Spielberg's Dead Wrong about the Dead; or, The Places in the Movie Where I Cried

Spielberg's whole speech, unvarnished
and ready for your viewing pleasure.
You'll have to buy a ticket to see the movie...
Sorry.

I stood in front of the rostrum in the National Cemetery with my parents. They hadn't seen the movie yet. My best-friend was next to them. He hadn't seen it yet. Another compatriot joined us who had seen it, but we were definitely outnumbered in our little knot of folks within the massive crowd. As Spielberg continued speaking, I leaned in to the group. "You really need to see the movie," I said, knowing that no matter whose ears it hit the odds were it'd hit a meaningful target.

Spielberg was speaking about the history writ with lightning I had seen the night before. It still amazes me that it has taken us a century's worth of time and this brilliant director (as opposed to his countless forebears) to steal that phrase back from the racists. And he was noting the gaps in history. "But even with history that’s as scrutinized as that of the American Civil War," the director noted, "some aspects, certain details, are gone forever."

Spielberg is exactly right. History, by its very definition, is a fragmentary tapestry missing quilt squares left and right."History forces us to acknowledge the limits of memory," Spielberg continued, "It tells us that memory is imperfect, that no matter how much of the past we’ve recovered, much of what once was or has been, now is lost to us."

Then he started down the road that got my dander up. "I believe it’s the betrayal of the job of a historian to promise perfect and complete recall of the past and to promise memory that abolishes loss." So far, so good. But then the turn.

That woman had the right idea:
watch the speech as someone
undoubtedly did 149 years ago...
with the aid of a treetop perch.

"One of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places that other disciplines such as history must avoid. To art, we enlist the imagination to bring what’s lost back to us, to bring the dead back to life. This resurrection is, of course, just an illusion, it’s a fantasy, a dream, but dreams matter somehow to us."

My heart reeled at the blow. Mr. E.T., Mr. Jurassic Park, Mr. Hook was telling me I couldn't do what I intend to do every day. What I already do whenever I step out in front of an audience of visitors.

"History must avoid," Spielberg said, using imagination.

"History must avoid," Spielberg said, trying to recover the lost and fill in the gaps.

"History must avoid," Spielberg said, endeavouring to resurrect the dead.

Interpretation is all about doing these things. We offer up the broken pieces of a fractured and piecemeal past and let visitors begin filling in the gaps, sousing out their own hidden meanings and meeting the dead once again. When you ask a visitor what they might have done faced by the stress and fear of the moment, when you ask them to place themselves in the minds, hearts and shoes of a soldier staring into the gaping maw of the enemy or a mother leafing through a newspaper and finding the name of her son in the list of dead, you're filling in the gaps of history we can't fill with evidence alone.

Evidence only takes us so far in understanding the past. If we stop at evidence, and ignore the human heart, we'll never draw anything meaningful from history beside rote cause-and-effect relationships. These are lessons, yes, but shallow ones that don't resonate with the human soul, but which only resonate with the human mind's fixation on policy decisions.

Spielberg's movie does just that perfectly. He's right. Art is an amazing medium through which to discover those moments. Tears poured down my face during those first 15 minutes of the film as the central meaning of the Gettysburg Address flickered on the screen and emerged from the mouth of a black man fighting for freedom. I cried as a pair of white soldiers lost their words when they spoke to the President, starstruck and babbling. I stepped into both their sets of shoes and felt their past.

It wasn't a contrived past; it was real. Those feelings had real historical implications. The butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling found while meeting Lincoln or discovered when imagining real freedom wasn't fake. It was a simple interpretive time machine, asking the audience to try to live in that past for a moment.

And I cried. For the bulk of the film I was sniffling, snorting or bawling. When Stevens presents his gift? Tears. When the roll call vote drags on and everyone expectantly hangs on the news? Saline drops all over my face. When Elizabeth Keckley casually tells Tad she was beaten with a coal shovel when she was younger than him, as if it's normal and not a travesty? It destroyed me.

But art isn't the only medium through which we fill in the gaps in the past.

All those things were real, Steven. They were real history. Not factual memories, but emotional ones of a past long lost and forgotten. History can be (and when undertaken to its fullest potential is always) a form of art. Don't take that away from those of us doing our jobs right. When you strip history of art and imagination, you get exactly what everyone hated in High School: names and dates to memorize and recite.

You're wrong, Steven. Your movie is history, not just art. Those gaps you fill are filled with real history. It might not be what actually happened in those moments exactly, but the only past that matters is the usable past that each of us carries with us anyways. We all simply fill in the gaps we have to.

Next time you're in the area, I'd be happy to prove it to you out on any of these local battlefields we have, gratis. History is exactly what you did, and we historians (some of us at least) do it daily. Let me show you.

Between now and then I'll probably just watch your movie a half-dozen more times.

And cry.

Every Man a Historian Means Every Man: Speaking with the Fringe

The amazing power of the internet age is the pure democratizing ethic it has injected into our culture. We aren't simply pleased when the world around us solicits and listens to our opinions, we've come to expect it. Every news story has a comment thread; every article asks for our feedback. The White House solicits input from the American "user" and offers meaningful responses. In short, we are a people who are growing more vocal in our daily lives. The brilliant constitutional law professor and master of cultural understanding Lawrence Lessig has called our culture "Read-Write" as opposed to "Read-Only."

What does this have to do with anything? This past weekend was the annual Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. One of the perks of being a faculty member is getting to sneak into the back for a few of the sessions. I snuck into Sunday's panel on Civil War Blogging, featuring A-list bloggers Kevin Levin (CWMemory.com), Brooks D. Simpson (Crossroads) and Keith Harris (Cosmic America). And one of the challenges which arose from the audience during the conversation was a desire for authority in blogs.

One commenter noted that he reads Crossroads because he has faith in Simpson as a historian, that he trusts Brooks' authority thanks to his published work. Another commenter asked if the Organization or American Historians or the CWI should publish a listing of "approved blogs."

Luckily, Brooks eviscerated the concept pretty handily by noting that the commenter was simply trying to impose a new authority on a medium essentially lacking in authority. And Brooks voiced the fear that if there were authoritative blogs, the world of the Civil War internet would simply devolve into a mirror of academia: historians writing for themselves and themselves alone. Brooks' comments were masterful, and will hopefully show up on C-SPAN sooner rather than later.

But the strongest conversation came when moderator Peter Carmichael posed the question of why we even listen to the fringe elements floating on the internet. Why should we even allow the voices of the "uninformed" enter the dialogue at all?

But here's the flaw in demanding authority be exercised on the democratic net: it's undemocratic. If every man is an historian, able to read the sources, find the data and come to his own conclusions, then we need to encourage every man to be an historian, not just the ones we think aren't whackjobs.

"To speak up for democracy..."
/ PD NARA

We do get to set the rules of the debate in our forums. On our blogs, that means we can ask commenters to be civil, and some of us go as far as to choose not to host comments we find counterproductive. In our parks and historic sites, that means we can ask folks to be civil, to listen to others' views respectfully and to investigate the historical sources honestly. But if we truly believe in the ethic of the internet, we can't simply allow only those who agree with us to speak.

In the end, democracy is about faith in the marketplace of ideas. I trust the intelligence of the American people. I think they can all be their own historians. Writing off a portion of the people is never going to help them to see the historical evidence, read it carefully and find true meaning in the past.

Writing them off, refusing to have real meaningful dialogue with them can only serve to alienate them.

The "every" in "every man a historian" really means "every." If you start from that point and move forward, the democracy of ideas truly means something.

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.

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.

Forever Free: The Dakota People's Civil War

Who marched atop these walls?  Who built them?
Who marched inside?  Who sat inside as captive?

As I mentioned last week, I left Fort Snelling after our tour as part of the National Association for Interpretation annual conference unfulfilled. The potential for high-drama and deeply meaningful connections was palpable on that landscape. The audience, a crowd of interpreters, were begging for meanings. One African American woman in the group, after the site administrator mentioned in passing Dred and Harriet Scott being held at the site, asked about the nature of the labor used to build the fort. I was sitting in the row behind her. I could not see her face. But from the inflection in her voice, I could tell exactly what the unstated question behind her spoken one was: "Were slaves used to build Fort Snelling?"

She was desperately trying to imagine her personal story within the context of that historical landscape. She wanted to know how people with her color skin might have figured into the sweeping narrative that is the fort. She wanted to know what this place meant to her today, the impact and implications it has had on who she is, where she stands in American society and how American society sees her.

The administrator did come around to the answer she wanted: "The first soldiers stationed at the fort built it." She did coax out of him the fact that no slave labor built the original walls of Fort Snelling. But only after goading. And with that cold answer, the site lost much of its potential meaning for her. She was not given the opportunity to care. She was not given a moment to see herself in that place.

My blood boiled; it always does when things like this happen. It's why people don't like visiting historic sites along with me anymore. I start stewing with every missed meaningful connection I see.

So, how do you make Fort Snelling relevant? Where is that deeply meaningful story? How can you overcome the fact that black hands did not lift stones into place to build that fort and still make this place relevant to this one particular woman?

Military executions are commonplace in Civil
War narratives, but the largest mass execution
in U.S. history happened in 1862, when the
U.S. Government hanged 38 Dakota Indians.

Here's a hint: Happy Thanksgiving! You can use America's other most maligned ethnic group, pushed and prodded westward across the American landscape for centuries - the American Indian. The other American holocaust, the destruction of North America's native peoples, is linked indelibly with the American holocaust which I study most: slavery.

In 1862, the Dakota people (part of the Great Sioux Nation) noticed that Minnesota had been drained of its male population. Men from every walk of life in the newly minted western state had struck eastward, heading to the fertile farmlands of Virginia and the silt-doused banks of the lower Mississippi valley to reap a harvest far different than the one they had pulled in years past from the fields around St. Paul. In the army, these men would sow and reap death and destruction in a war begun because of one concept: slavery. That one odious word holds so much power. The image of whips and cotton fields, of bleeding scarred sable skin and hounds baying in a dark wood immediately leap to mind when that simple word is uttered. It is the ultimate American evil.

The Dakota people, however, were experiencing another American evil. Their lands and livelihoods had been systematically chipped away by unbalanced treaties with white settlers from the east, until they were left with a thin strip of farmland running across Minnesota. For a people who thrived off of a physical connection to the sacred land, being separated from their holy ground was the greatest of injustices. Boxed in, but seeing the opportunity afforded by the strong and able-bodied white fighters being a thousand miles away, the Dakota seized the initiative. They rose up in rebellion and attempted to seize their lands back. They failed, but not before over 600 men, women and children had been killed on both sides. White Minnesotans lay dead in the dust in the fall of 1862.

In fields in Maryland, white Minnesotans lay wounded and bleeding. The fruits of their suffering was a transformation of the goal of the war. Those soldiers in blue suits now would march to free 4 million held in chains, prisoners in a brutal system of oppression. Lincoln declared that, "the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of," the former slaves, "and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom." The Federal soldier was now marching explicitly for freedom.

Looking at this photo of the
internment camp, it is hard to not draw
comparisons to the horrors of Andersonville.

But along the Mississippi in Minnesota, the military authority was doing the exact opposite for the Dakota Indians. A massive internment camp, which some modern historians have eerily demanded be called a concentration camp, was established by Federal soldiers. About 1,600 men, women and children were held in the stockaded prison through late spring of 1863. The tribe starved, suffered and sickened, all under the watchful eyes and keen rifles of Federal soldiers. While in Virginia and Tennessee, the blue uniform began to be seen as a symbol of hope for an oppressed people yearning to breathe free, on the edge of the prairie in Minnesota the blue uniform was the very tool of oppression.

As a culture, we often flatly look at the Federal cause during the war as wholly just. Lincoln becomes a great emancipator, free from any fault thanks in no small part to a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth. But in 1862 and 1863, just as an American revolution in thought and definitions of freedom was taking place in the halls of Washington and the sea islands of the Carolinas, another race of people stood behind barricades erected by Lincoln's troops. The Dakota's freedom was stolen from them by forces dressed the same as those marching to preserve the freedom of the slave.

The war was about freedom. But so often in America, our struggles for the freedom of one group ignore completely the plaintive cries of another. The American story is one of piecemeal progress. We take slow steps, grasp at handholds and toeholds as we climb the peak to a more perfect union. But, we can only keep climbing toward a land where all are truly forever free.

The American dream is one of fits and starts, not a smooth line of progress. It has been a very bumpy road. We can only endeavor to make it a little smoother. That's the meaning which lies at the heart of Fort Snelling.

Descendents return to Fort Snelling to commemorate their ancestors' struggles at this
monument inscribed with the words, "Remembering and Honoring."

Last Prisoners at Gettysburg: A Gift for Kind Hearts

Linnaean Hall on the Pennsylvania
College campus / GettDigital Collection

I have been digging quite heavily into the history of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College and the American Civil War these past few months, trying to fill a gaping hole in the scholarship not only of the college but of the local civilian story in the war. This has meant long Thursday nights at Adams County Historical Society culling through every random mention of the college and the complex relationship which the students and faculty had with both the citizens of the borough and the armies which invaded it. It has also meant that I've had the opportunity to revisit Gettysburg College's Special Collections in-depth for the first time since I began working with the college's Civil War history in 2006.

It continually surprises me how little has been unearthed from archives and newspapers on any topic I research. How any historian can 'discover' a source which was published in a newspaper in 1863 and has been sitting on a roll of microfilm for 20 years, or how they can discover a source which comprises part of the official record of an institution spanning more than 175 years of history and sitting in that institution's archive for over a century is a mind-boggling concept. Historical research is one never-ending instances of the thing you need being hidden in plain sight.

So, what did I find hidden in plain sight the other night in Gettysburg College's Special Collections?

The finding aid listed the following in the files of the Board of Trustees from 1864:

1 May 1864 - Letter to members of the Lenean [sic] Association, presenting them with two globes bought in Murfreesboro, TN from the sale of confiscated property of a professor

That date, that description of the content... it was just too tantalizing. My 'discovery' of the document was, in fact, exhilarating.

In May of 1864, the college received a letter and (presumably) a crate containing two globes. William Earnshaw, formerly a Methodist Episcopal Minister from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, had forwarded the geographic instruments to Pennsylvania College with his regards. Before the war, Earnshaw was a circuit riding minister and for a time was based in Gettysburg. As the war broke out, Earnshaw volunteered his services to the state of Pennsylvania. By the spring of 1863, he had resigned his commission as chaplain in the 49th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and volunteered for duty as a hospital chaplain. He was eventually attached to the Army of the Cumberland, and would spend the balance of the war in central Tennessee.

Earnshaw's globes were, "purchased at the sale of confiscated property in," Murfreesboro. The provenance of the globe was sketchy at the auction, Earnshaw admitted, but he relayed to the college that, "so far as I can learn they belonged to Professor Henderson formerly of the 'Union University.'” The previous owner of the hemispheres, "at the Commencement of the Rebellion," had given, "all his force against the dear old flag."

The globes immediately reminded the minister of the small college in the town in south-central Pennsylvania where he had made his home for a short time. "And remembering the kindness of the able President of the Penna. College, and many pleasant associations with the Professors + Students," Earnshaw explained, "I felt and now feel great pleasure in commiting [sic] to the care of your noble society," the globes.

Earnshaw was present at Gettysburg during the battle and hospital period, nursing the wounded and ministering to soldiers' destroyed bodies and souls alike. The "kindness of the able President," could refer to Henry L. Baugher's care of over a dozen wounded Federal soldiers in his home over the course of the three-day battle. The, "pleasant associations with the Professors," could refer to the amiable Martin Luther Stoever and his penchant for inviting any wayward soul wandering the streets of the town after the battle into his parlour for tea. If he did in fact set foot inside the hallowed walls of the college, he witnessed how the halls of the, "noble," Linnaean Society had been soaked with the blood of hundreds of wounded soldiers dashed to pieces by three days of carnage.

In Tennessee, Earnshaw experienced a new sort of carnage: reinterment of mangled men. As the war drew to a close, he was put in charge of the military cemeteries at Stones River and Nashville, later to be placed in charge of the cemeteries at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth and Memphis as well. Frank Conover explained in his Centennial Portrait and Biographical Record of the City of Dayton and of Montgomery County, Ohio in 1897 that, "in the presence of thousands of unreconstructed rebels, and of women and children who were imbued with the idea that secession was just and the northern soldiers usurpers, this duty was most arduous." Earnshaw, assisted by the men of the 111th United States Colored Troops, "in the face of insult and intimidation and personal danger," helped to find a final resting place for, "the bodies of 22,000 fallen Union soldiers... gathered from their shallow, temporary graves." Earnshaw reported to the War Department in 1866 that all of his, "assistants were brave soldiers who had served throughout the war." He cherished the thought that as long as he lived he would, "remember how tenderly they performed this work amid untold difficulties; how cheerfully they set out on long and toilsome journeys through rain and storm in search of their fallen comrades, and the proud satisfaction expressed by them when the precious remains were laid in the new made grave."

College mueseum collection inside
Linnaean Hall  / GettDigital Collection

After traveling far from the thick of the horror that was Gettysburg and plunging into a far more sinister landscape of rotting patriots, fresh-dug graves and racial strife, Earnshaw still thought fondly of that Lutheran college which sat on the border between heaven and hell for the entire summer of 1863. The two tokens of his esteem, everyday educational objects like those in colleges and classrooms across the United States, were laden with meaning. Where the globes are today I know not. They most likely drifted to an antique collector's shelf or a landfill's depths long ago, their story mute to the world. But to think of the meaning embedded in the simple act of spinning a globe, the meaning of the simple motion of a student running their fingers across its surface to find a far away land, is tantalizing. In 1864 those globes ended up sitting on a shelf in the Linnaean Hall at Pennsylvania College, expatriates held in a foreign land, the last prisoners of war lodged in buildings which had held so many destroyed sons of the South.

"That all men are created equal...": Universal Relevance and the Civil War

"Time circuits on...
Flux Capacitor... fluxing" /
CC by Anthony Catalano

One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future III. I know that is a terrible choice in some folks' eyes. The response I usually get is an, "ugh!" and a snarl of the lip. Still, I think there is so much going on in that film, from the struggle between fatalism and free will to the themes of love and sacrifice, heartache and heartbreak.

The reason Back to the Future III comes up in my mind today, though, is because of a dialogue within the public history world that appears to be heating up, thanks in part to both Kevin Levin and Ed Ayers (via James Loewen). The "Next Interpretive Challenge," of making the Civil War matter to an increasingly disconnected and diverse audience is crucial to the survival of the War's legacy, chiefly the emancipation ethic.

Levin, Ayers and Loewen see the great divide forming between how we service the traditional American audience (i.e. whiter, Anglo-centric audiences who have either a geographic or genealogical affinity for the war) and the new American audience (i.e. more diverse, recent immigrant populations whose ancestors lived thousands of miles from this country during the war). Their answer seems relatively clear: geography and a global view of the war.

This answer made me think of an exchange between Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett L. Brown on the rim of Clayton Shonash Ravine:

Doc - "You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally."
Marty - "Right, right. I have a real problem with that."

I'm not quite sure that Levin and the rest are thinking fourth dimensionally. They are running under an assumption that the sole barrier standing in the way of relevance for an audience of Pakistani visitors is a matter of geography. They assume that these visitors will instantly find relevance in the Civil War through any connection made between the war and Pakistan. But this forgets the simple fact that 150 years separate the Pakistanis of today from the denizens of the British Indian Empire of the 1860s. The assumption that these visitors (or any visitors) will care about any event or person of the past simply because of it's geographic location is dangerous.

Would telling a group of Pakistani tourists about Syed Ameer Ali and the Central National Muhammadan Association quest in the years after the American Civil War to win independence and freedom from oppressive British rule, and the similarities the quest had with the Abolition movement, instantly make a Civil War landscape matter to them? I'm not so sure. And furthermore, can any interpreter actually be prepared to offer that kind of relevance to any visitor of any nationality who wanders into their site at the drop of a hat? Does the inclusion of a shared geography instantly create relevance? Or is there another dimension (the fourth / time) which complicates this problem?

I'm not sure that pure geography is the right route to relevance. Too many things separate any of us, especially those without a blood connection, from the American Civil War. There seems to be a more unified solution to both the third dimensional and fourth dimensional distance which is far simpler: human universals.

No matter who walks into a Civil War site, be they a twelfth generation American or a new immigrant, we are all human. We all have wants and needs. We all have hated. We all have been proud. We all have been disappointed. We all have lost those we love and we all have found new love in others. We all have dreamed. These human universals are far more effective in helping any audience to access a site's meanings. It is my firm belief that through the lens of the human universal, we can help people see why these places might matter to them.

Why is the Civil War relevant? Certainly it is not simply because it is an American story (or a Chinese story, or a Canadian story or a Pakistani story). No. The Civil War is relevant because it is a human story.

CC by Jay Bonvouloir

That, as Marty McFly would say, is "heavy."

Thinking about how to bridge both the third dimensional gap and the fourth dimensional gap through human universal relevance, rather than trying in vain to make increasingly tenuous connections to each and every geographic locale, seems a far more fruitful endeavour.

I'll have more musings on the universal power of the human story next week, drifting back into that place where so much of our discussion of this War leads: race.

Holy Writ: Thinking Beyond Enabling Legislation to Modern Relevance

Just a quick one today...

Why trust a bunch of dead guys? I know it sounds trite, but it's very important when we begin approaching how we talk about Civil War sites (or any historic site). Oftentimes, the folks who voted the site into existence and decided its primary reason for being are dead and gone. The world has changed radically since they were here. The pieces of legislation they created (at the federal level they're typically called "enabling legislation," at lower levels they have varied other names) were distinct products of their times. The themes and significances they outline are likewise products of their times.

Take the first military parks for example, founded in the 1890s as a place for the War Department to simply preserve and explain the battle lines of the Federal and Confederate armies. America needed unity in the wake of war (we needed unity so desperately, we went to war again just a few years later with Spain and in the Philippines). Discussing the battle tactics and battle lines, focusing on shared valor, ensured that this unity could be forged. But does this land mean the same thing 100 years later, after successive civil rights movements, social upheavals, political realignments and military conflicts which have altered the American views of war?

I took this photo the morning of the
2009 inauguration. Did the meaning of this
simple piece of marble shift somehow that day?

Significance changes... significance even disappears. People change. They shift historical memory through their actions. The meanings of the past change with every successive year. What do we do when significance wanes or shifts? Do we lament? Do we vainly fight the tide and dictate that the old significance is the only valid one, in spite of the fact that it may no longer be relevant to a modern audience? Do we cling to our enabling legislation's statements of meanings as if they are holy writ to be followed for never-ending perpetuity? Or do we instead shift with the significances which Americans see fit to attach to these places and begin embracing their meanings? Do we let the people that own these places decide why they are important?

What are these historic sites and battlefields all about? To me, it has to be about helping visitors find their own personal meaning for the ground beneath their feet. This means that there are no correct resource meanings, only personal resource meanings. My personal meanings for a site are never the only ones I should offer to visitors. A dictatorship of meaning, imposing my views on a visitor, is just as bad as a visitor finding no meanings for a site. In the end, interpretation fails when the visitor is not provoked to think about meaning.

In the end, enabling legislation is not sacrosanct. Only the Visitor is Sovereign. The meanings they find for our battlefields are the only ones that matter. It's about how a modern audience finds these places useful and meaningful. Anything else doesn't really matter.

"And preachin' from my chair": The Historian and the Interpreter

I've been thinking lately of titles. The new blog Emerging Civil War's inaugural post touched off a powder-keg of thought for me. Looking down the list of contributors yields name after name listed as "historian at...." But most of those folks appear to have the official job title of "park ranger," "interpreter," or "visitor use assistant," and not "historian." This got the wheels in my head turning.

What does it all mean? Who am I to say?

What we choose to call ourselves is sometimes as important as the work we do. For those who 'do history' on Civil War battlefields, we have two distinct options. The best place to find how someone views themselves is right in their e-mail signature, but sometimes it's in the bio they put on their blog.

Some fashion themselves as historians first and foremost, imparting the historical truth to their audience. They persuade and argue a thesis for their audiences, acting as the professor in walking lectures with distinct points to prove.

Others see themselves as interpreters first and foremost, offering opportunities for visitors to connect with a site's meanings, to find meanings that the member of the audience find personally relevant. They offer multiple perspectives and a variety of viewpoints, acting as a facilitator, orchestrating a conversation between the resource and the visitor with no thesis to argue.

A historian emeritus from
Princeton on a battlefield...

Historians persuade; Interpreters reveal.

There is nothing inherently wrong with persuasive argument. But often historians on battle landscapes craft grand arguments with very specific theses. The historians dictate the conclusions and demand acquiescence to those conclusion by laying out every point of their argument to support their theses. They argue a point. There is what could be called a dictatorship of thought.

On the flip side of that coin, interpreters leave conclusions to their audience, offering multiple perspectives on an event and moral ambiguity. No one ends up having been right or wrong. This past summer, I've been running discussion-based experimental programs on John Brown. In the end, when the visitors step out of the engine house, I don't care what they think about John Brown. Some walk out loving him, thinking him a saint. Others walk out thinking him a terrorist and the devil incarnate. There is no right and wrong conclusion, only the visitor's conclusion. If they walk out thinking something, anything about John Brown, I've done my job. Think of it as a democracy of historical thought.

Take a look at the top of the blog. Go on... scroll up there. I'll wait. There's a very distinct reason we chose that title. "Interpreting the Civil War."

Yes, we'll argue historical points vehemently here in our own backyard, because to some extent we're hashing out our own personal meanings of these places. You have to care about something personally before you can help others find why they care about it too. But when we head out into the sacred spaces that America has set aside for itself, there is no right and wrong. There is muddy chaos, moral ambiguity and the visitor's conclusion. There are no theses. There are no right answers or acceptable opinions.

There is only the visitor and their personal appreciations of the places we hold dear.

Realistic Goals for Civil War Interpretation: What Are They Supposed to Walk Away With?

I was tempted to title this post, "Are we not men? We are DEVO!" but I wasn't sure the reference would read right off the bat...

What exactly did these visitors
walk away remembering?

Before you can begin any task, to some extent, you need to have some target in mind. Even if that target is hazy and indistinct, you need to aim that arrow somewhere before you let the bowstring fly.

So, what is the target that Civil War interpretation aims for? I go on programs and walks with interpreters when I'm out visiting Civil War sites. I love tours.

When I'm on a battlefield, I often witness a deep passion from the interpreter that the detailed actions of the battle are paramount. Their voices usually perk up at the nuts and bolts of battle movements and intricacies of where regiments stood, how many volleys they fired and the mechanics of war. You can't fault this personal passion, but passion alone does not simply catch like a virus. Meanings need to be facilitated, not donated to the visitor.

I went on a personal tour of a western battlefield one time with a deeply dedicated and knowledgeable historian. For two hours, he scrutinized the field as the sun waned, showing me places and describing every intricate detail of the battle occurred. I can't, for the life of me, remember a single bit of the battle action he described as he argued with the air. He held a discussion with every leading historian in absentia on the failures of their understanding of the battle. Still, I can't remember a detail of it. Not a one. I was very appreciative of the time he spent, but it was a wet towel to my appreciation of the battle landscape. That field means nothing more to me now than it did before that tour. I was never given an opportunity to explore what that place might mean to me. The goal seemed, regardless of the visitor's interests, to be imparting knowledge of tactics.

When I've visited house museums, the interpreter's passion usually rises at the mention of spoons or double-hung window sashes. And here, too, you cannot fault someone for what they personally care about. The intricacies of Victorian table manners, the strictures of 19th-century lifeways and the complexities of ornamental decoration over a fireplace often become the most talked about subject on a tour of a home. Jacob has a great story of a house museum which bucks this trend coming up soon, but in general it's all been about spoons when I've walked into a dining room of an historic home, and little about the conversations that happened over that table. The goal seems, regardless of the visitor's interests, to be imparting knowledge of the spoon.

All of this begs the question: what is history? I think every historian at some point in their career needs to wrestle with this one. If you've never done so, then you risk wandering through the profession with no bearings. So, what is it?

To me, history's definition is short and sweet:

History is ideas put into action by men on a landscape.

These four key elements all are present in any historical event. Take Seneca Falls in 1848: a Declaration of Sentiments for equality was signed by 68 women and 32 men in the Wesleyan Chapel. Or take Utah Beach in 1944: an assault on Fortress Europe by average men to topple the oppressive Nazi regime and ensure freedom in Europe. Whether the action is a grand military expedition or the flick of a pen on paper, mankind acting out ideas and ideals on a landscape encapsulates history in my mind.

But the passion for tactics or the passion for the spoon fails this test quite handily. Spoons or molding or curtains alone have no people and no ideas, and thereby little relevance. Tactics taken alone have no ideas and only faceless, shapeless groups of bodies, and thereby little relevance.

Who marched across this landscape?
Men or Armies?

So what is our goal in a Civil War era landscape? Is it to impart a raw fact dump? If so, then tactics and spoons are fine. But ask a visitor after a tour of Antietam what happened and they'll give you broad tactical strokes where you gave them minute detail. Ask them what they remember most after a program and I'll guarantee 9 times out of 10 that it's not the intricacies of tactics. People don't care about the 20th Maine at Gettysburg because they swung like a gate, with a pivot off of the colors at the regiment's center (a textbook military maneuver).

No. They care about that spot because an academic, an aloof professor of rhetoric, against what we might expect from a college professor, ordered his men to charge down the slope of Little Round Top, helping to ensure United States victory at Gettysburg and thereby a nation preserved and freedom for 4 million in bondage.

The tactic is only the context. The story and route to broad relevance lives within the man and the ideas / ideals his actions embodied.

In the end the question is simple: do we want the American public to know about these places or understand them? Knowing is being able to repeat rote fact. It is memorization of faceless facts and figures, the recitation of lists of dead white men in specific orders, the rattling off of cold and motionless dates. In short, knowing is the reason why every student in high school who hates history hates it.

Understanding is feeling and processing the place, the ground and the men who acted there, then caring about that place for your own personal reason. Certainly, tactical discussion is important, but its primary function is as a framework inside of which the men of a battlefield lived. The experiences of those men are what resonate with a modern visitor. Don't believe me? Just ask a fellow visitor what moved them most after you attend a program.

We often hear admonitions to sprinkle in human interest stories into programs and interpretive products. But this is, IMHO, the wrong impulse. Tactics are what should be sprinkled in; the core is human interest, where the personal relevance of the American audience is to be found.

Jake quoted a great piece of Freeman Tilden's Interpreting Our Heritage recently, which works as an excellent coda here:

The battlefield of our great fratricidal American war is not merely a place of strategy and tactics: not a place where regiments moved this way and that like checkers on a board; not merely a spot where something was decided that would lead to another decision. It is a place of the thoughts and acts of men, of their ideals and memories... a place of people, not armies.

"...Sexual Relations with that Woman...": Why the Lee Quote is Still Valid

A quick reflection this week. This started as a comment on Brooks Simpson's comments on Colin Woodward's blog post at his new blog civilwarhistorian highlighting a quote he found in a Massachusetts newspaper. Whew... now that that's out of the way.

The validity of the quote has been called into question, and seemingly thereby its usefulness to the historian. But I object to consigning this tidbit to the dustbin of history.

Did this man shtup his slaves?
Is that really the most important
thing we can discover from this
account? / PD / cwpbh 03116

The quote has now been proven valid and invalid simultaneously. Colin has since posted an update at his blog offering the reading of John Neff (University of Mississippi) that the piece refers to a daughter of Parke Custis and not Robert E. Lee. So, the soldier's reading of the situation was, in essence, dead wrong. Still, there were master-slave relations at Arlington, so the concept is proven somewhat right.

This quote is like a Schrödinger's cat of the Civil War.

Does the flaw within the soldier's words render them an invalid historical source?

Certainly, they cannot and should not be used to prove that Robert E. Lee slept with his house staff. He might have. He mightn't have. We don't know the answer to that one without a solid primary source to the affirmative. This soldier's account is a far cry from a primary source, in essence being hearsay evidence of an account that was itself hearsay. Even if the facts of the case were true, this soldier did not witness the events firsthand. Neither did the woman who claims to be Lee's daughter (for a quite obvious 9-month long reason).

But is there other value in those words? Read them closely:

At the cook house for the overseer’s family I noticed an octoroon, nearly white, with fine features. She told me that her mother, long since dead was a quadroon and Gen. Lee’s housekeeper at Arlington, and to the question, ‘Was your father a colored man?’ she answered without hesitation ‘No,–master’s my father.” And this father and master now leads an army, the sole purpose of which is to establish a government founded on an institution which enslaves his own children, making his own flesh and blood saleable property!
-Soldier in Greenfield, MA Gazette & Courier, 15 June 1863

Look at that soldier's assertion. He wants desperately to believe that Lee would fight to keep his own children in slavery. It certainly has been a long war by 1863, and will only get longer. Villainizing the enemy can get a soldier through the long arduous marches and hot battles. Look at the need of this man to see the war framed starkly in the world of moral crusade, and not a simple war to save the nebulous Union.

The Confederate cause is plain in this soldier's estimation. The rebel armies march for slavery. The rebel officers command their men to victory in order to establish a slave nation. This is what the soldier finds abhorrent in the South. It is what impels him to pick up a rifle and charge into battle. It is the means he chooses to villainize Lee in his own mind. This soldier is fighting for a high ideal, indeed the highest: the freedom of another man.

So is this source invalidated just because the information it contains is false? Definitely not. It just can't be used how everyone immediately expects. The soldier's longing for the validity of the facts is just as useful to an historian. The imaginary Lee this soldier constructs is the embodiment of both the general Confederate beau idéal and the personification of the very thing he is fighting to prevent. The imagined Lee becomes a crystal clear window into this fighting man's motivation.

Governor Wise's War: Burn Notice (Part 3)

(See Part 1) (See Part 2)

One of the first tangible signs of Virginia's
secession was the removal of the American
Flag from the Richmond Enquirer's
masthead.

The early teens of April seem to have been specifically engineered by Ex-governor Wise and some of the members of the Secession convention jonesing for separation of from the Union. A notice ran in the Alexandria Gazette on April 1st, declaring that on the 16th of that month a, "grand Secession demonstration," would be held in Richmond. Among those signing the notice was Henry Wise. The Gazette reported that, first news of it came from Norfolk," just a stones throw from Wise's home in Princess Anne County. "Perhaps they think the Convention too slow," the Gazette presumed, "and wish to hurry them up by a sufficient force here." Wise was massing an army of public opinion in the streets of Richmond.

As Alfred Barbour was making his way to Washington to submit his resignation to the Ordinance Department, Henry Wise was arriving on the floor of the Virginia Secession Convention. He had just the night before put into motion the key players to ensure Virginia's separation from the United States. His trap had been laid. All that was left was to spring it on the commissioners assembled in Richmond.

The second day of secret sessions went relatively uneventfully at first. A motion was brought to the floor to delay any decision on the question of secession until election day in late May. Commissioners argued that the people of the Commonwealth, and not their elected representatives, needed make the momentous decision.

The morning session stretched into the afternoon. Wise must have grown increasingly more impatient knowing the scheme hatching outside the doors of the hall. He had engineered an attack on the Federal Government, in direct opposition to the wishes of the state's ruling authority. He had massed an army of rowdys outside, eager to set, "the course which Virginia should pursue in the present emergency." Wise pounced on the moment, calmly rising to the podium. He had no guns in hand, no outward sign of threat. He spoke to the convention:

"I know the fact, as well as I can know it without being present at either the time or place, that there is a probability that blood will be flowing at Harper's Ferry before night. I know the fact that the harbor of Norfolk has been obstructed last night by the sinking of vessels. I know the fact that at this moment a force is on its way to Harper's Ferry to prevent the reinforcement of the Federal troops at that point. I am told it is already being reinforced by 1,000 men from the Black Republican ranks. I know the fact that your Governor has ordered reinforcements there to back our own citizens and to protect our lives and our arms. In the midst of a scene like this, when an attempt is made by our troops to capture the navy yard, and seize the Armory at Harper's Ferry, we are here indulging in foolish debates, the only result of which must be delay, and, perhaps, ruin."

The convention descended into bedlam. Even though he did not brandish a horse pistol, the Ex-governor did hold a proverbial gun to the head of the secession convention. Choosing his words carefully, Wise had not entirely lied. A Governor had commanded militia to Harpers Ferry. Certainly it was the Governor (ex or not) who commanded the loyalty of many both within the chamber and without.

The two delegates from Augusta County immediately expressed dismay at the news that war had been precipitated without their consent. When John Baldwin raised his concerns, Wise fired back snidely that he knew for a fact that men from his Augusta (those under Imboden’s command) were marching on Harpers Ferry at that very moment. “The Augusta troop are acting nobly in this matter.” George Baylor then made it known he stood firm against Wise. “We are told,” he spoke, that, “blood will be shed…. I do not deem it improbable that my own son is among the number. If he is not, certainly, some of the best friends I have are there.” Baylor could not stomach his own son’s blood on his hands. “I am sorry to say, sir, that I cannot approve of it. Yet, this Convention is going to pass it, whether I vote for it or not.”

Virginia's Ordinance of Secession [PDF Link]

The convention voted to leave the union. In the nearby counter convention, organized in part by Wise, jubilation reigned. "The Union had received its blessure mortelle, and no power this side of the Potomac could save it," John Jones recalled in his Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital. Upon the announcement that Virginia was no longer in the United States, cries went up from the throng. Soon thereafter, "President Tyler and Gov. Wise were conducted arm-in-arm, and bare-headed, down the center aisle amid a din of cheers, while every member rose to his feet." Tyler spoke first, giving, "a brief history of all the struggles of our race for freedom, from Magna Charta [sic] to the present day." The feeble former President, close to death, concluded that, "generations yet unborn would bless those who had the high privilege of being participators in," the secession of Virginia.

Then Ex-governor Wise rose. Wise, "for a quarter of an hour, electrified the assembly by a burst of eloquence, perhaps never surpassed by mortal orator." The crowd hung on every word he spoke. "Affection for kindred, property, and life itself," Wise instructed the crowd, "sink into insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming importance of public duty in such a crisis as this." Wise's actions, what he percieved as his public duty, bordered on treason, not simply against the United States but against his own Commonwealth of Virginia. Wise had forced the hand of the state into seceding. Governor Wise had percipitated war and was getting naught but laud for his actions.

The next day, Alfred Barbour's loose lips at Harpers Ferry tipped off Charles Kingsbury, Harpers Ferry armory's final superintendent, and Roger Jones, commanding the mounted rifles defending the installation. The pair decided to destroy the armory before if fell into enemy hands. War in earnest had come to Virginia.

The moral of this story is simple. Sometimes the things we take for granted, like a few simple sentences from our interpretive programs, are not quite as simple as they seem. Virginia's secession is at once devilishly easy to understand and excruciatingly tough to fathom.

"Virginia seceded from the Union. The Governor sent militia to Harpers Ferry to seize the armory. Roger Jones burned the armory to keep it from falling into enemy hands." The order is wrong, the players are wrong, the concept is wrong. Just a few short trips into the primary sources can unravel even the smallest details of any piece of history. History is a process; we're each discovering new things everyday. Maybe, just maybe, we should share the details of the historical process with folks in our historic sites. Perhaps we have an obligation as public historians to help folks understand that 'historical revisionism' isn't necessarily a bad word.

A colorized version of the burning of the large and small arsenals as drawn by
David Hunter Strother from the collection at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

Governor Wise's War: Loose Lips (Part 2)

(See Part 1)

John Imboden as he appeared during the war /
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

When last we left Ex-Governor Henry Wise, he was exceedingly impatient at the Virginia secession convention's failure to act immediately and swiftly after the firing on Fort Sumter. The power broker who had stared down John Brown now called upon personal loyalties to get the job done where politics had failed. An account by John Imboden has the Governor querying the future Brigadier General, asking whether he remembered the charge Wise made upon presenting two brass cannon to a Staunton militia unit. Imboden recalled the Governor had told him, "he was bound to obey the call of Wise for those guns whenever made." Admitting the remark a joke then, the former Governor assured Imboden that he spoke in, "earnest now." "I want those guns," the former Governor continued, "to aid in the immediate capture of the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry."

As the sun was setting on Richmond on the night of April 16th, a clandestine group met in the Exchange Hotel in Wise's chambers. After the group had assembled, keen on their planned actions, they resolved to get the permission of the sitting Governor. Three of the men, including Alfred Barbour, Superintendent of the armory at Harpers Ferry, rousted the State's Executive from bed and, in his night clothes, "laid the scheme before him." Governor Letcher would take, "no step till officially informed that the ordinance of secession was passed by the convention." The convention assuredly would vote for secession the following day. Letcher assured them that there would be plenty of time to act.

The small impromptu committee's response to the governor's entirety of patience: march on Harper's Ferry themselves if the Governor would take no action. There would be no need for secrecy among the members of the secession convention, simply because they knew nothing of the plot that night. Militia men began to form around the northern quadrant of the state with no real authority from the state's elected bodies. The only secrecy would need to be among the small group of plotters on the night of the 16th, scheming to force Virginia's hand into war.

And yet, the plan almost slipped their grasp. Alfred Barbour could not keep his mouth shut. Imboden recalled that on the train, "just before we moved out of the depot," the Armory's superintendent, "made an unguarded remark in the car." The plan to assault Federal property and seize Federal assets, hatched in part by the Federal official Barbour, was, "overheard by a Northern traveler, who immediately wrote a message to President Lincoln and paid a negro a dollar to take to the telegraph office." The black man, springing toward the telegraph office to forewarn Washington, was apprehended by the crew and the plot remained under wraps, but only barely.

On the same journey escaping Richmond, on their way north and west, were some of the western Virginian contingent of the secession convention. Reading the writing on the wall, John S. Burdett of Taylor County boarded a train to Washington, and thence up the Baltimore and Ohio railroad to western Virginia. Just up the car on the way from Washington were Alfred Barbour and another member of the Convention, "plenty of whiskey bottles in front of them." The train pulled into Harpers Ferry.

"The platform was black with a frenzied crowd," Burdett recalled. Barbour recognized Burdett. Chiding the delegate that his vote mattered not, the pair said, "Burdett, you seceded."

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opposite
Harpers Ferry / LOC Prints & Photos

"Well," Burdett replied to the drunken pair, "what about the injunction of secrecy?" The convention at Richmond had entered a closed session, and the news of the secession vote was to be kept quiet. The two did not respond.

When the Armory's Superintendent reached the platform at Harpers Ferry, he, "stepped off the train and said something and up went a tumultuous shout." The crowd erupted into bedlam. Burdett surmised exactly what the drunken official had returned from Richmond to do. He, "guessed he was there to grab the arsenal and steal all its valuable and costly machinery. It turned out that way." "Revolutionary devilment," Burdett concluded as the train pulled away from the station, along with a good dose of whiskey, "took the locks off [their] mouths."

To be concluded...

Governor Wise's War: My Misconception (Part 1)

A photo of me in old timey
clothing taken by Raymond Fudge

I worked in the living history branch at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park for three years, wearing old timey clothing and talking to visitors about the meanings of John Brown. Harpers Ferry is where I began to understand what the concept of interpretation means, and how it is such a radically different concept from academic history.

I don't know how many Civil War tours I conducted of the "Point," Harpers Ferry's downtown. The climax of the tour's first major tale was the arrival of Alfred Barbour, Superintendent of the Federal Armory, fresh from the secession convention in Richmond heralding the news that the state had seceded from the Union. The entire event was usually summed up in three lines: "Virginia seceded from the Union. The Governor sent militia to Harpers Ferry to seize the armory. Roger Jones burned the armory to keep it from falling into enemy hands."

The story seems plausible enough. In fact, it is about the way that Robert Rowison sums up the events in an article in the Southern Literary Messenger in July of 1862. Rowison points out Virginia's secession convention's plan to keep, "secret the passage of the ordinance," until they could, "secure for the State all the arms, munitions, ships, war stores, and military posts within her borders, which they had power to seize." One cache of those tools of war was, "Harpers' Ferry, in Jefferson County, on the Potomac river, with its Armory and Arsenal, containing about 10,000 muskets and 5,000 rifles, with machinery for the purpose of manufacturing arms, capable, with a sufficient force of workmen, of turning out 25,000 muskets a year."

The convention and Governor John Letcher worked in concert to seize the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, according to Rowison. The plan to seize the weapons was a measured and calculated move of consensus between the elected representatives of Virginia's citizenry. Letcher is credited with acting, "with great zeal and vigor." The Convention, for its part, appointed a committee of four to orchestrate the seizure of weapons from Harpers Ferry. Among these men appointed by the committee was Alfred Barbour, the Armory's own superintendent.

But Rowison's tale has very quickly ridden off the rails of truth and careened into a canyon of propaganda and imposed order. In actuality, the events of April 16th-18th, 1861 were far more complex and far less calculated. This becomes immediately clear when diving into the proceedings of the Virginia Secession Convention, newly digitized and available for free from the University of Richmond.

Rowison lists as one of Barbour's compatriots on the committee as John D. Imboden. A quick word search of the Convention records yields three references to Imboden, all pertaining to a perception that when the Convention met in February their first act would be to depose Governor Letcher. Imboden is never appointed to a committee by the secession convention. Imboden was not even a member of the secession convention, having lost his bid for a seat in the body.

Virginia Governor Henry Wise as
he appeared in Harpers Weekly,
August 1859

Indeed, there was no committee crafted by the convention. The truth is far weirder. The committee sent to Harpers Ferry on October 16th-17th 1861 was created by a governor of Virginia, but not the sitting governor. Henry A. Wise, former governor and delegate for Princess Anne County at the secession convention crafted the committee out of disgust with Virginian intransigence. John Imboden would later recall how Wise chaired the back room deal which led to Virginia's entry into the American Civil War.

Just a few short minutes of research can turn an entire interpretive product on its head. But where will delving further take us? How did the Civil War really start in Virginia? What is the definition of treason? And, most importantly, what does all this mean when the rubber hits the road and you need to interpret some of the most convoluted events on an historical landscape to a general audience?

Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

(To be Continued...)