Grape & Canister
In the News
Here is my latest op-ed on the passing of historian David McCullough.
The Congressional Committee tasked with the renaming of military bases that honor Confederate leaders has announced that the changes will cost roughly $21 million. As far as I am concerned it’s money well spent. We can only speculate as to the real cost to this nation of honoring men for decades who chose to fight against the United States.
Brent Staples published an op-ed on the renaming process in The New York Times earlier this week.
The naming honor was part of the alchemy that transformed America’s best-known enemies of the Republic into secular saints. The long-running myth that the rebel generals had no connection to racism became insupportable when contemporary white supremacists swaddled themselves in Confederate symbols.
Today is the anniversary of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one young woman dead. The question of whether the Robert E. Lee statue will be melted down and turned into a new piece of public art is still up in the air.
Robert Gould Shaw News
Many of you know that I am currently working on a biography of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. This week I learned that a United States flag has surfaced here in Boston that was purportedly stitched by local Black women and given to Shaw during the 54th Massachusetts’s parade through the city in May 1863, before they traveled to South Carolina. I don’t doubt that the flag is authentic and was stitched by African Americans, but I question whether it is connected to the parade. Shaw didn’t mention it in his correspondence about the parade and there is no mention of it in local news coverage.
One possibility is that it was given to Shaw while still in camp in Readville, MA or it may have been stitched by Black women in Port Royal/Beaufort after the regiment had arrived. The latter possibility is an even more intriguing story. Will keep you updated. It’s a fascinating find.
Video
Here is historian Joan Waugh discussing General Francis Barlow at this summer’s Civil War Institute conference at Gettysburg College. Waugh is currently at work on a new biography of Barlow.
New to the Civil War Memory Library
John L. Brooke, “There is a North”: Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019).
Lorien Foote and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai eds., So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War-Era North (Fordham University Press, 2015).
Otis
The big guy got a much needed bath this week. The entire process, from soaking to blow drying, took 2.5 hours. He enjoyed every minute of it, especially the blueberry scented face massage. Fun times.
