I have a friend and fellow history teacher who is working on a classroom project that asks each student to select an item to interpret for a museum about the Lost Cause.
Last week I ran a Google Search on the key words 'Column from Pensacola'. It's a search I run every so often, maybe once or twice a year since I first became aware of the Column from Pensacola more than five or maybe even ten years ago. This time it turned up something I hadn't seen before, an item headed '"Black-bellied Yankees" at the Battle of Fort Blakely' on a page belonging to someone named Seth Kaller Inc. who hunts down and serves up items of potential interest to people looking for Historic Documents for Legacy Collections. Apparently he's a sort of broker/bounty hunter who specializes in original documents museums and legacy collectors might wish to acquire for a price. The document in question, Black-bellied Yankees, is available at the low, low price of $3,000.00. He tosses out the phrase 'Up the Alabama' to quickly encapsulate what this piece of history, a letter written in April I865, is about. That phrase is lifted from a sentence early in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird that refers to Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, when he as president sent troops 'up the Alabama' to remove the Creek Indians along the Alabama River to the Trail of Tears and the Indian Reservation that eventually became Oklahoma. But the letter doesn't concern Creek Indians or the Trail of Tears. It concerns two Union Army officers, Black-bellied Yanks, who commanded two or more of the nine regiments of United States Colored Troops who comprised roughly half of what was called the Column From Pensacola under the command of Major General Frederick Steele. The letter writer, Colonel Frederick Crandal, was in command of the 48th U.S.C.T, on loan from the 33rd Iowa (and the 1st Arkansas Union regiment out of Fayetteville), when the Column From Pensacola marched through incredibly swampy terrain from Pensacola, destroying railroad tracks anywhere they encountered them, across the Alabama stateline to a camp a little northwest of Fort Blakely for the purpose of launching an assault on the fort one week after their arrival. The intended recipient of the letter was Colonel Julian Bryant, nephew of the poet William Cullen Bryant, in command of the 46th U.S.C.T. . Crandal's letter is a reply to a letter he received from Bryant upon boarding a vessel headed two hundred miles up the Alabama River near Birmingham. The letter suggests that Bryant and the 46th had been sent to New Orleans shortly after the Battle of Fort Blakely in that Crandal speculates about the thought processes of the Division Commander, John Hawkins, and the chances of returning the 46th to Mobile and both seem unaware that the 46th will shortly be assigned to Brazos Santiago in Texas. 48,000 Union troops converged on Mobile for the siege and once Mobile surrendered three days after the last pitched battle of the war they had many more troops on hand than could be accommodated. Many of those troops would converge on Brownsville and the mouth of the Rio Grande over the next two months for mustering out of service once Brownsville had capitualated. But in the meantime the excess troops were headed 'up the Alabama' simply because the city had no room for that many Union soldiers and there were still Confederate generals in the vicinity, Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith and Nathan Forrest, to be precise, who had not yet surrendered their forces. My great great grandfather, Private Wilhelm Steele, a German immigrant with the 27th Wisconsin, was among those sent up the river. They marched about fifty miles up the Tenasaw to the confluence of the Tombigbee and the Alabama, and followed the former up to a spot called McIntosh Bluff, where between the middle of April and the middle of May, 1865, they built a fort, mostly I suspect, as a way to keep busy and not cause trouble in downtown Mobile. McIntosh Bluff was quite scenic and a place of historic significance as the place where former Vice President Aaron Burr took refuge and was first arrested for shooting and killing Founding Father, author of most of the Federalist Papers and potential future president, Alexander Hamilton, in a still infamous duel of questionable legality. While the fort was under construction a number of prominent Confederate generals signed surrender documents that resulted in massive transfers of armaments and contraband cotton to a warehouse district between the train station and the main wharf at the Port of Mobile. About a week after the regiment had been recalled to Mobile an "accident" occurred in one of those warehouses resulting in an explosion that was audible in Baton Rouge and reduced nearly half of Mobile to rubble and cinders. It was blamed on "carelessness" on the part of Colored Troops who had moved the contraband cotton bales and armaments from the train station into the numerous warehouses along the wharf. Three ships sank and more than three hundred people, many of them USCT soldiers, died in the explosion and many more were seriously injured. Now to the point at hand. The Lost Cause narrative supplanted the narrative of a young African-American from Bedford PA who enlisted in the United States Colored Troops at the age of 14 and fought in the "last battles" of the Civil War before he was mustered out at age 16. The "last battles" of the War of the Rebellion were Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, just across the river from Mobile. Strangely enough, George Washington Williams didn't die in those battles or the warehouse explosion. And he went on to write two history books, A History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, published in 1882 , and A History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, published in 1887. The latter is accessible online and is fairly comprehensive, right up to but not including anything about the "last battles" of the Civil War and quite possibly the only battles of which Williams had personal experience as a soldier. Why in the world would he have omitted those particular battles? More African-American troops served in that last battle, Fort Blakely, and its nine USCT regiments of the Column from Pensacola, than in any other battle in the entire war. Williams crossed the Mexican border when he was mustered out in 1866 and joined forces with Benito Juarez to oust and execute the Emperor Maximillian. Cinco de Mayo is the Mexican holiday that commemorates that event. Then he became a Buffalo Soldier, rounding up renegade Native Americans in the desert southwest until he was wounded and sent home to Cincinnati. He's credited with coining the phrase 'crimes against humanity' and deployed that term in a letter he wrote to King Leopold of Belgium with regard to abuses he observed on several visits to the Belgian Congo. He served a term in Congress representing the district where he lived in Cincinnati, the first black man ever elected to Congress. He became a minister in the AME Church after graduating from a seminary in Boston. An excellent biography of him was written not long after he died in England at the age of 42 from tuberculosis after a second visit to the Congo. He seems in some ways to have modeled the latter part of his career after Henry Morton Stanley, the British explorer/journalist and founder of Dr. David Livingstone, the upper reaches of the Nile and the mountains of the moon. George Washington Williams was also featured in a film in the past decade as a character allied with the fictional character of Tarzan, created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Williams was played by Samuel L. Jackson opposite Alexander Skarsgaard's Tarzan in The Legend of Tarzan. The real legend introduced in that movie was that of George Washington Williams. It might be of interest to note that the real life British born orphan Henry Morton Stanley first entered the U.S. by way of New Orleans, where he enlisted in the Confederate Army, was captured in battle by the Union Army, escaped from a Union military prison by turning coat and enlisting in the Union Army and then after expulsion from his regiment managed to enlist in the Union Navy. Stanley made his bones as a journalist by posting first hand accounts of the war to newspapers and magazines in the UK. Edgar Rice Burroughs' father served as a regimental captain for the Union Army in the Civil War. His John Carter of Mars novels were based on the premise that a means of transport to Mars was discovered by Civil War soldiers who took refuge in a cave in the desert southwest that contained a portal through which Native Americans had acquired skills in interplanetary teleportation.
I’d consider some photographs of my own college, Virginia Military Institute, which in my day (I graduated in 1973) required the freshmen to salute Stonewall Jackson’s statute at the entrance to Barracks—in front of Jackson Arch, with Jackson Memorial Hall to its left. Now the statue is gone and the Hall and the Arch unnamed.
I don't think you could complete an exhibit on the aspect of 20th Century popular culture in perpetuating the Lost Cause mythology without including Margaret Mitchell, David O. Selznick, their contributions to the mythology and the impact of, "Gone With the Wind" on public perception. I can think of several problematic clips from GWTW, which I would edit together to run on a loop. I would also include media which would contextualize public response to the book and the film.
On the road to Tara and fleeing Atalanta, Rhett Butler leaves Scarlet, Melanie and her new baby to join to column of confederate soldiers he surmises will turn in a last stand and with the explanation (paraphrasing here) that he's always had a soft spot for lost causes, particularly when they'r truly lost.
As part of an overall exhibit of Hollywood and the mythology of the Lost Cause I would have to include Warner Brothers 1938 William Wyler directed film, "Jezabel". While the film is set antebellum it's depiction of a benevolent slave holding class in Louisiana and the dinner table scene with George Brett's dialogue represents the attitude that the Civil War was not fought over the question of slavery. The film garnered Bette Davis the Academy Award as Best Actress for her portrayal of the titular character.
What a great idea. I love the idea of expanding it to include clips from a number of movies over the years to show the consistency and evolution of the Lost Cause in Hollywood and popular culture.
What about one of those photos from 1/6 of what never happened during the Civil War: a Confederate battle flag being paraded in hostility in the United States Capitol?
A teacher or docent could also call attention to the two historic portraits shown on the wall in many of the photos.
One is of the notorious John C. Calhoun of South Carolina--ardent defender of slavery as a "positive good" and U.S. vice president, senator, congressman, and secretary of state.
The other is of the Massachusetts senator and ardent abolitionist Charles Sumner, remembered in lots of ways, but notably here because of the surname of the South Carolina congressman who beat him nearly to death in 1856 on the floor of the Senate. That surname was Brooks, same as the surname of an Alabama congressman who was a chief instigator of 1/6.
(Headline from Slate: "Turns Out Mo Brooks Was Wearing Body Armor to Trump’s Very Peaceful Jan. 6 Rally.")
It's a cliche, but sometimes it requires repeating: The past is never dead; it's not even past.
It's an interesting choice, but we also need to recognize that Kevin Seefried appears to have had little interest in the Civil War or the Lost Cause. It certainly provides an opportunity to talk about how these symbols have been leveraged for political purposes in recent years.
Thanks. Well, I do think, and almost added, that very often young men waving that flag are signaling independence or rebelliousness or alienation or the like--not making Lost Cause statements. So I hear you. But it's also true that sometimes, by loose analogy, it's the poem that matters, not the poet's intent--especially given the overall effect of what was pictured. What was pictured was monstrous even without explicit intent by that man and even without the embellishment of the two paintings.
Don't get me wrong. I think you make a compelling point and there is certainly plenty of room for interpretation. I was thinking of the politics of museums and the challenges that a museum like this would present. Where is the line between history and political activism? I don't have any firm answers. Thanks again.
Not sure where he resides today but if available I would display the Silent Sam statue late of the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Along with it a copy of the 1913 dedication speech by Julian Carr full of lost cause rhetoric and boasting of how Carr had “horse whipped a negro wench” 90 days after returning from Appomattox. While I attended UNC I lived in Carrboro. Unaware of what that town’s namesake represented.
How about the ads in the back of an issue of Confederate Veteran? For replacement uniforms to wear to reunions, for statues to put up in your town square, memoirs by various Confederates, and promoting a history of the KKK as Southern "heroes"? The commercialization of the "Lost Cause" is a different aspect worth exploring.
On a pop culture note, riffing on the Dukes of Hazard idea below (which I loved) there's an episode of Midsomer Murders (Blood in the Saddle, 13: 3) which takes place at a Wild West Show in a small English town. It's supposed to be the American West, but there are Confederate flags all over the place, including ones being carried around the performance ring by horseback riders. It's a British show, and they've somehow melded the Wild West to the Confederacy, probably as symbols of an unruly sense of freedom as rebellion and barely constrained chaos. For an American viewer is was slightly jarring.
I’d add the plaque on the outside wall of the modern day hotel sitting on the site of the Marshall House in Alexandria.
The text reads:
“The Marshall House stood upon this site, and within the building on the early morning of May 24, 1861 James W. Jackson was killed by federal soldiers while defending his property and personal rights as stated in the verdict of the coroners jury. He was the first Martyr to the Cause of Southern Independence. The Justice of History does not permit his Name to be Forgotten. Not in the excitement of battle, but coolly and for a great principle,
he laid down his life, an example to all, in defence of his home and the sacred soil of his native state Virginia.”
Nothing about Elmer Ellsworth and his Zouaves trying to maintain federal control of Alexandria or Ellsworth’s murder by Jackson just moments before his own death.
A way I look at the Lost Cause is how are dog whistled into modern education and politics. I would place a monitor in this Lost Cause Museum and show clips of Ron Desantis claiming that enslaved persons “learned valuable skills” for jobs as well as Christopher Ruffo on Fox News slamming Critical Race Theory and learning African American History as a “existential crisis for the United States.”
The connection of what is said in today’s politics and media and comparing it to what early founders of the Lost Cause said about slavery and the causes of the Civil War would show the audience that the fight over history and memory hasn’t stopped and more work is needed to combat misinformation.
I would say that there should be a room in the museum for late 20th century Lost Cause examples, and I'd put in the center of it the General Lee car from Dukes of Hazard.
Popular culture is such an important part of Lost Cause mythology. The fact that a relatively popular TV show had a car named after Robert E Lee, with a confederate flag on its roof, and the people that owned the car and drove it were the good guys presents a perfect picture of lost cause mythology in the 70s and 80s. I know as a kid I had a matchbox car of the General Lee.
I'd also add to this room jerseys from what used to be an annual College Football bowl game - the Blue vs Gray game. This was a college football all star game that was played (usually around Christmas) between all star players from southern states vs all stars from northern states. There was often civil war imagery around the game, and it was played all the way to the early 2000s.
I'm sure there are other cultural items like these that could show the softening of attitudes toward Lost Cause mythology, but these two came to mind first. I'd argue that the prevalence of cultural items like these contributed to an attitude that embraced Shelby Foote in Ken Burns Civil War - after all, he was just a good ol' boy...
Following up on your pop culture and football take; The Oregon/Oregon State football game entry from wiki follows. note when the naming the game the Civil War started.
The game was first played in 1894 and has been contested 127 times through 2023, as well as continuously since 1945. . The first reference to the "Civil War" name was in 1929 and came into common use in 1937. Prior to that, it was called the "Oregon Classic" or the "State Championship Game."[6] With players and alumni reportedly questioning the name,[7] usage of the "Civil War" name was discontinued in 2020 amid a wave of name changes sparked by the George Floyd protests,[7][8] although some websites still use the former name
Man I work in a Lost Cause museum and sitting literally 20 feet behind me are hundreds of objects that could qualify for this.
But I'm going to go with the (former) Robert E. Lee memorial window at St. Paul's. It is right in line with an aspect of the LC that doesn't get as much attention: the claims on a culture war pitting a humble people cultivating honor and gentility, and with an extreme disinterest in materialism against an avaricious, money-grubbing, capitalist and culture-and-soul-destroying modern industrial system.
Don't worry though, it does have a racial undertone in what the vestry chose not to portray in it. The scene in the window is of Moses fleeing the house of pharoah to go with his own people and in the original design (replicated in an exact copy window in England) included Egyptian slave drivers waggling whips over a crowd of Jews. St. Paul's said, yeah, we'll have none of that here and there is a lion in that panel instead.
I choose the book written by Dr. Hunter McGuire and George L. Christian, "The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States" (1907). It was prepared as a History report for the Confederate Veterans of Virginia and is particularly interesting (I think) to schoolteachers as these men examined the current textbooks being used to tell the history of the Civil War and found them "replete with error and misrepresentation." McGuire's first chapter: "Slavery Not the Cause of War." I wonder how much this book actually influenced textbooks later published in Virginia.
Wonder if his take on slavery was informed by B.B. Munford's book, "Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery..." Munford and McGuire, no doubt, knew each other quite well.
Dr. McGuire actually died well before his book was published (in 1900) and before Munford's book too, I see. He was chairman of the history committee of the Grand Camp, Confederate Veterans of Virginia. I expect they were good friends!
I have Munford's book (and the accompanying teaching guide) lined up for the next project after the current one I'm sorta working on. So, maybe next year I'll get around to comparing his and McGuire's versions of slavery.
Last week I ran a Google Search on the key words 'Column from Pensacola'. It's a search I run every so often, maybe once or twice a year since I first became aware of the Column from Pensacola more than five or maybe even ten years ago. This time it turned up something I hadn't seen before, an item headed '"Black-bellied Yankees" at the Battle of Fort Blakely' on a page belonging to someone named Seth Kaller Inc. who hunts down and serves up items of potential interest to people looking for Historic Documents for Legacy Collections. Apparently he's a sort of broker/bounty hunter who specializes in original documents museums and legacy collectors might wish to acquire for a price. The document in question, Black-bellied Yankees, is available at the low, low price of $3,000.00. He tosses out the phrase 'Up the Alabama' to quickly encapsulate what this piece of history, a letter written in April I865, is about. That phrase is lifted from a sentence early in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird that refers to Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, when he as president sent troops 'up the Alabama' to remove the Creek Indians along the Alabama River to the Trail of Tears and the Indian Reservation that eventually became Oklahoma. But the letter doesn't concern Creek Indians or the Trail of Tears. It concerns two Union Army officers, Black-bellied Yanks, who commanded two or more of the nine regiments of United States Colored Troops who comprised roughly half of what was called the Column From Pensacola under the command of Major General Frederick Steele. The letter writer, Colonel Frederick Crandal, was in command of the 48th U.S.C.T, on loan from the 33rd Iowa (and the 1st Arkansas Union regiment out of Fayetteville), when the Column From Pensacola marched through incredibly swampy terrain from Pensacola, destroying railroad tracks anywhere they encountered them, across the Alabama stateline to a camp a little northwest of Fort Blakely for the purpose of launching an assault on the fort one week after their arrival. The intended recipient of the letter was Colonel Julian Bryant, nephew of the poet William Cullen Bryant, in command of the 46th U.S.C.T. . Crandal's letter is a reply to a letter he received from Bryant upon boarding a vessel headed two hundred miles up the Alabama River near Birmingham. The letter suggests that Bryant and the 46th had been sent to New Orleans shortly after the Battle of Fort Blakely in that Crandal speculates about the thought processes of the Division Commander, John Hawkins, and the chances of returning the 46th to Mobile and both seem unaware that the 46th will shortly be assigned to Brazos Santiago in Texas. 48,000 Union troops converged on Mobile for the siege and once Mobile surrendered three days after the last pitched battle of the war they had many more troops on hand than could be accommodated. Many of those troops would converge on Brownsville and the mouth of the Rio Grande over the next two months for mustering out of service once Brownsville had capitualated. But in the meantime the excess troops were headed 'up the Alabama' simply because the city had no room for that many Union soldiers and there were still Confederate generals in the vicinity, Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith and Nathan Forrest, to be precise, who had not yet surrendered their forces. My great great grandfather, Private Wilhelm Steele, a German immigrant with the 27th Wisconsin, was among those sent up the river. They marched about fifty miles up the Tenasaw to the confluence of the Tombigbee and the Alabama, and followed the former up to a spot called McIntosh Bluff, where between the middle of April and the middle of May, 1865, they built a fort, mostly I suspect, as a way to keep busy and not cause trouble in downtown Mobile. McIntosh Bluff was quite scenic and a place of historic significance as the place where former Vice President Aaron Burr took refuge and was first arrested for shooting and killing Founding Father, author of most of the Federalist Papers and potential future president, Alexander Hamilton, in a still infamous duel of questionable legality. While the fort was under construction a number of prominent Confederate generals signed surrender documents that resulted in massive transfers of armaments and contraband cotton to a warehouse district between the train station and the main wharf at the Port of Mobile. About a week after the regiment had been recalled to Mobile an "accident" occurred in one of those warehouses resulting in an explosion that was audible in Baton Rouge and reduced nearly half of Mobile to rubble and cinders. It was blamed on "carelessness" on the part of Colored Troops who had moved the contraband cotton bales and armaments from the train station into the numerous warehouses along the wharf. Three ships sank and more than three hundred people, many of them USCT soldiers, died in the explosion and many more were seriously injured. Now to the point at hand. The Lost Cause narrative supplanted the narrative of a young African-American from Bedford PA who enlisted in the United States Colored Troops at the age of 14 and fought in the "last battles" of the Civil War before he was mustered out at age 16. The "last battles" of the War of the Rebellion were Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, just across the river from Mobile. Strangely enough, George Washington Williams didn't die in those battles or the warehouse explosion. And he went on to write two history books, A History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, published in 1882 , and A History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, published in 1887. The latter is accessible online and is fairly comprehensive, right up to but not including anything about the "last battles" of the Civil War and quite possibly the only battles of which Williams had personal experience as a soldier. Why in the world would he have omitted those particular battles? More African-American troops served in that last battle, Fort Blakely, and its nine USCT regiments of the Column from Pensacola, than in any other battle in the entire war. Williams crossed the Mexican border when he was mustered out in 1866 and joined forces with Benito Juarez to oust and execute the Emperor Maximillian. Cinco de Mayo is the Mexican holiday that commemorates that event. Then he became a Buffalo Soldier, rounding up renegade Native Americans in the desert southwest until he was wounded and sent home to Cincinnati. He's credited with coining the phrase 'crimes against humanity' and deployed that term in a letter he wrote to King Leopold of Belgium with regard to abuses he observed on several visits to the Belgian Congo. He served a term in Congress representing the district where he lived in Cincinnati, the first black man ever elected to Congress. He became a minister in the AME Church after graduating from a seminary in Boston. An excellent biography of him was written not long after he died in England at the age of 42 from tuberculosis after a second visit to the Congo. He seems in some ways to have modeled the latter part of his career after Henry Morton Stanley, the British explorer/journalist and founder of Dr. David Livingstone, the upper reaches of the Nile and the mountains of the moon. George Washington Williams was also featured in a film in the past decade as a character allied with the fictional character of Tarzan, created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Williams was played by Samuel L. Jackson opposite Alexander Skarsgaard's Tarzan in The Legend of Tarzan. The real legend introduced in that movie was that of George Washington Williams. It might be of interest to note that the real life British born orphan Henry Morton Stanley first entered the U.S. by way of New Orleans, where he enlisted in the Confederate Army, was captured in battle by the Union Army, escaped from a Union military prison by turning coat and enlisting in the Union Army and then after expulsion from his regiment managed to enlist in the Union Navy. Stanley made his bones as a journalist by posting first hand accounts of the war to newspapers and magazines in the UK. Edgar Rice Burroughs' father served as a regimental captain for the Union Army in the Civil War. His John Carter of Mars novels were based on the premise that a means of transport to Mars was discovered by Civil War soldiers who took refuge in a cave in the desert southwest that contained a portal through which Native Americans had acquired skills in interplanetary teleportation.
I’d consider some photographs of my own college, Virginia Military Institute, which in my day (I graduated in 1973) required the freshmen to salute Stonewall Jackson’s statute at the entrance to Barracks—in front of Jackson Arch, with Jackson Memorial Hall to its left. Now the statue is gone and the Hall and the Arch unnamed.
Great idea. You could focus on a number of colleges and their relationship to Lost Cause iconography over the years. Thanks.
I don't think you could complete an exhibit on the aspect of 20th Century popular culture in perpetuating the Lost Cause mythology without including Margaret Mitchell, David O. Selznick, their contributions to the mythology and the impact of, "Gone With the Wind" on public perception. I can think of several problematic clips from GWTW, which I would edit together to run on a loop. I would also include media which would contextualize public response to the book and the film.
On the road to Tara and fleeing Atalanta, Rhett Butler leaves Scarlet, Melanie and her new baby to join to column of confederate soldiers he surmises will turn in a last stand and with the explanation (paraphrasing here) that he's always had a soft spot for lost causes, particularly when they'r truly lost.
As part of an overall exhibit of Hollywood and the mythology of the Lost Cause I would have to include Warner Brothers 1938 William Wyler directed film, "Jezabel". While the film is set antebellum it's depiction of a benevolent slave holding class in Louisiana and the dinner table scene with George Brett's dialogue represents the attitude that the Civil War was not fought over the question of slavery. The film garnered Bette Davis the Academy Award as Best Actress for her portrayal of the titular character.
What a great idea. I love the idea of expanding it to include clips from a number of movies over the years to show the consistency and evolution of the Lost Cause in Hollywood and popular culture.
What about one of those photos from 1/6 of what never happened during the Civil War: a Confederate battle flag being paraded in hostility in the United States Capitol?
A teacher or docent could also call attention to the two historic portraits shown on the wall in many of the photos.
One is of the notorious John C. Calhoun of South Carolina--ardent defender of slavery as a "positive good" and U.S. vice president, senator, congressman, and secretary of state.
The other is of the Massachusetts senator and ardent abolitionist Charles Sumner, remembered in lots of ways, but notably here because of the surname of the South Carolina congressman who beat him nearly to death in 1856 on the floor of the Senate. That surname was Brooks, same as the surname of an Alabama congressman who was a chief instigator of 1/6.
(Headline from Slate: "Turns Out Mo Brooks Was Wearing Body Armor to Trump’s Very Peaceful Jan. 6 Rally.")
It's a cliche, but sometimes it requires repeating: The past is never dead; it's not even past.
It's an interesting choice, but we also need to recognize that Kevin Seefried appears to have had little interest in the Civil War or the Lost Cause. It certainly provides an opportunity to talk about how these symbols have been leveraged for political purposes in recent years.
Thanks. Well, I do think, and almost added, that very often young men waving that flag are signaling independence or rebelliousness or alienation or the like--not making Lost Cause statements. So I hear you. But it's also true that sometimes, by loose analogy, it's the poem that matters, not the poet's intent--especially given the overall effect of what was pictured. What was pictured was monstrous even without explicit intent by that man and even without the embellishment of the two paintings.
Don't get me wrong. I think you make a compelling point and there is certainly plenty of room for interpretation. I was thinking of the politics of museums and the challenges that a museum like this would present. Where is the line between history and political activism? I don't have any firm answers. Thanks again.
[In a museum] where is the line between history and political activism?
I also see what you mean about THAT!
Not sure where he resides today but if available I would display the Silent Sam statue late of the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Along with it a copy of the 1913 dedication speech by Julian Carr full of lost cause rhetoric and boasting of how Carr had “horse whipped a negro wench” 90 days after returning from Appomattox. While I attended UNC I lived in Carrboro. Unaware of what that town’s namesake represented.
We definitely need a monument and Silent Sam is an ideal choice given its history and the events that led to its removal. Thanks, George.
How about the ads in the back of an issue of Confederate Veteran? For replacement uniforms to wear to reunions, for statues to put up in your town square, memoirs by various Confederates, and promoting a history of the KKK as Southern "heroes"? The commercialization of the "Lost Cause" is a different aspect worth exploring.
On a pop culture note, riffing on the Dukes of Hazard idea below (which I loved) there's an episode of Midsomer Murders (Blood in the Saddle, 13: 3) which takes place at a Wild West Show in a small English town. It's supposed to be the American West, but there are Confederate flags all over the place, including ones being carried around the performance ring by horseback riders. It's a British show, and they've somehow melded the Wild West to the Confederacy, probably as symbols of an unruly sense of freedom as rebellion and barely constrained chaos. For an American viewer is was slightly jarring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGcEYDkWnzA
Great choice.
I’d add the plaque on the outside wall of the modern day hotel sitting on the site of the Marshall House in Alexandria.
The text reads:
“The Marshall House stood upon this site, and within the building on the early morning of May 24, 1861 James W. Jackson was killed by federal soldiers while defending his property and personal rights as stated in the verdict of the coroners jury. He was the first Martyr to the Cause of Southern Independence. The Justice of History does not permit his Name to be Forgotten. Not in the excitement of battle, but coolly and for a great principle,
he laid down his life, an example to all, in defence of his home and the sacred soil of his native state Virginia.”
Nothing about Elmer Ellsworth and his Zouaves trying to maintain federal control of Alexandria or Ellsworth’s murder by Jackson just moments before his own death.
Great choice.
Hear, hear!
A way I look at the Lost Cause is how are dog whistled into modern education and politics. I would place a monitor in this Lost Cause Museum and show clips of Ron Desantis claiming that enslaved persons “learned valuable skills” for jobs as well as Christopher Ruffo on Fox News slamming Critical Race Theory and learning African American History as a “existential crisis for the United States.”
The connection of what is said in today’s politics and media and comparing it to what early founders of the Lost Cause said about slavery and the causes of the Civil War would show the audience that the fight over history and memory hasn’t stopped and more work is needed to combat misinformation.
This would be difficult, but I really like the suggestion. Thanks, Sam.
Everything listed so far is great.
I would say that there should be a room in the museum for late 20th century Lost Cause examples, and I'd put in the center of it the General Lee car from Dukes of Hazard.
Popular culture is such an important part of Lost Cause mythology. The fact that a relatively popular TV show had a car named after Robert E Lee, with a confederate flag on its roof, and the people that owned the car and drove it were the good guys presents a perfect picture of lost cause mythology in the 70s and 80s. I know as a kid I had a matchbox car of the General Lee.
I'd also add to this room jerseys from what used to be an annual College Football bowl game - the Blue vs Gray game. This was a college football all star game that was played (usually around Christmas) between all star players from southern states vs all stars from northern states. There was often civil war imagery around the game, and it was played all the way to the early 2000s.
I'm sure there are other cultural items like these that could show the softening of attitudes toward Lost Cause mythology, but these two came to mind first. I'd argue that the prevalence of cultural items like these contributed to an attitude that embraced Shelby Foote in Ken Burns Civil War - after all, he was just a good ol' boy...
Following up on your pop culture and football take; The Oregon/Oregon State football game entry from wiki follows. note when the naming the game the Civil War started.
The game was first played in 1894 and has been contested 127 times through 2023, as well as continuously since 1945. . The first reference to the "Civil War" name was in 1929 and came into common use in 1937. Prior to that, it was called the "Oregon Classic" or the "State Championship Game."[6] With players and alumni reportedly questioning the name,[7] usage of the "Civil War" name was discontinued in 2020 amid a wave of name changes sparked by the George Floyd protests,[7][8] although some websites still use the former name
Man I work in a Lost Cause museum and sitting literally 20 feet behind me are hundreds of objects that could qualify for this.
But I'm going to go with the (former) Robert E. Lee memorial window at St. Paul's. It is right in line with an aspect of the LC that doesn't get as much attention: the claims on a culture war pitting a humble people cultivating honor and gentility, and with an extreme disinterest in materialism against an avaricious, money-grubbing, capitalist and culture-and-soul-destroying modern industrial system.
Don't worry though, it does have a racial undertone in what the vestry chose not to portray in it. The scene in the window is of Moses fleeing the house of pharoah to go with his own people and in the original design (replicated in an exact copy window in England) included Egyptian slave drivers waggling whips over a crowd of Jews. St. Paul's said, yeah, we'll have none of that here and there is a lion in that panel instead.
That certainly works. Keep me updated on when the new exhibit at ACWM opens. We should do an interview about it.
Will do
I choose the book written by Dr. Hunter McGuire and George L. Christian, "The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States" (1907). It was prepared as a History report for the Confederate Veterans of Virginia and is particularly interesting (I think) to schoolteachers as these men examined the current textbooks being used to tell the history of the Civil War and found them "replete with error and misrepresentation." McGuire's first chapter: "Slavery Not the Cause of War." I wonder how much this book actually influenced textbooks later published in Virginia.
Wonder if his take on slavery was informed by B.B. Munford's book, "Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery..." Munford and McGuire, no doubt, knew each other quite well.
Dr. McGuire actually died well before his book was published (in 1900) and before Munford's book too, I see. He was chairman of the history committee of the Grand Camp, Confederate Veterans of Virginia. I expect they were good friends!
I have Munford's book (and the accompanying teaching guide) lined up for the next project after the current one I'm sorta working on. So, maybe next year I'll get around to comparing his and McGuire's versions of slavery.
That's a great choice, Margaret. I've used a few excerpts over the years with my students.