Anyway, for those concerned I've been making my way through the reading. I finished Like Men Of War which is about as good a history of the USCT as I've seen. It's missing a core them, narrative or argument. Maybe there's not enough history to make one. But it feels like a kind of "And this happened, And this happened, And this happened" book, without a real narrative arc. But for my porposes, it was great.
I tried to read American Slavery, American Freedom. I found it informative, but very hard to finish. I got about halfway through. For whatever reason, I've been thinking a lot about my own mortality. I can't really slow down for books that aren't that well written. I knocked out Uncommon Valor, which is, sort of, a history of the 4th USCT (some of whom are seen here) and The Battle Of New Market Heights. It's a short book, with some interesting details--especially a speech by controversial general Benjamin Butler just before the battle.
In general, I'm a little dissappointed with the historical work on colored troops. There doesn't seem to be a truly classic history of the USCT, at the moment. I think that may reflect several things--1.) The fact that so many of the soldiers were illiterate, thus a lack of documents. 2.) The real, if unpleasent, fact is that very few of them saw combat in the battles we tend to spend the most time talking about--The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, Antietam etc. 3.) It really seems that most of the people interested in the actual military history are the sort of writers who sympathize with the South. 4.) It may also just be that this is a subject people have only recently (last 30-40 years) started to take seriously. Perhaps some of the historians here would be willing to weigh in on this.
Right now, I'm on Bruce Levine's book Confederate Emancipation, a history of the debate over arming slaves to fight for the South. Man's capacity for intentional self-delusion is, well, stunning. It's also becoming clear to me that something happened to the South in the late 18th century and early 19th century to turn it from a slave-holding region, to one that believed slavery was integral to economic interests and cultural identity. We go from Thomas Jefferson, a slave-holder, veiwing it as a neccessary evil to John C. Calhoun viewing it as an unchallengable, and divinely-inspired good. During the Revoloution when the English offered freedom to slaves who fought for them, the Americans had no problem matching that offer. But by the time of the Civil War, the notion of the South arming blacks to fight seemed insane. I suspect the cotton boom has a lot to do with this. But I don't know.
Anyway, that's where I am. Expect to see some posts about Patrick Cleburne--hero to Lost Causers the world over.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Do you mean James Crowley? Or are we having a TNR fued? Yay TNR feud!
Bah! Fixt.
I saw you mention Native Guard a while back. Not exactly a history, but I'm wondering how you liked it in the context of this Civil War reading.
"In general, I'm a little dissappointed with the historical work on colored troops."
Well, could you learn enough and study enough to write the book yourself? Maybe this hole in our country's written history was meant for you...
Ha, Stacy, you beat me to it.
Such a refreshing post after these last weeks.
But, TNC, to Stacy's suggestion, beyond satisfying your curiosity, what is the end goal with all this Civil War reading--an article, a book? Or have you already said that somewhere?
TNC has said something like -- that he could tell, but then he'd have to kill us.
Thanks for setting me straight. I'm happy to wait, especially on pain of death.
Yeah, what Peep said.
If I told you, I'd have to kill you. Or at least ban you.
You're planning to organize a brigade of blogger-reenactors, aren't you, TNC?
[dies]
TNC:
I suspect you're troubled by the unfortunate confluence of separate tendencies. One is the separation of academic and popular history - the former tends toward detailed studies, immersion in primary sources, and opaque prose, while the latter tends to embrace narrative, rely on secondary accounts, and produce books that people are more likely to read recreationally. Of course, the best practitioners of each type produce works that are tough to separate - well-written and well-researched. But in the main, the distinction is useful.
Unfortunately, much of the surge of interest in and research upon the role of African Americans in the Civil War has taken place in academic circles. And there, you find a second problem - the increasing marginalization of military history. The three classic fields of study - political, diplomatic, and military - have all fallen from favor, but none has fallen further than military. Few of the best young scholars are attracted to a subfield with few available positions; military history is increasingly taught by aging, male professors who trained in another discipline but have since gained tenure, or by the handful who hold endowed chairs. So the upshot is that the last thirty years have seen a positive flowering of scholarship about slavery, about black culture, even about the political and civic roles played by African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction, but a relative paucity of works on the USCT.
But I don't think this is a source problem. The materials may not be quite so abundant as for other units, but by any standard measure, there's an embarrassment of riches. No, this is a market-driven problem. Popular writers trying to sell their books have largely neglected it, and the academics most likely to focus on African Americans are also those least likely, on the whole, to be interested in actual military history.
But there's hope. Someone, sooner rather than later, is going to write a truly readable account of their amazing story - a literary Glory, that tells the story of more than a single unit, and that places the troops themselves, and their families, at the center. And it's going to sell like hotcakes. Have faith.
TNC, have you ever read The Seed Is Mine by Charles van Onselen? It's a 600+ page biography of a South African sharecropper... whose name appears on the country's official paper record exactly once, when he got fined for having an unlicensed dog. It's a fascinating read in itself, but I'm also amazed at the way van Onselen managed to put it together.
When I was in grad school I was pretty obsessed with this idea of history being tied to the paper record, and people who don't have the documents more or less vanishing from the narrative. There are some cool ways some historians have started to find to get around it. I suppose it's a bit late now for interviews and oral histories and the like for these Civil War soldiers, though.
Sorry, tangential. So are you going to write a book to fill in the gaps here?
Slightly off topic, but I finally read Tony Horowitz's "Confederates in the Attic" book. It's about this dude touring the South, and interviewing and hanging out with people who are still really really into the Civil War (or I guess the War Between the States?) It's a pretty great read, but obviously a downer. Stick with the history books I guess!
Don't you meant "The War of Northern Aggression?" ;)
Three words.
William Tecumseh Sherman.
An acquaintance of mine (from an old New England family) seemed to enjoy tweaking his southern-belle wife -- "like Sherman through Georgia" was his substitute for "knife through butter."
TNC wrote:
It really seems that most of the people interested in the actual military history are the sort of writers who sympathize with the South.
Is it possible that that's because by focusing somewhat narrowly on strictly military affairs, Southern-leaning historians can avoid addressing the broader ethical and moral issues that provided the context for the war? And as a result, Southern writers tend to self-select into the military history of that conflict?
That may be part of the truth, but I think the Confederacy is more interesting from a military perspective as well. The story of a battle is not as interesting if the side that has seemingly all the advantages wins. The Union mainly suffered from crappy leadership rather than some sort of defect in troop quality, numbers, or logistics. Part of the draw of studying military history is being able to place yourself in the role of the commander on the battlefield. If those commanders are inept, drunken, or cowards I suspect some people find that aspect of it less enjoyable.
In fact, you see a lot of the same thing in WWII history and studying the way the Germans did things instead of the Russians or Western Allies. It caused some measure of controversy several years back.
I agree with both Andy and wins, but would add that part of the glamor of the "Lost Cause" is the military heroism of the Confederates. Check into the home-schooling curricula about Stonewall Jackson sometime.
Confederate officers can be viewed as heroes on the battlefield because, in that limited frame of reference, they were. Dealing with battlefield conduct and military talent separately from other issues allows the Southerners to garner at least as much praise as the Northerners.
This is a good point. Often, the losing side offers a more interesting study for the student of military history, especially if you can use their record to compile a list of "Don't Do's" for future operations. Of course, for both the Confederacy and Germany, #1 on that hit parade would have to be, "Don't pick fights above your weight class," but we kind of already knew that. One of the surprises of military history is how often that principle gets ignored...
Anyway, the theory is, if you can figure out where previous campaigns went cubist, you can recognize a similar situation developing, and avoid it. This seldom works in practice, but it's still worth trying.
In Germany's case, the lesson might be "don't pick fights above your weight class _after sawing off one of your own arms_."
The Confederate lesson might be somewhat similar... though maybe "you won't fight well with until you take off that ball and chain around your leg" is a bit closer to the case....
If nothing else, we must realize that part of the reason there weren't enough 'Johnny Rebs' is that some had to stay home to keep Nat Turner safely interred.
just speaking for myself but this kind of Monday morning quarterbacking of wars is hard to understand given all of the atrocities and human suffering involved. That was part of what I found so moving about the Fog of War. I'm not attacking anyone here just trying to understand this perspective.
Michael Howard discussed your question about military history in a long and quite profound essay: "War and the Liberal Conscience."
As one noted pacifist wrote: you may not be interested in war, but war is certainly interested in you.
It is worth noting, the U.S. renamed the Department of War the Department of Defense as a reflection of a particular -- and apparently laudable -- sentiment about the role of war in human affairs.
It might be noted that, nevertheless, our military budget and our capacity to exact destruction and atrocity continued to increase.
"Dramatic clarity" provides most of the answer, I think. The same reason cop and doctor shows are more common on televsion. The emotional intensity is inherent, the plot mechanics are clear, there is usually a guaranteed payoff--an end to the story. You can write the drama at a sophisticated level, with insights into the nature of humanity and the world, or just jeer at the villains and root for the heroes.
I got into trouble when I went to Northwestern University because I hadn't thought this question out thoroughly. Ultimately, I think military history has to be studied, first, because it is there, determining cause, effect, and decision, not "contingent" as one of my social history professors put it. I also feel it serves as a "field experiment" for the study of the cultures involved, something lacking in most fields of history. In war, you get to see how a culture sees itself, how it organizies itself, how it solves problems and handles stress, pain, and change.
For my part, I can read about Union soldiers and see the soldiers of my father's generation, of World War II, and those of other wars before and after. I can see how alien to that cultural mainstream was the culture of the slavocracy.
I am more hard-pressed to relate the experience of the Civil War to our modern wars. Some things are the same, some different, some comforting, some shamefull, some a measure of both. It seems to me that that is what "wars of choice" for dubious or fictionalized causes will do to a country, and I don't like it much.
thanks all, I get the need for military history, and think that the lack of education in our country as relates to the military is terrible, especially given our priveledge of civilian control of the military. I don't get the whole war-gaming/re-enacting thing that seems to drive the history channel. Do folks just seperate the realities from the intellectual/imaginal parts?
John Keegan's Face of Battle has a section on the new military history (now 25+ years old.)
As to Monday morning quarterbacking -- what if we actually could have conquered Germany without bombing Dresden, and/or Japan without flattening every city of over 50,000 men, women, and children? Would that knowledge justify inquiry into war's 'dark arts?'
Granted, however, there is a schaudenfreude involved in the study of war: it is a fascinating and beguiling subject in and of itself.
I'll answer your question by way of story.
I once attended a gaming convention and for 4+ days played the role of a Soviet general during the last gasp German drive on Moscow in 1941. I didn't dress up in a uniform or anything like that, but I had a sector of the front and troops. I had problems with logistics, weather, the commander on my flank, the commander attacking me, the quality of my troops, the quality of their troops, lack of air support, and the fact that they were 100 miles from the rail lines that supplied the rest of the country. I stayed up for long periods of time, sleeping when I got the chance, drinking coffee like a fish. As my cardboard men were continually driven back despite my best efforts I felt like I'd been dealt repeated body blows. I ordered counterattack after counterattack to no seeming effect. I was convinced my side had lost. At the end of the 4 days when we were picking up, I talked to the commander who had been playing the Germans in front of my sector. Apparently he'd felt like his logistics were so strained that even my failing counterattacks had sapped his supplies enough that he was unable to perform the attacks he had intended which may well have actually captured Moscow.
Through playing the game, we'd ended up complaining (and worrying) about the same things as our historical counterparts. I'm a firm believer that games can educate people in a way that no other media can. I was put in the same position as a man from another country, speaking another language who was dead before I was born and I ended up bitching about the same stuff. That's why I play wargames.
@wins (again)
GBII? Consimworld Expo?
Sorry I missed it this year -- I had a great time (playing the same game) about three years ago.
@Carrington
Yes and yes. I played GBII 2 years in a row there. The first con was the one I described above. The second year I played the same game (different scenario) with a Carrington. Given the relative infrequency of the name, I suspect it was you. Small world, eh?
That said, the history of Northern strategy in the Civil War is of enduring interest in part because of the political constraints that limited and delayed an all-out attack on the system of slavery itself.
That's different from the operational constraints that the generals were operating under though. Most military history books are army/army group level rather than grand strategic.
@wins32767.
... and what would Clausewitz say about that?
I'm not saying it's not fair ground for a book (or even several), but I'm unconvinced of the merits of adding that argument to every book. An exploration of Bull Run probably wouldn't benefit from it much for instance.
@wins
Agreed. Books are written toward a specific audience... I tend to imagine that Clausewitz would have fallen asleep over Bull Run -- a bloodletting with no particular strategic concept.
Heh. Were you playing directly against me, or were you further down the front (I was playing Germans up in the North)?
That was one of my top four or five wargaming experiences. OCS is a great system... but we're waayy off topic.
I'd quibble with the statement that the "Americans had no problem matching" the British offer of freedom to slaves who served in their army. There certainly were significant numbers of African Americans (mostly free) who served in the Continental Army in the north, but the decision of the British to offer freedom to slaves in Virginia in 1775 drove many southerners to support independence. Later in the war, John Laurens' plan to arm slaves and grant them freedom for their service was strongly rejected by other members of the southern elite, and never materialized.
In many ways--and this is something that's becoming increasingly clear from the work of historians such as Sylvia Frey and Woody Holton--the American Revolution was also a war about slavery. And as in the case of the Civil War, it was African Americans--who fled their plantations by the thousands--who made it an issue.
Alouette:
This was a dope post. You are right that the colonists did, in fact, have many problems matching the British's offer of black freedom for black service. (TNC, there is a great book called WATER FROM THE ROCK (by Frey) and she drops the knowledge on blacks in the American Revolution.)
Also, John Lauren's attempt to arm slaves in South Carolina is not doubt the most-well known attempt. BUT, my boy, my man, one of my heroes, Alexander Hamilton lobbied and lobbied Washington, Congress, state legislatures for arming slaves and giving them their freedom. Not only was he a fierce abolitionist on moral and ethnic grounds, but also he understood that slavery was anathema to a vibrant and bustling industrial and modern economey.
I didn't know that about Alexander Hamilton.
Read Ron Chernow's magisterial tome, ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Hamilton is the most important of our founding fathers in terms of constructing our government and our economy. (Washington in terms of gaining our independence.) I know this is a crude reduction, but if you had to choose one....
But Hamilton was BEAST. Created Coast Guard, Customs service, Treasury department, and so much more. He was a major abolitionist and lobbied for Native American education.
Of course, he was sympathetic to be the Other. he was a scholarship kid, single parent kid--his dad ran off on him and his family, (rumored to be part black!), and was not rich but worked hard and was an autodidact.
Also, many of the black soldiers who fought with the British ended up emigrating to what is now Canada with other loyalists after the war. There are a few black communities in Nova Scotia that date back to the 1780s. I don't think many people would uproot their lives and move to uninhabited areas of Nova Scotia in the 1780s if they really thought staying behing was much of an option. There may have been some black soldiers fighting for the Revolution, but it's pretty clear who really had the slaves' interests at heart.
True, although the lot of the Black loyalists in Nova Scotia was fairly miserable, and many wound up emigrating to Sierra Leone. Simon Schama's Rough Crossings tells this story in a fairly compelling way.
It is an interesting question, of course, whether the British could have pushed this strategy further. One suspects that British strategists during the revolution were too inclined to listen to their Tory (and often slave-owning) advisors.
One suspects things would have been different, and rather less 'restrained' had the British been more committed to victory in 1812.
"I don't think I'll be thinking about a single one of those threads a year from now." You're undoubtedly right about the specifics, but a lot of what those discussions were premised on, you'll definitely be thinking about, dealing with, getting annoyed by, etc. etc. All part of our ongoing "civil war." Can't consign our history to the dead guys...
I'm rather curious what you'd think of the recent book on Jones County and Newton Knight by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer. While ostensibly about Newt Knight and his private unionist war against the rebels, I think it also does a very good job of systematically dismantling the notion of the Lost Cause.
Anyone else here read it yet?
I saw her on the Daily Show last week and it sounded pretty interesting I was thinkign of picking up a copy, would you recommned it?
"divinely inspired"..."I suspect the cotton boom has a lot to do with this."
My guess is that you'd find parallels in our own history - and that of many countries - wherein a class or caste relationship that is increasingly embedded in a very profitable economic and social structure is also increasingly rationalized theologically. "Theologically" here could mean literally, as in the Southern Baptist Church becoming an official institution of white supremacy with hardened theological justification, to "the Protestant ethic" touting the virtues of Robber Baroon capitalism, to more metaphorical stuff like Econ 101, that often serves to establish market theory as natural law. It's crucial to getting people not to see what's in front of their very eyes, or at least minimizing the parameters of legitimate discourse by casting stuff that's wrong as ordained by God or Nature.
The crucial point, I think is that the American slave system changes from a "system of slavery" to a "system of slavery IN PERPETUITY," with huge ideological impacts.
This change is a result of an ironic twist to the political economy of slavery, which is that the decision to outlaw the import of _new_ slaves (around the turn of the century, IIRC) caused a major change in the value of _old_ slaves.
Nearly at one stroke, this change in the legal framework changed the economic role and value of slaves for slaveowners. Where once they had been basically expendable laborers -- you can always import some more -- they became 'human capital,' and some significant portion of their value began to derive from their ability to reproduce.
The result -- slaves likely received better physical treatment (there are advantages to being a goose that lays a golden egg -- but their offspring bore the brunt of American ruling classes desire to justify and create a new caste system.
The other result is greatly increased political discord over this system... in great part because hereditary bondage required a significant increase in the repressive structures to maintain the value of investments.
Wow, what a really interesting insight, about an aspect of slavery I would never even have thought about.
I should mention: caveat emptor on this theory. By no means 'case closed.' But as it stands it is (probably) motive...perhaps a corpse, but no smoking gun.
In retrospect this should have been the subject of my MA -- or at least a more focused question on the "specifics of motive" -- the market value of slaves 1776-1840. On the other hand, taking Fogel and Engerman seriously -- as far as they went -- was not a recipe for popularity in the early 1990s.
And tracing the dollars-and-cents economics of slavery is a recipe for recurrent nausea.
This is the nub of it for me. During the Great Depression, American workers forcibly occupied factories, organized general strikes, engaged in shoot-outs with the police and with company goons, and even occupied the NJ State Senate for a week to protest inaction on extending relief benefits. I read about events like the Apex Hosiery plant occupation of 1937 -- in which union garment workers forced their way into one of the largest non-union garment factories in the country and held the plant for 6 weeks -- and wonder, how did this happen in my country? I cannot imagine this happening in American today.
What happened? How have we changed? Is there any way to explain it? And if we can explain it, is there any way to drive the process deliberately?
The better question is, why don't workers do this now when they are being told their factories are shutting down? Why does everyone just go along with it? I'm not proposing a communist revolution or anything, but I wonder how we got from a point where workers would forcibly take control of factories to one in which everyone goes home peacefully when they are told that they've been replaced with a twelve year old in China. Or, more realistically, why the workers don't push through bills requiring businesses to sell closed factories to their workers or something to that effect.
That's the big question. I spent 7 years as a union organizer, both external and internal. Studying history (were American workers ever really different? if not, how did they do what they did? if so, why?) and studying other societies (same questions, except about French or Italian or South Korean workers) might help us understand.
I dunno, it's temptingly easy to romanticize and to imagine that the grass is always greener. The British have had a stronger class consciousness and more politically organized commitment to labor (at least until Blair), but Joe Strummer wrote "White Riot" about white Englishpeople.
I hope you'll finish American Freedom/American Slavery, as the final chapters deal with the rise of race-based hierarchy and the origin of white populism in Bacon's Rebellion (1672).
The book is dense and rambling, yes, but it did more for my understanding of race in America that probably any other. Skip to the end, if you have to.
I hope you'll finish American Freedom/American Slavery, as the final chapters deal with the rise of race-based hierarchy and the origin of white populism in Bacon's Rebellion (1672).
The book is dense and rambling, yes, but it did more for my understanding of race in America that probably any other. Skip to the end, if you have to.
Ben, I probably will do that. Another question though--Are those other chapters worth plowing through? I learned a lot from them, but came to feel like I was mining info that could more efficiently gotten elsewhere.
It really depends on what you're after. An Australian comparing the British transportation system of the 17th century against that of the 19th century will be interested on certain chapters that the rest of us wouldn't. I read the book looking to answer the questions "where did I come from" and "where did we (the nation) come from"?
The first question is an obscure one for the majority of white Southerners, since so few of us fit the Ellis Island narrative, nor the Pilgrim Fathers narrative, nor (once you get beyond the Lost Cause projections) the Cavalier/FFV narrative. The story of white indentured servants isn't highlighted in the narrative we get in high school. The second question is, however, the one I believe that you are interested in.
I'd recommend you read Chapter 11, "The Losers". It describes the "problem" presented to the ruling classes of Virginia by white indentured servants who have survived their indenture. Their masters had never imported them with any intention of losing control over their labor, so once the mortality rates in Virginia dropped, the owners of their indentures resorted to stricter terms and more devious measures to extend the indentures of their servants and prevent competition by freedmen. This chapter both sets the stage for Bacon's Rebellion and the adoption of race slavery, and--though Morgan does not point this out--has many parallels with the Reconstruction/Redemption "problem" posed by the freedmen.
Chapter 12, "Discontent" is worth at least a deep skim, as it covers efforts to intimidate freedmen and control their labor after the expiration of their indenture. Chapters 13 and 14 are more political/military history, and I think that you need only skim the beginning of 13 for your purposes.
Chapters 15 ("Toward Slavery"), 16 ("Toward Racism"), and 17 ("Toward Populism") are essential reading, in my opinion, despite being a bit long-winded. They form the thrust of Morgan's conclusions, analyzing the events of 17th-century Virginia through the light of relevance to race relations in 1975, and the history of slavery and racism up until that date.
In summary, I think that your time would be better spent reading 11, 15, 16, and 17 twice (with a smidgen of 12) than reading all of chapters 9-18 once.
"what is the end goal with all this Civil War reading--an article, a book?"
Let's abandon the small-time, been-there-done-that thinking and suggestions. Surely this epic conflict deserves to be enshrined as a video game...TNC has the unique skill set to drag Civil War nerds into the 21st Century.
Heh. It is an interesting -- and I think fairly serious -- question how long it is before we see historical MMOs challenging Warcraft, WHO, etc.
Granted... part of the issue would be encouraging civil war reenactors to bring laptops and generators along.
;-).
TNC wrote: "It's also becoming clear to me that something happened to the South in the late 18th century and early 19th century to turn it from a slave-holding region, to one that believed slavery was integral to economic interests and cultural identity."
One of the best books I've ever read was an overview of how racism, bigotry, and prejudice became institutionalized and absorbed into the culture of Medieval Europe. The book was called The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250. It's not directly about the time period or country you're looking at, but it was one of the most eye-opening things I've ever read because it explained with many historical documents that, sometimes, people just... hate. It's incredibly depressing, but it's not difficult to draw a line from the way Europeans saw themselves and transfer that to the New World, even as late as the Civil War.
I highly recommend that book if you're looking for another exploration of how people rationalize and justify their disgusting behavior.
Please finish "American Slavery, American Freedom." It is an important book about the creation of racism (or perhaps better, white supremacy) as a political force in America. I agree with Ben's view above. If worse comes to worse, read the section about Bacon's rebellion.
I agree, please finish, or at least read the concluding chapters where he puts his argument together; they (the arguments) are as important as has been claimed.
On black troops and related issues, James McPherson's old book, from the 1960s, "The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted" remains worthwile, a very good read.
"I suspect the cotton boom has a lot to do with this. But I don't know."
My understanding is that this is correct.
Jefferson is a broke plantation owner. Calhoun is a rich one. Cotton was much, much more lucrative for slaveholders than tobacco was.
Two words: Eli Whitney.
It is not simply cotton and economics. That kind of reductionism loses the complexity of ideology, politics, and sociality formed antebellum slave society life. Remember, as Grasmci and other neo-Marxists (including late Marx) said as they criticized Marxists who boiled everything down to economics, it is not simply about money. People often vote against/go against their economic interests for other reason--sociality, race, gender, political power, etc.
Plus, there were many broke cotton producers and many wealthy tobacco planters.
But cotton WAS very important. Also Andy don't put that on Eli Whitney like that. That brother had his worked turned against him.
"it is not simply about money. People often vote against/go against their economic interests for other reason--sociality, race, gender, political power, etc."
Which reinforces the importance of ideology - i.e. Calhoun's version of slavery over Jefferson's - order to align all of the more dubious intangibles into a belief system.
Another important consideration is that slavery became increasingly regional as time passed. In 1776, slavery was legal in all 13 colonies (I believe). While there were not a lot of slaves in the north, arguments for emancipation were not directly focused on the south - they would apply everywhere. But, as the north abolished slavery in the next twenty or so years, arguments against slavery became much more sectional. That is not to say that the Civil War was ultimately about states' rights, etc., but rather that it became increasingly easy for southerners to see opposition to slavery as opposition to the south, which meant people who previously might have been on the fence suddenly felt they had to defend slavery against those interfering northerners. Given fifty years of this, you end up with people who have been told from birth that slavery is a divinely-inspired part of being a southerner, etc.
Brucds: Can you expand here? I don't quite know what you mean.
Nothing very deep -just making the point that it helps to get folks to choose perceived or less tangible interests over material interests if the ideas are reinforced as part of an ideological system - i.e. racism not simply as the tendency to be suspicious of the "other" but as biological or theological "fact." Or, say, the belief that it's better for everyone to be "free to choose their own health care" over social insurance because somehow the "free market" ordains better outcomes in all cases, despite the fact that's obviously not applicable to more than a few areas of the economy - otherwise how do you get people arguing vociferously against empirical evidence of other countries and raising the spectre of "slavery" in the context of the social insurance debate? Sometimes standing against your material interests is rational and even noble. Too often IMHO in our domestic political debates it signals folks in the thrall of parochialism and dogmatics, if not the kind of derangement fostered by FOX News.
And just to clarify, I don't think "material interest" is necessarily an issue of calculations of the impact of a particular social policy on your personal tax bracket, but that social stability and the measurable benefits of a society that attempts to equalize opportunity as opposed to some more chaotic, brutal landscape, are in fact, "material interests" that I share with Warren Buffet.
Actually, five words: "Importation of slaves banned, 1808."
See my post above. The U.S. Congress banned the importation of slaves on January 1, 1808. The act may well be an object lesson in the unintended consequences attending progressive legislation -- as I suggest above.
The obvious question: why did the South acquiesce to the act? The answer, I suspect, is that many Southern slaveholders realized that a ban on import of slaves would sharply increase the value of the slaves they already owned.
There is, by the way, an interesting mirror image in Parliament, the Foreign Slave Trade Bill of 1806, which -- at least as Amazing Grace put it -- gutted the Liverpool-based British slave trade in the guise of economic warfare against the French.
Unfortunately your analysis of the material limitations of a history of black soldiers is likely the end of that line of general investigation. As a relatively new field statistical/economic history is pretty contentious to say the least(http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/weiss) so there aren't likelyy to be any definitive answers from those quarters. The question of the mind-set of slave-owners/politicians, in terms of the why they did it question, will always be speculative in so much as we only have their justifications of their actions. Through the latest neuroscience (and years of more humanistic research) we now know that our choices aren't reducible to our justifications. This might be seen as a kind of loss of understanding but if the point is to make sure that this never happens again then understanding the rhetoric of oppression may be more useful than trying to psychoanalyze facists.
dmf, i'm relatively confused with your statement "As a relatively new field statistical/economic history is pretty contentious...". From my understanding of recent historiography, it's actually a relatively dead field. The fixation on numbers present in "Time on the Cross" has been largely discredited. Current research trends point towards a more diverse mixture of quantitative/qualitative methods, with a heavy focus on a reworked use of the types of sources that came from the New Left (songs, journals, scratch paper etc).
On another note, right now I'm reading Stanley Elkins' "Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life." While even more dated than "Time on the Cross," Elkins' work does ask the interesting question on why slavery was so much more different in Latin American than in the US. His answer is quite interesting. Essentially he says it boils down to the fact that slavery in Latin America had competing institutions (church, the crown and the slave-holder), while US slaveholders did not. The church's recognition of the humanity (even if they thought it was "fallen"), kept many of the worst abuses of slavery at bay. It also made it much more possible for slaves to buy their freedom and/or live/intermarry with free people.
dbp, not sure how you are measuring the "death" of the use of statistical data in economic theories of history but it's not by counting the number of people engaged in such activities.
Personally I have little use for stats outside of the hard sciences and engineering but that's a whole other can of worms.
Indeed cotton had a lot to do with it and the ability to make money.
But remember, parts of the South were ALWAYS slave societies as opposed to societies with slaves, to use Berlin's formulation. Furthermore, it was part of their political identity and it is that that started to differentiate it from the North. That became their political powerbase. They wanted slavery to expand West for political reasons, too.
Moreover, their were more slaveholders in the South during the 18th and early 19th centuries than the by the time of the Civil War when you had more planters. Thus, the fact that it became increasingly part of its cultural identity was really mostly about the planter class. Poorer whites and working class whites in the South who did not own slaves did not necessarily view slavery as part of their cultural identity--although some did see it as what to aspire to. Hence many who fought in the Confederacy who did not own slaves and who were, in fact, against slavery. What changed, I think, is that the Southern economy was less complex than the the North and there were ways in which one could gain political, economic, and cultural capital in easier ways than one could in the North. I guess I am saying that slavery was ALWAYS part of their economic interests and cultural identity, it is just that it became more and more part of the way to acquire political power--whether it was actually owning slaves or working AGAINST slaveholders. (What G. Frederickson writes about in BLACK IMAGE IN THE WHITE MIND, the stuff on Herrenvolk philosophy.)
What about the so-called "Aristocracy of the Commoner?"
What about it?
I think the good doctor was suggesting that it tied poor whites together with rich whites because they all felt like they were of a high social class than the black slaves. Slave ownership might have been most common in the planter class, but it made many poor southern whites feel like they were part of a privileged class, so they wouldn't necessarily oppose it.
NYC:
There is very little evidence that poorer whites felt like they were part of the planter class. In fact, they often bandied against them because they had numbers, thusly gaining political power. They did not feel part of the privileged class, although they might have aspired to it. (It is like working class people voting Republican and citing tax cuts for the rich, the elimination of the estate tax, or no capital gains tax. None of this has anything to do with them, but they aspire that it might one day.)
Working class whites were not tied with planters nor blacks. They constituted their own social class, somewhere in between the two. The reason why I, and other historians, are adamant about this is that it is lumps whites together, suggesting that performances of white supremacy and whiteness are uniform across white people. But, indeed, it is different. Economic, social, and political interests demanded that it didn't.
Invisman,
I quibble with one point you make, that the white yeoman farmer saw himself apart from the plantation owner. It is true that he was socially and economically a part from the plantation class, but the poor white farmer who probably didn't own a single slave still wanted to be like the plantation owner. He wanted to one day be a plantation owner himself. Many a slave owner in the antebellum South began his life poor as all get out and end up with 30 human beings working his lands for him.
This is why even a handful of free blacks became plantation owners as well, because it was the most sought after thing in southern society, to be a large landholder with a big house and fair number of slaves.
I want to have what they have, was and still is a big motivator for many people.
not sure how you seperate out these different "identities". This is one of the dangers of reading history backwards, reading aspects of actions/effects as intentions/causes. On a related note Herrenvolk philosophy, (not unlike all of the hegelians or other believers in mass/collective consciousness{es})was speculative and not empirical(whatever that would mean here).
How else do you "read history" but backwards?
And what else can history and historiography be but "speculative?"
What do you mean you are not sure how you can "separate out these different 'identities?'" We do it all the time because identities are separate. Just because someone benefits from and is involved with someone of a different cultural and socio-economic class/positionality, does not mean they share identities. The Jamaican nanny who works for the conservative Citibank executive and spends all day with his kids, benefits from her place, eats their food, perhaps aspires to be like this person and even votes Republican because that is how her boss votes does not mean they share an identity. They might overlap, but they can indeed be separated. I think you can overlap and be separate, as paradoxical as that sounds.
And please ignore my horrible and crude example. It might not work.
no more crude than my questions, tuff in these limits. You can read history without assuming any kind of neccesity, "reading aspects of actions/effects as intentions/causes" (see related arguments on presentism in historiography). I meant how do you seperate someone's "cultural" identity from their "economic" identity/interests when you are talking about motives and such? And in general given the lack of sociological data how do you decide what anyone believed back then? There is "speculating" in the sense that always we choose to simplify things in our own interests, and then there is "speculating" in the sense that seperates historical fiction from historical non-fiction and psycho-history, personal or collective, shares more in common with novels.
AH! I see. By backwards, you are talking about a crude causality, the kind of 19th century, von Ranke et. al progressivist/empiricist history. Yes, good point. Taken.
I also see what you mean by separate. Also, taken.
Stay strong.
Dmf,
Isn't the best way to answer questions about identities to look at what people wrote about themselves at the time? I'm not the greatest person for looking at history through a specific lense, I enjoy the narrative too much, but it seems that the actual words of the players involved should count for something. The difference between what a person said at a particular time and the way in which it was later remembered and justified can teach volumes about what an even was about.
Sometimes what people "forget" to mention is as important as what they do mention.
Sorn, yes best to look at what people say, although as you say this doesn't give the whole answer (just tells us how they justify something not how they came to do/believe it). This was my part of my point here that we shouldn't treat groups of people as if they are individuals (good for poetry bad for history). Some day we will perhaps get into the idea of the "death of the author(author=that we can nail down what a text means by understanding what the author intended) but that's abit far astray. I love historical narratives but they fall down a bit when we move to assigning responsibility and blame.
DMF gets a prize! DMF get a cookie!
Anyway who alludes to the great, brilliant, magisterial, towering, indispensable ROLAND BARTHES wins whatever prize is being given out.
(Can you tell I like Barthes?)
I am not saying he "saw" himself apart. I am saying that he WAS apart. I am sure mad people today see themselves as part of the Hollywood elite, rich and famous, and 1 in 1,000,000 will end up being there. But for the others, they are definitely apart. What you aspire to be is not what you are--visualization is not realization. I don't care what Oprah and that book THE SECRET says.
If an institution stays around long enough and is a big enough part of the social order people begin to see it, not as a human creation, but as a gift from god. After a while human institutions, modes of thought, and patterns of life become set. In another way of speaking about the same thing people have a tendency to follow newton's first law: "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force." The size of the slave ecconomy was almost prohibitively large. In my mind the wonder was not that slavery became an entrenched part of American Society. William Lloyd Garrison being chased through the streets of Boston by the broadcloth mob ready to hang him speaks to the power of the slave interest. In my way of thinking the most amazing thing about the civil war was that it happened at all, and that slaves were freed because of it. I mean 600,000 people were killed, on a per-capita basis that's almost 20 million, but in the end the slaves were freed, (how little freedom they recieved is tragic), the slave economy was put to rest, (to be replaced by a type of debt slavery in the south, but in the race to industrialize America it is worth noting that the south went from one of the richest sections of the country to one of the poorest because they tried to turn the clock back to before the civil war), and a new system of social order was worked out. All in all that's really amazing.
The entrenchment of slavery into the American economy prior to 1860 isn't that hard to understand. I think something like 10 of the first 15 presidents were slaveowners. What is absolutely astounding is that there were enough dedicated people standing on principle to bring about a civil war, that although tragic, ended forever a social order that had taken root so deeply.
as I was reading this very Sorn-like/heroic comment I could hear the more negative responses coming and this seems to be a place were we could spend all day arguing about who did what for what reason. We might be able to narrow this down to likely scenarios for individuals but not for such large numbers of people. We can try to be clear about what was at stake, and who did what to whom, but beyond that we would all be speculating.So if the task at hand is historical accuracy perhaps we could try and be a bit more specific. If on the other hand you're more interested in battling pet theories in a kind of clash of rorscach tests then have at it
Sorry to charge at windmills without asking permission. I probably should have used a smaller brush.
While we're picking on Sorn...when you're mixing metaphors, don't paint with a broad brush just to see if they stick.
"people in glass houses sink ships." A rock in the hand is worth two birds in the bush. Pigs don't know people have loose lips. A watched pot never gets the worm.
This is kind of fun now that I think about it.
wasn't a dig at all, when you wrote "What is absolutely astounding is that there were enough dedicated people standing on principle to bring about a civil war" this could be read to assume that this war was motivated/triggered by ideals/principles, which is certainly possible but impossible to prove, just as the negative would be. Seems to me to be more a matter of the reader than the "facts". Not against clashes of personality just the confusion of this with other forms of engagement.
I'll take "pet theories" for $250, Alex.
always good to take them out for a walk just don't forget the leash and the pooper-scooper.
Here, I think the connection to the English Civil War becomes crucial -- not least the fact that the people most disaffected with the Restoration and the Orangist compromise in 1688 would form a disproportionate element of English-speaking immigrants to the U.S.
Methodism, as well as more overtly political dissenting ideologies would form a significant elements of the abolitionist/free soil coalition that elected Lincoln.
I can see your point. I think though that sometimes the debate over the principles that caused the civil war is framed in terms that make Americans feel warm and fuzzy about themselves.
I can't prove this, and I don't want to start a hypothetical debate, but I think that a certain segment of the white southern population was so dedicated to the institution of slavery that when Lincoln was elected they started a war in order to preserve their institution.
The interesting thing is that there was also a segment of the northern population so dedicated to preserving the union that ultimately it was willing to end slavery to do so.
Now I don't want to get into the debate over historical inevitability or the paramount cause of the war. But I will say that sometimes wars happen because each side is bound and determined to stand on principles that are unable to peacefully coexist. Not always but sometimes, and I think the civil war was such a case.
sure, I have been trying make the case in various exchanges here that the idea that some differences are not negotiable, and that we in the US are fortunate (to whom much is given) to live in a country that solves most of its major political/ideological clashes with ballots not bullets. I am probably stretching this thread thin but if you think about all of the folks that you knew in the military, and all of the folks who were in the federal govt, plus the press and the public, that had some role in starting our current war in Iraq, can you boil all of these factors down into One common reason/cause for being at war? Can we say why the "USA" went to war? sorry about the soapbox, that's all, thanks for 'listening'.
No question... there's a temptation to romanticize a "Protestant ethic and the spirit of abolition." My father's name is Wesley, so I can't but admit a certain personal attraction to such a narrative.
On the other hand, the scholarship on the American Revolution has increasingly tended to emphasize the role of zealots in starting -- and keeping -- the ball rolling. It seems reasonable to believe that a similar intra-sectarian tug-of-war between... well, Jacobins and girondins... played a huge role in the North-South chess-match leading to secession.
Such 'zealots' are by no means absent from the Union side once the war started -- German '48ers in Saint Louis can rightly claim a disproportionate influence on the Civil War in the far west, while the 'burned over districts' of upstate NY and Vermont claim their share -- in Vermont's case a disproportionate share per capita -- of the Union dead. And it's not as if Vermont has a constitutional aversion to secession.
As to continuation of 1640... hard to tell... Although, nb. the Cabots and Astors had a tendency to push their rowdier and more radical inferiors out to the low-rent periphery.
wasn't Wesley a royalist?
@ dmf.
Different situations have different contingencies. The driving force between the war in Iraq was not the driving force behind the civil war. The civil war in my humble estimation was about principles. The war in Iraq after all the B.S. is melted down seems to have started over a personal vendetta.
I think when the arguments are trotted out and the issues are looked at that the words of former president Bush in the 2000 presidential debates will prove to be of significance.
Like I said, wars start for various reasons but the important thing is to seperate the list of possible causes into a list of probabilities. I don't want to argue about the causes of the war in Iraq, but personally I think that most often people think of a course of action and then come up with the reasons to justify it.
The same is true of the civil war.
@dmf Evidently Wesley was a royalist... I suppose one of the occupational hazards of starting a religious movement is that your followers stop listening to you.
On this Wesley could commiserate with Luther and Calvin.
Carrington,
Add in Christ, Mohammed, St. Francis, Bhudda, et alia. Every movement, institution, and organization eventually comes into conflict with it's founder.
Who knew that principles were maleable? Or that people change their minds?
That was a beautiful thought.
Do let us know if you happen to come across any books that are suitable for children, say, nine- or ten-year-old boys. This whole thread is very timely for me -- I am a homeschooling parent trying to set up a literature-based Civil War curriculum to occupy my son and another fourth-grade boy for half the next year.
So far the best general observation I can make is that any kids' book by James Haskins kicks ass. Also that it's incredibly hard to find a children's book willing to tackle Reconstruction or Jim Crow laws. The best I have been able to do so far, working from our city public library, is a bio of George Washington Carver by Cheryl Harness that spends several pages addressing Jim Crow.
TNC wrote:
Man's capacity for intentional self-delusion is, well, stunning. It's also becoming clear to me that something happened to the South in the late 18th century and early 19th century to turn it from a slave-holding region, to one that believed slavery was integral to economic interests and cultural identity.
For a compelling treatment of a disturbingly candid and previously undertapped area of the South's historical record on the eve of secession, see Charles Dew's Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Concise, damning, and forceful, Dew assembles speeches and letters that demonstrate southern leaders' tremendous "capacity for intentional self-delusion" at the culmination of the South's transformation. As the commissioners traversed the South developing support for secession among southern leaders and common folk, they stoked fear at the prospective loss of the southern idyll; meanwhile, their rhetoric of states' rights bursted at the seams with the vitriol of white supremacy that was so fundamental to the defense of such a society.
Just quickly, I would tend to think that the memory of USCT and their sacrifice was itself sacrificed in the 1877 compromises ending Radical Reconstruction.
Very often, history is used as a wedge for social change: both positive and negative. The memory of USCT was, I think, again sacrificed -- somewhat less malevolently -- in favor of the Tuskeegee airmen, who were a sharper wedge to lever open the politics of Jim Crow (without overtly challenging the 'Lost Cause').
No question, one wishes that history were an entity in itself -- indeed, there are ghosts, monuments, and gravestones that call for it. But writers and historians choose their battles.
And we now may be at the time when we need to lance and drain a particular historical wound.
Oh, there's an awful lot of documents on the USCT (and in Civil War pensions) in the National Archives. I think the problem is more that the document base is so overwhelming.
If you haven't yet seen this one, I'd highly recommend
_The Black Military Experience_, series II of _Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867_, edited by Ira Berlin, et al. (1982).
This is fantastic combo of both secondary writing & primary documents.
I just recently saw a review for a book on a North Carolina regiment. But I agree that I can't think of a really good recent book on the USCT as a whole.
TNC,
You're absolutely right about the change in attitudes towards slavery in the South from late 18th century to early to mid 19th century. It was indeed the cotton/agriculture boom that paralleled 19th century industrialization that led to slavery becoming as Calhoun argued an unchallengeable right. Innovations in technology allowed for a more cost effective planting of cotton, notably Eli Whitney, Jr.'s cotton gin.
The best example of the attitude change is in Thomas Jefferson himself who was a generation behind George Washington's generation. Washington and many others of his generation emancipated all of their slaves, whereas Jefferson's generation died about the time agricultural technology was making agriculture hyper profitable across the South. Jefferson, unlike, Washington didn't free all of his slaves, only some. This was because the ownership of his slaves made his estate something of great value to his legatees. If he had freed them all his legatees would be getting close to nothing, instead of a intact livelihood.
I think you're also right about the USCT lacking a complete history. I think you allude to the reasons why. Not enough of the soldiers wrote diaries or letters home (freedman, where would they write to?). White officer reports from their USCT units may be lacking as well. I think also because the troops got used in battles not until later in the war and usually were only used on the periphery of major campaigns (54th Mass. an exception perhaps, and the USCT at the Crater, which have been covered pretty well).
I've been reading lately about Grant's Vicksburg campaign and what's interesting and not too well covered is Grant's problems with dealing with freed slaves post emancipation proclamation. Freed slaves got in his way and the ad hoc system he had set up (he got an Army chaplain to come up with something for the freedman to do) laid the grounds for the post-war freedman's bureaus. Basically he had a hard time feeding them and his own army, especially when miles away from any Union supply depot.
What I also find interesting is Grant's use of slaves/freedman to effectively pick places of battle for him. His army used slaves and freedman to guide them all over Missisippi and Northeast Louisiana. At one point Grant ordered his troops to abduct a slave from a nearby plantation so that he could find a proper place to land his troops south of Vicksburg. They found a man and he told them of a spot, and that was where Grant first got his troops on the east side of the Mississippi, just south of Port Gibson and Grand Gulf, Mississippi. This effectively meant Vicksburg would fall.
Dude, that is fascinating.
"It's also becoming clear to me that something happened to the South in the late 18th century and early 19th century to turn it from a slave-holding region, to one that believed slavery was integral to economic interests and cultural identity."
Dear Coates and Carrington,
What you are describing (slavery in perpetuity, as legal status) is what Ira Berlin has called the transformation of a "society with slaves" to "slave society." I'd highly recommend his _Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America_ (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998), though you can get a taste of his insights in "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African- American Society in Mainland North," William and Mary Quarterly 53, No. 2 (1996): 251-88. (On jstor here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2947401).
Also, I'd be surprised if there weren't some untapped insights about Black soldiers in the WPA slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers' Project during the Great Depression. These have generally been mined as a source of information about the daily life/treatment of slaves, but not so much about the Civil War. (I'd recommend a talk with a librarian at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture about what your resources are in NYC--the primary texts available might be staggering.) If you haven't seen the many volumes of the WPA slave narratives produced by state (there were about 2,300 interviews), I'd advise at least requesting a few through your local library.
Interesting... .there's a good chance that I ended up osmosing Berlin's argument from somewhere.
The WPA slave narratives have a bit on the war, but the interviewers asked specific questions, so they're not great.
Susie King Taylor, a formerly enslaved black woman, wrote a diary about her time with a South Carolina USCT regiment. She and her husband escaped, he joined the regiment, and in her official capacity she worked as a laundress, but she also loaded guns & taught soldiers to read and write. This diary is published, so it's accessible via amazon.
TNC - of these books (or others), which would you recommend as a "first read" on this subject?
Battle Cry Of Freedom. With no hesisitation. Incredible book. Talk about a guy stepping up for the big game. McPherson brings it, and he brings it on the greatest subject in our (American) history.
I actually felt stupid for watching the Ken Burns flick after reading Battle Cry.
I have to wonder about the suggestion that anti-slavery ideology was strengthened in North America because opponents of the Restoration came to England's American colonies. The Restoration was in 1660. The American Civil War began in 1861.
I had Peter Onuf (when he was at Columbia) for the American Revolution class and a seminar on American Legal History. I recall reading assigned essays that noted many New England Puritans had worried that power would make Cromwell and the rest of their English counter-parts corrupt.
I would also remind you that Cromwell sent some of his opponents into slavery in the Caribbean while the New England Puritans had no problems selling Native Americans into slavery.
It's not a comprehensive history, but George S. Burkhardt's Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War is a recent investigation of Confederate official and unofficial reactions to facing colored troops, as well as Union retaliation. Colored troops and their officers learned that surrender was not an option, and they fought accordingly. The book also discusses the hostility to colored troops in the North. It is thoroughly appalling.
Ta-Nehisi,
I would also add to the chorus of voices urging you to finish AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN FREEDOM. I read it my second semester of grad school, and it totally changed the way I think about American history. A very important book.
Also, on the matter of why the non-planter whites of the South (i.e., the white yeoman class, the majority of the electorate), see J. Mills Thornton's POWER AND POLITICS IN A SLAVE SOCIETY: ALABAMA, 1820-1860. It is dense but rewarding, and the concluding chapter is magisterial.
I've been reading lately about Grant's Vicksburg campaign and what's interesting and not too well covered is Grant's problems with dealing with freed slaves post emancipation proclamation. Freed slaves got in his way and the ad hoc system he had set up (he got an Army chaplain to come up with something for the freedman to do) laid the grounds for the post-war freedman's bureaus.
This is part of an entire arena of Civil War history that is scarcely covered by history or fiction. From Grant’s move on Fort Henry in February of 1862 to Wilson’s defeat of Bedford Forest in April of 1865, there was a “western front” stretching from West Virginia to New Orleans a thousand miles long. Much of the population was fiercely pro-Confederate, which made it impossible for the advancing Union armies to garrison or patrol captured territory properly. Some areas, like Jones County, Mississippi, were pro-Union, giving equal grief to the Confederate authorities. Invading armies marched back and forth, spectacular cavalry and guerilla raids made news in all the newspapers, spies and scouts risked everything to gain a little advantage for their cause, while smugglers and corrupt officials thrived on the black market trade in cotton. In the midst of it all, hundreds of thousands of slaves looked for their chance to escape to freedom.
In another country, in another culture, there would be a vast literature of novels and stories set on this frontier. Apparently there was such, on either side, in the immediate aftermath of the war, but the fashion faded quickly. Nowadays, other than Bierce’s Incident at Owl Creek Bridge, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and John Ford’s movie The Horse Soldiers, no one but Civil War buffs has anything but the vaguest knowledge of what happened in that place and time.