Grape & Canister

News, Books, Videos, and a Public Service Announcement from Otis

(Source: Library of Congress)

Upcoming Talk

On Friday September 8 I will deliver the Joshua L. Chamberlain Legacy Lecture at the Pejepscot History Center in New Brunswick, Maine. My topic will be the history and ongoing controversy surrounding Civil War monuments. I am very much looking forward to this event.

News

I’ve been following Cooper Wingert for a number of years. He is an incredibly talented young historian, who is currently working on his PhD in history at Georgetown University. Cooper has already written a number of books about the Civil War and he recently published a wonderful essay in the Journal of American History on the history of the Fugitive Slave Act, along with a website that maps fugitive slaves.

Creating a dataset and then mapping that data helped me sharpen my argument in my recent JAH article. Slaveholders were less troubled by the actual number of escapes. Instead, slaveholders were concerned more broadly about the place of slavery in American federalism. Black and white northerners’ success at undermining the federal law raised fundamental questions about the security of slave property interests in a federal system that allowed for considerable local variation. Enslavers never doubted that the federal government remained their staunch ally in the protection of slave property, but slaveholders increasingly questioned the sufficiency of any federal commitment, no matter how strong, to protect slavery from mounting northern opposition.

I am very much looking forward to the publication of his dissertation at some point. Watch out for this kid.

Arlington National Cemetery is slated to remove the Confederate monuments that has stood since 1914, but as part of the process it is soliciting input from the public on what to do with it. I would like to see part of it interpreted in a museum setting on site, but that is highly unlikely.

New monuments and public art are taking shape where Confederate monuments once stood in New Orleans.

The National Park Service at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park has some excellent programs planned for the 160th anniversary of the battle of Chickamauga

Interesting piece on a select group of veterans of the 1848 German revolution who immigrated to America in the 1850s

The Turners were one of the most influential athletic organizations of the nineteenth century, “turn” being German for “gym” or “gymnastics.” The German immigrants who made up the Turners’ ranks were heavily influenced by the mid-nineteenth-century radicalism of the country that they fled. In the 1850s the Turners transformed their Turnverein, or gym halls, into armed community centers.

The Turners first dedicated their efforts to advancing the message of socialism in the United States while defending themselves against nativist thugs. They went on to advocate abolishing slavery, defend the Union, and even act as Abraham Lincoln’s personal security detail. Along the way, they drank a lot of beer and lifted a lot of barbells.

What can you learn about Union and secession from a map? Check out this piece at Atlas Obscura. This would make an excellent primary source for the classroom.

Videos

Another guitary great has passed. This past week we lost Robbie Robertson. Here is The Band’s classic song, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

The new visitor center at Antietam has finally opened after years of renovation. Garry Adelman got a sneak peak inside.

C-SPAN is now airing sessions from the most recent Civil War Institute conference in June. This is a wonderful event. Register now for the 2024 conference.

• Ashley Whitehead Luskey on Confederate Starvation Parties.

• Roundtable on Lincoln and His Generals.

• Roundtable on the Army of Tennessee’s Generals.

• Peter Carmichael on Illiterate Confederate Soldiers.

These talks are well worth your time.

Books

Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas (Harvard University Press, 2022).

D. Scott Hartwig, I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).

Kristin A. Olbertson, The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690-1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

George C. Rable, Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War (Louisiana State University Press, 2023).

Andrew M. Wehrman, The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).

Public Service Announcement from Otis

Please don’t shave my Berner and other fluffy canine friends during the summer or any time of the year. See my shiny coat in the picture below? That coat has never been trimmed or shaved except for a tiny bit around my paws. We need this long coat to protect us from the heat and cold. It is like an air pocket around us. Also, it is much cheaper not to shave because once you do, it will become an expensive grooming issue and our coat will be coarse and never recover. Got it? Woof!