On Tuesday I had the honor and pleasure of taking part in what is likely the first ever battlefield tour at Gettysburg National Military Park focused entirely on the experiences of African Americans, including the thousands of enslaved Black laborers who toiled in Robert E.
I am going to squeeze in a third opinion here. In my life, nothing has ever been "black and white"!
I cannot find an analogy to this phenomenon, something that has been hiding in clear sight, well, since 1619. The history of my family, my clan, as Japanese for in my case three (now five) generations, in the span SINCE this civil war has been incredible and very contrasting. My ancestors came over into slave-comparable occupations (e.g., cane plantation labor) and my relatives practice a broad spread of occupations. My wife's last career was as a longtime staffer of the twice-elected Speaker of the House. Three uncles and my father-in-law served in, and received the Congressional Gold Medal for serving in the WW2 100/442/MIS units.
Myself, I was born in Georgetown, Washington, DC, in 1948.
My parents met and married and otherwise lived in a total of five of FDR's WW2 concentration camps. I am now 75 and have spent my life - since 1963 - trying to discover first the fact, then the shades of that meaning. My parents' generation had to argue for the right to fight in WW2, then the lucky ones merely died fighting in the 100/442/MIS. After one uncle passed on in 1985, my aunt told me he suffered from screaming PTSD all his life.
Japanese Americans maybe were the luckiest non-Anglo-Saxon race. We only started arriving in 1868, not 1619; nor were we standing on the shores in October 1492 to greet Chris.
My mother reacted to the war with rage. She grew up on a poor farm the eldest daughter. Japanese sexism so oppressed her that it seemed racism didn't seriously oppress her until her frightened parents burned everything precious after Pearl Harbor. When they were forced to self-deport to the first of the concentration camps, her mother's health broke. She died of hypertension in the second concentration camp; my mom vented the blame on FDR and 30 years later she still cursed him: the Great White Father.
As a post-WW2 child, my parents always brought me up to be paranoid, to be polite to Caucasians. Frankly, the racism and pressure were unbearable. My father was a Christian convert. I'm still angry.
To summarize and place this in context: I cannot believe how African Americans, virtually every single one of them, could live centuries playing Stepin' Fetchit'. Certainly, employees learn this behavior for a period of the day. A lot of learned behavior is chalked up to "manners". In reading my mother's clan history, a bad attitude was a deep character trait, but RHIP.
I cannot fathom how enslaved men and women and their offspring managed to live dual lives, perhaps multiple lives, entirely to eke out daily existences. Perhaps history will never tease this out.
I believe it is essential for everyone to make the effort. At least, everyone of good will. I am sure there will be a lot of supposition and conjecture without basis, but that's humanity.
I went on a pilgrimage to the Arkansas site of my parents' last two concentration camps last month. While there, I met with (I'm overstating this a tad) George Takei and we started a mitzvah for Rosalie Gould, the onetime mayor of the town of McGeehee, where Rohwer had a tiny cemetery. (George was a child-inmate at Jerome, the other camp, and now there is a talking monument featuring his voice.) Forty years ago, she had the town start to refurbish the site including the two concrete monuments to the servicemen and the inmates themselves. It's now a national monument on the civil rights trail. Where people were kind. we must repay it!
Again, it was traumatic for my parents, for my race, but I cannot start to compare it -- especially as we campaigned for and received a presidential apology and $20 grand each in reparations. At least, the survivors received them.
I will avidly read Kevin's book while I appreciate how lucky some of us ended up.
Kevin,I am particularly intrigued by this statement in your original post: "I also wanted participants to understand from the outset that every Confederate soldier and officer—regardless of whether he owned slaves—understood that their ability to carry out this campaign was dependent on slavery." This statement suggests that southern military power was far weaker than many of us have thought for a very long time. They had a major problem that no amount of bravery or tactical skill on the battlefield was going to fix. There is truth in the axiom that professionals think logistics and amateurs think strategy and tactics. If you cannot sustain the forces you put into the field you are not going to win. That the South had to rely on people who were considered property to keep its armies supplied means the leadership could never be certain of the logistics effort. Men like Lee, professional soldiers, had to know and understand this. I am curious, have you ever come across or are you aware of references to this issue in the correspondence of Confederate military leaders?
Thanks for the comment. Confederates certainly did not think of slavery or the need to mobilize their enslaved population as a weakness, but as a strength. For every slave impressed an additional man was able to shoulder a rifle. I do not subscribe to the thesis that Confederate defeat was inevitable.
The point I was trying to make to the tour group is that we need to move away from the ideological questions surrounding why soldiers enlisted and why many remained in the ranks until the very end. We've learned a great deal over the years from historians about how the Confederate rank and file thought about slavery.
What I am trying to do is move us away from that question to think more carefully about how Confederates--regardless of whether they owned slaves--experienced slavery in camp, on the march, and even in battle. When we do this it is clear that soldiers would have understood the important role that enslaved laborers played in making it possible for the army to function.
Your reply prompts two questions; based on numerous posts you have made here and your book it seems pretty clear that by the summer of 1863 there were enslaved men present in the field in some numbers with the Army of Northern Virginia. Have you seen evidence to suggest this was true of all Confederate field armies? And, does this presence date from the start of the war or does it grow as the Confederacy's need for soldiers grows?
I suspect it was true for all Confederate armies, though I am less confident re: numbers outside the Army of Northern Virginia. Larry Daniel does a pretty good job of exploring the subject in the Army of Tennessee. https://amzn.to/42QuqYN
Kevin - I'm glad Pete Carmichael chimed in on this. It was certainly a pleasure to be with you and for working to expand the narrative of the Civil War so that ALL participants, soldiers or not, are included in the story. The primary source that really grabbed my attention was the Confederate order detailing how the "reclaimed slaves" were to be processed into various locations.
I tend to agree with Pete on the Grateful Dead issue, but I never been to a Barbara Mandrell concert.
For readers of Kevin's work who have not attended CWI go if you can. I can certainly attest that is extremely well run, thought provoking, and fun. I mean, where else can you spend 5 days hanging out with other Civil War students.
The order that you referenced really drives home the importance that the Confederacy attached to hunting down and returning enslaved people to their owners. It's horrifying.
The Grateful Dead is certainly an acquired taste. That said, I've been working with Pete on his musical tastes for a long time and I will continue to do so. That's what friends do. LOL
Being from Indianapolis as is Pete, I can verify that our fair city is pretty much a musical wasteland unless you're interested in seeing 70s rock bands. Back in the day, Barbara Mandrell would have been a big deal. :-)
You were superb on Tuesday as was Jill. To see so many people interested in the stories of enslaved men (we had a full bus, and I bet we could have filled two) reaffirmed my strong belief that Civil War enthusiasts want to hear a wide range of stories. I was also struck by the level of their engagement, impressed by their questions, and pleased that they gave us (me) a little push back. And to populate the battlefield with enslaved people felt like we were reclaiming the landscape for historical actors who had been silenced.
We go back a long way, and if someone had told us in the early 1990s that the day would come when we would lead a tour about slavery on the Gettysburg battlefield, we would have said keep dreaming. What we did with Jill is a powerful reminder of how far the field has come. And let's not forget our NPS colleagues who have been working hard on this front (John Hennessy at Fredericksburg for example, Emanuel Dabney at Petersburg, Keith Snyder at Antietam, and the list goes on).
And finally, I really appreciated your framing the Confederate slave experience as not fighting in the field, but trying to survive in Southern armies. I hope my colleague Scott Hancock succeeds in getting a monument to enslaved people at Gettysburg--and one that reminds all visitors that black men--both slave and free- had a strong presence during the battle.
Interpreting enslaved Confederates with you and Jill was really special, and the experience will undoubtedly rank as one of the high points in my teaching career. And I even got you to go out to the Garry Owen for a drink. But your admission that you once loved the Grateful Dead was disturbing. Any band that promotes the wearing of tie dye shirts is suspect. Listen to the Hold Steady. In time you will come to worship them. (worship might be a little strong)
Your conversation with Kevin on Substack was wonderful and at age seventy I’ve now added attending the Civil War Institute Conference to my bucket list.
I second everything you said here, especially the point about acknowledging the work of our good friends and colleagues in the NPS. I hope we have an opportunity to do this tour again.
You should know that there has never been a problem getting me into a bar. Perhaps you forgot about our all-nighter all those years ago in New Orleans with Bohannon. By the way, it was great to see him.
It takes a certain level of intelligence to appreciate the music of the Grateful Dead. LOL
That said, I my respect for you has only gone up with your admission of attending a Barbara Mandrell concert.
Don't forget to check out Christian McBride at the Majestic on June 23 if you are still in town.
Thanks again for everything. I hope you, Jill, Ashleigh and the rest of the staff have a chance to catch your breadth and enjoy the summer.
This sounds awesome. Congrats on the tour. Wish I had been there.
Wondered what you are thinking when you say that in Evans' diary entry, you can see the origins of the Lost Cause? (I ask because when I read it, I saw pre-war pro-slavery rhetoric through and through.)
Should have been clearer there. The point I wanted to make is that the Lost Cause is not simply a postwar fabrication of the Confederate experience of war. It can't be reduced simply to a "Big Lie" but must be understood as evolving out of a complex lived experience. Hope that helps.
Bingo!!! %1000 agree. Gets frustrating when folks imagine that defeated Confederates woke up in April 1865 and decided to fabricate a whole new story. I see a great deal of consistency in how they thought about the interconnectedness of slavery and national political trends before and after.
Having said that, how they thought is 1861 is different to how they thought in 1865 and the experience of war caused that change. In my comment above, I was thinking aloud about the possibility that wartime experiences made subtle changes in the way white folks imagined interracial relationships.
Completely agree on that specific issue. I was thinking about the way in which Evans frames Moses's supposed loyalty/fidelity. It's unwavering. Moses cares more for his master than he does himself.
I got that too. It's certainly a part of the abstract ways that proslavery folks talked about slavery--Black contentment and appreciation and loyalty within the confines of slavery. They talked about it all the time, even that one point about the danger of abolition to enslaved people. What made me stop and think after your comment is that I'm not all that familiar with pre-war, individual testimony on such an intimate level as this. It might be there before 1861, but ... ?
I am going to squeeze in a third opinion here. In my life, nothing has ever been "black and white"!
I cannot find an analogy to this phenomenon, something that has been hiding in clear sight, well, since 1619. The history of my family, my clan, as Japanese for in my case three (now five) generations, in the span SINCE this civil war has been incredible and very contrasting. My ancestors came over into slave-comparable occupations (e.g., cane plantation labor) and my relatives practice a broad spread of occupations. My wife's last career was as a longtime staffer of the twice-elected Speaker of the House. Three uncles and my father-in-law served in, and received the Congressional Gold Medal for serving in the WW2 100/442/MIS units.
Myself, I was born in Georgetown, Washington, DC, in 1948.
My parents met and married and otherwise lived in a total of five of FDR's WW2 concentration camps. I am now 75 and have spent my life - since 1963 - trying to discover first the fact, then the shades of that meaning. My parents' generation had to argue for the right to fight in WW2, then the lucky ones merely died fighting in the 100/442/MIS. After one uncle passed on in 1985, my aunt told me he suffered from screaming PTSD all his life.
Japanese Americans maybe were the luckiest non-Anglo-Saxon race. We only started arriving in 1868, not 1619; nor were we standing on the shores in October 1492 to greet Chris.
My mother reacted to the war with rage. She grew up on a poor farm the eldest daughter. Japanese sexism so oppressed her that it seemed racism didn't seriously oppress her until her frightened parents burned everything precious after Pearl Harbor. When they were forced to self-deport to the first of the concentration camps, her mother's health broke. She died of hypertension in the second concentration camp; my mom vented the blame on FDR and 30 years later she still cursed him: the Great White Father.
As a post-WW2 child, my parents always brought me up to be paranoid, to be polite to Caucasians. Frankly, the racism and pressure were unbearable. My father was a Christian convert. I'm still angry.
To summarize and place this in context: I cannot believe how African Americans, virtually every single one of them, could live centuries playing Stepin' Fetchit'. Certainly, employees learn this behavior for a period of the day. A lot of learned behavior is chalked up to "manners". In reading my mother's clan history, a bad attitude was a deep character trait, but RHIP.
I cannot fathom how enslaved men and women and their offspring managed to live dual lives, perhaps multiple lives, entirely to eke out daily existences. Perhaps history will never tease this out.
I believe it is essential for everyone to make the effort. At least, everyone of good will. I am sure there will be a lot of supposition and conjecture without basis, but that's humanity.
I went on a pilgrimage to the Arkansas site of my parents' last two concentration camps last month. While there, I met with (I'm overstating this a tad) George Takei and we started a mitzvah for Rosalie Gould, the onetime mayor of the town of McGeehee, where Rohwer had a tiny cemetery. (George was a child-inmate at Jerome, the other camp, and now there is a talking monument featuring his voice.) Forty years ago, she had the town start to refurbish the site including the two concrete monuments to the servicemen and the inmates themselves. It's now a national monument on the civil rights trail. Where people were kind. we must repay it!
Again, it was traumatic for my parents, for my race, but I cannot start to compare it -- especially as we campaigned for and received a presidential apology and $20 grand each in reparations. At least, the survivors received them.
I will avidly read Kevin's book while I appreciate how lucky some of us ended up.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to share your family's story.
Kevin,I am particularly intrigued by this statement in your original post: "I also wanted participants to understand from the outset that every Confederate soldier and officer—regardless of whether he owned slaves—understood that their ability to carry out this campaign was dependent on slavery." This statement suggests that southern military power was far weaker than many of us have thought for a very long time. They had a major problem that no amount of bravery or tactical skill on the battlefield was going to fix. There is truth in the axiom that professionals think logistics and amateurs think strategy and tactics. If you cannot sustain the forces you put into the field you are not going to win. That the South had to rely on people who were considered property to keep its armies supplied means the leadership could never be certain of the logistics effort. Men like Lee, professional soldiers, had to know and understand this. I am curious, have you ever come across or are you aware of references to this issue in the correspondence of Confederate military leaders?
Thanks for the comment. Confederates certainly did not think of slavery or the need to mobilize their enslaved population as a weakness, but as a strength. For every slave impressed an additional man was able to shoulder a rifle. I do not subscribe to the thesis that Confederate defeat was inevitable.
The point I was trying to make to the tour group is that we need to move away from the ideological questions surrounding why soldiers enlisted and why many remained in the ranks until the very end. We've learned a great deal over the years from historians about how the Confederate rank and file thought about slavery.
What I am trying to do is move us away from that question to think more carefully about how Confederates--regardless of whether they owned slaves--experienced slavery in camp, on the march, and even in battle. When we do this it is clear that soldiers would have understood the important role that enslaved laborers played in making it possible for the army to function.
Hope that helps.
Your reply prompts two questions; based on numerous posts you have made here and your book it seems pretty clear that by the summer of 1863 there were enslaved men present in the field in some numbers with the Army of Northern Virginia. Have you seen evidence to suggest this was true of all Confederate field armies? And, does this presence date from the start of the war or does it grow as the Confederacy's need for soldiers grows?
I suspect it was true for all Confederate armies, though I am less confident re: numbers outside the Army of Northern Virginia. Larry Daniel does a pretty good job of exploring the subject in the Army of Tennessee. https://amzn.to/42QuqYN
Thanks, that is helpful
Kevin - I'm glad Pete Carmichael chimed in on this. It was certainly a pleasure to be with you and for working to expand the narrative of the Civil War so that ALL participants, soldiers or not, are included in the story. The primary source that really grabbed my attention was the Confederate order detailing how the "reclaimed slaves" were to be processed into various locations.
I tend to agree with Pete on the Grateful Dead issue, but I never been to a Barbara Mandrell concert.
For readers of Kevin's work who have not attended CWI go if you can. I can certainly attest that is extremely well run, thought provoking, and fun. I mean, where else can you spend 5 days hanging out with other Civil War students.
So glad to hear that you enjoyed the tour.
The order that you referenced really drives home the importance that the Confederacy attached to hunting down and returning enslaved people to their owners. It's horrifying.
The Grateful Dead is certainly an acquired taste. That said, I've been working with Pete on his musical tastes for a long time and I will continue to do so. That's what friends do. LOL
Being from Indianapolis as is Pete, I can verify that our fair city is pretty much a musical wasteland unless you're interested in seeing 70s rock bands. Back in the day, Barbara Mandrell would have been a big deal. :-)
Kevin,
You were superb on Tuesday as was Jill. To see so many people interested in the stories of enslaved men (we had a full bus, and I bet we could have filled two) reaffirmed my strong belief that Civil War enthusiasts want to hear a wide range of stories. I was also struck by the level of their engagement, impressed by their questions, and pleased that they gave us (me) a little push back. And to populate the battlefield with enslaved people felt like we were reclaiming the landscape for historical actors who had been silenced.
We go back a long way, and if someone had told us in the early 1990s that the day would come when we would lead a tour about slavery on the Gettysburg battlefield, we would have said keep dreaming. What we did with Jill is a powerful reminder of how far the field has come. And let's not forget our NPS colleagues who have been working hard on this front (John Hennessy at Fredericksburg for example, Emanuel Dabney at Petersburg, Keith Snyder at Antietam, and the list goes on).
And finally, I really appreciated your framing the Confederate slave experience as not fighting in the field, but trying to survive in Southern armies. I hope my colleague Scott Hancock succeeds in getting a monument to enslaved people at Gettysburg--and one that reminds all visitors that black men--both slave and free- had a strong presence during the battle.
Interpreting enslaved Confederates with you and Jill was really special, and the experience will undoubtedly rank as one of the high points in my teaching career. And I even got you to go out to the Garry Owen for a drink. But your admission that you once loved the Grateful Dead was disturbing. Any band that promotes the wearing of tie dye shirts is suspect. Listen to the Hold Steady. In time you will come to worship them. (worship might be a little strong)
Pete
Dr. Carmichael,
Your conversation with Kevin on Substack was wonderful and at age seventy I’ve now added attending the Civil War Institute Conference to my bucket list.
I grew up a mile from Brandy Station, on land where Stuart staged the review of his cavalry for Lee. A new memorial is now planned for the battlefield, to honor Culpeper-born USCTs, and I find it very encouraging. Perhaps Gettysburg will be inspired by it. https://starexponent.com/news/culpeper-county-to-support-march-to-freedom-monument/article_3e641aca-0baf-11ee-92cf-33ebd9924159.html
I hope the monument gets lift off and look forward to having you at CWI next summer. Best Pete
No question that you would have a wonderful time, Suzanne.
Hi Pete,
I second everything you said here, especially the point about acknowledging the work of our good friends and colleagues in the NPS. I hope we have an opportunity to do this tour again.
You should know that there has never been a problem getting me into a bar. Perhaps you forgot about our all-nighter all those years ago in New Orleans with Bohannon. By the way, it was great to see him.
It takes a certain level of intelligence to appreciate the music of the Grateful Dead. LOL
That said, I my respect for you has only gone up with your admission of attending a Barbara Mandrell concert.
Don't forget to check out Christian McBride at the Majestic on June 23 if you are still in town.
Thanks again for everything. I hope you, Jill, Ashleigh and the rest of the staff have a chance to catch your breadth and enjoy the summer.
All the best,
Kevin
I didn't have enough to drink to justify my Barbara Mandrell concert in high school. What an admission.
This sounds awesome. Congrats on the tour. Wish I had been there.
Wondered what you are thinking when you say that in Evans' diary entry, you can see the origins of the Lost Cause? (I ask because when I read it, I saw pre-war pro-slavery rhetoric through and through.)
Should have been clearer there. The point I wanted to make is that the Lost Cause is not simply a postwar fabrication of the Confederate experience of war. It can't be reduced simply to a "Big Lie" but must be understood as evolving out of a complex lived experience. Hope that helps.
Bingo!!! %1000 agree. Gets frustrating when folks imagine that defeated Confederates woke up in April 1865 and decided to fabricate a whole new story. I see a great deal of consistency in how they thought about the interconnectedness of slavery and national political trends before and after.
Having said that, how they thought is 1861 is different to how they thought in 1865 and the experience of war caused that change. In my comment above, I was thinking aloud about the possibility that wartime experiences made subtle changes in the way white folks imagined interracial relationships.
We are definitely on the same page here.
Hi Chris,
Completely agree on that specific issue. I was thinking about the way in which Evans frames Moses's supposed loyalty/fidelity. It's unwavering. Moses cares more for his master than he does himself.
I got that too. It's certainly a part of the abstract ways that proslavery folks talked about slavery--Black contentment and appreciation and loyalty within the confines of slavery. They talked about it all the time, even that one point about the danger of abolition to enslaved people. What made me stop and think after your comment is that I'm not all that familiar with pre-war, individual testimony on such an intimate level as this. It might be there before 1861, but ... ?