This morning I read a comment following an announcement for a panel discussion hosted by Emerging Civil War that I will be taking part in on Wednesday evening.
i am a little surprised no one has mentioned operational military history. There are aspects of Confederate Military operations that deserve attention from historians. The use of combined arms, the use of fixing attacks to hold an opponent in place, use of frontal attacks and why that is seldom a good idea, use of light and irregular forces are areas that come to mind.
I had thought I posted a footnote to the comment I posted on the post a week or two ago about the importance of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War published in 1960 as the lead in to the Civil War memory of the Civil War Centennial. I don't want to get too meta here, but I have returned from my visit to Gallipoli and the monuments there as well as throughout Istanbul and greater Türkiye and can now report that the book on my summer home shelf is in fact the same book I thought I had I inherited from my dad about ten years ago and which sat on the coffee table in my parents' living room from second grade until long after I completed my master's degree in English literature close to three decades later. Remembering that book and re-reading substantial portions of it now through my still ongoing jet lag prompted a stream of consciousness response that I included in my missing footnote. I was prompted to recall reading The Red Badge of Courage in junior high school as part of the curriculum, preceded by an assignment remembered from 7th grade when I was asked to choose a poem to recite before my seventh grade classroom. The dumbest kid in that class was named Murphy Hill. He was six foot two and one hundred and ninety five pounds as a seventh grader and his father had won the Congressional Medal of Honor while serving in the South Pacific. He was a very good-natured kid who intimidated his teachers by his mere presence without any intent to do so. Corporal punishment was the order of the day in 1965 and Murphy set the school record for hacks received in the history of the seventh grade. He was challenged for that record by Gary Jackson, who also got his growth early, and was probably the meanest kid in that school. It was a Navy town and he went out of his way to live up to his family reputation for preying on sailors in downtown Bremerton on Saturday nights. He was a born and raised street fighter who didn't mind displaying his talent in the school parking lot on a fairly regular basis. He 'graduated' to the Job Corps before he'd completed ninth grad. Another Navy kid in that class was Dave Nichols who was working assiduously to write his fourth James Bond novel and in this one he had cast me as the president. He was always asking me for advice about what the president should do in different situations in which he'd placed that character. It gave me an incentive to run for class representative to the Student Council on a promise to reform the school rules for corporal punishment such that a student had to sit on a committee that determined when corporal punishment was appropriate. The poem I read for the class poetry assignment propelled me to victory in the class election. I read a poem called Victor Galbraith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My memory of that poem has always been that it was a Civil War poem, but in recalling it for this occasion it's occurred to me that it was actually a poem written about the Mexican War and not published until 1858 when the Civil War had become inevitable.
I read the whole line of comments on the ECW page. Seems to me if the gentleman had a actual point to make he would say “look forward to seeing you there and discussing our points of view” yet he kept insinuating that certain points of view have been unjustly shut out of the conversation and would continue to be excluded. I hope he’s at the event and you both have an engaging conversation.
Hi Kat. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am looking forward to the conversation later tonight and the opportunity to converse with anyone who is interested in a good faith discussion. See you there.
You know Kevin, I have heard you called a "bomb-thrower" and "incendiary" many times over the years. These are labels that have also been stuck on me from time to time. But I don't think we should make apologies for doing our part to unravel the Lost Cause. You get people's attention with your writing and that gets people thinking (we hope). I think the central problem here, is that anyone that wants speakers/authors with "Confederate-friendly" views seeks only those whose views align with their own. Fox News (and other such outlets) have conditioned people not to trust any other views. Sadly, we will never change the minds of the willingly ignorant.
Nice to hear from you, Derek. I hope this post wasn't interpreted in any way as an apology. The gentleman's comment prompted these thoughts and it gave me the opportunity to sort them out a bit. I think a big part of the problem is the divide between viewing history as a morality play and an approach that is more analytical and driven by questions that constantly evolve along with the critical analysis of primary sources.
Your last point is an important one. I am not interested in changing people's views on the Internet. The Internet is not a classroom or a debate society. There are plenty of people who are sincerely interested in this history and I am always willing to engage in a good faith discussion. Thanks for the comment.
I spent most of this morning in the Mississippi museum of history. Unlike the Old Court House museum this place tries to preform a public history balancing act much like NPS has to. I suspect they have supporters (donors) who are deeply engaged with just about any interpretation of Mississippi’s past you could create. The Museum is trying to strike an interpretation that gives most something to embrace
I think part of the issue is that even when approaching Confederate history with genuine curiosity, rigor, and empathy is that it's hard to escape, as a 21st-century American, a sense of alienation from the Confederate worldview. An analogy would be, you could come up with the most non-sensationalistic, grounded, humanizing look at Ancient Greece, but as soon as you delve into certain facets like pederasty, it's going to be off-putting to modern people.
Sure, but that is also the challenge of studying history. You are forced to face the fact that despite certain continuities, the past is a foreign land. Thanks for the comment.
Absolutely. Perhaps seeking "friendly history" may come from a desire to seek a deeper connection to the past that the full picture makes tenuous. Thanks for the reply!
Dear well-known and highly-touted skeptic of Confederate-friendly history --
As someone who does podcast-style interviews yourself, and as someone who provides thoughtful, cogent commentary of the current state of the Civil War field, you will certainly offer excellent observations and insights. And we will be pleased to have you.
"Confederate friendly" that right there should exclude any legitimate historian. What they mean is "accepting of Lost Cause lies".
Look, I am from Alabama and I was raised on the Lost Cause. It was only when I began the serious study of history that I saw what a pack of romanticized lies I had been fed my entire childhood.
I spent part of the afternoon wondering through the Old Court House in Warren County Mississippi (Vicksburg). It is a very interesting place telling, in part, a story that at first I thought no longer ought to be told, at least not in the way it is presented. There is almost no mention of slavery. There is considerable reference to the defenders of southern freedom. There are two display cases addressing slavery. One displays half a dozen or so pictures of Confederate soldiers or veterans with black men (they include the one from the cover of Kevin’s book. The black men are all identified as camp servants accept for the one in Kevin’s photo, his “role” is not specifically identified. I guess my point. Is maybe you are having a positive impact-at least they are not identified as Confederate soldiers. The other display is a very few artifacts pertinent to slave life in and around Vicksburg. The display certainly is not a negative portrayal of slavery although the museum would probably argue its neutral.
I have after thinking about this decided the display and the museum in general should be left as it is. It is window, in several ways, to less than positive aspects of our collective past. A past that as Kevin has pointed out, should be studied and understood. If we are going to do that we need access to that past as it existed. I hope this isn’t getting too abstract. Tomorrow I’m going to the Mississippi state history museum and wondering what I will find,
I have been to this museum as well, a few years ago. It was disturbing and fascinating. In addition to the black Confederate nonsense, there was a whole room dedicated to Jefferson Davis, complete with a quote from a man formerly enslaved on his place supposedly declaring that “Every colored man he ever owned loved him.” I have many photos. A car parked on the street out front sported a bumper sticker with a confederate battle flag on the left side and the words “fightin’ terrorists since 1861” on the right.
So much there was remarkable in this day and age, but those two things kind of stood out to me
I know exactly the exhibit you are referring to and it sounds like perhaps it has been revised since my book was published. That would indeed be a step in the right direction. Hope your museum visit is enjoyable.
Thank you @kevinmlevin for presenting your research in the spirit of curiosity & ongoing exploration... Understanding our complicated history in the "ever-living now" REQUIRES such careful & open-minded (not necessarily "friendly") treatment!
I find these kinds of comments come from people who, seemingly, are more interested in appearing objective and nuanced than they actually are. Maybe I am wrong on that, but I have yet to see one of these commenters give historians their well-earned respect.
Many of them see historians as a threat to their "Confederate-friendly" narrative, which, of course, is unfortunate as it assumes a great deal about intention.
"Confederate-friendly history?" What the heck is that?
A book where a drunken Grant surrenders to Lee by mistake? James Thurber did that as a short story.
Oh, the "Black Confederate Soldiers." Right. Find them.
You know, as World War II droned on, Julian Amery, the Fascist, drug-addicted wastrel son of Cabinet Minister Leo Amery, tried to set up a British force in the Wehrmacht, the "Legion of St. George," and attracted from the hundreds of thousands of British Commonwealth service members in the German bag a whopping 48 men willing to exchange battledress brown for Landser gray.
They were the runts of the British military litter, of course, most eager to get out of PoW camps, enjoy the benefits of high living in the Reich (including women), and expected to avoid further combat. They did. The Germans used them for three purposes: propaganda broadcasts to the UK, propaganda appearances in PoW camps to attract recruits, and propaganda appearances in the Reich to show what worthless people British troops were.
They failed at all three. The Legionnaires who went to PoW camps were hooted at, their flyers burned. One Legionnaire, former merchant sailor Walter Purdy, was sent to Colditz as a stool pigeon. Canadian Army VC recipient and peacetime lawyer Col. Cecil Merritt interrogated Purdy harshly and the weak little man gave himself up. The Senior British Officer told the Germans they would not answer for Purdy's safety: get him out of the camp alive or they would turn him over to the Germans dead. The Jerries scurried him away. Purdy did prison time after the war.
Therefore, because of these 48 guys, but the "Confederate-Friendly History" logic, we have to write history books that turn these traitors into heroes....am I right?
I didn't think so.
The Rebs were traitors. So was the Legion of St. George.
i am a little surprised no one has mentioned operational military history. There are aspects of Confederate Military operations that deserve attention from historians. The use of combined arms, the use of fixing attacks to hold an opponent in place, use of frontal attacks and why that is seldom a good idea, use of light and irregular forces are areas that come to mind.
I had thought I posted a footnote to the comment I posted on the post a week or two ago about the importance of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War published in 1960 as the lead in to the Civil War memory of the Civil War Centennial. I don't want to get too meta here, but I have returned from my visit to Gallipoli and the monuments there as well as throughout Istanbul and greater Türkiye and can now report that the book on my summer home shelf is in fact the same book I thought I had I inherited from my dad about ten years ago and which sat on the coffee table in my parents' living room from second grade until long after I completed my master's degree in English literature close to three decades later. Remembering that book and re-reading substantial portions of it now through my still ongoing jet lag prompted a stream of consciousness response that I included in my missing footnote. I was prompted to recall reading The Red Badge of Courage in junior high school as part of the curriculum, preceded by an assignment remembered from 7th grade when I was asked to choose a poem to recite before my seventh grade classroom. The dumbest kid in that class was named Murphy Hill. He was six foot two and one hundred and ninety five pounds as a seventh grader and his father had won the Congressional Medal of Honor while serving in the South Pacific. He was a very good-natured kid who intimidated his teachers by his mere presence without any intent to do so. Corporal punishment was the order of the day in 1965 and Murphy set the school record for hacks received in the history of the seventh grade. He was challenged for that record by Gary Jackson, who also got his growth early, and was probably the meanest kid in that school. It was a Navy town and he went out of his way to live up to his family reputation for preying on sailors in downtown Bremerton on Saturday nights. He was a born and raised street fighter who didn't mind displaying his talent in the school parking lot on a fairly regular basis. He 'graduated' to the Job Corps before he'd completed ninth grad. Another Navy kid in that class was Dave Nichols who was working assiduously to write his fourth James Bond novel and in this one he had cast me as the president. He was always asking me for advice about what the president should do in different situations in which he'd placed that character. It gave me an incentive to run for class representative to the Student Council on a promise to reform the school rules for corporal punishment such that a student had to sit on a committee that determined when corporal punishment was appropriate. The poem I read for the class poetry assignment propelled me to victory in the class election. I read a poem called Victor Galbraith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My memory of that poem has always been that it was a Civil War poem, but in recalling it for this occasion it's occurred to me that it was actually a poem written about the Mexican War and not published until 1858 when the Civil War had become inevitable.
Confederate friendly history can be found written in German….
I read the whole line of comments on the ECW page. Seems to me if the gentleman had a actual point to make he would say “look forward to seeing you there and discussing our points of view” yet he kept insinuating that certain points of view have been unjustly shut out of the conversation and would continue to be excluded. I hope he’s at the event and you both have an engaging conversation.
Hi Kat. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am looking forward to the conversation later tonight and the opportunity to converse with anyone who is interested in a good faith discussion. See you there.
You know Kevin, I have heard you called a "bomb-thrower" and "incendiary" many times over the years. These are labels that have also been stuck on me from time to time. But I don't think we should make apologies for doing our part to unravel the Lost Cause. You get people's attention with your writing and that gets people thinking (we hope). I think the central problem here, is that anyone that wants speakers/authors with "Confederate-friendly" views seeks only those whose views align with their own. Fox News (and other such outlets) have conditioned people not to trust any other views. Sadly, we will never change the minds of the willingly ignorant.
Nice to hear from you, Derek. I hope this post wasn't interpreted in any way as an apology. The gentleman's comment prompted these thoughts and it gave me the opportunity to sort them out a bit. I think a big part of the problem is the divide between viewing history as a morality play and an approach that is more analytical and driven by questions that constantly evolve along with the critical analysis of primary sources.
Your last point is an important one. I am not interested in changing people's views on the Internet. The Internet is not a classroom or a debate society. There are plenty of people who are sincerely interested in this history and I am always willing to engage in a good faith discussion. Thanks for the comment.
I spent most of this morning in the Mississippi museum of history. Unlike the Old Court House museum this place tries to preform a public history balancing act much like NPS has to. I suspect they have supporters (donors) who are deeply engaged with just about any interpretation of Mississippi’s past you could create. The Museum is trying to strike an interpretation that gives most something to embrace
I think part of the issue is that even when approaching Confederate history with genuine curiosity, rigor, and empathy is that it's hard to escape, as a 21st-century American, a sense of alienation from the Confederate worldview. An analogy would be, you could come up with the most non-sensationalistic, grounded, humanizing look at Ancient Greece, but as soon as you delve into certain facets like pederasty, it's going to be off-putting to modern people.
Sure, but that is also the challenge of studying history. You are forced to face the fact that despite certain continuities, the past is a foreign land. Thanks for the comment.
I like your comment the past is a foreign land. It captures much of the difficulty in explaining those who came before us
Absolutely. Perhaps seeking "friendly history" may come from a desire to seek a deeper connection to the past that the full picture makes tenuous. Thanks for the reply!
Very much looking forward to this discussion. Is it necessary to have a facebook account to listen in?
To watch it live, but it will be posted later on ECW's YouTube page.
Dear well-known and highly-touted skeptic of Confederate-friendly history --
As someone who does podcast-style interviews yourself, and as someone who provides thoughtful, cogent commentary of the current state of the Civil War field, you will certainly offer excellent observations and insights. And we will be pleased to have you.
Signed,
The person who invited you to be on the panel
Thanks, Chris.
I am looking forward to the discussion.
"Confederate friendly" that right there should exclude any legitimate historian. What they mean is "accepting of Lost Cause lies".
Look, I am from Alabama and I was raised on the Lost Cause. It was only when I began the serious study of history that I saw what a pack of romanticized lies I had been fed my entire childhood.
Oak Grove 1864
there's a gray boy in the oak grove
a blue boy by his side
a cold wind blows thru the shattered trees
where the gray and the blue boy died
there's a blue boy on a mantle
a father wipes his eyes
a gray boy in a locket
a girl in black just cries
some things that are buried
never do stay that way
they can live for years and years and years
before they fade away
there's a gray boy up in heaven
a blue boy by his side
prayers ascend thru bitter rains
and clouds obscure the sky
blue and gray might be brothers
might be you and me
but the prisoners of those bygone ways
need to be set free
there's a gray boy in the oak grove
a blue boy by his side
hearts were stilled, lives unfulfilled
when the gray and the blue boy died
Malcolm McKinney 2016
I spent part of the afternoon wondering through the Old Court House in Warren County Mississippi (Vicksburg). It is a very interesting place telling, in part, a story that at first I thought no longer ought to be told, at least not in the way it is presented. There is almost no mention of slavery. There is considerable reference to the defenders of southern freedom. There are two display cases addressing slavery. One displays half a dozen or so pictures of Confederate soldiers or veterans with black men (they include the one from the cover of Kevin’s book. The black men are all identified as camp servants accept for the one in Kevin’s photo, his “role” is not specifically identified. I guess my point. Is maybe you are having a positive impact-at least they are not identified as Confederate soldiers. The other display is a very few artifacts pertinent to slave life in and around Vicksburg. The display certainly is not a negative portrayal of slavery although the museum would probably argue its neutral.
I have after thinking about this decided the display and the museum in general should be left as it is. It is window, in several ways, to less than positive aspects of our collective past. A past that as Kevin has pointed out, should be studied and understood. If we are going to do that we need access to that past as it existed. I hope this isn’t getting too abstract. Tomorrow I’m going to the Mississippi state history museum and wondering what I will find,
I have been to this museum as well, a few years ago. It was disturbing and fascinating. In addition to the black Confederate nonsense, there was a whole room dedicated to Jefferson Davis, complete with a quote from a man formerly enslaved on his place supposedly declaring that “Every colored man he ever owned loved him.” I have many photos. A car parked on the street out front sported a bumper sticker with a confederate battle flag on the left side and the words “fightin’ terrorists since 1861” on the right.
So much there was remarkable in this day and age, but those two things kind of stood out to me
I know exactly the exhibit you are referring to and it sounds like perhaps it has been revised since my book was published. That would indeed be a step in the right direction. Hope your museum visit is enjoyable.
Thank you @kevinmlevin for presenting your research in the spirit of curiosity & ongoing exploration... Understanding our complicated history in the "ever-living now" REQUIRES such careful & open-minded (not necessarily "friendly") treatment!
Thanks, Marek.
I find these kinds of comments come from people who, seemingly, are more interested in appearing objective and nuanced than they actually are. Maybe I am wrong on that, but I have yet to see one of these commenters give historians their well-earned respect.
Many of them see historians as a threat to their "Confederate-friendly" narrative, which, of course, is unfortunate as it assumes a great deal about intention.
I kind of got that sense with the gentlemen who replied to my defense of you. It is a sad sight.
"Confederate-friendly history?" What the heck is that?
A book where a drunken Grant surrenders to Lee by mistake? James Thurber did that as a short story.
Oh, the "Black Confederate Soldiers." Right. Find them.
You know, as World War II droned on, Julian Amery, the Fascist, drug-addicted wastrel son of Cabinet Minister Leo Amery, tried to set up a British force in the Wehrmacht, the "Legion of St. George," and attracted from the hundreds of thousands of British Commonwealth service members in the German bag a whopping 48 men willing to exchange battledress brown for Landser gray.
They were the runts of the British military litter, of course, most eager to get out of PoW camps, enjoy the benefits of high living in the Reich (including women), and expected to avoid further combat. They did. The Germans used them for three purposes: propaganda broadcasts to the UK, propaganda appearances in PoW camps to attract recruits, and propaganda appearances in the Reich to show what worthless people British troops were.
They failed at all three. The Legionnaires who went to PoW camps were hooted at, their flyers burned. One Legionnaire, former merchant sailor Walter Purdy, was sent to Colditz as a stool pigeon. Canadian Army VC recipient and peacetime lawyer Col. Cecil Merritt interrogated Purdy harshly and the weak little man gave himself up. The Senior British Officer told the Germans they would not answer for Purdy's safety: get him out of the camp alive or they would turn him over to the Germans dead. The Jerries scurried him away. Purdy did prison time after the war.
Therefore, because of these 48 guys, but the "Confederate-Friendly History" logic, we have to write history books that turn these traitors into heroes....am I right?
I didn't think so.
The Rebs were traitors. So was the Legion of St. George.
Thanks for the response.