August tends to be a slow month for podcasts, but it was a great one for blog posts and book reviews. Enjoy!
Blogs
Scott Hartwig asks over at HistoryNet if “Everything We Think We Know About Pickett’s Charge Is Wrong.” The particular myth Hartwick has in focus is the persistent claim that Pickett’s Charge would have succeeded if J.E.B. Stuart had attacked the Union line in the rear. This is a myth that became popular in the 1950s, was propagated by the famous Electric Map at the Gettysburg Visitor’s Center, and was reinforced by several books in recent decade.
At Emerging Civil War, Kevin Pawlak writes about Hungarian revolutionary Gustav Waagner‘s involvement in the Second Manassas Campaign. Waagner was a respected artillerist in Europe who joined in Hungary’s liberal revolution in 1848 and was forced into exile when the forces of reaction triumphed across the continent. In 1851, Waagner entered the United States and supported himself as a railroad civil engineer. Waagner’s intelligent actions during the prelude to Second Bull Run saved men’s lives but may have ended his military career.
At the same site, Sarah Kay Bierle writes about the well-known use of stones by out-of-ammo Confederates at the Second Bull Run. We know this paleolithic weapon was used, but Bierle looks at whether is was effective. Jon-Erik Gilot writes about the 156th Pennsylvania, a regiment recruited by a German immigrant officer that never quite got organized. Doug Ullman reviews a new musical on Frederick Douglass.
Emerging Civil War has had a whole series of posts on Civil War “What If’s.” These speculative articles ask how things might had been different if something that did not happen during the war had, in fact, taken place. The best of these articles is one by David Dixon on the well-known attempt to get the Italian legend Garibaldi to come to America to help lead the Union’s military effort.
Nick Sacco is one of my favorite bloggers, but I must have missed one that he posted at the end of July. A reader had asked him if statues and monuments, while not great media for understanding the history of the events they depict, might be useful to reinforce American “civil religion.” The reader asked “But do you think monuments of heroes meant to inspire veneration as part of America’s civil religion — which helps a diverse society cohere around a shared story — are not necessary or helpful?” Sacco begins his response:
I take a skeptical view of the use of statues and monuments within the context of civil religion. My primary concerns are that they promote the worship of false idols and overly simplify the complexities of history. Put differently, I get worried about histories that are flattened in the name of unquestioned patriotism, nationalism, and the glorification of the nation-state. While I think there are many admirable people from the past that we can learn from, I think the language of “heroes” and “veneration” runs the risk of creating division within the diverse groups you speak of. After all, veneration is quite literally the act of honoring a saint. Therefore, within the context of civil religion, if certain individuals or groups do not properly “venerate” historical figures deemed as important to society through monumentation, they are considered unpatriotic, not real Americans, politically radical, etc. etc. So yes, I question the very premise that statues can help diverse societies cohere around a shared understanding of the past.
The fact that Sacco next references Jurgen Habermas gives you a sense of the serious discussion on his blog.
Al Mackey writes about what is going on with four Confederate-linked statues removed from public display in Baltimore, Maryland following pro-Confederate acts of homicidal terrorism in Charleston and Charlottesville. The statues may be headed for a vacation in LA. He also discusses the removal of Confederate flags from a race track in California and the dispatch of a Confederate monument in Wisconsin.
Civil War Monitor has a disturbing set of quotes illustrating the homicidal passion of some Civil War soldiers.
The Monitor also has its choices for the five best books on the Civil War in the Far West.
The Civil War Picket reports on the discovery of a cannon ball at Fort Sumter. The Picket also has news of a new St. Louis park named after Benjamin Oglesby, who escaped slavery and enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. Here is video on the new park and the history behind it.
Substack
Kevin Levin is writing a new biography of Robert Gould Shaw and he has occasionally discussed his research and writing on his Substack account. Recently he wrote about trying to research and write about Shaw while pushing “aside the fact that he would eventually come to command a regiment of Black soldiers in early 1863. Focusing on the last few months of Shaw’s life, before his death at the foot of Battery Wagner in July 1863, can obscure the many twists and turns that led him to accepting command of the first Black regiment raised in the North. Approaching the subject in this way can lead to a mischaracterization of earlier events as little more than a precursor to what we know awaited Shaw.”
Levin is also an expert on “Black Confederates,” a Lost Cause myth dominant in Confederate-friendly circles for forty years now. Levin’s recent publication of a letter from a Confederate regiment seeking to recruit Black soldiers in the last weeks of the war raises all sorts of interesting questions for Levin.
Finally, Levin has a nice piece up at the Washington Post on the post-Reconstruction Readjusters in Virginia. That state has neglected the story of how white and Black voters in the late 1870s formed a fusion movement to challenge the state’s political elites. If you can’t access the article through the Washington Post, you can read it on Substack.
Book Reviews
The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans Edited by Allison M. Johnson is reviewed by Jon Tracy at Emerging Civil War. This is part of a growing library of books on the war-wounded and disabled. Right after the Civil War, chaplain William Oland Bourne held two writing contests with submissions from soldiers that had learned “to write left-handed after the loss of the ability to use their right arms through disabling wound or amputation,” says reviewer Tracy. The reviewer writes that “These writings not only showcased their re-learned penmanship, but also included accounts of their service, wounding, recovery, and mindset as they struggled in the postwar world of 1865-1867.” Chaplain Bourne never managed to publish the works submitted to him and they have lain in obscurity for a century and a half. Now many of these essays and poetry from the soldiers are accessible online through the Library of Congress, and Allison Johnson has created what Jon Tracy describes as “a must for those who are exploring a wide range of Civil War era topics.”
Steve Davis, Emerging Civil War’s chief book reviewer, has a review of the promising collection of letters between a Confederate and his wife. The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton & Anne Radford Wharton, 1863-1865 Edited by William C. Davis & Sue Heth Bell is “an intriguing biographical narrative,” according to Davis.
The same book is also reviewed by historian George Rable at the Civil War Monitor. Rable writes:
Those interested in Confederate military history may wish Gabe had written about his service in more detail, but his letters well described problems in Confederate command, including great uncertainties about his own role. He offered much commentary on Confederate generals, repeated complaints about superior officers, and showed much concern for his soldiers’ welfare. Readers interested in Jubal Early will find frequent remarks from both Whartons, at first admiring but later sharply critical. Like most Confederates, Gabe greatly admired Robert E. Lee. He has little good to say about Jefferson Davis, and at one point said he had nearly lost faith in “republican government” altogether.
Like many novice Civil War students, I was attracted to the life story of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain when I was young. Then, as I studied the Battle of Gettysburg, I looked into the stories of other men who fought there. Apart from Paddy O’Rourke, the most fascinating non-Chamberlain is Strong Vincent, Chamberlain’s commander. The Lion of Round Top: The Life and Military Service of Brigadier General Strong Vincent in the American Civil War by H.G. Myers is a new biography of this respected officer. Jon-Erik Gilot reviews this book for Emerging Civil War saying it is a useful narrative of a brave officer’s life. He worries, however, that Myers sometimes seems to be trying to enwrap Vincent in a myth of his own.
It is not easy to find good histories of the Battle of Perryville. Two small armies clashed in Kentucky, both losing heavily in terms of numbers of men killed and wounded. Now there is a new volume out on this 1862 fight. Meg Groeling, a fine author herself, reviews Decisions at Perryville: The Twenty-Two Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Larry Peterson and says that it “is not an easy armchair read. It is far too compelling for that. It is detailed and meticulous in its analyses. It is, however, a perfect book to have in multiple copies–one for each friend to use–so that the opinions and interpretations can be discussed as a group.” Rare that we are instructed to buy more than one copy of a book!
Patrick Kelly-Fischer reviews two new books on the Civil War economy, Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein, and Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union by David K. Thomson. Kelly-Fischer says that “both authors did an excellent job keeping their work accessible and engaging. Ways and Means is a particularly narrative-driven work that leans heavily on the character of Secretary Chase to keep the reader bought in; of the two, I would read this first as an introduction to the topic, and be more likely to recommend it to a friend with a more casual interest in history. But I think you’d be missing the full story if you didn’t follow it by reading Bonds of War, and I expect I’ll be reaching for that book regularly as a reference.”
Wesley Moody reviews a new biography of Confederate commander P.G.T. Bearegard. Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War by Sean Michael Chick is a short biography of a well-known but little studied Confederate general. Moody writes:
Unfortunately, biographies of Civil War generals have been out of fashion in academia for a while. The last full-length biography of Beauregard was written in the 1950s. Too much of our understanding of the Civil War has changed to let that much time pass without reexamination. Sean Michael Chick’s brief biography is a good start. Dreams of Victory asks some interesting questions and brings to life the old controversies.
Evan C. Jones writes an extended review of Leon F. Litwack’s classic 1979 book Been In The Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. Jones write:
Litwack distinguished himself as one of the great humanities research trailblazers of his era. This is in part because most of his fellow graduate students traveled back into the antebellum South, whereas Litwack followed a road that led beyond Appomattox Court House. By venturing into Reconstruction studies, he stepped into the anti-Dunning School world dominated by the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and John Hope Franklin.[2] But where Du Bois and Franklin focused mostly on high politics and sources from the black political, religious and intellectual elite, Litwack embraced the “new social history” of the 1960s and ‘70s. In so doing, he took a history “from the bottom up” approach that included the illiterate and undistinguished. He undertook a decade-long odyssey that carried him to archives in nearly every corner of the former Confederacy and to points as far afield as a graveyard for black Union soldiers in Port Hudson, Louisiana.
There has been a big increase in intelligent books about Civil War medicine that take the reader beyond the myth of doctors as amputation happy drunks tossing limbs out of hospital windows. North Carolina’s Confederate Hospitals 1861-1863, Volume I by Wade Sokolosky get a good review from Civil War Books and Authors which says that this is “the first comprehensive history of the personnel, organization, and management of military hospitals in the Old North State during the first half of the Civil War. The quality of this study certainly heightens the anticipation level for the second and final volume…”
Railroads, on the other hand, have gotten major attention from writers since the 1960s. Civil War Books and Authors says that “Dan Lee’s The Mobile & Ohio Railroad in the Civil War very clearly demonstrates the great degree by which this vital logistical artery shaped how and where major western theater military campaigns were conducted over the entire length of the war.”
Podcasts
Emerging Civil War has an interesting interview with Mike Block on the Battle of Cedar Mountain.
Addressing Gettysburg had a great podcast on Civil War Pittsburgh with the National Park Service’s Rich Condon.
Untold Civil War has a fascinating discussion of the Confederate attack on Lawrence, Kansas in 1864 which resulted in a massacre of civilians living there.
The Civil War Center interviews historian Nick Sacco about the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.
American Historical Association
James Sweet, president of the respected American Historical Association, put up a controversial post on the group’s website on August 17, 2022 on “Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present” that has attracted praise and criticism. Citing an essay two decades ago by Lynn Hunt, Sweet wrote:
[Hunt] warned that this rising presentism threatened to “put us out of business as historians.” If history was little more than “short-term . . . identity politics defined by present concerns,” wouldn’t students be better served by taking degrees in sociology, political science, or ethnic studies instead? The discipline did not heed Hunt’s warning. From 2003 to 2013, the number of PhDs awarded to students working on topics post-1800, across all fields, rose 18 percent. Meanwhile, those working on pre-1800 topics declined by 4 percent. During this time, the Wall Street meltdown was followed by plummeting undergraduate enrollments in history courses and increased professional interest in the history of contemporary socioeconomic topics. Then came Obama, and Twitter, and Trump. As the discipline has become more focused on the 20th and 21st centuries, historical analyses are contained within an increasingly constrained temporality. Our interpretations of the recent past collapse into the familiar terms of contemporary debates, leaving little room for the innovative, counterintuitive interpretations.
This trend toward presentism is not confined to historians of the recent past; the entire discipline is lurching in this direction, including a shrinking minority working in premodern fields. If we don’t read the past through the prism of contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism—are we doing history that matters? This new history often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines.
Two days later, President Sweet posted an apology for his column:
My September Perspectives on History column has generated anger and dismay among many of our colleagues and members. I take full responsibility that it did not convey what I intended and for the harm that it has caused. I had hoped to open a conversation on how we “do” history in our current politically charged environment. Instead, I foreclosed this conversation for many members, causing harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association.
A president’s monthly column, one of the privileges of the elected office, provides a megaphone to the membership and the discipline. The views and opinions expressed in that column are not those of the Association. If my ham-fisted attempt at provocation has proven anything, it is that the AHA membership is as vocal and robust as ever. If anyone has criticisms that they have been reluctant or unable to post publicly, please feel free to contact me directly.
I sincerely regret the way I have alienated some of my Black colleagues and friends. I am deeply sorry. In my clumsy efforts to draw attention to methodological flaws in teleological presentism, I left the impression that questions posed from absence, grief, memory, and resilience somehow matter less than those posed from positions of power. This absolutely is not true. It wasn’t my intention to leave that impression, but my provocation completely missed the mark.
Once again, I apologize for the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA. I hope to redeem myself in future conversations with you all. I’m listening and learning.
Kevin Levin wrote about Sweet’s column soon after it was published but before Sweet’s follow-up post. Levin called it a “hit piece.” According to Levin:
Sweet seems to think that he is the first person to suggest that historians should, “interpret elements of the past not through the optics of the present but within the worlds of our historical actors.”
Instead and perhaps predictably, the only book referenced in Sweet’s piece is Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project, but even in this case he offers little in the way of serious analysis of the individual essays, a number of which are authored by academic historians.
Sweet makes no attempt to show how historians like Kevin Kruse, Matthew Delmont, and Tiya Miles have fallen under the spell of presentism in their respective chapters.
He continues:
There is nothing inappropriate about critiquing a work of popular history or the interpretive framework of a historic site, but Sweet goes about this in an entirely inappropriate way.
Finally, the timing of this piece could not have been worse. Sweet’s conclusions confirm just about every unsubstantiated assumption made by Republican lawmakers and their allies about history teachers and history education. It’s just a matter of time before we see references to this piece and the AHA on FOX News and other right-wing publications.
Teachers are beginning to return to the classroom for what promises to be another challenging year. States across the country have passed or are in the process of passing legislation that curtails the teaching of certain subjects, especially the history of slavery and white supremacy in the United States. Sweet’s characterization of his fellow academic historians as preoccupied with “social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism” and insinuations about how The 1619 Project is being utilized by some educators will only serve to justify even further restrictions and harassment.
Sweet is the Vilas-Jartz Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a scholar of the African diaspora. His prominence in the field gave his words added attention beyond social media. Jay Caspian Kang’s New York Times newsletter took up the story. Kang wrote that Sweet’s column was:
a seemingly harmless missive about “presentism,” a phenomenon wherein historians allow the political, identity-based demands of the current day to dictate the focus of their scholarship and inquiry….I agree with Sweet on the fundamentals of what he said, but I also understand why minority scholars felt like the integrity of their work was being questioned. An uncharitable reader might accuse him of singling out scholars who write about identity (read: mostly nonwhite scholars) and making unfounded insinuations about the motivations behind their work. This would be more forgivable if Sweet were not the president of the American Historical Association, a position that presumably gives him some influence over where the discipline is headed.
What interests me most about the Sweet controversy, however, is the idea that history itself might be taking up too much space in the ways that we think about the present not just in the cloisters of the university but also within the broader discourse around social justice. “We suffer from an overabundance of history,” Sweet writes, “not as method or analysis, but as anachronistic data points for the articulation of competing politics.”
I agree with everything Sweet argues in this piece and I think this kind of historical thinking–understanding the past on its own terms not ours–is absolutely essential for teaching the discipline to students. As Sam Wineburg put it, historical thinking is an “unnatural” act. It forces us to see the world from the perspective of those in the past. Historians must capture these lost worlds regardless of contemporary trends….Is presentism bad? Let’s put it this way: if all a “historians” do is write books with the intent purpose of trying to explain the present (and frame their work in such a way) then they should just call themselves sociologists or activists or religious studies scholars or a political scientists. All of the practitioners of these disciplines also work in the past, but they are not historians.
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Would you be willing to review “Unhonored Service: The Life of Lee’s Senior Cavalry Commander, Thomas Taylor Munford.”? Published by Fox Run Publishing. Vauthor: Sheridan R. Barringer.
Congrats on your new book. Generally I only review books available as Kindles.