Grape & Canister
In the News
The Naming Commission’s final report was published this week. It includes the recommendation to remove the Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Mathews County (VA) Board of Supervisors is considering deeding land to a Confederate heritage group to protect a local monument. What has some people confused is the fact that as it stands there is no immediate threat to this particular statue.
Confusion has built since last fall’s referendum in a county of some 8,600 residents that’s roughly 8 percent Black. Even though the voters’ message was clear, and despite the fact that the statue has not been targeted by graffiti or other protest damage, some residents and county supervisors have been on a crusade to save it from any possible future calamity.
The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia is asking for community feedback as it makes plans for Confederate monuments removed by the city in 2020. Take the survey here.
Check out this interesting story about a Maine soldier, who executed for desertion and very likely disabled.
Videos
As best I can tell these two videos date to the 1980s. They feature the Kentucky Historical Society’s mobile Civil War history exhibit. The first video is a short local news clip about the exhibit, but the second focuses on a classroom visit. Their guide looks like a cross between a professional wrestler, Confederate soldier, and Elvis. It’s an interesting look at how the Civil War was remembered in the 1980s.
New to the Civil War Memory Library
Lindsey Fitzharris, The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).
Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers' Testimony of the Great War (Cornell University Press, 2014).
Donald Yacovone, Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity (Pantheon, 2022).
Otis
Fall is beginning to set in here in Boston and Otis is quite content with the cooler temperatures. He will be even happier once it starts snowing.
Hope all of you are doing well.
"The Great Invasion", "Yankee Justice"...so interesting to hear a different perspective from the one I received in Maine schools in the 70's, although there was still a fair share of Lost Cause propaganda even there. Couldn't help but wonder what that African-American girl was thinking during the talk.
Wonderful information as usual. The videos especially are a real treat.
As someone from Kentucky, it’s a fascinating reminder of how far my state had come in remembering the war. The first video about the history mobile is pretty much how I remember being taught about the war. Looking back, it was a hybrid Lost Cause/Reconciliation history that featured Lincoln, Perryville, and the guerrilla war. There was minimal context of the political situation, to say nothing of emancipation or the extensive African-American experience.
Fast forward to the sesquicentennial and that same history mobile used by the Historical Society prominently featured emancipation and the African-American history of the war. It still presented Unionists, rebels, and battles, but it revealed to average Kentuckians more of their history than most had seen. It did a commendable job of portraying the complicated story of Kentucky’s war.
Within my lifetime, the unduly prominent focus on the Confederate cause has waned to a degree and new stories are now being told. The fact that Camp Nelson is an NPS site is reflective of that change. There is still much to do, but this video reminds me that we’ve come far.
Thank you for sharing these videos.