Shaw's Backside: The Other Side of an Icon

This week I find myself in Boston, one of the couple of American cities which call themselves the cradle of liberty. But I'm not drawn like a moth to the Revolution. It's just not my bean.

Instead, I find myself in the awkward position of standing at a visitor desk and asking a park ranger what will interest a Civil War geek in a Revolutionary-bent city. That dog don't hunt so well.

The Shaw Monument was the ranger's only suggestion. The Shaw Monument was already on my list. So the Shaw Monument it was.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens crafted an amazing piece of art to sit along the edge of Boston Common. Standing in awe staring at the bronze, the 54th Massachusetts came to vivid life as I stood in the waning hours of Sunday evening. I found amazing power in the words at the base of the monument, so much so I needed to trumpet them on Facebook: "Forward as fits a man, but the high soul burns on to light men's feet." That's art.

But somehow, I missed the fact that there is a backside to that bronze statue. Shaw and his soldiers have more to say through their marble resting place.

Every photo I see are those faces, those men, those chiseled jaws and striking brows marching into unknown death and destruction, but also winning freedom. I'd never seen the back of the monument.

The White Officers
taking life and honor in their hands cast in their lot with men of
a despised race unproven in war and risked death as inciters of
servile insurrection if taken prisoners besides encountering
all the common perils of camp march and battle.

The Black rank and file
volunteered when disaster clouded the Union Cause. Served
without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops.
Faced threatened enslavement if captured. Were brave in action.
Patient under heavy and dangerous labors and cheerful amid
hardships and privations.

Together
they gave to the Nation and the World undying proof that
Americans of African descent possess the pride, courage and
devotion of the patriot soldier. One hundred and eighty thousand
such Americans enlisted under the Union Flag in
MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.

The text was written by Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard in the years following the war. It is a powerful epitaph to the regiment made famous in our age by the film Glory and the rising neo-emancipation interpretation of the war. But it is not simply that. It works as an epitaph to the war itself, as a description of what the whole affair meant.

An imperfect partnership, inherently unequal yet striving toward equality, of white men and black men. Here, in this memorial to a war many have eschewed and subverted, ignored or swept under the rug, the two are offered a balanced set of praise.

The consequences are balanced as well. White officers and black soldiers risked not only their lives, they risked their freedom. And together, they proved that black folks were deserving of freedom.

Lincoln took that proof to heart. The faith he had in those black soldiers, the fact that he respected their willingness to step up and fight for a nation which didn't see them fully as men, the thought that because they fought that nation should treat them like men ultimately got that tall man killed.

The bronze on the front of the Shaw Monument at Boston Common is striking and powerful. But so are the words on the back.

Sockdologizing: Finally Laughing at the Lincoln Assassination

I've taken solace in the fact that Abraham Lincoln died laughing. Sarah Vowell, in her riveting and powerful Assassination Vacation, speaks about how, "it is a comfort of sorts to know that the bullet hit Lincoln mid-guffaw. Considering how the war had weighed on him, at least his last conscious moment was a hoot."

But Vowell expresses confusion at that laugh line, which Booth made one of the most momentous of all theatre history: "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap."

For years, I thought it was all lost in translation. That funky word "sockdologizing," getting in the way of our modern understanding of this apparently hilarious one-liner.

A few weeks ago, I tried to explain the joke to my class of college students. After delivering the line, prefaced with a warning that it's the biggest laugh-line in the play, the students stared back with blank expressions. I didn't blame them. I grasped for words.

"It's an insult; it's like insult comedy. It means she's a conniving woman. It's like a great line from a bawdy big-budget Hollywood frat-boy comedy today."

My students looked unconvinced. Frankly, I was unconvinced. The line just isn't funny. And it began bugging me. It began really bugging me.

The line haunts me every now and again, I think because I've never understood it. My mind works like this weird melange of pop culture and history, with things swimming into my consciousness unbidden more often than not. I'll be walking down a hallway, when I hear my lips mumble, "sockdologizing old man-trap," and not know how those words got there.

That night, after class, it lingered in my mind. Why was it so funny?

At about 3am, I sat bolt upright in bed. I don't know if I had been attending Our American Cousin in a dream, or if I had been Lincoln in a dream or if it had just taken that long to process.

Mrs. Mountchessington's not the butt of the joke, I explained to myself, finding the words in my mind before I forgot the dream revelation, It's Asa Trenchard who's the butt of the joke. That one revelation is enough to slot everything else into place. The joke lives in the setup, not the punchline.

MRS. M: I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.

ASA: Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.

There stands Mrs. Mountchessington, played that night by Helen Muzzy, telling Harry Hawk's Asa Trenchard that he is definitely, "not used to the manners of good society," as a boor of an American transplanted into the depth of prim and proper English manners. This is Asa's moment, his opportunity to show her up.

And he definitely wants to. Asa shouts back, directly to Mountchessington's face that accusatory question. But then it all goes off the rails. Asa steps into Mrs. M's beartrap of a taunt. And it snaps around his leg.

The meaning of, "sockdologizing," doesn't matter. It's all in the setup. Asa's been accused of not knowing the manners of good society, and then proves in one line he not only doesn't know them, but doesn't know he's being judged at all.

Analyzing a joke is the best way to kill it, I know. But I'll now always laugh at that hilarious line, just like Lincoln did right before Booth eased his finger back on the trigger in April of 1865.

And then I'll cry.

Gettysburg's Other Unknown Soldier

What happens when you don't die
clutching a photo of your kids? / PD LOC

We all know the name Amos Humiston. We know he was found on the first day's field. We know he clutched the image of his three children, an unknown soldier until his wife Philinda Humiston saw her children peering back at her from a copy of that picture. We know his drama and the agony of Philinda, we know the heartbreak and horror.

But who's buried next to him?

We know Amos Humiston, but the man next to him is a mystery. To the New York father's right is another man, another soldier who fought and died for the flag, for the nation, for the freedom of four million. He has a last name, partial information, a unit and not much else.

And searching finds relatively little on him. "Chamburg" of the 134th New York is a relative mystery. There are no Federal soldiers named Chamburg listed in the rolls of the Army of the Potomac. Not a one.

The 134th New York Infantry did have a Private Jesse P. Chamberlin who was killed at Gettysburg. The man buried next to the famous Gettysburg unknown is more than likely Private Chamberlin.

But who was Chamberlin, then?

In 1860, a Schenectady County census enumerator recorded the details of Jesse P. Chamberlain and his family. The 40-year-old laborer had a young 28-year-old wife, Hulda. Safe in their home in Duanesburg were twin 4-year-old boys, Arthur and Oscar, and a new 2-year-old daughter named Cornelia. And Jesse Chamberlain left them all behind when he enlisted in the 134th New York in August of 1862.

Moved toward the front just after the battle at Sharpsburg, stood in reserve at Fredericksburg and suffered only eight wounded men at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg would be their true baptism by fire.

News of the battle at Gettysburg began trickling into the Schenectady Evening Star and Times in the first few days after the battle. On July 9th the editor ran an excerpt from a letter written in the frantic moments after the battle. But the news was piecemeal. The friends and family of the 134th New York Infantry waited, fearing.

The next day, more casualties. More fear. Henry Teller wrote to the paper that the, "regiment went into the fight about three hundred strong, and came out with twenty-seven men and five officers." That simple sentence must have ricocheted in the minds of the men and women of Schenectady County. Did Hulda Chamberlain hug Arthur and Oscar tight to her side as she heard the news? Did she hope as she tucked Cornelia in to her bed that her beloved father was alright?

July 11th brought glad tidings. Lieutenant Colonel Allan H. Jackson had survived the harrowing first day of the battle, ferreted away in the town as rebels swarmed through the streets and, under cover of darkness, "by running through the rebel pickets got back to our army." It seemed anyone might have survived.

What does gripping horror in the
newspaper do to the folks back home
still waiting?  How many times do
they put their husband's face on
Jake Trask's body?

On July 13th, more news and a few more names appeared in the Schenectady Evening Star and Times. Orderly Sergeant William H. Howe wrote to readers back home that it was only, "through kind Providence I was spared to come out safe, without a scratch." As the 134th charged forward, "they fired grape and shell at us." Although they stood strong for a brief moment, the line buckled and, "they drove us and when we fell back they killed a great many of our boys." The friends of Jake Trask must have read in horror as Howe described how a shot passed, "through the breast and he laid right over and died in five minutes after. Poor Jake!"

Had Hulda figured it out yet? Did she know? Or did she still hope against hopes that her husband would return to his two sons and daughter?

All hope died on July 22nd, as a complete list of killed, wounded and missing was passed along to Schenectady by Colonel Jackson. There, in hard black-and-white, the only man listed as outright killed in Company H: Private Jesse P. Chamberlain.

All-told, 37 men were killed in the fighting on July 1st, Jesse Chamberlain among them. Arthur and Oscar would never see their father again. Cornelia more than likely wouldn't remember him at all. Another father among thousands buried beneath Pennsylvania's soil.

But unlike Humiston, whose grave eventually was marked properly and is venerated by thousands who come to meet the soldier who J. Francis Bourns made into an icon, Jesse Chamberlain gets no mourners. As visitors stand at Humiston's grave, do they ever wonder who "Chamburg" is?

I never did before. I'm a bit ashamed of that. How could I stand there and not obsess over who was buried in that grave?  But now I know I should kneel down at Jesse's side too and mourn along with Arthur, Oscar and Cornelia. I'll wipe away Hulda's tears 150 years too late. Then I'll move on to the next grave and do the same.

After all, that man died for freedom too. Just like Amos Humiston.

And Jesse Chamberlain.

Interpreting Different Cheesesteaks

Wednesday's Metaphorical Cheesesteak, dirty and
on the street. Just like it should be.

I wandered around Philadelphia last week on travel for work, which meant I had the opportunity to indulge in my favorite Philly pleasure. Besides Rocky, Comcast and Benjamin "Macho Man" Franklin, the City of Brotherly Love has given us all one other joyous invention: the cheesesteak.

I'm a Pat's King of Steaks partisan.

My order is, "wiz wit," and is usually served up with a side of pickled peppers. I love the dingy picnic tables. I love the greasy grill. I love the surly staff that mans the window. Going to Philadelphia means an inevitable pilgrimage down to Passyunk & 9th for a taste of true sandwich perfection.

Except I didn't go to Passyunk this time. I could have. I had the time, Pat's is open 24-hours and the steak is always hot. Still, I didn't make my usual trek.

Instead, I had a steak at a street cart just outside Independence Hall. There was no wiz. The cheese was provolone. It still had onions, but they were crisp and moist, not stringy and caramelized. And the view wasn't a South Philly baseball diamond, it was the brick-and-mortar cradle of liberty.

The sandwich was nothing like what I expected.

It wasn't bad, it was just different. I enjoyed the different experience. I liked this different steak.

It's not what I went to Philadelphia seeking, but it game me a new appreciation for the form. It was a new sandwich experience. I found a new way to see cheesesteak.

Sometimes, interpreters are afraid of changing their stories. The inertia in many interpretive environments can be indomitable. You hear phrases like, "our audience doesn't come here to hear those types of stories," or, "if we change what we talk about, our audience won't come anymore."

But I'm going to keep eating cheesesteaks. In fact, this new cheesesteak experience might open me up to trying other takes on the sandwich. I'll still love the Pat's experience. But I'm not so dead-set against trying other offerings in the city of Brotherly Love.

Maybe our sites are the same. We can offer up new sandwiches alongside the old, different meanings along with the ones we've been sharing for generations. Trying new cheesesteaks doesn't diminish my love of Pat's. Nor does it mean I can never eat a Pat's steak again. It just means I've found other steaks that I enjoy as well.

And in Philly, variations on cheesesteaks are inexhaustible. I can keep finding sandwiches that mean something to me.

Thank god.

Out of Sorts: Finding the Passion behind the Article

A familiar handwriting
and inflammatory content...
must be Stahle!

The individual letters used to layout and print a newspaper in the 19th century were called sorts. Each letter was a sort. But the individual sorts that make up the words don't always give you the full story behind an article. They often aren't quite enough.

Digging hard into odd historical files, you find amazing things. Most recently it happened to me at Adams County Historical Society, my perpetual Thursday night haunt. Doing an in-depth dive, in essence living inside of an archive for years, you get to know the collection so intimately that it becomes a friend.

The vertical files in particular are amazingly odd creatures. They bear the fingerprints of anyone who has worked as at gathering the raw material together, in this case in Adams County. They're weird. They're wild. They're the mixed bag of history.

A few weeks ago, I opened a mixed bag up and found the amazing. In a folder on the Gettysburg Compiler, the borough's often-inflammatory conservative newspaper of the 19th century, a yellowing page has iron gall ink scrawled across it. I thought I recognized the handwriting.

The title screamed at me, "Thaddeus Stevens' Late Speech." The opening lines were just too good to resist diving in deeper. "Without following Mr. Stevens in his meanderings through marsh, swamp, fen, bog and slough of political despond, let it suffice to approach the threshold of this quagmire of abolition heresies." The editor continues on, excoriating Stevens in interminable diatribe.

The tone is spot on for Henry J. Stahle, the newspaper's editor. So are the politics and the handwriting. In the end, Stahle demands every good, right-thinking American to:

defend our free institutions; defend our liberal, toleration of religion; defend our homes, our altars, and our fires from the ruthless hands of conspiring demagogues and abolition traitors; defend the purity of the ballot box; defend the President in his Constitutional policy of restoration and re-Union; and God will bless and save our country from the ravages of another civil war."

A photo, alongside the handwritten manuscript
in the folder, showing the Compiler's wartime
office on Baltimore Street.

The letter is amazing in its content and its vitriol. It was eventually published in the September 18th, 1865 edition of the newspaper on page 2 as written. Surrounding it is the real aim of the editor: a concerted effort to deny David McConaughy a seat in the State Legislature, and thereby prevent real black voting rights from becoming a reality within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Where civil war had divided North and South, racial war threatened to divide states, counties and even small towns as the "War Between the States" subsided and the war over the future of the black man began.

But what's most exciting is the realization of the process. This diatribe was handwritten, with underlined words peppered throughout the page. The vitriol is in the words, but it's just as evident in the stroke of the pen. Touching the paper, the rage seeps through. These words were real for Stahle, they were things he believed so passionately and felt had such dire consequences that he penned them in neat but violent hand.

Where in the newspaper, Stahle's fear of America becoming, "a government of a single idea," is rendered in italics, in his draft each word is underlined of its own accord. Stahle fears the, "abolition traitors," because they threatens to transform America into, "a government of a single idea." That idea is ever-extending freedom to the oppressed and punishing those who deny that freedom. And as you look at the words, look at the simple ink on a page, you can almost see Stahle's pen underlining each separate word in the phrase, a short underscore for each word resolutely placed below. This wasn't the America he wanted. And he let that fact be known.

When they were translated into type, when the sorts were laid in the trays and the paper was ready to print, the italics became uniform. The anger was there, but not nearly as palpable. But in touching a simple sheet of paper, a tool of hatred from nearly a century and a half ago, you find Stahle's soul in neat, dark ink.

Old, Worn Bibles: What Did She Feel?

What is the emotion here?

A simple photo for today, taken back in September standing in the Dunker Church. A visitor, giddy and laughing, gets so close to the Dunker Bible standing inside of the footprint of the Dunker Church on the eve of the anniversary of battle.

Why? What is it that made her so happy?

Was it knowledge? That surely came into play. She needed to have some background and understanding of that place, she needed a feel for the forces at play. But it's not knowledge she's getting from those pages. It's just a book like any other.

On Monday, Obama laid his hand on a plain 1853 pocket Bible, published by Oxford University Press. To open it, to read it, it is a King James Bible. Likewise, the Dunker Bible is a plain English Bible, easily read. The 23rd psalm is the same in both books as any other hunk of dead trees and cow's skin you find on shelves and in churches across America.

So what's the power?

It's the talisman. It's the meaning. The book doesn't really matter all that much. It adds weight, but not substance. If Lincoln had set his hand upon Punch Magazine to swear out the oath of office, if the Dunkers had read from a sacred copy of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus right before the battle at Sharpsburg, we would drool over those pages of wood-pulp and ink.

It's the fact that these object were there, but it's something more than that fact too.

It's the romance and wonder of that proximity. It's the understanding that we cannot shake Lincoln's hand any longer. We cannot hear the Dunker's songs that Sunday before the battle any longer.

But we can meet the library's silent witnesses. So we stand slack-jawed with our camera, not gaining knowledge. There is none to be gained from these books.

We instead gain something to feed our soul.

Meaningless Lists of Soldiers: Hidden in Plain Sight

Pencil scratches on a page...

This week I had the chance to visit National Archives 1 to do some research for work into the history of the Federal Armory at Harpers Ferry, and particularly the building I work in. Mather Training Center waswas the Superintendent's House before the War came and upended the entire town. It was nice to get back into the stacks downtown and dig through musty boxes of (in this case) Office of the Chief of Ordinance records.

It brought to mind the last time that I got the chance to root around in the trove that is the Nation's repository down in DC. In the fall of 2011, working on a hunch, I ran a lead to ground. Working from a few random Confederate Compiled Service Records I found over in the College's Special Collections, I dug into Confederate prisoner of war records from the Gettysburg Campaign.

In and of themselves, those types of documents aren't all that interesting. The data is plain and simple, a litany of names and units without much more detail. But this lead was different. I was working from the hunch that a manifest of the College Hospital existed thanks to a notation on a CSR index card.

I do that sometimes. I work hunches and tiny leads. In the past, it's lead to finding a Confederate deserter who was a student at Pennsylvania College and another student who pulled a 'John Burns' and fought on July 1st. History is like a sock with a few bare threads sticking out of the seams: pull hard enough and the whole story falls apart, baring all.

This lead took me to Record Group 109, a War Department cache of documents pertaining to Confederates and Entry 211, "Records Relating to Confederates in Union Hospitals." When the cart was wheeled out, my heart leaped. I threw open the "Gettysburg, Pennsylvania" box.

The campaign was so large, with so many wounded prisoners, it warranted its own box. And there, inside box 15, sat a simple set of two sheets of paper with light pencil scrawled on front and back. The document's bureaucratic title still sends chills up my spine: College Hospital transferred July 19, 1863 to Baltimore, Md.

A document is cold, meaningless.

The list is a roll of about 80 prisoners who sought shelter in the halls of the College Edifice through mid-July, when their fortunes suddenly changed and the United States decided to move them out of the Pennsylvania border town.

This all sounds like an amazing moment. But the truth is, it's all really meaningless. The document is just a list of names. Lists and accountings of things have no real meaning but for their weight. Here are 80 men who survived the horror of a Civil War hospital and were moving on toward better times. Beyond that, the list is just a list. It's a dry number: 80.

What does it take? It takes looking at each individual name, one by one, and finding the story. A list is a list. Any monkey can do the type of research I do. All it takes is some dogged determination and the stupidity to follow a lead all the way to its conclusion, no matter the effort. But to take that information and sous out the story? To make this mean something takes more.

It takes finding out more than just Private John Abner Persinger of the 28th Virginia's name and rank, and the sterile fact that he was wounded in the right side. That's all the document tells you. He is pencil scratches on paper. You need to keep digging and discover that he was born on March 2nd, 1842 and lived in Roanoke, Virginia as war descended on the Old Dominion state.

In 1863, as John sat in a college dorm room or library hall with a wound in his side spilling forth a trickle of cleansing blood, at home on a sprawling family farm valued at over $45,000 sat his 53-year-old father James. His mother Emaline waited too. Charles and Marshall, two of John's younger brothers, were 15 and 13. There was much work to be done on a large, prosperous farm. But how many times did their thoughts flit to John in the army. Was he safe? When had his last letter arrived? Was he among the wounded or, worse, the dead?

John Persinger survived his wound from Gettysburg, was transferred on to Baltimore and eventually exchanged. He rejoined the 28th Virginia and fought on, captured again by United States soldiers at Five Forks in the waning days of the war. Four long years of war, and four long years of waiting for father and mother and brothers at home. The 5' 5" tall soldier, with blue eyes and brown hair would return home to his family intact. But the anguish of war, for soldier and for family, would never disappear.

How many untold hours of anguish aren't captured on this simple piece of paper. These aren't pencil scratches, they're the remnants of lives. We don't commemorate pencil scratches. We don't kneel at the graves of worn stubs of graphite and yellowing paper.

It's the people. It has to be. The men and women of the past must be brought back to life in the glowing technicolor of the mind in order for any of this to matter at all. Tactics don't matter. Lines and boxes on maps don't matter. Raw casualty statistics and rote lists of prisoners don't matter.

But men and women? That's the heart of interpretive history. And here are 79 more men waiting to be awoken, remembered and set walking the world once more.

Living Fortress of the Heart: Resonance of Emancipation

Under the spreading Emancipation Oak
a band of interpreters stand...

Jacob dragged me somewhere again. I really should learn to say, "no," because no matter where I get dragged by Jake, it always ends up wrecking my brain for months and making me obsess about some amazingly minute interpretive experience. But I'm a glutton for interpretive punishment.

Last year during the National Association for Interpretation annual workshop it was an historic diner. This year, with the conference being held in Hampton, Virginia, there are far more Civil War related speed bumps to roll over.

Yesterday it was the Emancipation Oak. "It'll be amazing," Jake assured me, "It's a living thing that's a National Historic Landmark."

I made a snide remark about, "living history," and joined him in the car along with Clayton and Travis, two more whip-crack interpreters.

The tree is on the campus of Hampton University and is massive. It's an impressive Southern Live Oak, an evergreen tree that seems to envelop the sky with it's sheer mass.

Under the tree 150 years ago, former slaves sat in rapt attention as the words of the Emancipation Proclamation were read aloud to them for the first time. Lincoln exclaimed in neat strokes of ink upon a page, translated into living words for the contraband gathered at the foot of the tree, that the slaves of the Southern states in rebellion, "henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons."

These poor shards of humanity, shivering in the shade of a even-then sprawling tree, saw new light as Lincoln took a massive step toward their freedom and equality. The fort that loomed on the horizon, the bastion of freedom named after James Monroe, now stood explicitly as a bastion to protect their freedom from the slave power.

OK, so Jake was right. It was worth the stop.

But then we went on another wild goose chase. "Now we're going to see the Hampton National Cemetery!" Jake declared. Into the car we piled again. After discovering there are two Hampton National Cemeteries, and that we had arrived at the wrong one, we hightailed it over to the correct one, again within the campus of the historically-black Hampton University. Four white boys in an SUV were waived past an incredulous security guard. She was sure we weren't going to cause trouble, but it was an odd sight at sundown.

We wanted to find someone, and had our sights set on a few USCT soldiers. Travis produced his phone and listed off the names of some Medal of Honor winners resting within the cemetery's brick walls.

We hunted down the grave of Color-Sergent Alfred B. Hilton. Hilton served in Company H of the 4th United States Colored Troops. He enlisted in August of 1863 at Baltimore. He listed his residence as Harford County, Maryland. He was married and in his twenties. He was 5 foot, 10 and a half inches tall. His complexion was black.

Standing over the sod beneath which lay Color-Sergeant Hilton, we read a quick biography of his heroic act. Our glowing screens told the tale in the growing darkness.

In late September of 1864, as the 4th USCT charged the rebel works during the Battle of Chaffin's Farm outside Richmond, the Color-Sergeant carrying the Regiment's flag was struck down by a bullet. Standing next to him was Sergeant Hilton, the United States flag tight in his grip. As his comrade fell, Hilton grabbed for the flag and, according to the Official Records, "struggled forward with both colors, until disabled by a severe wound at the enemy's inner line of abatis." Hilton urged his fellow soldier onward, passing the flags on to another man, "his thoughts were for the colors and not for himself."

Hilton, bleeding from a severe wound in his right leg, was brought to the United States Hospital at Fortress Monroe. His leg was amputated at the knee.

He lingered, sickness taking hold. Hilton died on October 21st, 1864.

A package was returned to his company commander in the field from the hospital. Inside were simple things: a cap that had sheltered his head from rain or sun as he marched forward for freedom, a wallet with $4.50 worth of paper money, and two ambrotypes. Who were the faces in those pictures? Were they his wife? Was one a photo of him, waiting for a spare moment to send it home to loving hands waiting for a warm embrace that would never come?

I looked up from the gravestone, a tear staining my right cheek. I swear it was from the cold. A tree caught my eye. Its leaves looked familiar. Behind Hilton's grave, shading his final resting place, is a Southern Live Oak. The branches don't spread as wide as the Emancipation Oak, but they're still strong.

Color-Sergeant Hilton rests now, forever a free man under the shade of a cousin of the tree of first freedom, a stone's throw away from Freedom's Fortress.

He is the Civil War in microcosm more than any other man.

I'm glad I got the chance to meet him.

The King of Rock, Roll n' Interpretation

THE King of Rock n' Roll. Period. Full Stop.

Last week was "Elvis Week" in Memphis. I don't know that because I follow Elvis. In fact, I really can't stand Elvis Presley's music. About as far as I can go down that road is listening to "Suspicious Minds," every so often. Nothing else really speaks to me.

No, I know that last week was "Elvis Week" in Memphis because I have Sirius XM radio in my car and they were constantly playing advertisements for "Elvis Week."

I don't really care about Elvis. But I do remember a fond trip to Memphis, where I went out of my way to avoid Graceland. The man driving the shuttle to my Enterprise Rent-a-Car really appreciated that. "He's so overblown," I remember him saying.

Of course I don't take my stock in Elvis. My vote for the King of Rock 'n Roll must, by all accounts, be Chuck Berry. He's the true King of Rock 'n Roll. I know, I know, I'm going to raise a lot of ire by saying that. But it's important to me. He was an amazing singer-songwriter who wrote the music he performed and didn't just take blindly steal other folks' music and slap a pretty white face on it to market to middle America.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." -John Lennon

My favorite song by Chuck Berry isn't anything you'd normally expect, although I love me some "Johnny B. Goode," some "You Can't Catch Me," (stolen by John Lennon) and some "Sweet Little Sixteen" (stolen by the Beach Boys). My favorite, though, is something you don't hear played very often by Berry when you tune your radio dial. It's "Memphis, Tennessee."

I grew up on the song. My mom and dad always listened to the local oldies radio station in the car. The Johnny Rivers version of "Memphis Tennessee" seemed to be a perennial mainstay. It would constantly be playing, nearly once every hour. It became a standard.

Chuck wrote the lyrics and music, though, and the first recording was his 1959 B-side cut on the back side of his peppy "Back in the U.S.A." Berry wrote an amazing story. And important for the interpreter looking for a bit of inspiration, he used one of the basic tools of drama to do it.

The original B-side Recording
of "Memphis, Tennessee."

Listen to Chuck's version of the song. Go on, I'll wait. Listen all the way through and pretend that you've never heard it before. Maybe you haven't. Just listen to the lyrics and listen close.

Who is this man? What does he want? And who is Marie? The story unfolds, bit by bit, piece by piece. Crucial tidbits of information fall into your lap as each line of the song rings out. "Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge..."

The sorrow in his voice is clear and plain. You feel him; you feel his pain. It is the sorrow of lost true love.

We find out that her mother broke this pure love up, destroyed their "happy home in Memphis, Tennessee." And you feel the heartache of the singer, missing the woman he so desperately loves and cares about, her tear-stained cheeks wishing him goodbye and "hurry home."

But then at the end, the turn, and suddenly you realize this love affair you've discovered in the past two minutes wasn't a love between a man and a woman, but between a father and his daughter. It wasn't a deeply devoted sexual love, but a deeply devoted paternal love.

And with just one line - "Marie is only 6 years old, Information, please." - the whole song suddenly shifts and changes meaning again. The song first gives one meaning to you, a true white-hot passionate love, and then at the end gives another powerful meaning, true fatherly devoted love. Two simultaneous meanings, just from the choice to leave out one crucial piece of information until the songs final strains.

The technique isn't that hard. It's simply learning what not to include, what not to say and when not to say it. But then it is also the crucial skill of finding the exact moment to turn the wheel and reveal what you've withheld.

What if you thought Kirkland was simply
giving aid to South Carolinians until the
very last moment? / CC Jim Bowen

Where does this all fit into the world of interpretation? Try to think of that one story where leaving out a crucial piece of information until a key moment adds that extra layer of meaning. The story of Jack Hopkins, janitor of Pennsylvania College is one where I've been using this technique for years. The complicated tale of a beloved janitor, jokingly called the "Vice-President" of the college in student view-books, chided for missing his daily duty of ringing the college bell for prayers and class, and owner of fine imported carpet and fancy mantle clocks, takes on an added dimension when I finally reveal the fact to audiences that Jack Hopkins was black. Withheld to the end, suddenly the students' joke, the chiding and the fact he owned fine goods all take on added and different meanings.

Anyplace that there is inherent mystery in a story, where someone's identity is unknown, when the circumstances of their life make a moment even more meaningful, when someone turns out not to act as we might suspect, we don't need to throw the facts out right away. Even a famous case like Amos Humiston, Gettysburg's mystery soldier, can take on new magic by making sure that, when telling his tale, the first time the words, "Amos Humiston," escape your mouth they are the very last words of the story. Imagine the story of Richard Kirkland at Fredericksburg, but only finding out at the very end of the tale that he was not offering water to his friends and comrades, but to the enemy instead.

If all of this seems like a manufactured drama, yes, it is to some extent. But it's dramatic sentiment employed to help throw light on deep meaning. And that's the business that interpreters at Civil War sites are in: offering opportunities to gain meanings, not simply reciting cold, hard facts.

So take a cue from the King of Rock n' Roll. Maybe it's time to try Chuck-Berry-style Interpretation.

Thinking Fourth Dimensionally: How Battlefields Become Deloreans

"Marty! It runs on steam!" / CC Bill V

I have written before of my intense love for Back to the Future III. Part of the reason that film resonates with my movie-going soul is my abiding love of the 19th century. Part of me wishes I could hop into a Stainless-Steel Delorian and visit the past for a short stint. I'm pretty sure I'm too much of a pansy to last very long in the world of latrines and muddy water, but I'd love to see the past for even just one fleeting moment.

Of course, I don't need a souped-up Delorian to take that fleeting glance into the past. Time travel is possible, and not simply the straight arrow, forward ho! style that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity takes into account. I can break the laws of physics, bend the universe to my will and move backwards in time.

Hold up an historic photograph and line it up perfectly on the landscape and you can peer through a window in time, if only for a moment. Chant aloud the words of a vaunted or vilified historical character on the spot where he himself spoke those words and you can, just for a moment, hear an echo of their very voice. Close your eyes and look at the historical landscape in front of you and your mind will pull back the curtain of time, for just a split second, to reveal the gory or glorious past.

On the tour around Antietam I wrote about last week, Garry Adelman mentioned one of my favorite concepts: the fourth dimension. Although in the descriptions of the universe there's some arguments over what constitutes the fourth dimension (which we'll leave to the physicists, thank you very much), one useful way to visualize that construct is as the dilation of time. Garry mentioned that getting out on the physical resource and peeling back the layers of the past is the closest thing we have to time travel.

But...

Sometimes we historians fixate on a particular target in that Fourth Dimension, unable to take our eyes off of it. It rushes at us like a horde of cartoon indians on the back wall of a derelict drive-in movie theatre:

Doc: "All you have to do is drive the time vehicle directly toward that screen accelerating to 88 miles an hour."
Marty McFly: "Wait a minute, Doc. If I drive straight towards the screen, I'm gonna crash into those Indians."
Young Doc: "Marty, you're not thinking fourth dimensionally. You'll instantly be transported back into 1885, and those Indians won't even be there."

"No wonder this circuit failed.
It says 'Made in Japan.'" / CC Adafruit

But one of the true amazing joys of the Delorean cum Time-Machine that Doctor Emmett Brown crafted is that it's completely programmable. If Doc wanted to, as he points out to Marty in a keen moment of exposition in the first film, see the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Birth of Christ or even the mundane 5th of November, 1955, all you need to do is punch in the time into the keypad, engage the circuits and accelerate to 88 mph. The whole of time is yours to observe. But the landscape (Hill Valley, California in Marty and Doc's case) remains the same. Three dimensions, the physical location, never shift or change. But the crucial fourth dimensions is eternally fluid thanks to a Flux Capacitor and a dream.

We historians can do the same thing. We have the choice of going anywhere within this landscape in the Fourth Dimension, leaping from time to time to help find deeper meanings. This is the prerogative of the present: we have the freedom to see the past with 20/20 hindsight, the ability to see the ripples in the pond and the stone that made them simultaneously.

This means we can stand in one place, be it the steps of the Montgomery State House or the base of the Peace Light in Gettysburg, and witness the entirety of the past. Furthermore, it is our solemn duty to allow those different points to dialogue, to interact and to live simultaneously on the landscape. Standing on the State House steps, Jefferson Davis gives Martin Luther King Jr. more meaning, and King's march gives Davis' act trajectory. At the Peace Light, FDR in 1938, the KKK in 1925 and bleeding young men for North Carolina commanded by a man named Iverson in 1863 all play on the landscape simultaneously in a symphony of meaning, each melody melting into the next to give that landscape the ultimate story.

Our time machines MUST be programmable. If we lock them into one date alone, we miss the broader world of meanings. If public historians refuse to think fourth dimensionally, history will never make sense to the public.

Lost and Found: Where the Iconic Meet

Gilded icons: brilliant,
striking and with deeper
meanings. / CC Cea

I know exactly when I began believing in the Muppets again. I am a child of the '80s. I was five years old when Jim Henson died. I remember watching the TV with my Mom crying beside me as Frank Oz's Fozzie, Richard Hunt's Scooter and Dave Goelz's Gonzo read to their friends the condolence letters sent by thousands of grieving fans. I remember the slow building of "Just One Person."

But somewhere along the way, I lost the Muppets. Or they lost me. "Or did something break we can't repair?" Every time I heard Steve Whitmire's voice come out of Kermit's felt maw, my heart sank. That wasn't my frog, my Kermit. For over a decade, for the better part of my childhood, the loss of Jim Henson was palpable. I held a grudge against something, someone, for taking away this frog (and the person who he embodied) I cared deeply for away from me.

Then I saw the newest Muppets movie. It was good, but it was still Steve Whitmire. It was a different Kermit, with a different voice and a different personality. Then this new voice told Miss Piggy, "it's time for our song." The crowd in the Muppet theatre applauds, and a familiar banjo patter begins. "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" Kermit asks in song.

I burst into tears. More of the characters joined in. Eric Jacobson's Miss Piggy, Bill Barretta's Swedish Chef, John Henson's Sweetums all sing along with Kermit on the most iconic of Muppets songs. My heart broke. I sat in the theatre, next to my Mom, and cried. At that moment, Steve Whitmire became Kermit. I couldn't hear the difference in his tone or inflection. He was that frog and the frog was him.

The iconic power of the song, the raw emotional pull of its lyrics about dreams being possible coupled with its lilting banjo line, transformed a ping-pong ball adorned felt puppet into a being, a real living thing. And the iconic power of that song and it's message of hope and perseverance transformed Steve Whitmire's voice into Kermit the Frog's voice, lost for me since Jim Henson died in 1990.

Icon comes from a Greek word meaning image or likeness. But the iconic moments in our lives have more to do with the Greek Orthodox Christian interpretation of that word. Wander through the market stalls of any of the former Soviet satellite states and you will find vendors peddling small hammered metal trinkets with beautiful Eastern European depictions of the Madonna and Child or any one of a number of Saints. The icon has deep spiritual meaning. It plucks at the heart somehow. It represents a larger truth, be it God or the simple beauty of man's artwork, to the believer and unbeliever alike. It encapsulates the essence of something larger than just the sum of its parts, something greater than the wood, tin and paint from which it is made.

Interpreters share many stories. We tell tales of valiant soldiers and courageous protestors, civilian bystanders and student sit-ins. But the stories which resonate the most with an audience are those that touch the heart. Looking for the passingly iconic in history is not hard. Many things in history represent something larger than just the paper they are written upon or the ink spilled to craft them. But looking for the icons which transcend, those which possess the power to pluck the strings of any soul requires skill, practice and a bit of luck. They often hover around those magical human things we call dreams and love.

In the realm of the Civil War and Civil Rights, the transcendentally iconic often lies where these two worlds collide. It is the image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. standing in the, "symbolic shadow," of the Great Emancipator in 1963. It is the farm owned by a black man where, in 1863, the future of black men's right to citizenship in the nation would hang in the balance during bloody combat. It is the bridge named for a Confederate general and slaveholder where in 1965 the sons and daughters of former slaves were mercilessly beaten for wanting something as simple as a right to vote that had been promised to them a century before.

How do you find the iconic? Sometimes it is as simple as looking for the intersections of history, where two tales crash into each other, forging a broader transcendent meaning. Sometimes it takes stepping outside of your own frame of view, to see the world from a broader perspective. Keep looking. The deep, iconic and meaningful connections are out there waiting to be found and shared.

Or as Kermit the Frog said once. And another Kermit the Frog still says today:

“Someday we'll find it

The Rainbow Connection

The lovers, the dreamers, and me.”

The Iconic floats over New York's streets. / CC Musicwala

This piece originally appeared as part of the pre-course reading material for the recent Civil War and Civil Rights training course I helped organize and conduct at work with the NPS. But that course only reached 19 students over the course of four days. Sometimes icons need to be shared with the wider world.

Good Morning to the Night: Requiem for My Battlefield

"It's got a lot of songs to sing
If I knew the tunes I might join in..."

The fireflies have started to appear around Gettysburg. We have a new sliding glass door in the kitchen that I can press my face against and see them. I did it the other night when Jess mentioned they're out there.

I live up on Seminary Ridge, now. The right flank of the final Confederate push on the afternoon of July 1st flushed right across the postage stamp lawn out my front door. The next night, young men from Virginia and North Carolina milled around, eating and singing and readying themselves for the pain of the next day.

I look out my windows, or I wander these streets or these fields, and I see ghosts. I don't mean the pretend, "boogity boogity," ghost tripe they peddle in town. I mean the resurrected dead who wander in my mind. If I squint out the window, between the fireflies, I can see the forms of men swilling Pennsylvania whiskey and chanting out rebel tunes from hoarse throats.

This field swarms with more than just fireflies. It swarms with living memories.

After grabbing an ice cream, Jess and I went driving on the south end of the battlefield last night. She flipped off the AC and rolled down her window. On the radio, John Lennon was singing the last few lines of, "In My Life." "Though I know I'll never lose affection," the ill-fated Beatle sang, "for people and things that went before." The song's last strains faded and Elton John began singing, "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters."

"They know not if
it's dark outside or light..."

I turned to Jess and asked her if we were the only people who did this. Everyone else tooling around the field was squinting into the growing darkness and desperately trying to listen to their auto tape tour. They were trying desperately to read the last few lines of this wayside or that monument in the dying sunlight. But we were intently listening to the King of Pop (yes, I went there) sing about his undying love for a place and her people.

That field means so much to me, but that meaning goes so far beyond the phantoms of the dead wandering through my mind. They're always there. But there's a cleanness on the landscape, a centering calm and a beautiful quiet. It's mournful and celebratory all at once. Sort of like Elton's song.

When I squint at that field, I don't just see soldiers floating across it. Phantom trolley cars cruise down long-rotten rail lines. On the fields north of town, a legion of white hooded ghosts appear and disappear in long clouds of hate-filled mist. On a rostrum in the cemetery, the ghostly voice of a Vice-President demands, "together."

But that's not all. I can squint and see Tim and Garry giggling gleefully as they dive headlong into photos and parade around in front of PCN cameras. Somewhere on Culp's Hill, a crowd of Civil War Roundtable members still clips away at the pricker bushes incessantly in my mind. And now, in the valley of death, I'll forever hear Elton John singing, "And I thank the Lord for the people I have found, I thank the Lord for the people I have found."

----

Last week, while while we were sitting in a meeting with a visitor to the building, the interpretive training staff was talking about how we all live in different places. One of my co-workers lives right in Harpers Ferry. My boss lives across the river in Maryland. I drive an hour to and from work each day from Gettysburg.

The woman we were talking to asked me the simple but loaded question, "you're looking to move down here though, right?"

The answer fell out of my mouth before I could close my lips. If my mind could have kept up, it would have said something judicious, something measured. Thank god it couldn't.

"No, never."

College Kids with Guns: Hidden in Plain Sight

The College Church, across the street
from these scene of today's tale.

Sunday morning found me out in the field with a stalwart group of Gettysburg devotees: the Gettysburg Discussion Group's annual spring Muster. When the coordinator of this year's Muster put out the call for something a bit different, perhaps something in town for Sunday, my ears perked up. I've been looking for groups to test out the nuggets of the College's Civil War story on and the GDG seemed like the perfect group of guinea pigs.

The GDG has been around for a healthy stint, trading barbs about the Gettysburg Campaign and various other topics for years. I was first turned onto the group in 2004 and have alternated between an active member and a detached lurker. One thing that's never changed: these are battle-centric people. The conversations revolve chiefly around the obscure idiosyncrasies of the battle. In short, they focus on the type of thing that tends to cure insomnia for the bulk of folks out there.

If I could interpret for these folks, and help them see value in the civilian story alongside the military story they so deeply care about, I could begin to prove a major point on interpretive theory. Shifting our stories, telling different stories on these landscapes than those we've traditionally presented, will not alienate our traditional audiences. Instead, it only serves to give them even more reason to care about these places than the same tired reasons they've already found.

Of course, like all these types of revelations, I stumbled upon the answer accidentally. The most powerful moment on the tour came at a stop I hadn't quite planned.

Charles Schaeffer in 1862, from a
brilliant Tyson Brothers album in the
Gettysburg College Special Collections.

As we moved from the former President's House on the south end of campus into the borough toward our final stop on the Diamond, the group began straggling. Stopping to let them catch up, I realized just how close we were to the home of Professor of German Charles Schaeffer. The professor's home became a shelter for one of the most awkward and unique participants in the battle at Gettysburg during the dark days of July. Inside those walls, Frederick Lehmann sought solace and safety.

Frederick Lehmann was a student in the Preparatory division at Pennsylvania College in 1863. A native Pennsylvanian from outside Pittsburgh, Lehmann got an itch on the morning of July 1st as the sound of battle echoed over the hills west of Gettysburg. Like much of the town, he went rubbernecking.

But the teenager Lehmann did more than go look. He picked up a rifle from a wounded Federal soldier. He scrounged for a cartridge box and cap pouch. He joined the fight. Somewhere in the melee of the day, the young student was captured by Confederate forces. With help of the persuasion of a Federal officer, the rebels let him go and placed him in the care of Professor Schaeffer.

But curiosity got the better of Frederick on July 3rd. He wandered into Chambersburg Street in front of the Professor's house and quickly found himself the target of a bullet through the lower leg. He recovered, but forever bore a limp, the painful reminder of a curious young kid.

The GDG folks had never heard the story of Frederick Lehmann before. They stood transfixed. The first question out of their mouths was simply, "how did you find that?"

So I walked them through the research process. They had the vicarious thrill of discovery as I explained the tiny steps I made toward understanding who Lehmann was. For this crew, the joy of discovery was just as powerful as the tale of Lehmann itself.

Sometimes history is like a grand police procedural. The thrill is in the chase, not in the story completed. Piecing the story together bit by bit, from piece of evidence to piece of evidence, can help give a visitor the joy of discovery that the historian feels in the archive. When they finally have the clues and their minds line up all the pieces, when they become their own historians, that spot will forever be remembered as a meaningful place of discovery for them.

For the group I had the honor of leading on Sunday, that spot is the south end of the 7-11 parking lot. Maybe not that illustrious of a place, but it's the humble spot of pavement where Frederick Lehmann came back to life for them for just a few moment, resurrected from the cold paper records of history.

"The People for Whom He Saved the Union": Ninety Years Ago in DC

Reading the official Facebook page of one of my favorite history authors yesterday, I saw a pithy note about a "day of note." Ninety years ago this week, President Warren Harding dedicated the Lincoln Memorial at the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

If ever there was a landscape where the story of the Civil War and the story of Civil Rights have collided in technicolor majesty, it is on those steps. I pointed out as much a couple weeks ago. And author Sarah Vowell pointed out yesterday the first time that Memorial was the scene of Civil Rights strife - the very first day it was open. From its beginning, the temple dedicated to Lincoln has been the scene of conflict over the paltry detail of the color of the skin of some Americans, the very, "people for whom he saved the Union."

It's a throw away line, the detail that the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial was a segregated affair. I've used it as a stark underline of the point that the Civil War was the beginning of an end to racial strife, not an end fully achieved. But to be honest, I've never dug that deeply into the hearts and words of the black folks who experienced that ultimate snubbing, that theft of the Great Emancipator's shrine from under their noses.

The snub was palpable to Black communities across the country, both those dotting the District and those lying hundreds of miles away. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, The Appeal indignantly told its predominately black readership that, "Colored Americans were segregated in the seating of the audience during the dedication."

The Memorial as it appeared on the
front page of The Afro-American

Shelby Davidson, the executive secretary of the Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP sent a somewhat-public letter to the organization's national headquarters. Dignitaries. white and black, were given tickets for the event's platform. "Platform seats reserved for white were in chairs and within hearing distance of the speakers," The Appeal reprinted Davidson's words on June 10th, "while back of those seats were those reserved for colored people, roped off from those occupied by the whites and placed about a block from the Memorial in the grass and weeds, with rough hewn benches without backs or supports."

Adding insult to injury was the fact that flanking the black dignitaries. "placed at the entrance to these seats were marines who were distasteful, discourteous and abusive even to swearing in the presence of our women who accompanied their husbands to the celebration." Baltimore's Afro-American on June 2nd recounted the experience of Whitfield McKinley, "well known local real estate dealer," who was ordered by one of the armed Marines to sit on his assigned bench. When McKinley responded that he'd, "think about it," the Marine gruffly responded, "Well think damned quick."

The Afro-American, with no lack of bravado, recounted how, "a near riot ensued and the crowd demanded the transfer of the marine elsewhere." When a nearby officer declared that the Marine were, "the only thing to do to keep the colored people in their place, twenty-one persons arose as one and left the enclosure."

The Saint Paul Appeal, addressing African-American citizens of the state who had sent her sons eastward to be slaughtered at places like Fredericksburg and Gettysburg fighting for the freedom of the slave, noted that, "it is a wonder that Lincoln did not turn over in his grave."

In Salt Lake City, Utah, The Broad Ax told its black readership that the Washington branch of the NAACP had petitioned President Warren Harding to unseat the Superintendent of Capital Grounds and Buildings, the man responsible for the segregation of public spaces in the District. The incident at the Lincoln Memorial wasn't the first, but, "the second of its kind in less than two months, the first being the placing of segregation placards in Rock Creek Park." The Broad Ax reprinted the NAACP's stern warning to the Republican Harding:

It would be a rude awakening and a painful disillusionment to us to realize that the party was approving and following a practice which was an incident to the institution of chattel slavery.

For black citizens across America reading similar details in their own local newspapers, the fact that the Lincoln Memorial was segregated spoke all too loudly. It told them where the White House and the rest of America stood on their equality. The promises which Lincoln made in 1863, through a Proclamation destroying slavery and an immortal address Lincoln gave at Gettysburg, rang hollow and empty as they echoed through the halls of that marble temple. Lincoln didn't need to be standing over a kneeling slave for 1922's black folks to see what their predecessor Frederick Douglass had noted in 1876: that Lincoln was, "preeminently the white man's President." White America had gone out of their way to claim him as their own, snatched from a black populace questing for some icon around which to rally.

If we stop imagining the Civil War in 1865, we aren't getting the whole story. If we stop in 1877, we're only a few steps down the highway of the Civil War. The dedication of the Lincoln Memorial was a battlefield in 1922, in some sense just like Shiloh or Petersburg, where men faced off over the momentous concept of freedom and liberty. This week the 90th anniversary of that battle of wits, minds and words passed by like an historical speed bump. How many more opportunities to remember the other battles of the Civil War, the ones that took place in the hundred years after the white men put down their swords and shook hands, will we leave by the wayside before we realize they are integral parts of the Civil War story as well? Wars don't end, they linger for decades, even centuries. No place was that more clear than on a day in late May 1922, when the war erupted once again on the Mall in Washington.

Haupt-enstance: Whatever Became of Herman?

Tom Lehrer, on his 1965 album That Was The Year That Was, sang a send-up of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey with his, "Whatever Became of Hubert." The song's been going through my head this past week or so, but with the name "Herman" taking the place of LBJ's second-in-command.

One of my students, a good chap named Cory who just graduated, has been railing about how the college pays no attention to our most famous Herman: Herman Haupt. I have to admit, I hadn't paid much thought before this year to Herman Haupt, nor has much of the rest of Gettysburg's huge historical community of researchers, guides and authors. To be fair, Haupt is a relatively obscure Civil War personality. Haupt was one of those officers too good at his job for his own good. Like fellow masters of the mundane Montgomery Meigs and Winfield Scott Hancock, Haupt found himself relegated to the world of supply and support. Field command was beneath the engineering genius' genius.

Haupt's connection with the borough of Gettysburg before the war runs deep. Haupt found God in the town, baptized under the roof on St. James Lutheran Church in March of 1837 by Reverend Keller. He found love here, too, marrying the pastor's daughter a year later and settling into a quiet life in the Pennsylvania crossroads.

Haupt, the skilled engineer who graduated from West Point at 18 and went immediately to work surveying for railroads throughout the southern half of the Commonwealth, designed and built his own brick mansion on the ridge west of town. He christened the manse, "Oakridge." Years later, the building would be used to shelter wounded men from the elements as the work of war raged around its walls. Even later, on my first visits to Gettysburg, my mother would ogle the building and dream of someday buying the beautiful Queen Anne mansion. You've probably dreamt that dream too; it's that beautiful house on the south-east corner of West Confederate Ave and the Fairfield Road.

Haupt worked as a brilliant professor of science at Pennsylvania College during the 1840s, helping to spearhead the initiative to form a scientific society on campus and to design and build their grand home: Linnaean Hall. His writings in the society's journal run the gamut of subjects, from physics and chemistry to the study of weather patterns and putrefaction of natural materials. He was what you might call a Jack-of-all-Trades.

When war erupted, Haupt tendered his services as a railroad engineer, repairing and laying out new lines to support the operations of the armies in the field around Washington, D.C. As cannon roared in the three-day volcano of Gettysburg, Haupt painstakingly organized the repair of Pennsylvania and Maryland's ravaged rail infrastructure. Rail service to Gettysburg was restored by Haupt's careful work within days of the battle, a job Meade expected to take the better part of a month. Rail cars were flowing into Gettysburg in time to give General Daniel Sickles a smooth trip from the field of battle back to the halls of Congress to help crucify his former commanding general in front of the Committee on the Conduct of the War.

General Herman Haupt, surveying the work of
the General Herman Haupt. Yup, Haupt was so
cool they named a train after him.

Haupt more than likely had a hand in aggravating Lincoln's growing frustration with Meade over not following up on his massive victory at Gettysburg. It was Haupt who alerted the War Department of Meade's intentions to stay put and not pursue Lee. The telegraph, sent over Haupt's own newly repaired lines, was quickly passed on to Lincoln who was infuriated at yet another slow, plodding general in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Haupt walked the campus of Pennsylvania College and the streets of Gettysburg, not simply as a soldier but as a citizen and scholar. Gettysburg was where he cut his teeth, crafted his skills and found his life as a young man. Haupt's valiant work recreating the rail networks in the aftermath of the battle brought food to a tired and worn Federal army when they needed it most. Gettysburg was Haupt's home. What added meaning did this place have as he tried desperately to help in its defense?

And why have I never heard of Haupt, except as a footnote to a footnote? I'm still digging and piecing the story together, but Herman Haupt seems to be a key player in both pre-war Gettysburg society and the swift recovery of the army after a trip through flaming, dripping hell. He's certainly not a footnote. He was a key piece in the chess game that was Federal victory at Gettysburg.

Once Upon a Time in Gettysburg: Sometimes It Works

Monday night, I took my class out on the 'battlefield.' I know some of them are taking my class because, "it's Gettysburg College and I should take a Civil War class before I leave." I couldn't resist the siren call to show them where they have lived for four years and transform the meanings of that ground for them. So we went on a campus tour, the battlefield they walk everyday when they go to class or dinner or out to party on a Friday night.

The College Boys who broke and
ran: one of my keystone tales
on the campus. / CC Deb Pittenturf

I showed them the Beachem portico, where construction workers once unearthed human bones, the remnants of a long forgotten amputation. I showed them the quad in front of the Library where Jack Hopkins' house stood during the battle, while Hopkins himself ran from the oncoming Confederates, unable to hide from the color of his own skin. I showed them the south portico of Pennsylvania Hall, where amputations took place in the open air and men nearly drowned in rivulets of water from the rains following the battle. I showed them the doorway where Alice Baugher, the College President's daughter stared coldly into the eyes of Robert E. Lee. I showed them the dining room where President Baugher sat down to a cordial dinner with former favorite student turned Confederate soldier James Crocker in the bloody aftermath of the battle.

This semester has been tough on me. It has felt like a never ending struggle to reach these kids, to show them that history can be exciting and personal and deeply human. On the first night of class, after going through the syllabus, I asked the question I ask of anyone with a desire to study history: "why do you hate history?"

Typically it conjures answers swirling around lists of dates and names with no context, no meaning.

Back in January, after we had reviewed the required reading and research paper for the course, it elicited a different response from one student: "I hate reading and I hate writing."

I was incensed that night, a holy fire lit within my gut. I didn't know how I would make it through the semester. I didn't know how I could reach out to these students. That night has haunted me this whole semester, constantly nagging at me and making me doubt that I could get through.

Monday night, I got an e-mail from the same student who said she hates reading and writing:

I come home to write science papers, but instead find myself googling Crocker and Hopkins! There is so much interesting stuff documented from the war.... This stuff is so cool!”

As we all walked back from the President's House toward Weidensall Hall, she admitted to me that as she started reading Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering for class, she was already thinking how "gross" it must have been on the campus in 1863.

I guess that's as good enough a reason as any to do this. She closed her note Monday night with a simple comment: "Hope that wasn't the last of the tours...."

I hope so too.

A Letter of Man: "And what is 'truth'?"

When would these people be called citizen?
Could Anderson's letter have helped the
march toward true freedom? / PD LOC

Have you seen the letter making the rounds on the internet? It's been tough not to see the letter in the past week or so. And it certainly is powerful and meaningful. Jordan Anderson has struck a chord with modern audiences nearly 150 years after he dictated a snide and sarcastic letter to his former master. Reading over the former slave's word, it feels like he tailored his tone for the tongue-in-cheek, breezy style of the virtual world.

The internet latched onto the letter, immediately asking if it was real. I had the same reaction when I first heard its forceful words. I first heard Anderson's letter because it appears on the soundtrack of the amazingly moving Broadway flop Reunion. The letter is read with Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" as underscore. It isa brilliant moment encapsulating the true revolutionary shift of the war. A black actor with a wonderfully booming voice intones, "eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars," with such weight and power.

I did some digging after hearing the powerful words, wondering if these were authentic or the invention of a brilliant playwright. I found a few users at Snopes who had already done much of the research for me. The letter appears to be authentic to the period.

But did Jordan Anderson write it? Did he dictate it? And in the end, how much does that really matter?

The people of 1865 who reprinted the sarcastic letter wanted it to be real. The very fact that the words attributed to Anderson saw viral distribution in the months after it first appeared in an Ohio newspaper shows there was a real desire from Americans to believe the words were real. Why were they reprinted?

The Wellsville, Pennsylvania Agitator ran a version of the letter in October of 1865. That year's state legislative races all revolved around black voting rights in the Commonwealth. Regardless of whether the letter was an invention or the genuine article, it still became a keen and sharp political tool to advocate that a black man could be just as witty, intelligent and snidely observant as a white man. The letter could help show a white Pennsylvanian audience that yes, in fact, a black man was smart enough to employ sarcasm and identify irony. Why not let him vote?

Is the letter real? We'll never know for sure, unless we find the original document, and even then it might still be a little suspect. But is it real, in the sense that it sheds light on what the past was like, how people acted and what they felt. Does it help us to reach a better understanding of the Truths of the past? Of course.

We feel the pain of a slave, just like voters across America did as they went to the polls in the aftermath of the war, deciding who in their states were worthy of being called 'citizen'.