I would love to go but I have signed up for the LBG Academy for the summer and have neither the bandwidth nor the funds for any additional activities. I also interpret living history as a USN Sailor during the CW with the Ship’s Co aboard Constellation
As Kevin knows, I have attending CWI for the better part of the last 10 years. So it will come as no surprise that I highly recommend the conference and I have plans to attend this year. I live in Indiana so unlike some of my east coast friends a day or weekend trip to the Gettysburg area is not feasible. (A nine to ten hour drive with minimal stops) The amount of the conference fee with lodging and meals is less than I would spend for a hotel and food on my own for 5 days in June. So, I consider the programming as a kind of extra bonus.
As Pete pointed out, CWI is not an academic conference. It's very relaxed and the faculty are very approachable willing to talk and answer questions.
I will also admit that I play hooky - and do some battlefield walks on my own usually with Reardon and Vossler's Field Guide.
Thanks for video Kevin. Always good to see you and Pete.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Mike. It's always nice to be able to catch up with you in person at CWI. While I won't be attending this year, it looks like I will likely be there in 2025.
Thanks for this. From the materials, it really does look like it justifies enthusiasm.
Forgive me for taking the opportunity to comment about the very first presentation, following a welcome speech. It's to be by Elizabeth D. Leonard, a Colby College history professor emerita, about General Benjamin Butler, a graduate of Colby's predecessor college. The general figures importantly in my own work on national civic memory of emancipation. He's remembered for lots of things, but the one that I think most important the world calls the Contraband Decision. But I think the world has the meaning of it wrong.
As many know well, General Butler was the first Union commander to say "Yes indeed" to slavery escapees seeking sanctuary with Union forces. Mere weeks after Fort Sumter, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend showed up at Fort Monroe--on the general's first day there--and asked for sanctuary.
Under the filthy laws of slavery they were property, which the general reasoned meant that under the laws of war, since they were an asset to the Confederate forces for whom they had been building fortifications, they must be deemed contraband, and must be confiscated. Adam Goodheart has pointed out that this made the federal government their liberator—a “revolutionary change,” Goodheart declared, since always before, “U.S. authority had protected slaveholding as a constitutional right.” That meant too that whatever was in the general's heart, still more laws were involved: the laws of nature and of nature's god.
But here's why something about that story, as traditionally told, drives me nuts. The general's decision was momentous, but it was merely ***second***. The enslaved had known nationwide that a civil war would constitute a colossal freedom opportunity, and they were way ahead of powerful white guys on that. But in the traditional white-savior telling of the story, it's presumed that without the general's decision, nothing would have happened.
If you ask me, though, Baker, Mallory, and Townsend represented and symbolized the unstoppable force set loose when that nationwide colossal freedom opportunity appeared. Most historians now agree that hundreds of thousands just like those three forced the fate of slavery onto the national political agenda.
Yes, the Contraband Decision mattered. But what mattered even more was the enterprising determination and resolve of multitudes of enslaved Americans who were going to exploit the colossal freedom opportunity no matter what a general at Fort Monroe decided. It was Baker, Mallory, and Townsend who made the first ***active*** decision in that case. The general made the second ***reactive*** one. The movement that some historians call self-emancipation had already started elsewhere, fitfully and with no success, but it was not going to be stopped by General Butler, no matter his decision.
By the way, with the typical arrogance of the predominating white saviorism concerning national civic memory of emancipation--an affliction seen in thought leaders of ***all*** races--the story is regularly told, even today, without the decency of giving Baker, Mallory, and Townsend the simple dignity of being named. Those freedom-striving Americans were just "slaves," you see.
I got started in all of this in 2005 when the Army announced that it would retire Fort Monroe in 2011, and Virginia announced that it was considering condos for that prime waterfront site--the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake. It's also called Point Comfort, the 1619 place where slavery both began and began to crumble, a quarter millennium later with the escape decision of Baker, Mallory, and Townsend--a decision given power by the general.
In 2005, despite my decades of connection to Fort Monroe, I didn't even know about that quarter-millennium arc of freedom--the arc that was long, but that bent toward emancipation. So I understand why national memory is slow to get it, which is why the footer to my Substack postings says, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that Americans will esteem the multitudes of freedom-striving, emancipation-forcing Civil War slavery escapees. Just not yet."
Anybody who has read this far is kind to have indulged me.
“It's also called Point Comfort, the 1619 place where slavery both began and began to crumble, a quarter millennium later with the escape decision of Baker, Mallory, and Townsend--a decision given power by the general.” Thank you, thank you for linking these two events. I grew up in Virginia, a white child of the Fifties, and am still recovering from my lost cause upbringing. You’ve helped me grow.
White child of Fifties Virginia? Me too. I'm from a Navy family, often stationed in Tidewater, and I vividly remember the late 50s, when Massive Resistance to integration closed Granby Elementary School for a while, and when we were taught that 1619 was Virginia's Red Letter Year--slavery, legislature, arrival of women. I also remember the Civil War centennial of the early 60s--all about valor and generals and battles, with nothing about the cause of the whole thing. The sesquicentennial did better, in my view, but not enough.
It really is amazing--overused word, but here I mean it--how ignorant I was in 2005, when the Pentagon announced Fort Monroe's 2011 retirement, about the post's and the land's full history. In 2005, my family connections to Fort Monroe stretched back decades, yet when I started publishing op-eds opposing Virginia's shockingly parochial plans for commercially overdeveloping that historic prime Point Comfort waterfront, I didn't even know about the slavery and emancipation connections--and neither did most other people.
My Substack, especially the piece called "Rereading 'How Slavery Really Ended in America,'" tells more, but a quick way to get the full picture is to read my History News Network essay proposing Point Comfort as the location for the needed national emancipation memorial. (It's something advocated for a long time by former National Park Service chief historian Dwight Pitcaithley--whose advocacy none other than Kevin Levin cited once, way back in 2012. When I talked to Dr. Pitcaithley before publishing that essay, he gave me permission to say that he thought the Point Comfort idea for a location had merit. It doesn't need a new statue or anything. The moated stone citadel that self-emancipators called Freedom's Fortress, built by enslaved Americans with Lieutenant Robert E. Lee doing some of the supervising, already stands.)
(And by the way, that embarrassing statue in D.C.--Boston's replica of which Boston removed--is sometimes called a national emancipation memorial, but it won't do. I mean the one with President Lincoln, holding the proclamation, towering over a kneeling, half-naked Black man. That example of white saviorism is high on my list for future postings.)
"Yes, the Contraband Decision mattered. But what mattered even more was the enterprising determination and resolve of multitudes of enslaved Americans who were going to exploit the colossal freedom opportunity no matter what a general at Fort Monroe decided."
There is no question that the decision of these three men and the enslaved throughout the South took forced the issue, but if we are going to think in terms of process we have to acknowledge the role of the commanders on the ground. Plenty of commanders early in the war, as you know, returned the enslaved to their masters or discouraged them from entering Union lines. This changed by the time of the Second Confiscation Act and, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation. That turned armies into armies of liberation. What I am suggesting is that we acknowledge the complexity and contingency of the process. Thanks again for the comment.
In my view, the fundamental problem--not just here, but generally--is an underexamined imbalance in national memory between what Ira Berlin, the eminent emancipation historian, contrasted as the “hand of constituted authority” vs. the “hand of ordinary people.”
> What I am suggesting is that we acknowledge the complexity and contingency of the process.
I not only agree with that, I continually advocate especially the underacknowledged complexity.
> Plenty of commanders early in the war, as you know, returned the enslaved ... or discouraged them from entering Union lines
Yes, and as you know, that's why I stipulated that the freedom movement of Black multitudes that some historians call self-emancipation--and that I think is scanted in a way that's terribly costly for national civic memory--had
* already tried to start elsewhere, fitfully and with no success, and that
* General Butler--weeks after Fort Sumter--was the first Union commander actually to harbor self-emancipating slavery escapees.
> This changed by the time of the Second Confiscation Act and, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation. That turned armies into armies of liberation.
Here's what I see as a fundamental question for national civic memory: What changed it?
"Here's what I see as a fundamental question for national civic memory: What changed it?"
We need to examine any number of factors, beginning with the actions of enslaved people, changing attitudes among the soldiers on the ground, Confederate success in the East, etc.
Thanks. I've probably extended this far enough, but as to those changing attitudes among the soldiers on the ground:
If only for the sake of possibly curious passers-by, I'd like to tie things up by quoting something Ira Berlin wrote in The Long Emancipation (p. 162) about that. He's of course not the only scholar who has said things like this; it's just that I was using this material last week:
"Steadily, as opportunities arose, slaves risked all for freedom. By abandoning their owners, crossing into Union lines, and offering their labor and their lives to the federal cause, slaves forced federal soldiers at the lowest level to recognize their importance to the Union cause. That understanding traveled quickly up the chain of command, to the officers, to their civilian commanders, to elected officials in Congress, and to the presidential palace. In time, it became evident even to the most obtuse federal commanders that every slave who crossed into Union lines was a double gain: one subtracted from the Confederacy and one added to the Union. The slaves' resolute determination to secure their liberty converted many white Northern Americans--soldiers and civilians alike--to the view that the security of the Union depended upon the destruction of slavery. Eventually, this belief tipped in favor of freedom, even among Yankees who displayed little interest in the question of slavery and had no affection for black people."
Worthy stuff for consideration of the balance--or imbalance--between memory of the hand of constituted authority and memory of the hand of ordinary people.
I would love to go but I have signed up for the LBG Academy for the summer and have neither the bandwidth nor the funds for any additional activities. I also interpret living history as a USN Sailor during the CW with the Ship’s Co aboard Constellation
Maybe next year.
Yep…hopefully will have my MA program and thesis completed by then.
Oooooo. I like that ACTIVE TRACK option. Touring the battlefield for two days!
You won't regret it. The tours are first rate.
I bet!
As Kevin knows, I have attending CWI for the better part of the last 10 years. So it will come as no surprise that I highly recommend the conference and I have plans to attend this year. I live in Indiana so unlike some of my east coast friends a day or weekend trip to the Gettysburg area is not feasible. (A nine to ten hour drive with minimal stops) The amount of the conference fee with lodging and meals is less than I would spend for a hotel and food on my own for 5 days in June. So, I consider the programming as a kind of extra bonus.
As Pete pointed out, CWI is not an academic conference. It's very relaxed and the faculty are very approachable willing to talk and answer questions.
I will also admit that I play hooky - and do some battlefield walks on my own usually with Reardon and Vossler's Field Guide.
Thanks for video Kevin. Always good to see you and Pete.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Mike. It's always nice to be able to catch up with you in person at CWI. While I won't be attending this year, it looks like I will likely be there in 2025.
Well dang. I've been saving up all my loose change to be able to pay for your dinner at the nearest Golden Corral. :-) Maybe next year.
As long as they still have the chocolate waterfall, I'm in.
Thanks for this. From the materials, it really does look like it justifies enthusiasm.
Forgive me for taking the opportunity to comment about the very first presentation, following a welcome speech. It's to be by Elizabeth D. Leonard, a Colby College history professor emerita, about General Benjamin Butler, a graduate of Colby's predecessor college. The general figures importantly in my own work on national civic memory of emancipation. He's remembered for lots of things, but the one that I think most important the world calls the Contraband Decision. But I think the world has the meaning of it wrong.
As many know well, General Butler was the first Union commander to say "Yes indeed" to slavery escapees seeking sanctuary with Union forces. Mere weeks after Fort Sumter, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend showed up at Fort Monroe--on the general's first day there--and asked for sanctuary.
Under the filthy laws of slavery they were property, which the general reasoned meant that under the laws of war, since they were an asset to the Confederate forces for whom they had been building fortifications, they must be deemed contraband, and must be confiscated. Adam Goodheart has pointed out that this made the federal government their liberator—a “revolutionary change,” Goodheart declared, since always before, “U.S. authority had protected slaveholding as a constitutional right.” That meant too that whatever was in the general's heart, still more laws were involved: the laws of nature and of nature's god.
But here's why something about that story, as traditionally told, drives me nuts. The general's decision was momentous, but it was merely ***second***. The enslaved had known nationwide that a civil war would constitute a colossal freedom opportunity, and they were way ahead of powerful white guys on that. But in the traditional white-savior telling of the story, it's presumed that without the general's decision, nothing would have happened.
If you ask me, though, Baker, Mallory, and Townsend represented and symbolized the unstoppable force set loose when that nationwide colossal freedom opportunity appeared. Most historians now agree that hundreds of thousands just like those three forced the fate of slavery onto the national political agenda.
Yes, the Contraband Decision mattered. But what mattered even more was the enterprising determination and resolve of multitudes of enslaved Americans who were going to exploit the colossal freedom opportunity no matter what a general at Fort Monroe decided. It was Baker, Mallory, and Townsend who made the first ***active*** decision in that case. The general made the second ***reactive*** one. The movement that some historians call self-emancipation had already started elsewhere, fitfully and with no success, but it was not going to be stopped by General Butler, no matter his decision.
By the way, with the typical arrogance of the predominating white saviorism concerning national civic memory of emancipation--an affliction seen in thought leaders of ***all*** races--the story is regularly told, even today, without the decency of giving Baker, Mallory, and Townsend the simple dignity of being named. Those freedom-striving Americans were just "slaves," you see.
I got started in all of this in 2005 when the Army announced that it would retire Fort Monroe in 2011, and Virginia announced that it was considering condos for that prime waterfront site--the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake. It's also called Point Comfort, the 1619 place where slavery both began and began to crumble, a quarter millennium later with the escape decision of Baker, Mallory, and Townsend--a decision given power by the general.
In 2005, despite my decades of connection to Fort Monroe, I didn't even know about that quarter-millennium arc of freedom--the arc that was long, but that bent toward emancipation. So I understand why national memory is slow to get it, which is why the footer to my Substack postings says, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that Americans will esteem the multitudes of freedom-striving, emancipation-forcing Civil War slavery escapees. Just not yet."
Anybody who has read this far is kind to have indulged me.
“It's also called Point Comfort, the 1619 place where slavery both began and began to crumble, a quarter millennium later with the escape decision of Baker, Mallory, and Townsend--a decision given power by the general.” Thank you, thank you for linking these two events. I grew up in Virginia, a white child of the Fifties, and am still recovering from my lost cause upbringing. You’ve helped me grow.
Thanks very much.
White child of Fifties Virginia? Me too. I'm from a Navy family, often stationed in Tidewater, and I vividly remember the late 50s, when Massive Resistance to integration closed Granby Elementary School for a while, and when we were taught that 1619 was Virginia's Red Letter Year--slavery, legislature, arrival of women. I also remember the Civil War centennial of the early 60s--all about valor and generals and battles, with nothing about the cause of the whole thing. The sesquicentennial did better, in my view, but not enough.
It really is amazing--overused word, but here I mean it--how ignorant I was in 2005, when the Pentagon announced Fort Monroe's 2011 retirement, about the post's and the land's full history. In 2005, my family connections to Fort Monroe stretched back decades, yet when I started publishing op-eds opposing Virginia's shockingly parochial plans for commercially overdeveloping that historic prime Point Comfort waterfront, I didn't even know about the slavery and emancipation connections--and neither did most other people.
My Substack, especially the piece called "Rereading 'How Slavery Really Ended in America,'" tells more, but a quick way to get the full picture is to read my History News Network essay proposing Point Comfort as the location for the needed national emancipation memorial. (It's something advocated for a long time by former National Park Service chief historian Dwight Pitcaithley--whose advocacy none other than Kevin Levin cited once, way back in 2012. When I talked to Dr. Pitcaithley before publishing that essay, he gave me permission to say that he thought the Point Comfort idea for a location had merit. It doesn't need a new statue or anything. The moated stone citadel that self-emancipators called Freedom's Fortress, built by enslaved Americans with Lieutenant Robert E. Lee doing some of the supervising, already stands.)
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183254
(And by the way, that embarrassing statue in D.C.--Boston's replica of which Boston removed--is sometimes called a national emancipation memorial, but it won't do. I mean the one with President Lincoln, holding the proclamation, towering over a kneeling, half-naked Black man. That example of white saviorism is high on my list for future postings.)
Thanks for this comment. You said:
"Yes, the Contraband Decision mattered. But what mattered even more was the enterprising determination and resolve of multitudes of enslaved Americans who were going to exploit the colossal freedom opportunity no matter what a general at Fort Monroe decided."
There is no question that the decision of these three men and the enslaved throughout the South took forced the issue, but if we are going to think in terms of process we have to acknowledge the role of the commanders on the ground. Plenty of commanders early in the war, as you know, returned the enslaved to their masters or discouraged them from entering Union lines. This changed by the time of the Second Confiscation Act and, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation. That turned armies into armies of liberation. What I am suggesting is that we acknowledge the complexity and contingency of the process. Thanks again for the comment.
Thanks for a thought-filled comment.
In my view, the fundamental problem--not just here, but generally--is an underexamined imbalance in national memory between what Ira Berlin, the eminent emancipation historian, contrasted as the “hand of constituted authority” vs. the “hand of ordinary people.”
> What I am suggesting is that we acknowledge the complexity and contingency of the process.
I not only agree with that, I continually advocate especially the underacknowledged complexity.
> Plenty of commanders early in the war, as you know, returned the enslaved ... or discouraged them from entering Union lines
Yes, and as you know, that's why I stipulated that the freedom movement of Black multitudes that some historians call self-emancipation--and that I think is scanted in a way that's terribly costly for national civic memory--had
* already tried to start elsewhere, fitfully and with no success, and that
* General Butler--weeks after Fort Sumter--was the first Union commander actually to harbor self-emancipating slavery escapees.
> This changed by the time of the Second Confiscation Act and, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation. That turned armies into armies of liberation.
Here's what I see as a fundamental question for national civic memory: What changed it?
"Here's what I see as a fundamental question for national civic memory: What changed it?"
We need to examine any number of factors, beginning with the actions of enslaved people, changing attitudes among the soldiers on the ground, Confederate success in the East, etc.
Thanks. I've probably extended this far enough, but as to those changing attitudes among the soldiers on the ground:
If only for the sake of possibly curious passers-by, I'd like to tie things up by quoting something Ira Berlin wrote in The Long Emancipation (p. 162) about that. He's of course not the only scholar who has said things like this; it's just that I was using this material last week:
"Steadily, as opportunities arose, slaves risked all for freedom. By abandoning their owners, crossing into Union lines, and offering their labor and their lives to the federal cause, slaves forced federal soldiers at the lowest level to recognize their importance to the Union cause. That understanding traveled quickly up the chain of command, to the officers, to their civilian commanders, to elected officials in Congress, and to the presidential palace. In time, it became evident even to the most obtuse federal commanders that every slave who crossed into Union lines was a double gain: one subtracted from the Confederacy and one added to the Union. The slaves' resolute determination to secure their liberty converted many white Northern Americans--soldiers and civilians alike--to the view that the security of the Union depended upon the destruction of slavery. Eventually, this belief tipped in favor of freedom, even among Yankees who displayed little interest in the question of slavery and had no affection for black people."
Worthy stuff for consideration of the balance--or imbalance--between memory of the hand of constituted authority and memory of the hand of ordinary people.
I am going
Are you going to take mom with you? LOL