Letterman on the Civil War

Thursday, May 15, 2008
TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR TEACHER IS DRUNK
Number 9:  Insists the Civil War was fought between Jack Daniel and Jim Beam

Thursday, April 8, 1999
TOP TEN WAYS TO MAKE GOLF MORE EXCITING
Number 3:  New hazard: Civil War re-enactments. 

Monday, May 2, 1994
TOP TEN SIGNS YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GRADUATE
Number 9:  In essay on Civil War you wrote about Tom and Roseanne break-up
 

(for complete listings, click on the title of each top ten list) 

Was Nicolas Cage a vampire during the Civil War?

This imaginative eBay listing has since been removed. Perhaps the item was sold. The original auction was entitled, "Nicolas Cage is a Vampire / Photo from 1870 / Tennessee," with an asking price of $1,000,000. Imagine what it would be worth if you could get Cage to sign it. (Thanks to my brother for bringing this supernatural item to my attention.)

Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.

This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.

I've had a lot of questions asking where I purchased this. As followers of my website know, I collect antique memorial photography - images of dead people - from the 1800s. This photo was found in the very back of album that contained an unusual number of Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified by name - this man was not.

Reviews Forthcoming

George Crook: From the Redwoods to Appomattox, Paul Magid (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011).

Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou, Stanley B. Burns, M.D. (Burns Archive Press, 2011)

Dakota Dawn: The Decisive First Week of the Sioux Uprising, August 17-24, 1862, Gregory F. Michno (Savas Beatie, 2011).

In the Cornfield

Yes Virginia, you can produce regular, lengthy blog entries and still find time to write a book

There are too many Civil War books to keep up with (or catch up with) these days, so one has to be fairly discerning about how to fill those precious few hours available for reading (it's hard enough to keep up with all the blogs). But even though his Facebook entries evince a startlingly pronounced and deeply disconcerting [New York] Yankee bias, I'm going to take time to read Brooks Simpson's newest work from Praeger's, "Reflections on the Civil War Era" series. Reflections should always be characterized by well-informed and well-considered opinions, and I'm confident Simpson won't disappoint on that score, whether or not you concur with his observations. 

P.S. I can see what the dust jacket designer was going for with the Grant image on top, and the Gettysburg map below, the Civil War in the East, of course, but you just know some reviewer is going to count coup by pointing out Grant wasn't at Gettysburg.

Georgia Adds Swastika, Middle Finger To State Flag

I don't know how I missed this controversial story from the late 1990s. It must have gotten lost in a busy news cycle.

[News in Photos, November 4, 1998, The Onion]

Ed Bearss' favorite Civil War books

No, Ed did not mention a book on Glorieta Pass in his top five, but I'll bet you he read this one, and thought highly of it. On his tours of Glorieta and Valverde, no doubt he crossed paths with the late historian Don Alberts, who sadly passed away from Parkinson's in November of 2010. I love the New Mexico desert, and I love Don's book on Glorieta (read Don's account of the battle at the Civil War Trust website).

I started thinking about Don's book when I stumbled upon this link over at the fine "Past in the Present" blog, a Billings Gazette article that asked Ed Bearss to list his five favorite Civil War books. I was very curious to see what Ed would list, since these kinds of things are so subjective, and imagining what any one person would say after a lifetime of study is difficult. Battle Cry of Freedom and Grant's memoirs are unassailable choices. I imagine a great many people would list them as a "must" for any top five ranking. I do.

I was interested to see the Sears' book on Gettysburg—which I have not read—make the list for best book on a single battle. Now I feel like I have to read it, though before today my chances of getting around to it were less than 50-50. Still waiting on my metaphorical nightstand is Steven Woodworth's single volume Gettysburg history, Beneath a Northern Sky (about which Jeffrey Hall wrote a fairly penetrating review).

Invariably at some point when reading a book by Sears, I find myself distracted by the author's emotional reaction to one thing or another, one officer or another. Since McClellan was not at Gettysburg, perhaps the distractions of his book on that subject are more fleeting. I should say that Sears' book on Antietam, Landscape Turned Red, was one of the truly seminal books in my own Civil War reading. Powerful stuff. I might have included it in my own top five had I re-read it any time in the last 15 years. I can't really remember it that well now. His Seven Days book is a great contribution.

For personal gratification, I was hoping Bearss would name Mark Bradley's book on Bentonville, Last Stand in the Carolinas, which I assembled in Quark on my Mac in the dining room of our then Santa Clara apartment. Ed did make it known he considers Mark's tome a landmark work. I won't take issue with Ed's choice of Killer Angels, only say that it's a gripping story the first time you read it, but harder to revisit the more you learn about the Civil War. At least that was my experience.

Of course picking five "favorite" books from a list of literally thousands of titles is pretty impossible, like naming your favorite five novels of the 20 century, or favorite five movies of the last 40 years. But like Rob in Nick Hornby's brilliant novel (later movie) High Fidelity, ranking items in lists is something we are inclined to do as a way to get a handle on things.

My five favorite Civil War books (not counting reference works, for which I have an inordinate fondness)? I thought you'd never ask. One has to distinguish between "favorite" and "indispensable." Edward Porter Alexander's, Fighting for the Confederacy is indispensable, and a good read, but I guess I wouldn't rank it among my top five favorites. Likewise, Charles Roland's, The American Illiad is my favorite concise single-volume history, but you can't have two single-volume histories in your top five, can you? Isn't there a rule about that? Anyway, if it's Monday, then the list must read this way:

1. Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson

2. Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

3. Decision in the West, the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, by Albert Castel

4. A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton

5. The Battle of Glorieta, Union Victory in the West, by Don E. Alberts

What's your top five, just off the top of your head?

The Civil War Documentary - A Documentary

"We were about one hour into the Civil War, we all figured things were going pretty well, but naturally we wondered how much longer it would all last. Some of us thought an hour. Some thought two. We little suspected the Civil War would drag on for more than 11 hours"

The Hunley is Upright

"The first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship is upright for the first time in almost 150 years, revealing a side of its hull not seen since it sank off the South Carolina coast during the Civil War." (AP) Read about it here. 

Photo gallery is here (AP Photos: Bruce Smith).

Meanwhile, progress continues on preserving remnants of the U.S.S. Monitor.

Mary's life didn't end when John was hanged

Mary Brown with daughters Annie (left) and Sarah (right)
in 1853, Vernon, New York (Library of Congress)

John Brown's son, Salmon

I was surprised, some years ago, to learn that Mary Brown—the 2nd wife of John Brown of Bloody Kansas and Harpers Ferry fame, and his wife at the time of his execution—was buried in my "back yard," in the South [San Francisco] Bay town of Saratoga, in the hills southwest of San Jose. Surprised, too, to learn that she taught English to Japanese migrant workers in the Santa Clara Valley (today more often referred to as Silicon Valley, where remnants of the once-endless orchards still survive as isolated fruit trees in fenced-off back yards).

I wasn't surprised that she had made her way to the western end of the continent in the years after her husband was hanged in Charles Town, West Virginia. According to a direct descendant, Mary Brown and her children—and a stepson, Salmon, from John's first wife—moved to California to let their families experience a life "out of the shadow of John Brown."

I was surprised because I'd never heard about it before—surprised that in an area so enamored of its history, not many people beyond the local historical society know that the widow and other family members of the man author Tony Horwitz describes as "the most successful terrorist in American history" is resting peacefully in this beautiful and affluent Northern California suburb.

It wasn't always thus, of course. As is the way with history, things are forgotten over time. Her presence in California—first in Red Bluff, then up amongst the giant coastal redwoods in Rohnerville with daughters Annie, Sarah, and Ellen, and next door to Salmon Brown and his family—was well known and widely reported in her day. Daughter Annie reportedly served as her father's secretary during at least part of his anti-slavery campaigns. During the centennial of the Harpers Ferry raid, on October 18, 1959, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Annie "had, when but 16, assisted Martha Brown, wife of John Brown's son, Oliver, with the cooking at the Kennedy farm, where the daring maneuver was prepared" (this from Jessie Faulkner at the Humboldt County Historical Society).

In 1881, about three years before her death, Mary Brown relocated to Saratoga, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, and is buried in Madronia Cemetery along with her daughters Sarah and Ellen.

To the end of her days, it seems, she was both harassed by enemies of her late husband (even having to outrun southern vigilantes on the Oregon Trail, by one account) and warmly embraced by his supporters (supported financially to some degree by well-heeled abolitionist literary figures like Thoreau and Emerson), wherever she went. The latter outnumbered the former in this Far West Union state. Check out this blog entry about John Brown's great-great-great-granddaughter, Alice Keesey Mecoy, speaking about her famous ancestor. "'I didn't know I was related to him until I was 16,' Alice Keesey Mecoy said Sunday to a packed room at the Saratoga History Museum. 'I said, What? I'm related to this crazy man?'"

In 2009, dirt from Mary's grave in California and John's in North Elba, New York, were commingled. 

I enjoyed a number of hours reading material at this excellent John Brown blog, which includes considerable information on Mary Brown.

This Allies for Freedom website has lots of interesting information on Mary Brown and her family in California.

The 9/11 of 1859

Vivenne Flesher and Ward Schumaker

Author Tony Horwitz wrote this NYT Op-Ed piece in December of 2009, on the subject of his forthcoming book about John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (Midnight Rising, John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, coming from Henry Holt in October of 2011).

The "9/11 of 1859" essay can be read in its entirety here. Scroll down at this page of the publisher's site to hear a five-minute audio from Horwitz discussing what he was trying to accomplish in writing the book.

Here's an earlier (October 2010) Horwitz Op-Ed piece on the enduring Civil War, "The 150-Year War."

Charles Town, W. Va.

ONE hundred and fifty years ago today, the most successful terrorist in American history was hanged at the edge of this Shenandoah Valley town. Before climbing atop his coffin for the wagon ride to the gallows, he handed a note to one of his jailers: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
-- from "The 9/11 of 1959"

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

I extend a hearty thank-you to my history-major neice Susan for bringing this forthcoming Horwitz volume to my attention. First, let me say how gratified I am that there are still history majors, and that I am related to one of them. Second, let me say how excited I am that Horwitz took on the John Brown raid. Like many a Civil War buff, I enjoyed his Confederates in the Attic, and his talent as a writer and a journalist caused me to follow his efforts afterwards—his chronicling of Captain Cook's adventures (Blue Laditudes), and I did download, on the advice of the aforementioned Susan, his most recent book, A Voyage Long and Strange.

Not everyone cares for Horwitz's style, but I like it. I love the conflation of serious journalist, history enthusiast, and travel writer in his narrative voice. I don't even care if he turned to John Brown to capitalize on the sesquicetennial fervor (even if he's behind the date on the John Brown raid). I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, having never been disappointed thus far. It's also a perfect segue to my forthcoming blog post on John Brown's wife, Mary.

Google Earthing the Civil War

Look at the neat things Andy Hall has done with Google Earth over at his consistently interesting Dead Confederates blog. Through "image overlay," and careful scaling of the original to align with the Google image (when will someone come up with an App that scales these images for you?), one can get a reasonably accurate look at how a historic image fits into today's satellite view. Pretty damn cool. Have at look at what he did with the location of Henry Wirz's gallows (at the Old Capitol Prison -- see the full essay on the Wirz Execution photos here) in relation to today's U.S. Supreme Court building. Likewise, the overlay of 1865 Galveston with the modern view. The application of Google Earth tools to historic documents is as unlimited as our nearly infinite capacity for avoiding doing any real work (or as Andy put it, the functionality is limited only by the imagination of the user). 

Thus far, with respect to Google Earth, my imagination was limited to creating three Civil War quizes in which participants view an overhead view of a part of a battlefield or significant landmark -- just out of context enough to be disorienting for some -- and try to guess the Civil War location. If you haven't given it a shot yet, links to the quizes and answers are given below. Quiz #1 centers on fairly famous battlefield features, without clues, while the subsequent two quizes include more-or-less useful clues. 

Google Earth Quiz Number One is here -- Answers to Quiz One are here

Google Earth Quiz Number Two is here -- (the answers for Quiz Two are found in the last of the 3 comments attached to that post).

Google Earth Quiz Number Three is here -- Answers to Quiz Three are here

The largest offensive ever mounted by a Confederate army. . .

Historian Bobby Krick addresses members of the CompuServe
Civil War Forum at their 15th annual battlefield conference, April 2011

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battle of Gaines's Mill, a major fight that remains obscure even to many self-proclaimed students of the American Civil War. Why Gaines's Mill, the rest of the Seven Days Battles, and the overall 1862 Peninsula Campaign remain in the backwaters of Civil War studies is a mystery to me.

Fortunately for us, organizations on the front lines of the Civil War preservation movement have not given the Seven Days backwater status. Just this year, important portions of the Gaines's Mill battlefield have been saved by the Richmond Battlefields Association and the Civil War Trust.

Speaking of the Civil War Trust, the July 1-8 issue of "The Week" named Civil War Trust as their "Charity of the Week," noting that they have saved 30,000 acres on 110 Civil War battlefields in 20 states. Not a bad track record.

Civil War Trust's web site continues to grow into one of the most useful and fascinating resources on the Civil War. The articles, maps, interviews, photo galleries, and videos make up a treasure trove of some of the most reliable and interesting information to be found in one place. Their Gaines's Mill page, for example, is the perfect starting point for planning a visit to the battlefield. Once there, you would do well to get in on one of NPS historian Bobby Krick's tours of the battlefield.

In the penultimate essay, Krick looks at the climax of the battle of Gaines's Mill, by far the bloodiest of the Seven Days. His topic is Brig. Gen. W. H. C. Whiting's two-brigade division and its late-afternoon assault that breached Union lines near the Watt House. Krick draws on an impressive array of materials to make sense of the attacks, which, among other results, catapulted the soldiers of John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade to fame as the army's finest shock troops. Krick reminds readers that the offensive at Gaines's Mill was the largest ever mounted by any Confederate army, its 50,000 participants far exceeding the number involved in more famous attacks by George E. Pickett and James Johnston Pettigrew at Gettysburg and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. He also sees the attack on June 27 as a pivotal event that marked the first offensive tactical victory for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The general and his soldiers built on that foundation to create one of the most famous and effective military partnerships in American history.

[The extract above is from the introduction to Gary Gallagher's, The Richmond Campaign of 1862: the Peninsula and the Seven Days, speaking of Bobby Krick's contribution to the volume.]

Remembering Edwin Francis Jemison

This portrait of Private Edwin Jemison is one of the most iconic images of the war. Though he was descended from two of the founding families of Georgia, his branch of the family moved to Louisiana before the war. When secession came, Jemison enlisted in the 2^nd Louisiana Infantry as a 16-year-old.  

The 2^nd Louisiana was sent to Virginia, where it came under the command of John Bankhead Magruder. The regiment saw limited action at Dam Number One in the opening movements of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, but was not engaged again until the last of the Seven Days battles. There, at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, 17-year-old  Private Jemison was killed in action.

With family roots in Milledgeville, Georgia, it was presumed that his remains were returned to the family plot there, and indeed, there is a gravestone for him there, as well as a more substantial monument to his memory (Memory Hill Cemetery).

Two researchers, however -- Alexandra Filipowski and Hugh T. Harrington -- have concluded that Private Jemison’s remains are buried elsewhere, namely at Malvern Hill where he was killed. This, based mainly on a contemporary obituary that mentions his burial at Malvern Hill, and the lack of any documentation that Jemison’s body was relocated to Milledgeville. You can read those researchers’ convincing argument in this America’s Civil War article from 2004.

When I think of Milledgeville, I think of Sherman’s troops ransacking the then state courthouse, and I think of Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite authors. If Jemison is buried at Memory Hill, then he’s in good company.

"Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong. Almost."

Based on Joan Walsh’s outstanding critique at Salon.com, I purchased the Kindle version of this book today. The prospects of a well researched and thoughtful new “big picture” view of the run up to war and the appalling abandonment of African Americans afterwards – the effects of nativism and religion, religious intolerance, and bigotry – and the drawing of parallels to the political landscape 100 years later, is too intriguing to pass up.

I’ll revisit this subject with my own views once I delve into it, but be sure to read Walsh’s review by clicking HERE.

From the review:

Goldfield's book has been well-reviewed, because if it's sympathetic to Southern whites, it depicts the savagery of slavery and post-war white terrorism with unflinching and gut-wrenching clarity. (Literally. The book's tales of slaves' abuse and Southern white post-war savagery will make you sick.) Still, this Civil War history challenges the absolutism of the "Northerners were heroes, and Southerners were vicious, violent racists" school of history. He exposes and excoriates Southern whites' violence against black people before and after the war. But he also links the war to the pro-business evangelical Protestant crusade to eradicate native American Indians, Mexicans, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and an emerging class of landless Northern laborers – anyone who stood in the way of their vision of clean, hard-working, business-friendly American progress. 

*  *  *  *

Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to former Confederate Florida, became an Episcopalian, wrote a best-selling book about home decorating for women, and never again troubled herself about the (former) slaves. Abolitionist Horace Greeley gave up on Reconstruction and black rights quickly. His New York Tribune, which once crusaded against slavery, began to feature "exposes" of Reconstruction, including tales of black "corruption" and political incompetence. Even the Nation magazine, which we remember as a journal of abolitionism, soured on the experiment with black suffrage.

*  *  *  * 

For many reasons, Northern Republicans gave up on the early goals of Reconstruction: to grant free blacks civil and economic rights. Goldfield quotes a Northerner observing a general desire to forget the war, and particular "apathy about the Negro" – shades of the "compassion fatigue" that would be diagnosed by neoconservatives 100 years later, after the Great Society. The parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms, are unmistakable and chilling.  . . .After each morally overdue reckoning, the parties suffered, and then they changed sides. Republicans were trounced after Reconstruction, as Democrats became the party of the South; 100 years later, Democrats were trounced, and Republicans became the party of the South. The Civil War is still not over.

Freakonomics: Why Does the South Still Commemorate the Civil War, But Not the North?

Freakonomics fearlessly explains everything. It's tempting to say that the South commemorates the War more than the North because the South is where the war was fought. But I suspect there's more to the story than that, particularly when you consider that many of those who are most eager to commemorate it are also eager to rewrite the history of the War.  

Those consequences are most apparent in the economic inversion that took place following the war. The parts of the South that were generally the richest in 1860 are today its poorest. These were the areas with the highest concentration of plantations: a swath of land stretching from coastal South Carolina down through Georgia, and west into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Today, this region is home to some of the poorest counties in America, with high rates of unemployment, low-skilled labor, and other social ills like obesity and a lack of education.

From the June 7 blog posting at "Freakonomics: the Hidden Side of Everything."

"Thanks a lot, Ken Burns"

For all its appeal, however, The Civil War is a deeply misleading and reductive film that often loses historical reality in the mists of Burns' sentimental vision and the romance of Foote's anecdotes. Watching the film, you might easily forget that one side was not fighting for, but against the very things that Burns claims the war so gloriously achieved. Confederates, you might need reminding after seeing it, were fighting not for the unification of the nation, but for its dissolution. Moreover, they were fighting for their independence from the United States in the name of slavery and the racial hierarchy that underlay it. Perhaps most disingenuously, the film's cursory treatment of Reconstruction obscures the fact that the Civil War did not exactly end in April of 1865 with a few handshakes and a mutual appreciation for a war well fought. Instead, the war's most important outcome—emancipation—produced a terrible and violent reckoning with the legacy of slavery that continued well into the 20^th century.

From "Thanks a lot, Ken Burns," by James M. Lundberg, Slate, June 7, 2011

Over 4,000 Civil War graves identified in a Brooklyn cemetery

Using the cemetery's own burial records, plus government, military and privately owned documents available online, Green-Wood's project has identified the graves of about 4,600 Civil War veterans. Green-Wood historian Jeffrey Richman estimates 3,000 to 4,000 more are scattered among the cemetery's more than 560,000 total interments.

The Civil War dead buried at Green-Wood include unknown privates and famous officers, buglers and Medal of Honor recipients, Yankees from Maine to Iowa, fathers, sons and brothers, and even 75 Confederates, including two generals. None of the original gravestones for the Confederates gave any indication they had fought for the South, an intentional omission being rectified by the installation of new granite markers provided by Veterans Affairs.

Read the full article here. 

Solarium: A novella

I just finished reading a pretty amazing short work of fiction called, "Solarium: A novella," by Josh Weil. It was published in the journal, "American Short Fiction," vol. 13, issue 50 (Winter 2010/11). I had subscribed to the journal because the previous issue featured a short story by a friend of mine (great job, Rob!), and because I was curious what this resurrected literary journal was doing these days.

I was surprised to find a story set during the Civil War—"Solarium" takes place on a Virginia plantation in 1865, beginning some time before Richmond falls and continuing beyond. But I was really surprised that the author boldly told the tale in the first-person vernacular of mid-19th century master and slave. Generally speaking, I'm of the opinion that if your name is not William Faulkner, the practice should be avoided, but author Josh Weil did an admirable job. So I will modify my recommendation to say don't do it unless you're good enough to pull it off. Seriously, who are you trying to kid?

The story is told in six overlapping narratives—each headlined simply by the narrator's  name (As I Lay Dying)—mainly giving alternating perspectives from a cotton farmer and certain of his slaves. I so want Civil War historical fiction to be as engaging and powerful as the material itself, and I am so regularly disappointed, that I started reading this novella with trepidation.

But I was soon caught up in the strange story centered on the discovery one day of an errant hot air balloon that lands on the farm. Weil skillfully gives us characters to care about (which is to say believable and compelling), and builds an ever-rising tension about the coming of the end for some, and the promise of a new beginning for others.

It's hard to review a 90-page story without giving away elements that would otherwise contribute to the reader's pleasure of discovery, but suffice it to say I found it impressive in its construction, unpredictable, and exciting. What more do you want from historical fiction, other than a reasonable faithfulness to accuracy? It has that, too.

One of the best things you can say about a work of art is that it causes you to reflect on it long after you've moved on. I've been thinking a lot about "Solarium," puzzling out some things I moved over too quickly, suddenly recognizing a larger image that I was too close to discern while reading, or replaying in my head a powerful scene, as if I had seen it acted out. Damn it, I'm going to have to read it again, and life is already too short to read all the books I own once.

I had never heard of Josh Weil, but his biography in the journal indicates he's off to a good start—many prizes and many prestigious fellowships. His 2010 triptych of novellas, The New Valley, is described in some detail on Amazon.

You can read "Solarium" by buying the current issue of "American Short Fiction" at the publisher's website—"Solarium" and three other short stories—for five bucks. Unless I'm mistaken.