University, Bill is perpetually editing Jed Hotchkiss's war-related letters and papers for publication (at least he had better be).

Click here for a biography of Hotchkiss at the CWPT site. Visit the Library of Congress here to see the Hotchkiss collection.

Q. (Civil War Forum): Bill, what many here probably don't know is that you actually live in Jed Hotchkiss's wartime house. Do you find any inspiration in this as you work on his papers? Seen any ghosts?

A. (Bill Miller): I do find it pretty exciting, I guess unique, that I get to edit these papers, these letters, in the same house to which they were written. His wife and family lived here during the war, and of the hundred and seventy or so letters that he wrote home during the war, they all came here, to this property. His wife lived in this house, and his brother lived in a house just up the road, and he wrote 170-some odd letters to his wife and brother, and it's kind of neat working on those now, and editing them, interpreting, in the same place they were written to 135 years ago.

Q. (CWF): Opposing officers went into the Civil War with a shocking paucity of reliable maps. Did the military ever attempt or consider any need to comprehensively map the country in the antebellum period in the event of an external invasion? After all, it was less than 50 years since the War of 1812.

A. (Bill Miller): I'm not an authority on that. My experience in researching Hotchkiss did extend to what maps had been made of Virginia before the war, and they were, again, certainly by modern standards, inadequate. And I think by contemporary military standards, were inadequate as well. The U.S. Coast Survey was in existence before the war, and had produced oceanographic maps of coastal areas, but inland areas, even, for example, as little inland as the Virginia peninsula between the York and James Rivers, which was very definitely a coastal area and little more than 50 or 60 miles at the extreme inland extent, was unmapped, as Robert E. Lee found at the outset of the Seven Days Campaign in June 1862.

Q. (CWF): Were Hotchkiss's maps reproducible and, if so, what method was used? One problem I recall from even as late as Five Forks was conflicting maps.

A. (Bill Miller): As far as the reproduction of maps goes, the Federals had photographic methods by which to produce maps. The Confederates did not. The Confederates did have a chemical process by which they could reproduce maps, something like a mimeograph process that we used up until 10 years or so, I guess, whereby they would use chemicals and sunlight and treated paper to reproduce maps. I don't know how widespread that process was. Hotchkiss's maps were reproduced by hand by draftsmen. Later in the war, 1864, 1865, he maintained an office in Staunton, Virginia, with at least two draftsmen making copies of originals. The copies were nearly identical to the originals.

Q. (CWF): How long would it take him to complete a map. Did he work alone, or with a team? How was the scope of a specific map determined?

A. (Bill Miller): It varied greatly, depending on the assignment. Many of his maps were made for strategic purposes. For example, Jackson requested that he make at least five copies of a map of Northern Virginia immediately before Jackson undertook his part in Lee's 2nd Manassas campaign. That map, of course, covered a very broad area. In the winter of 1862-63, Hotchkiss worked on a very large map of Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which was later used in the Gettysburg Campaign. Many of the maps Hotchkiss made were of much smaller areas: battlefields, and portions of battlefields. These were made to accompany and clarify the reports of general officers. As to his method of working, he did have assistants. He spent many hours working alone, surveying and sketching roadways and other features of the terrain on horseback. On these occasions he would often have a cavalrymen detailed to him to run errands for him. For example, the only true landmarks in much of Virginia, or all of the U.S. for that matter at the time, were residences. There were far fewer towns. Not all of the roads were named. There were no route numbers. So, in navigating from one place to another a traveler would need to know the names of crossroads, many of which are still in existence—the crossroads names that is -- and are familiar to students of the Civil war: Brice's Crossroads, for example, Polly Hundley's Corner, for example, in the Seven Days Campaign. . .

The point is, there was no way to navigate from one place to another as we know it, so as Hotchkiss mapped these areas, it was important to note the names of residences and the names of crossroads and mills, and this required a great deal of riding about and inquiring of residents the name of yonder mill, or yonder house, or yonder crossroads. And for such errands Hotchkiss would, on occasion, have riders to assist him. There were other cartographers connected to Jackson's headquarters, and they worked under Hotchkiss's direction.

Q. (CWF): What were his qualifications? Was he a civil engineer? Cartographer?

A. (Bill Miller): He was self-taught. Before the war he taught himself the elements of surveying, and through practice became a competent topographical, or even, civil engineer. After the war, he went into business as a civil engineer, but he never attended formal classes, had no formal training as an engineer. He taught himself. Much of his value to Jackson was his intimate knowledge and intuitive understanding of the topography of the Shenandoah Valley. An analogy might be an expert mechanic can open the hood of a car and within a very short time understand the problems of the machinery. Almost intuitively Hotchkiss had what we call a sense of direction, and even more, an instinctive understanding of terrain. This permitted him to perform competently even in areas of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania with which he was not intimately familiar.

Q. (CWF): What was it about Mr. Hotchkiss that led to your detailed studies of the man and his work?

A. (Bill Miller): He was a self-made man, in many ways he is the personification of all that America offers, and that's the truth—not just being hokey. He is the personification of all of America's possibility. He taught himself. He left home at age 17, walked from New York State, his home in New York State, to Virginia with nothing but what he could carry on his back, and became not only a person of great influence in the region, an educator of great repute by his early 30s, but by the time of his death he was without question the leading authority on Virginia's natural resources. He was the best informed, most knowledgeable geologist in Virginia's history. All of this achieved by a man who never attended any formal classes beyond the age of 17. He was, by any measure, a remarkable man, and would have been even had he not played a crucial role in those military campaigns that so interest us.

Q. (CWF): Reportedly, Jackson was very secretive around his staff. Did this extend to Hotchkiss?

A. (Bill Miller): It very definitely included Hotchkiss. The nature of Hotchkiss's job made it possible for him to divine beforehand what Jackson's plans were, or might be. For example, if Jackson asked for maps of a certain part of the state, Hotchkiss might surmise that Jackson was contemplating operations there. Jackson went to great lengths on at least two occasions to attempt to mislead Hotchkiss about the potential field of upcoming operations by deliberating asking Hotchkiss for maps of two or three different areas of the state. Hotchkiss on these occasions correctly surmised where Jackson was in fact heading. Jackson was a poor liar. Jackson was concerned about Hotchkiss's habit of being rather talkative. Personally, Hotchkiss was friendly, outgoing, and something of a chatterbox. This concerned Jackson. And in the fall of 1862, Jackson had a private talk with Hotchkiss suggesting that he may wish to curb his garrulous instincts. Jackson was secretive with everybody, and liked it that way.

Last fall I wrote a blog entry remarking on the fact that with the passage of time, the U.S. Navy eventually began to honor certain leaders of erstwhile enemy forces from the Civil War era.

 The U.S.S. Robert E. Lee was the main case in point.

More recently I had occasion to ponder another celebrated enemy of the United States who was subsequently honored by the U.S. Navy. The great Shawnee chief Tecumseh allied himself with the British in the War of 1812, and was killed in combat against American forces in 1813.

It would be nearly a century before the Navy would put a Confederate officer’s name on a U.S. warship. But interestingly, it was only half that time—about 50 years—from the death of Tecumseh to the launching of the U.S.S. Tecumseh, a single-turret monitor that fell victim to a Confederate mine and sank in Mobile Bay. Robert E. Lee would have been about six-years-old when Tecumseh was fighting American expansion, perhaps old enough to remember talk of the legendary enemy warrior.




There was something about Tecumseh that inspired white Americans in a way that other fierce warriors and tribal leaders did not. There appears to have been something of a Tecumseh baby-naming boom beginning around 1820, which makes me wonder if some popular history of the man was circulating about that time. Seven years after Tecumseh’s death, future Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman was born. Two years later, in 1822, another child, and another future Civi War general, was given the ultimate warrior name of Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana. The following year, in 1823, William Tecumseh Wilson was born, a future brevet brigadier general in the last days of the Civil War.

That’s at least three babies given the name Tecumseh seven-to-ten years after the death of the Shawnee leader. These three were easy to identify because they were all general officers in the Civil War and so show up in reference works, but almost certainly there were many other babies during that time frame who were given Tecumseh’s name. I suppose this is something a good biographer of Tecumseh may already have shed light upon. I’ll have to check, now that my interest is piqued.

One hundred years after the monitor Tecumseh sank in Mobile Bay, the U.S. Navy launched a nuclear sub christened with the same name, keeping that noble moniker alive in the annals of American military history.

The Free State of Jones: MISSISSIPPI'S LONGEST CIVIL WAR

revisiting a favorite book

A Q&A with Victoria Bynum

The saga of Jones County during the Civil War is one of the most intriguing and enduring sidebars of the era. Here, from the archives of the Civil War Forum, is the transcript of a Q&A with Dr. Bynum, professor of history at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, about her book, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). This conversation took place on-line, October 25, 2001.

Q. (David Woodbury): Welcome Dr. Bynum. Since this is probably a fairly obscure topic even among Civil War buffs, can you begin with an overview of Jones County, and what set it apart from the rest of Mississippi (e.g., the paucity of slaves there), and the events that gave rise to stories of the so-called "Free State," or Kingdom of Jones?

A. (Dr. Bynum): Jones County was founded in 1826, and it's part of one of the earlier-settled sections of Mississippi (because of Native Americans already being pushed out of that part of the state, but not out of the more fertile portions of Mississippi). Many of the earliest settlers were veterans of the War of 1812, especially. I won't go too much into it, but because it was the Piney Woods region, you didn't have a great many slaveholders there. Slavery was important—there were slaveholders—but not many big slaveholders. It had the lowest number of slaveholders of any county in the state, and almost 80 percent of those slaveholders owned fewer than four slaves.

So, just to leap forward to the Civil War itself, this was a region that was pretty ripe—by around 1862—for seeing the war as a "rich man's war" and "poor man's fight," because they were the poorest men in the state. I don't want to imply that they were landless, because they were small landowners, but in terms of slaveholders, they were the poorest in the state. [The county] voted almost 2-1 against secession.

Moving ahead to the 20th century about how all these stories got started—what made this story so legendary and why it has persisted so long is that the leader of this band of deserters crossed the color line. Now, it's not that crossing the color line was so unusual, it's the way that Newton Knight did it. He not only crossed the line, but two of his children intermarried with the children of the slave woman who was his chief collaborator (it was after the war that they intermarried—she was his collaborator during the war). And that resulted in a mixed-race community that's still very vibrant today—a very large mixed-race community that claims descent from Rachel the slave, and Newton, the leader of the deserter band.

. . . So you've had this ongoing battle—this is why I make the second part of the title, "Mississippi's Longest Civil War," because factions of this family have been debating the meaning of this uprising since the Civil War. And with the racial aspect, it has made the debate particularly volatile. Those who wanted to defend the Unionism of the Knight band generally just erased the story of the race-mixing, and those who were pro-Confederate . . . used the racial mixing as just further examples that these were deviant men who committed treason against the country, against the Confederacy, and against their race. That's why the story has lasted, [and] because there have been several books written, and a novel, and even a movie made from the novel.

Q. (David Woodbury): One of the fun things about reading your book is the spirit of investigation, or discovery, in unmasking the past. Can you recall any major breakthroughs during the course of your research, or any particular surprises you encountered upon digging deeper?

A. (Dr. Bynum): I believe some of the most delightful surprises were the ongoing discoveries I made about the Collins family—I believe that their story is one that was buried because of the notoriety of Newt Knight. The discovery that their ancestors were both Regulators back in the 1760s and Populists in the 1890s kind of gave me a whole view of Southern descent as represented by this family, in a way that just stood right out—and made them the core of the Unionist group there, rather than Newt Knight.

And I want to add that probably the biggest surprise was that the Collins' had brothers in Texas who were leaders of their own deserter band, so there were actually two deserter bands which existed simultaneously. It just showed the uncompromising nature of their Unionism, but not nearly all the deserters were as Unionist as the Collins. There was a core group of about five different families that I would call truly Unionist. Putting that together was very exciting, because I kept finding connections between the very distant past, and the Civil War era, and connections between the various families as well.

Q. (Margaret D. Blough): What was the reaction of the Confederate authorities? Was it as brutal as the suppression of the earlier East Tennessee Unionist uprising?

A. (Victoria Bynum): I'm not sure just how brutal that was, in terms of making an exact comparison, but the Confederacy did send two expeditions into Jones County to put down the uprisings there, and in the Official Records there is quite a bit of discussion of Jones County. The most important example is Colonel Lowry's raid on Jones County. In the space of a few days, they executed ten members of the Knight Company—the Knight Band. That was the worst experience that the Jones County group experienced. I imagine that it was probably worse in East Tennessee due to the geographic location. Jones County was still pretty remote, and there weren't as many raids.

Q. (Stevan F. Meserve): My question is about Unionist sentiment in Jones County. How many precincts of the county voted to remain in the Union? Here in Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, three of 16 precincts voted to remain in the Union. Overall, the county voted 2:1 to secede.

A. (Victoria Bynum): All I know—that I've been able to find—is that 166 people voted against secession, and I believe it was about 89 who voted for it . . . Let's see . . . Yes, 166 for the Cooperationist Candidate, and 89 for the Secessionist Candidate. In fact, neighboring Perry county (I don't have those numbers with me) was even more Unionist. So Jones County was not isolated in that respect. The Perry County delegate held out longer.

Q. (Margaret D. Blough): Did any of the Jones County Unionists articulate why they supported the Union? The pressure must have been intense in the Deep South for secession?

A. (Victoria Bynum): Yes, of course in their county they didn't feel that so directly—more so when the war began—but (after the war) they cited the 20 Negro Law [when] citing reasons for their desertion from the Confederacy. The only articulated Unionist statements are by the Collins family, who did not believe that the election of Abraham Lincoln was grounds for secession. And there's a quote of a certain Collins brother counseling men to try to get duty in the hospitals as nurses if they did join the service -- that they should not fight against the Union. And one more statement attributed to the Collins' is that while they didn't believe in slavery, they also did not believe that the federal government had the right to end it.

Q. (Teresa N. Blaurock): Early in the book, you describe rivers that were dammed to provide power for mills, but preventing fishing for those needing to do that. It seems such a conflict! I know the Jones County deserters were really against the 20 Negro Law, which was the objection to "government" in their era.

A. (Victoria Bynum): One of the things that I found, as you no doubt noticed, were that these were people who were very touchy about the government's role in their lives. And again to use the Collins' as an example, since they were always in the thick of it—as they moved across the frontier they continued petitioning the government to respect their rights as citizens and to provide them protection, not only against Indians, but against corrupt local officials. So this is a theme that runs throughout their history, and I think that's the point that you're making with your comment.

Q. (David Woodbury): It sounds like your research benefited nearly as much from elderly locals and descendants as it did from archival work. That is, they were able to show you things, like the grave sites of Newt and Rachel Knight. Could you have written this book 20 or 30 years from now, after many of these people are gone?

A. (Victoria Bynum): I agree that my personal contacts with descendants was really crucial to the book, and no I couldn't have written the same book. I could have written a book—a study—but in fact when I started writing this book I had no idea that I would achieve the kind of contact with local people that I did. It brought perspectives that I just don't think I could have pieced together from archival documents. In particular, I don't think I could have described the mixed race community if I hadn't spent a lot of time among the descendants of Rachel and Newton Knight. . . And I don't believe I could have written nearly the kind of study of their community without that personal contact. That was crucial.

Q. (Margaret D. Blough): To tie into what Terry asked, I've seen some opinions that many of the Unionists areas in North Carolina, etc., in the mountains had had no experience with the US government, except for the postal system and the first experience they had with an intrusive government was Confederate authorities enforcing the conscription and impressment laws? Is that what you saw?

A. (Victoria Bynum): I would say that in general that was true, once they settled in Jones county, that they had a lot of local autonomy. Some writers suggest there was no real government in Jones county before the war, but that just isn't true. But it is fair to say that they had very limited contact with state government at the top, or federal government. However, I would still point out that their frontier petitions do show quite an interest in the Federal government and its power. They have a long history of protest of corrupt local government, and I suspect that during the Civil War they developed a similar relationship with the Federal government, because they saw the Confederacy as another example of corrupt local government. That tradition goes all the way back to the Regulators.

Q. (David Woodbury): You include a photograph of the Leaf River in your book, "site of Deserter's Den—the Knight Company's Civil War hideout." Were you able to pinpoint the actual location, and what is there today (presumably private property)?

A. (Victoria Bynum): It is private property today. I took the photo myself and I was taken there by one of those local old-timers. Not very far from that river—the site of that river in the photograph—is the cemetery of Newton Knight's grandfather. That land is now in the hands of a private company, and we had to be escorted into the cemetery by someone who had a key... But all of those lands used to be owned by the core members of the deserter band.

Q. (Stevan F. Meserve): On the subject of "intrusive" government, how much intrusion did Jones County see during the war from officials on either side? The territory between Hattiesburg and Meridian was pretty much no man's land, wasn't it?

A. (Victoria Bynum): I think it was pretty much considered no-man's land between those areas. The Confederacy managed to have a Home Guard unit down in Jones County, headed by a local Confederate officer, and that was Amos McLemore, reputed to have been murdered by Newt Knight and his men. By April of 1864, when more and more reports were reaching Confederate officials elsewhere that Jones County was under the control of deserters, and they had murdered some of the tax agents, then they sent the two expeditions I mentioned earlier... Col. Maury, in March (1864), subdued the deserters a bit but they came back just as strong, so then they sent Col. Robert Lowry in April. Now that really did splinter the band. He executed ten of them, and that's when a number of them fled to New Orleans and joined the Union army. About 40—they weren't all members of the band—about 40 Jones County men joined the Union Army in New Orleans... And then about 15 men were captured and forced back into the Confederate army. That left about 20 more whom they never caught, including Newt Knight, still out in the swamps.

Q. (Teresa N. Blaurock): You describe the prominent role of women in the book. Using "polecat musk and red pepper" to throw off the scent of the men from the dogs was rather emphatic. How did that come to be known as the thing to use?

A. (Victoria Bynum): Well, according to Ethel Knight, who wrote the best known book (The Echo of the Black Horn), the white women learned it from Rachel, the slave. I don't know where she got her information from.

Q. (David Woodbury): When did you first hear of the legend about Jones County in the Civil War? And what first drew you to this as a subject of scholarly research?

A. (Victoria Bynum): I first learned about Jones County around 1976 when I was an undergraduate in college. I saw it in a footnote in the Randall and Donald—the old Civil War text [Randall, James G., and David H. Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction]. I did not hear about it from within my own family, even though my father was born in Jones County. What drew me to it as a subject of scholarship was writing my first book, Unruly Women. I have two chapters on the Civil War there, and one of those chapters centers on a county very similar to Jones County in many ways, and that's Montgomery County, North Carolina. . . .But I just became fascinated with the topic of Southern Unionism, and the way that entire families were involved in resisting the Confederacy. It was both the class element in it, and the participation of women and free blacks in North Carolina that made me then want to look at Jones County. So, it was only as I developed as a historian myself that I decided I would like to do a study of Jones County.

Q. (David Woodbury): Would you talk a little bit about the so-called "white Negro" community in Jones County after the war, the trial of Davis Knight in the 1940s, and why this is such an important part of the story of The Free State of Jones.

A. (Victoria Bynum): I think it's incredibly important because it reveals how 20th century race relations and segregation buried the story of the Free State of Jones beneath all these stereotypes about race-mixing, and then combined with the myth of the Lost Cause, which presented Unionists as treasonous. The story had just become so distorted. And so I began and ended the book with the trial to basically look at why race was such a volatile part of the story, and then to move from there to look at the story of a class-based uprising of white men that is an important story in its own right, and would not have been buried so deeply if it had not been for the obsession with Newton Knight's interracial relationship with Rachel. And so I was determined to tell both stories, and particularly to try to bring back the stories of all these other members of Knight's band who had just sort of been lost from the picture.

Some years back, in 1066, William the Conqueror defeated the British at the Battle of Hastings.

Today, nine-hundred and forty-one years later, visitors can still see some of the actual battlefield, and visit the ruins of Battle Abbey. One English Heritage site invites you and me to "enjoy the new audio tour of the 100-acre battlefield, stand on the very spot where King Harold was slain and explore the ruins of the atmospheric abbey, built by William the Conquer to commemorate the thousands who died."

By contrast, probably the most dramatic surviving remnants of the nearly 144-year-old fighting around Atlanta in the American Civil War are a handful of partial "Shoupades," innovative earthworks designed by Francis Shoup as part of Joe Johnston's Chattahoochee River Line—now fenced-in mounds practically in the side yards of massive, cookie-cutter suburban homes.


The Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, Utoy, Ezra Church, Jonesboro—all were critical battles in a critical campaign in the war that ultimately determined the future of the nation. But one gets the distinct feeling that there's more battlefield to see at Hastings than there is in Atlanta. And but for groups like the Georgia Battlefields Association, there would be even less.

Spending a day visiting Civil War sites in Atlanta is an exercise in imagination. One must imagine battlefields where townhouses, factories, golf courses, and shopping centers now stand. Of course that is true of many other areas in the country, but few cities have been more diligent and comprehensive in their destruction of all-things-Civil War than has the city of Atlanta. Here are a few photos of our visit. Charlie Crawford, President of the GBA, led the way, starting off with the visit to some surviving Shoupades [click on images to enlarge].




These remaining photos will give you a good feel for what I'm speaking of. The death sites of Generals Walker and McPherson in the Battle of Atlanta are in a busy intersection (Walker) and a residential area (McPherson). The headquarters marker where Johnston handed over command to John Bell Hood is in an industrial parking lot. The Andrews marker is on a downtown street corner. The last image is of the Texas, situated in the Atlanta Cyclorama, the locomotive that went in pursuit of Andrews Raiders.

For two hours, we had the Southern Museum to ourselves.

Upon entering, we hightailed it straight to the auditorium where the two most popular people of the weekend were holding court, the caterer Adriane Larson and her assistant Gail. In 12 years of putting these conferences together, it has become clear that the most indispensable components are good guides, a reliable bus, and good food. Some of those things can be overcome or mitigated if they fall short—I often have multiple guides and speakers, mostly known entities with veteran track records. Some bus problems are unavoidable, but a tour organizer can take steps to minimize the chances of that. The food is a little trickier. People will forget a poor speaker, or a malfunctioning bus, but if the food is subpar you may hear about it for years to come. At our Shiloh conference about six years ago, we were compelled to use the in-house kitchen at Pickwick Landing State Park and from time to time, someone makes an effort to remind me of those all-but-inedible meals.

By the same token, really good food is remembered with a fondness that grows in memory. It's no exaggeration to say that our evening meals and box lunches from Adriane's Delectables in Marietta were the best we've had on our annual outings, and now the bar is set high for subsequent conferences.

After dinner, we gathered next to the General herself for one of the highlights of the trip, a brief history of the Great Locomotive Chase and a fleshed-out timeline on the fascinating, all-the-way-to-the-Supreme Court battle between the states of Georgia and Tennessee over the rights to the famous steam engine. Author Russell Bonds and Southern Museum historian Harper Harris told some tales (photo at top shows Russell, left, and Harper), and Russell even rang the General's bell for the enthralled throng. All readers are encouraged to read Dimitri Rotov's 2-part interview with Russell Bonds here, and here.

Not yet satisfied with having run the conference attendees ragged on a non-stop, 13-hour day, we capped the night off with a presentation on the fighting at Kennesaw by Assistant Professor John Fowler, a young, energetic and well-spoken fellow who promises to be a presence in the world of Civil War historiography for a long time to come. His regimental history of the 19th Tennessee Infantry, CSA, Mountaineers in Gray, is a new model for unit studies. It's an exceptional work, and we'll all do well to keep an eye out for Fowler's future contributions.
(Gail, left, and Adriane: best food ever)

I've been to Kennesaw, Georgia twice now.

The first time was in the mid-90's when I was traveling around the Atlanta area trying to get bookstores to carry copies of a book on the Atlanta Campaign.

At the time, Kennesaw was most famous for a 1982 city ordinance making it mandatory for every head of a household to own a firearm with the right kind of ammo. I was there because I wanted to see the General, and because I'd heard of a store there that sold Civil War books, Wildman's Civil War Surplus and Herb Shop.

I knew nothing about Dent "Wildman" Myers before my visit, but this description on a flickr page captures the flavor of his establishment: "a fascinating and horrifying shop specializing in Confederate Civil War memorabilia and southern white supremacist paraphernalia." The wild man, wearing two revolvers in a Wild West holster, was in the shop when I stopped by (photo and profile here, write-up by the Southern Poverty Law Center here). It was pretty much as described in those articles. My main memory of the place was that it filled to the rafters with all manner of random stuff, like a surreal curio shop in some African-American nightmare. The store and its proprietor make for a deeply weird and unsettling anachronism—an unwitting museum with an out-of-time caretaker.

Across the street was the Big Shanty Museum, an old cotton gin housing the locomotive from the "Great Locomotive Chase." I spent the rest of my brief stay in Kennesaw admiring the great engine, and the quaint museum's assemblage of relics. I love railroad history, and Kennesaw is a railroad town. It's gratifying to see they have an active historical society—check out the Kennesaw Historical Society website here. Of special note are links to some pretty thorough driving tours, one on retracing the route of the General, and one on the route of Sherman's armies in the 1864 campaign (both written by Robert C. Jones).

Fourteen or so years later, I returned to Kennesaw in company with the good folks of the Civil War Forum. I'm here to report that Wildman's store is still standing, and apparently still in business (I assume under the same ownership). And happily, the old Big Shanty Museum is now the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, with a large, modern addition built to look like part of the original gin. The change is fairly dramatic. What had been, essentially, a locomotive in a barn has been transformed into a signifiant museum with three permanent exhibits and space for rotating shows, a library and archives, and all still anchored by the General. In 2001, the museum became part of the Smithsonian Institution's Affiliations Program, making it a stop for traveling Smithsonian exhibits.

I wonder if Dent Meyers will cross the street this summer to take in the new Liberty on the Border: A Civil War Journey in Time exhibit (running through September 7th). According to the museum's web site, the exhibition "explores the differing attitudes of Americans on slavery leading up to the Civil War, the dilemmas faced by African Americans during the war, and the lasting impact slavery had on the struggle for human rights."

Tomorrow: a night at the museum, and a day in the city

Sometime right after breakfast, I will endeavor to dispense with the final recaps from my recent Atlanta adventure

—picking up after Kennesaw, and moving on to dinner at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, there to see a locomotive as famous as any I can think of, and finishing off with a short narrative of our final day in Atlanta, where apparently all pre-Coco Cola, non-locomotive history has been relegated to roadside markers.

Clearly I'm going to have to pick up the pace here. Kevin Levin over at Civil War Memory has posted twelve entries since my last one, and that was after he quit for the summer (Kevin, I don't think I'm the only one who thought your little sabbatical sounded a bit too ambitious, given the passion and energy with which you attack your blogging habit—though I figured you were good for at least a month).

Beyond the Atlanta travelogue, I also have a hopper full of announcements I'm anxious to post here, mainly about a series of unique battlefield tours I will be coordinating this summer and fall, beginning with Unseen Appomattox on August 2nd. Stay tuned.

Down the road at Kennesaw, things were really cooking.

One glance at the Visitor Center parking lot and you could see that here was a major battlefield that tourists and locals alike had discovered. It is a good place to hike, and a good place to walk the dog, but the Visitor Center itself was relatively empty. I had heard or read that, like Chickamauga and some other battlefield parks, Kennesaw is visited more by outdoor enthusiasts than by history buffs in solemn reflection of the heroic and tragic history of that ground. It's not surprising—the park offers nearly 3,000 acres of green space within an ever-tightening circle of development.

After leaving the hotel in Atlanta at an early hour, driving to Resaca, then down to Pickett's Mill and Pine Mountain, we were running pretty late by the time we reached Kennesaw. Still, we had time to fit in the highlights. First stop, the gift shop/bookstore, where a couple of things caught my attention. With respect to the gifts, souvenirs, and so on, I can't remember seeing such a product selection geared toward little kids. It may be that I've simply lost touch with what's being stocked in battlefield parks now, but clearly there are a lot of families passing through. It was the first time I'd seen a U.S. Grant doll, and no puny action figure either, but one easily knee-high to a five-year-old.

On the book side, I was impressed by the wide selection of titles on the Atlanta Campaign, including small press or effectively self-published works you would not easily find elsewhere, like the various William Scaife books with his beautifully drawn "architectural" overlays of troop movements on modern topo maps.

With the souvenirs bagged, Park historian Willie Johnson, our guide for the afternoon, herded our pack into the theater to view the park's video production—a 20-some minute film that would set the stage for and interpret the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. We've all seen a bunch of these at various parks, and oftentimes the film itself is a historic artifact. The Kennesaw Visitor Center film is fairly new, but I thought one thing was odd.

It's possible that I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so, since I'm very tuned in to how the National Park Service treats the causes of the Civil War. It's always interesting to me to see how various films deftly craft a condensed summary of the lead-up to war, and the war to the point featured at their particular park. The Kennesaw film began as might be expected, outlining the sectional differences of the antebellum era. The Industrial Revolution was named as a driving force in the inescapable regional friction. I was curious to know when they were going to slip in talk of that other thing—the thing about an involuntary labor force.

On and on it went without mention of the "S" word. At one point, I actually leaned over to my sister and whispered, "do you think they'll say the word?" I'm fairly certain they didn't. I say "fairly certain," because even though I listened to it closely, I still can't believe the Park Service produced a film giving the background to the Civil War without mentioning the thing that literally divided the nation along slave and free soil lines.

Following the film, we went up to the top of Big Kennesaw for some spectacular views, and a talk by Willie. The next stop, at Cheatham Hill—the Dead Angle—was the highlight of our Kennesaw visit. There, Greg Biggs, standing before the Illiniois monument, read a powerful passage from Sam Watkins's account of that very struggle—the close-in lodgment of U.S. soldiers in front of the Confederate line, and the C.S. efforts to dislodge them.

[photo at top: Willie Johnson at Cheatham Hill; two middle photos of Sherman and Johnston are from the Visitor Center exhibits; photo at bottom: the Illinois monument, Cheatham Hill]

Next: the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History.

From Pine Mountain to Eternity. . .

Atlanta Campaign continued: after a vigorous hike at Pickett's Mill, we boarded the bus again and headed more or less due east on the Due West Road, a wartime route, making our way to the death site of Bishop Polk on Pine Mountain. There, Stealing the General author Russell Bonds, who wrote a nice piece on Leonidas Polk, posted here (originally published in the May 2006 issue of Civil War Times magazine), gave a concise summary of the fateful day, June 10, 1864, when generals Johnston, Hardee, and Polk made themselves conspicuous on Pine Mountain, in full view of Yankee artillerists. Bonds explains in his essay, "Pine Mountain is hardly a mountain at all. Rising no more than 300 feet above the surrounding countryside, the unimpressive little ridge—which is heavily wooded today but had been cleared of timber in the summer of 1864—is referred to in official reports and diaries as Pine Knob, Pine Hill, Pine Mount or Pine Top."

Call it what you will, it was the end of the trail for the fighting clergyman when a Hoosier battery lobbed some shells in his direction.

A Confederate veteran placed a monument to Polk in the near vicinity of the place where that Federal artillery round nearly split the Bishop's mortal coil in twain. Today this weathered yet substantial memorial sits on (or is surrounded by) private property, accessible from the road by a short path. I appreciate that the homeowners in this neighborhood are devoted to preserving the site. One neighbor from across the street, Melvin Dishong, came over to introduce himself, and to pass along his card offering "Pine Mountain Civil War History Tours" for no charge. Nice to see some property owners trying to promote the historical significance of their holdings, rather than bulldozing it to dissuade pesky tourists.

From Pine Mountain, it's only a handful of miles to the highest peaks in the area, Kennesaw and Little Kennesaw Mountains. According to the NPS, "Kennesaw is derived from the Cherokee Indian 'Gah-nee-sah' meaning cemetery or burial ground." Leave it to my Pale Face brethren to ram that meaning home with volume and efficiency.

Next blog entry: Kennesaw Mountain, and the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History.

Georgia Sojourn Continued

More than any other place on the CW Forum's Atlanta Campaign itinerary, I was looking forward to my first visit to Pickett's Mill. Driving from Resaca, we arrived around mid-day (last Friday). The caterer met us there with some delicious box lunches, and after a quick repast, we met up with State Historian James Wooten (pictured at right), portraying a Confederate soldier.

He guided us on one of the park's numerous trails—in this case a hike along the Confederate side of the fateful ravine, down to the Pickett's Mill Creek and mill site, and back up to view the impossible topography from one of the Federal jumping off points.

There are no monuments at Pickett's Mill, no distracting signage beyond color-coded trail markers. Just trails in the woods. To me personally, this kind of park facilitates the most transcendent experience for the visitor. There's nothing there but the landscape. That's not to say that the great memorial parks at Vicksburg, or Gettysburg are not deeply moving, but one gets the sense at Pickett's Mill that this is as close to what it looked like as we're ever going to be able to imagine. The same holds true for Port Hudson, another state park, and one of my favorites.

The Pickett's Mill visitor center is situated a short walk from the Cleburne side of the ravine, so within moments the visitor is standing more or less in the heart of the battlefield. I have read a great deal about this battle over the years, even worked on maps of how it all unfolded to accompany an essay by Jeffrey Dean, who plotted out the trails there, and whose research laid the groundwork for the state's interpretation of the site. So I had a pretty good picture in my mind of what to expect. Nevertheless, it was something of a shock to see the severity of the depression—the steep grade of the ravine—across which the Federals attacked Cleburne's men, the last troops in the Army of Tennessee one would wish to assault under even the best of circumstances. One reads of the inordinate number of head wounds among the Federal casualties in this battle, and standing where Cleburne's men stood that day, there's no mystery to that gruesome detail.


There's no substitute for walking the ground to spark a better understanding of what the soldiers recorded. But even beyond settling matters of historical accuracy, there's something to be gained by simply visiting the scenes of valor and sacrifice, which are also, necessarily, the scenes of fear and horror marking the experience of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances.

[photo above: Pickett's Mill Creek; below: the ravine from the Federal side, looking up to where Cleburne's veterans were waiting—click on images for enlarged view]

Resaca

I had planned to knock out a quick travelogue of each day of my recent sojourn in Georgia, which would have required some fairly quick summaries at the end of some very long days. Instead, I've decided to take a little more time to recount the various events, and to give due coverage to the highlights.

When I left off, we had enjoyed a presentation by Gordon Jones at the Atlanta History Center on Thursday afternoon—one week ago—and a talk by Steven Woodworth Thursday night. Come 7:45 a.m. Friday our bus, with 40 hearty souls, departed the hotel for the 90-minute ride to Resaca. It killed me to trim Rocky Face Ridge and Dalton off the itinerary, but even as it was, I probably bit off more than we could chew in a day (indeed, I ran them ragged that day, not returning to the hotel until close to 10:00 p.m.).

On the drive up, one of our Dalton/Resaca locals regaled me with a spectacular tale of his classmate, Marla Maples, one-time Homecoming Queen (not to mention, former Miss Resaca Beach, 1983—you'll have to Google that one yourself) returning for her 10-year high school reunion by landing in a helicopter at the 50-yard-line. Probably the same way you returned for your 10-year reunion.

Once in Resaca, which has no beach, we hooked up with Ken Padgett, president of the Friends of Resaca, which group has begun to pull off an admirable feat, qualifying for green space funds to save some relatively pristine Confederate defensive works overlooking the crossings of the Oostanaula River. See some views of Fort Wayne here, and a master plan for what will be a county park here.

To grizzled veterans of Civil War Forum tours, the hospitality of the Friends of Resaca was unprecedented, even by southern standards. Out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, they had set up some tables with coffee, bottled water, and an endless array of donuts to treat our group to mid-morning refreshments. That was a first.

The Friends are going to need a lot more cash than they were able to secure through green space monies. Readers of this blog are encouraged to lend a hand, or at the very least, purchase a modest membership (email civilwarforum@mac.com for details). They have also done up a nice driving tour of the Resaca Battlefield (all private sites at this time). You'll need their driving tour brochure, or local assistance, to find what you're looking for. While you're at it, look at this richly substantive site on the Resaca Battlefield.

After leaving Fort Wayne, we made a stop in the vicinity of a future state park devoted to Resaca (preservation is alive and well in this small town), and to the eastern end of Snake Creek Gap. My only regret is that we did not have time to drive up the gap a few miles to view the terrain. Instead, we hurried over to the north end of the battlefield, and later did a drive-by of what is reportedly the oldest Confederate cemetery, seen here.

When computer-literate Civil War Buffs come to town, you'd best alert the media. Check out this article in the Calhoun Times. Pictured in the article are Ken Padgett of the Friends of Resaca, Rudy Perini of New York, and Greg Biggs of the Clarksville, TN Civil War Round Table, who also served as one of our guides that day.

One experiences clarification, and often revelation, when finally visiting the topography previously imagined only in books and in two dimensional maps. Resaca was a deathtrap for Joe Johnston's army. Even putting aside the controversy over which army Sherman should have sent through Snake Creek Gap, and McPherson's seemingly over-cautious advance, one wonders how the entire Army of Tennessee got across the Oostanaula with Sherman's guns in range of the bridge.

After the cemetery drive-by, it was already after 10:00 a.m.—time to hurry south with Johnston's and Sherman's armies into the Hell Hole.

[photo at top: Oostanaula River at Resaca. Fort Wayne is in the trees in the center of the image]