Civil War Memory

Sons of Confederate Veterans Hope to Purchase Mahone's Tavern

The members of the Urquhart-Gillette Camp No. 1471, Sons of Confederate Veterans in Southampton County, Virginia hope to raise enough money to purchase the boyhood home of William Mahone, which is currently on the market.  Mahone's family moved into the home following "Turner's Rebellion" in 1831 and established a tavern a fairly successful tavern.  While I applaud the SCV for taking on this cause there is something just slightly humorous about their decision to utilize Mahone's home for your standard SCV/UDC events:

The group holds monthly meetings in a private restaurant room in Franklin, and [Tommy] Simmons said Mahone’s Tavern would provide a meeting place and activity center for the local SCV camp, as well as for the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other community historic and civic groups.

As many of you know I've spent considerable time reading and writing about William Mahone's postwar career, and while he was involved in various kinds of commemorative events his goal was almost always to further his business and political interests.  Mahone led a veterans organization made up of men from his Virginia brigade and he authorized biographies as a means to attract interest in his plan for railroad consolidation.  His forays into the past usually resulted in controversy owing to his abrasive personality and political convictions.  The point is that Mahone did not languish in the Lost Cause or weep over the death of the Confederacy; rather, he was optimistic about the future and confident that he could bring Virginia into the modern age.  Such a goal stands in sharp contrast to our memory of white Southerners in the postwar period who stood up defiantly against the modernizing tendencies that they so valiantly fought against for four years. 

Most interesting, of course, is Mahone's politics and position on issues of race.  One has to wonder what Mr. Simmons has envisioned when he references using the home as a "meeting place and activity center."  How many members of this particular chapter of the SCV are aware of Mahone's leadership of the Readjuster Party from 1879 to 1883 which was the most successful bi-racial third party in the postwar South?  Do they know that Mahone was considered to be a "Judas" by much of the state and even the men he led into battle for bringing about a political coalition with black Virginians that led to important advances within the public sphere?  Black Virginians attended public schools in the largest numbers and served in local governments around the state, while Mahone served as senator in Washington and voted with the Republican Party:

In 1858 occurred the raid of John Brown and the raid of Mahone and the Readjusters in 1879, though less bloody was more dangerous than that of John Brown.  Both raids occurred in Va, and the negro was in both cases the instrument relied on to destroy the old order of things. [George Bagby’s pamphlet, John Brown and William Mahone: An Historical Parallel, Foreshadowing Civil Trouble]

The Revolution gave us but one Arnold, during the whole seven years of its course, while the Confederate war failed to yield a single one on either side until after it had been fought out.”  Though many of Virginia’s native sons “held out long and well. . . at last some of them succumbed, and are now found, Arnold-like, leading their old enemy against their old friends and associates. [The Richmond State, 1881]

Reconstruction came late to Virginia and it came not at the hands of so-called "Carpetbaggers" but at the hands of one of the most successful Confederate generals.  As a result, white Virginians consciously erased Mahone and the Readjusters from their public memory well into the twentieth century.

Again, I wish the SCV all the best in raising the necessary funds to purchase the property, but I am not at all confident that Mahone would want them in his home.

Did Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson Subscribe to the Theory of Evolution?

My guess is that the good people at Exploration Films Television probably don't think so.  They make films and documentaries for a Christian audience:

EFT believes that life is a wonderful discovery and they serve those who are willing to embrace life to the fullest... those who are curious, risky and insightful... people who love truth: true thinking, true ideas and true facts. EFT's powerful, high-quality stories are some of the most unique around. Some of its titles include Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution, a three-volume series that exposes the lies and assumptions of evolutionary theory; Warriors of Honor, a look at the life and faith of two of America's legendary generals Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson; First Love, an historic reunion of Jesus-Music pioneers; and Rebellion of Thought, a chronicle of two brothers and their heart-rending struggle for authentic faith in a post-modern culture.

I assume that Lee and Jackson are two of the "Incredible Creatures" that we can watch in the documentary challenging the theory of evolution.  After all, Lee and Jackson are the paradigm examples in favor of Intelligent Design since it is impossible to imagine that they were both simply the result of some kind of accident within the primordial soup.  More telling, however, is the listing of the Lee and Jackson film smack in the middle of two films that point to the dangers of a secular world. It gets us right back to my previous post which pointed out that we are wedded to an image of the Confederacy as defying the modern tendencies of the North during the war.  It's the standard ahistorical distinction that we've grown accustomed to and which provides the moral framework for understanding the war that a large number of people continue to utilize.  This is a wonderful example of the ways in which history can get sucked into the culture wars: on the one side we have Lee, Jackson, God, and morality and on the other we find Grant, Sherman, atheism, and pragmatism.  For a sense of just how pervasive these assumptions surrounding Lee and Jackson are, keep in mind that EFT is based in Colorado and not in the South. 

Demobilization, Reconciliation, and Johnny Yuma

About two weeks ago I shared my very rough introduction to my essay on the demobilization of the Army of Northern Virginia. I took on this project with few prior assumptions about what I would find.  Problems abound in trying to track down sources from the period immediately following Appomattox.  Few soldiers had the time or the interest in cataloging their journeys home.  Most surprising of all was the level of violence that pervaded sections of Virginia, specifically along the Blue Ridge Mountains where those Confederates who deserted during the war continued to hide.  Others headed for the hills in hopes that elements of the ANV would regroup and continue the struggle.  The sudden surrender and dispersement of the ANV taxed an already depleted landscape and placed those civilians living in close proximity to roads in a precarious situation.  Competition for limited resources inevitably led to clashes between soldiers, civilians, and the newly-freed slaves.  Couple that with the humiliation of defeat and a sense of uncertainty regarding the future and you've got yourself a potentially explosive situation.  Many of the soldiers learned of Lincoln's assassination during their travels and this only added to that uncertainty.  I was surprised by how many Confederates viewed the president's death as a loss for the South.  A farmer in Nelson County anticipated much harsher punishment for former Confederates under the new president, Andrew Johnson, while others could only speculate as to how they would be treated.

Confessions of an AP History Dropout

Leave it to a high school junior to sum up my own feelings about the AP American history curriculum:

The overriding goal is to crack the AP test. That means taking a lot of practice tests -- week after week, filling in those bubbles in class. It means researching past AP exams to predict what will be on the test. It means answering model AP essay questions for homework. It means brute memorization. My classmates ask: Will there be more questions on the American Revolution or World War I? What do we really have to know about mercantilism? Their unspoken question is: If I blow the AP test, can I still get into a good college?

In class, we cannot stray from the AP regimen. A few weeks ago, we were rushing through the 1960s with lightning speed. The Vietnam War is a fog. Somehow the New Frontier turned into the Great Society, which I always confuse with the New Freedom, the New Nationalism and the New Federalism. And what does CORE stand for?

Today is my last day with my AP students before tomorrow's test.  I hope they do well on it, but I have to admit to feeling ambivalent about the "big day."  The level of tension among many of my students has gradually increased over the past few weeks and it has become much more difficult to engage in serious dialog.  They've entered the "just the facts please" mode which leaves little room for the bigger questions and debates.  What I dread most of all is that my students will evaluate their progress in this course based on their AP score which usually arrives in July.  I also get to see the grades, but to be completely honest I don't place much stock in them.  The final grade that I give each student is based on a much richer body of information that the AP Test cannot measure.  I don't feel much excitement about having come to the end of the year; what I find myself contemplating is whether all the work put into the year has been nothing more than preparation for a standardized test created by people who have no idea what went on in my class. 

On a more personal level, I thoroughly dislike the way the course ends.  Most of my students are taking other AP courses, which means that during the week of exams I never have a full class.  There is little opportunity to bring the class to a close with final thoughts or to introduce some kind of lesson that allows my students to think about the year as a whole.  Unlike other schools we do not meet as a class after the AP Test.  I think this is unfortunate as I have grown quite attached to my students.

I recently completed work on a committee here at school set up to evaluate our AP program.  We had some very interesting discussions and our final report will hopefully lead to some changes.  I look forward to the day when I can add my name to the growing list of AP dropouts.

What Would An Obama Presidency Mean To Civil War Memory?

This post originally ran in April 2007.  Given last night's primary results in Indiana and North Carolina I thought it might be an opportune moment to share it once again.

One of my readers recently pointed out that the Civil War Sesquicentennial observances may coincide with the election of our first black president.  How will that shape the national narrative that will arise out of political speeches, state sesquicentennial commission plans, and other observances?  My friendly emailer asks:

As the bellowing over the Confederate battle flag seems to be nearing crescendo, how relevant will Confederate heritage appear four years from now?  And with, perhaps, a black president, how empty will any Confederate legacy be revealed to be?

The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that an Obama presidency could reshape our understanding of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the rest of American history right down to the Civil Rights Movement.  We've already seen how a push for black civil rights in the 1950s and 60s served to challenge the work of various centennial commissions.  This led to a noticeable waning in enthusiasm among white Americans for centennial celebrations by 1963.  The difference this time around could be that with Obama potentially elected in 2008 that this will leave plenty of time for the nation to begin to rethink its history and the place of slavery and emancipation within the overall narrative.  Think about it: We will hear about how far the nation has come since before the Civil War.  Part of that narrative will highlight the Civil War as leading to emancipation through the sacrifice and bravery of black soldiers themselves along with the actions of countless others.   It is reasonable to expect that the work of various organizations involved in setting up events for the sesquicentennial would be influenced to some extent by this natural curiosity as to how the nation has come to elect its first black president.  In short, the "emancipationist legacy" of the Civil War would return to center stage. It does have the potential of becoming overly celebratory and I would resist this urge for the sake of maintaining the focus on better understanding the relevant history.

Returning to the passage quoted above it is necessary to point out that the "emptiness" referred to in connection with "Confederate heritage" is not meant to denigrate the very strong desire on the part of Southern whites to remember and acknowledge the service of ancestors.  I've said before that there is nothing necessarily wrong or even strange about this personal need to remember.  It is meant, however, to point out that this view reduces both the war years, Reconstruction, and the history of race and slavery in a way that fails to acknowledge salient factors and relevant perspectives as part of the overall historical narrative.  It tends to reduce Southern history and the Civil War to the perspective of white Southerners and equates the Confederacy with the South.  More importantly, Southern history is equated or understood along the overly narrow lines of the four years of the Confederacy.  In short, the narratives coming out of Confederate Heritage groups would be inadequate to explain a black president.

More to the point, the attention among professional historians in recent years to better understanding the ways in which slavery shaped the Confederate experience will potentially occupy a central place in future narratives that purport to explain the historical background of a black president.  We will be forced to acknowledge secession and the Confederacy as an attempt to maintain slavery and a racial hierarchy and not simply as a constitutional right or a defense of hearth and home; both points figure prominently in our collective memory while race and slavery linger on the fringes.  Of course, understanding the Civil War years does not in any way come close to defining the black experience in America nor does an emphasis on the American South.  What it does do, however, is highlight the importance that was attached to emancipation both during the war and in the decades to follow before it was overshadowed by reunion, reconciliation and Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century.

This post is not meant in any way as a justification for a vote for Barak Obama.  The election of a black president would be an important milestone for this country, but in our attempt to understand how we as a nation arrived at this point it also has the potential of radically shifting the way we think about our collective past.

One of my readers recently pointed out that the Civil War Sesquicentennial observances may coincide with the election of our first black president.  How will that shape the national narrative that will arise out of political speeches, state sesquicentennial commission plans, and other observances?  My friendly emailer asks:

As the bellowing over the Confederate battle flag seems to be nearing crescendo, how relevant will Confederate heritage appear four years from now?  And with, perhaps, a black president, how empty will any Confederate legacy be revealed to be?

The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that an Obama presidency could reshape our understanding of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the rest of American history right down to the Civil Rights Movement.  We've already seen how a push for black civil rights in the 1950s and 60s served to challenge the work of various centennial commissions.  This led to a noticeable waning in enthusiasm among white Americans for centennial celebrations by 1963.  The difference this time around could be that with Obama potentially elected in 2008 that this will leave plenty of time for the nation to begin to rethink its history and the place of slavery and emancipation within the overall narrative.  Think about it: We will hear about how far the nation has come since before the Civil War.  Part of that narrative will highlight the Civil War as leading to emancipation through the sacrifice and bravery of black soldiers themselves along with the actions of countless others.   It is reasonable to expect that the work of various organizations involved in setting up events for the sesquicentennial would be influenced to some extent by this natural curiosity as to how the nation has come to elect its first black president.  In short, the "emancipationist legacy" of the Civil War would return to center stage. It does have the potential of becoming overly celebratory and I would resist this urge for the sake of maintaining the focus on better understanding the relevant history.

Returning to the passage quoted above it is necessary to point out that the "emptiness" referred to in connection with "Confederate heritage" is not meant to denigrate the very strong desire on the part of Southern whites to remember and acknowledge the service of ancestors.  I've said before that there is nothing necessarily wrong or even strange about this personal need to remember.  It is meant, however, to point out that this view reduces both the war years, Reconstruction, and the history of race and slavery in a way that fails to acknowledge salient factors and relevant perspectives as part of the overall historical narrative.  It tends to reduce Southern history and the Civil War to the perspective of white Southerners and equates the Confederacy with the South.  More importantly, Southern history is equated or understood along the overly narrow lines of the four years of the Confederacy.  In short, the narratives coming out of Confederate Heritage groups would be inadequate to explain a black president.

More to the point, the attention among professional historians in recent years to better understanding the ways in which slavery shaped the Confederate experience will potentially occupy a central place in future narratives that purport to explain the historical background of a black president.  We will be forced to acknowledge secession and the Confederacy as an attempt to maintain slavery and a racial hierarchy and not simply as a constitutional right or a defense of hearth and home; both points figure prominently in our collective memory while race and slavery linger on the fringes.  Of course, understanding the Civil War years does not in any way come close to defining the black experience in America nor does an emphasis on the American South.  What it does do, however, is highlight the importance that was attached to emancipation both during the war and in the decades to follow before it was overshadowed by reunion, reconciliation and Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century.

This post is not meant in any way as a justification for a vote for Barak Obama.  The election of a black president would be an important milestone for this country, but in our attempt to understand how we as a nation arrived at this point it also has the potential of radically shifting the way we think about our collective past.

Where Are the Logical Positivists When You Need Them?

I am sitting here flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC and trying to figure out whose political talking heads sound more absurd.  It must be a tie.  There is no dissemination of information, just pure entertainment.  I would love to stick A.J. Ayers in the studio:

We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, [she or] he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express—that is, if [she or] he knows what observations would lead [her or] him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. [From Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)]

Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

My students and I are thoroughly enjoying our study of the civil rights movement.  We are reading an excellent book by Harvard Sitkoff and my choice of additional primary and secondary sources has hopefully added to the complexity of their understanding.  I do my best to get beyond the high-profile figures that dominate our memory of the movement.  We spend time analyzing the make-up and structure of organizations such as SNCC, CORE, as well as the Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam.  I also challenge some of our gender assumptions regarding the leadership of these organizations.  My ultimate goal is to give my students the necessary background to better understand the frustrations and challenges that black Americans faced in Jim Crow America as well as the reasons why various individuals and groups approached the challenges differently.  Today we discussed an interesting article by Claiborne Carson on the difficulties that King faced in balancing his support of non-violence and the more aggressive strategies of SNCC and CORE. 

In doing so I introduce my classes to individuals who typically fall through the cracks, but without whom the movement would have stagnated.  Many of these individuals fall into the age range of my own students.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard my students complain about some public issue, but are unable to imagine a way to stand up for their position or challenge a perceived injustice simply because they cannot vote.  It is difficult for students to maintain this outlook after I've shown them photographs of high school- and college - age kids who  integrated southern schools.  While most of us are no doubt aware of the "Little Rock Nine" (pictured above) it is important to share with students that across the country young black kids were putting it all on the line by integrating the schools.  I give the class some background to understand these images, but my goal is to give them an opportunity to identify with their fellow students across time.  I sometimes ask if they can imagine going to school under these conditions or whether they could muster the necessary courage to do so.  Consider the image to the right of the desegregation of a school in Chilton, Tennessee in 1956.  Can you conceive of a more uninviting scene on the steps of a school?  By far my favorite image is of Geraldine Counts who attended Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina.  When this image was taken she was 15 yrs old (younger than the students in my classes).  I can't help but be impressed by her dignity and her courage in the face of such hatred and aggression.   

At times the reaction of my students is one of shame rather than some kind of positive identification with the black youths pictured here.  Unfortunately, that reaction sometimes translates into a broader sense of shame in response to the many examples of "massive resistance" at both the level of the state and federal government and in communities across the country.  This is even after I've explained and shown numerous images of both white and black Americans working together to bring about change in both the Freedom Rides and Lunch Counter Sit-Ins. I do my best to discuss some of these uncomfortable feelings, though I admit it is difficult.   It is telling that a certain number are unable to easily identify with the black youths in these images.  After all, both the white and black students in these images are roughly the same age as the students in my class. 

Most Americans have little difficulty celebrating the steps that the colonists took in the 1770s in dealing with a British government that was perceived to have overstepped its authority, so why shouldn't we admire black Americans in the 1950s and 60s for doing the very same thing?  I think it's because we still think of American history as the history of white America and the measurement of how well the country is doing morally is necessarily understood along racial lines.  When we look at the images above our tendency is to see Americans at their worst.  However, if we take that more inclusive perspective the photographs show Americans at their best and standing up in the face of oppression and discrimination - the very values that many of us hold dear.  This may seem like a subtle point, but it is important in terms of how inclusive we choose to be and how we interpret what we include in our history.

Finally, another brave American died today.  In 1958 Mildred wed Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker.  They drove 90 miles from central Virginia to be married in Washington D.C. and on their return were arrested for unlawful cohabitation.  In 1967 the Supreme Court, in Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, overturned state codes banning interracial marriage.  Let's hope that in the future additional laws banning couples from marriage are seen as equally absurd and are stricken from the legal codes.   

What Glatthaar Was Probably Not Looking At

In his somewhat obscure review of Joseph Glatthaar new book, Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, Dimitri Rotov suggests the following:

Perhaps he was looking at the succession of volumes of Russel Beatie’s Army of the Potomac thinking, “Why not the ANV?”

Let me suggest that Glatthaar did not have any of Beatie's books in mind during the writing of this study, which predates Beatie's own work. I've actually finished reading Glatthaar's book, though from Dimitri's commentary it is difficult to know whether he has read it other than the sections that have to do with the Antietam Campaign.  Glatthaar's book is a tightly argued overview of the history of the Army of Northern Virginia.  While I do not believe that every chapter represents a new interpretive step Glatthaar does an excellent job of synthesizing much of what has been published about Lee, the ANV and the Confederate home front over the past two decades.  [Previous posts on the book can be found here and here.]The book has absolutely nothing in common with Beatie's work and we should be thankful for that.  I tried reading through the first of his three volumes and found so many interpretive and factual mistakes that it was impossible to continue.  I wish I had read John Hennessy's review of volume 1 in America's Civil War before setting out.  The reconstruction of dialog and almost unquestionable use of postwar material was just too much for me.  Perhaps successive volumes are better organized and better judgment was employed in terms of what to include and what to leave out.  I just don't see how the piling on of information without any coherent analytical/interpretive threads is helpful to the reader. 

What I can say is that Glatthaar's book is well organized and a useful tool to understanding the ANV's structure from the top-down and its evolution through the war.   

No Confederate Plates in Florida

Actually, the situation is much worse:

Finally, before they hit the road, lawmakers passed only two transportation proposals. The first will outlaw motorcyclists from popping wheelies and increases penalties for all motorists caught driving more than 50 miles per hour above the speed limit. The second bans the introduction of new specialty license plates which nixes proposals for a new Christian "I Believe" specialty license plate and a "Confederate Heritage" specialty license plate.

So, in addition to not being able to express their Confederate heritage Floridians are also being barred from expressing their Christian faith.  It's not all bad news however.  A bill allowing the police to ticket vehicles with replica bull testicles hanging from the rear did not make it through. 

Nice to know some things are still sacred in this country.

Can You Identify This Image?

This will be my last full week of teaching before a few days of review and the final exam.  My survey classes are reading through parts of Harvard Sitkoff's The Struggle For Black Equality and they seem to be enjoying it immensely.  The book does an excellent job of getting beyond the high-profile figures and moving to the complexity of what took place on the ground in various places.  Organizations like SNCC and CORE receive a great deal of coverage and I am especially pleased that Sitkoff emphasizes the fact that the civil rights movement was in large part a youth movement.  I can't tell you how often I hear from my students that there is nothing they can do in the face of perceived injustices because they cannot vote.  They simply throw their hands in the air in frustration or are already too cynical to even consider the possibilities of activism.  When we discuss desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education I show my students a fairly large number of photographs of young black teens walking between angry mobs of white people into the public schools.  I simply ask my students to consider the images and ask themselves whether they would have had the courage to engage in such behavior. 

We've heard quite a bit of late about how little our children know about major figures in American history, but it seems to me that we fail to understand the past if we don't also give them a sense that some of the most significant changes cannot be understood simply from the top-down, but must be acknowledged as the work of ordinary people who risked everything.  The decision of the Supreme Court and the reluctant decision of various individuals, including President Eisenhower, to enforce the court's ruling around the country would have meant very little if ordinary Americans did not step forward. 

Now to the reason for the post.  When we first started I had my classes analyze the image on the book cover.  It's a wonderful image, but unfortunately, I have been unable to identify the scene.  We worked to put some of the pieces together.  We discussed why the Capitol dome had been painted black and came to the conclusion that it must have been an attempt to camouflage it during WWII.  The crowd of African-Americans was much more difficult, but by the time we discussed it they had read the first chapter which covered the period between 1900 and 1954.  So I asked what a crowd of black Americans might be holding in front of the Capitol building during WWII.  The consensus was that they were holding copies of Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order No. 8802. 

Given that this is just a guess can anyone identify the image?

Getting Right With Wright

The commentary in the mainstream media surrounding the sermons of Jeremiah Wright and what it means in terms of Barack Obama's vision of American have been sickening to say the least.  We rarely get any serious discussion, just the same few tapes played in an endless loop.  Worse yet most conservative commentators, who have taken the lead in beating this story to death, rarely tell their viewers the rationale behind it all.  In other words, they never quite get to the conclusion that lingers in the background which is the assumption that Obama holds the same views as expressed in those short snippets.  What I find so depressing is the fact that if Obama had been a member of a church that did little or nothing in the form of community outreach and included a reserved pastor there would be no problem at all.  I admit to finding it hard to believe that Obama was not aware of Wright's occasional outbursts, but to reduce his church membership to these clips and ignore all of the work that he engaged in through this institution seems to me to be unfair.  All of this comes down to the question of whether Obama shares Wright's vision of America.  And if the answer is no than what is all of this really about?    Ultimately, this comes down to our inability as a nation to talk openly and honestly about the history of racism and its continued effects within the black community.  That is why it was so nice to see someone on television last night actually say something thoughtful.  No surprise that it was Bill Moyers.  I've included his commentary in its entirety.

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" Everyone he said. Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience." That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical," one viewer wrote. A "nut case," said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.

"It Looks Like We're Going To Need To Plow Our Own Fields From Now On"

You can find additional cartoons by this illustrator at birthofanotion.com.  If you haven't already done so I highly recommend reading Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was Over, which is now in paperback.  In addition, I recently finished reading Joe Glatthaar's General Lee's Army.  Both studies analyze the role of slavery and race during the war and particularly the way it shaped Confederates and white Southerners.  Glatthaar's book is a first-rate synthesis of recent Civil War historiography without getting bogged down in an analysis of those studies.  Check out the interview with Glatthaar at Civil War Book Review.

Is Confederate Heritage Really Under Assault?

Not according to this story. 

Ironically, the vast majority of respondents knew the Arthur Ashe monument even though Monument Avenue was started as a memorial to Confederate Virginian Civil War participants. Even more ironic, only one person guessed (correctly) that Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, had his own monument.

History can't be under assault if the people are ignorant of it.

Why Do My Students Giggle When I Teach Watergate?

I'm not sure how to explain it, but it seems to have something to do with the names I list on the board:

"Tricky Dick" Nixon
Archibald Cox
"Deep Throat"

Any ideas?

Update: I just remembered that there is a shopping complex near my parents in New Jersey which includes Siemens, Dicks, and BJ's.  Could I be any more immature?  Please don't test me.

Last Time I Checked Amazon Has All the Gettysburg Books You Could Possibly Want to Read

I am looking forward to visiting Gettysburg this summer to join some friends for a battlefield tour.  All of us are interested in seeing what the NPS has done with the exhibits in the new visitors center.  I've read a number of posts from fellow bloggers who are concerned about the book selection in the gift shop.  Apparently, the gift shop is catering to the average visitor who has little need to wade through 20 titles on the fighting at the Wheatfield.   I sort of understand the disappointment of the veteran Gettysburg dudes who want the visitors center to be both a popular tourist destination and a place where the most obscure studies are made available, but we shouldn't make too much of this. 

My advice is for the NPS to offer whatever the hell sells and generates money.  If that means Newt Ginghrich's alternative history of the battle and Jennie Wade dolls than so be it.  The NPS can easily satisfy its mission of educating the public without having to stock its shelves with titles that appeal to a select few.  The NPS ought to include some titles that reflect the contours of the campaign and the broader issues of the war - mission accomplished.