Ferro iis libertas perveniet

Medal of Honor Recipients for the Battle of New Market Heights, September 29, 1864:

Colonel Samuel A. Duncan’s Brigade:

Sgt. Charles Veal, 4th USCI – “after two bearers of the regimental color had been shot down, seized it close to the enemy's works and bore it through the remainder of the action”

Sgt. Alfred Hilton, 4th USCI – “the bearer of the national colors, when the color-sergeant with the regimental standard fell beside him, seized the standard, and struggled forward with both colors, until disabled by a severe wound at the enemy's inner line of abatis, and when on the ground he showed that his thoughts were for the colors and not for himself”

Sgt. Maj. Christian A. Fleetwood, 4th USCI – “when two color bearers had been shot down, seized the national colors and bore them nobly through the fight”

Lt. William Appleton, 4th USCI – “First man of Eighteenth Corps to enter the enemy’s works. Valiant service in desperate assault, inspiring Union troops by example of steady courage”

1st Sgt. Alexander Kelly, 6th USCI – “gallantly seized the colors, which had fallen near the enemy's inner line of abatis, raised them, and rallied the men at a time of confusion and a place of the greatest possible danger”

Sgt. Maj. Thomas Hawkins, 6th USCI – “though twice wounded brought the colors off the field”

Lt. Nathan Edgerton, 6th USCI – “when the color bearer was shot down, seized the colors and carried them forward, even after his own hand was pierced by a bullet which severed the flag-staff”

Colonel Alonzo Draper’s Brigade:

Sgt. Powhatan Beaty, 5th USCI – “in command, all their company officers being killed or wounded, and led them gallantly and meritoriously through the day”

Sgt. James Bronson, 5th USCI – “in command, all their company officers being killed or wounded, and led them gallantly and meritoriously through the day”

Sgt. Maj. Milton Holland, 5th USCI – “in command, all their company officers being killed or wounded, and led them gallantly and meritoriously through the day”

Sgt. Robert Pinn, 5th USCI –“in command, all their company officers being killed or wounded, and led them gallantly and meritoriously through the day”

Pvt. James Gardner, 36th USCI – “rushed in advance of his brigade, shot at a rebel officer, who was on the parapet cheering his men, and then ran him through with his bayonet”

Cpl. Miles James, 36th USCI – “after having his arm so badly mutilated that immediate amputation was necessary, loaded and discharged his piece with one hand, and urged his men forward; this within thirty yards of the enemy's works”

Pvt. William Barnes, 38th USCI – “among the very first to enter the rebel works, although himself previously wounded”

Sgt. Edward Ratcliff, 38th USCI – “thrown into command of his company by the death of the officer commanding, was the first enlisted man in the enemy's works, leading his company with great gallantry”

Sgt. James Harris, 38th USCI – “has a medal for gallant conduct in the assault of the 29th instant”

Now THAT, My Friends, is a Title!

While I was browsing through the display tables at Friday’s Signature Conference on Race and Slavery, I happened upon a flyer for a lecture that was taking place at the Greenbrier Library in Chesapeake, VA.

It was scheduled for the next day which, unfortunately, was the same day that I was set to give walking tours of the New Market Heights battlefield.

It wasn’t so much the content of the lecture that grabbed my attention, but the title.

Try this one on for size:

“Chaffin Farms/New Market Heights – September 29-30, 1864: The Mother of All Afro-Union Medal of Honor Battles”

I’m thinking my book just got a new title …

Stolen Legacy - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Stolen Legacy - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Final Q&A Session

Q: Is there a difference in how people of different ages remember the war and why don’t more African Americans go to Civil War Sites?

A: Holzer – Stated that he fears that memory of the Civil War is evaporating among young students.

Blight – African Americans did not go to Civil War sites because for many years it was just the story of the “blue and the gray” being told – they had no vested interest due to a “segregated memory” of the Civil War.

Well, there have been other questions asked to the panelists but I have simply been unable to keep up with the pace of conversation. If you want the full experience, be sure to order a copy of the DVD (follow the Sesquicentennial Commission’s website for updates on when it will be released).

Overall, I think that this conference has been a smashing success, handling a very complicated and controversial subject with sensitivity and sophistication. As we head into the Sesquicentennial, the topic of slavery and race will no doubt stir up the usual firestorms of righteous indignation. Conferences such as this will be invaluable educational tools for what will hopefully be a very inclusive and diverse commemoration.

Many thanks to Cheryl Jackson of the Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission and all of those involved in putting together a great Signature Conference.

My fingers are tired, so I’m going to sign off.

See you next year!

Dwight Pitcaithley - Addressing the Causes of the Civil War in Public History

Dwight T. Pitcaithley received his doctorate from Texas Tech University in 1976. He is a Professor at New Mexico State University, and has published in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, New Mexico Historical Review, The History Teacher, The Public Historian, Perspectives, Legacy, CRM, New Mexico Humanities, North & South, and The George Wright Forum. He wrote Let the River Be: A History of the Ozark's Buffalo River, National Park Service (1987); and has contributed chapters to Becoming Historians, University of Chicago Press (2009), Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, The New Press (2006), Preserving Western History, University of New Mexico Press, (2005), Public History and the Environment, Krieger Publishing Company (2004); Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, University Press of Florida (2001); Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, University Press of Kansas (2001); Past Meets Present, Smithsonian Institution Press (1987).

Pitcaithley began by comparing and contrasting academic views on the causes of the Civil War with the public perspective – perspectives which are very much out of sync. He then relayed a story that most us of can relate to about an encounter he had with an individual who told him he ought to teach the “real” history of the war (i.e. it wasn’t about slavery because most Southerners did not own slaves, blah blah, whatever).

This is in part because of the work of the children of Confederate veterans (UDC, SCV, etc.) and the permanence of the Lost Cause narrative.

Pitcaithley also talked about a controversial meeting held by the NPS in 1998 in which the unspoken moratorium on discussing the causes of the American Civil War in National Parks was lifted. This sparked anger from very vocal groups who despised this “Yankee” interpretation of history. Even though Pitcaithley was able to muster a mountain of evidence that secession was indeed caused by slavery (including the minutes of the secession conventions in which the delegates made it very plain that they were leaving the Union because Lincoln was an abolitionist and the peculiar institution was threatened by his election) these cranks were unmoved.

Pitcaithley ended by stating that this issue will certainly come to a head as we delve into the Sesquicentennial.

Recommended Reading:

Edward L. Ayers. What Caused The Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Kenneth M. Stampp, ed. The Causes of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Jean Fagan Yellin - Harriet Jacobs in the Refugee Camps

Jean Fagan Yellin was born into a radical Midwestern newspaper family and earned her graduate degrees at the University of Illinois. A Distinguished Professor Emerita at Pace University, New York, she has edited Uncle Tom's Cabin and other classic American texts, and is best known for her work on the fugitive slave author and activist Harriet Jacobs. She published the definitive edition of Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, establishing the book as autobiography and Jacobs as its author; wrote the biography Harriet Jacobs: A Life (2004); and edited the two-volume Harriet Jacobs Family Papers (2008). Also the author of Women and Sisters and The Intricate Knot, she is a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. With her husband, she divides her time between New York City and Sarasota, Florida.

Dr. Yellin began with a survey of the life of Harriet Jacobs and Civil War refugees in general. Born into slavery to Elijah and Delilah Jacobs in 1813, Harriet Ann Jacobs grew up in Edenton, N.C., the daughter of slaves owned by different families. After a brief account Jacob’s owners and the distressing situation she found herself in, Yellin described her escape from slavery and how she lived in hiding for 6 years and 11 months. Jacobs then wrote of her account life as a slave entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. After publishing this anonymous work, she went to Alexandria, VA to help with contraband refugees. After witnessing the destitute situation of the slave refugees, Jacobs became a correspondent and advocate for them. Yellin mentioned that Jacobs was enthralled by the site of black soldiers and would have really enjoyed my blog (OK, well she didn’t say that last part but I’m sure it’s true).

After the war Jacobs and others who worked with black refugees were targeted by the KKK – an element of the story that Yellin says has nearly been forgotten. Most fitting for a discussion on memory.

Recommended Reading:

Jean Fagan Yellin. Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Cambridge: Basic Books, 2004.

Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, & Leslie S. Rowland, eds. “Life and Labor within Union Lines” in Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. Edison: The Blue & Grey Press, 1997.

Harold Holzer - The Image of the Emancipation Proclamation in Art and Memory

Harold Holzer, Senior Vice President for External Affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, serves also as co-chairman of the U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Clinton. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 35 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. Among them are The Lincoln Image, The Confederate Image, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln as I Knew Him, Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art, The Lincoln Family Album, Lincoln on Democracy (co-edited with Mario Cuomo), which has been published in four languages, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President, which won a 2005 Lincoln Prize. His latest books are: Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 (2008), which won the Barondess/Lincoln Award and the Award of Achievement of the Lincoln Group of New York; The Lincoln Anthology (2009), a Library of America collection featuring 150 years of great writers on the subject of Abraham Lincoln; and In Lincoln’s Hand (2009), featuring Lincoln’s original manuscripts with commentary by distinguished Americans; and Lincoln and New York (2009), the catalogue of a New-York Historical Society exhibition for which he served as chief historian. Holzer has also written more than 425 articles over the past 35 years in both scholarly and popular publications, and contributed chapters and prefaces to 30 additional volumes. He has won many research and writing awards, most recently the National Endowment Medal from President Bush in 2008. A former journalist, and political and government press secretary (for both Bella Abzug and Mario Cuomo), Holzer has served as an executive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1992. He and his wife, Edith, who live in Rye, New York, have two grown daughters and a grandson.

Dr. Holzer examined the image of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation starting with the earliest editions. He did this via a PowerPoint presentation, so this summarization will not do it justice.

Holzer began with some of the earliest lithographs of the Proclamation and showed how they were very unpopular at the time. He compared these with Southern images of Lincoln cutting a deal with the devil as he signed the proclamation.

After Lincoln’ assassination, images of the Emanciapton Proclamation grew in popularity. Holzer showed a great lithograph that showed the cabinet meeting where Lincoln unveiled his proclamation. For some reason, General Grant is in the meeting, pointing at a map. This artist apparently needed money later on, so he created a Confederate version in which he superimposed Jefferson Davis and his cabinet into the print and replaced Grant with Lee.

The irony, of course, is that Jefferson Davis is holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in his hands!

Holzer closed with several modern images of President Obama and the Lincoln Memorial.

Recommended Reading:

Allen C. Guelzo. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Harold Holzer, Edna Greene Medford, & Frank J. Williams. The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

David Blight - John Washington; How, When, Where and Why Emancipation Happened

David W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, joining that faculty in January 2003. He previously taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. As of June 2004, he is Director the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. During the 2006-07 academic year he was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, New York Public Library. Blight is a frequent book reviewer for The Washington Post Book World, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe and is one of the authors of the bestselling American history textbook for the college level, A People and a Nation. His book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001), received eight awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, as well as four awards from the Organization of American Historians. Blight’s most recent book, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, was published by Harcourt in 2007.

Blight began by speaking briefly on the commemorations that came before the 150th and how the most important speech given was the “Dream” speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial.

He then shifted to the subject of his paper, john Washington of Fredericksburg, VA. Born in 1838, Washington was a talented young slave who was hired out to a tobacco factory in Fredericksburg and then got work in a tavern in Richmond. Washington came back to Fredericksburg in the winter of 1861-62 and became engaged, getting married in early 1862. He then worked as a hotel manager. He was there when the Federals arrived in April of 1862. Blight related the story of Washington pouring a round of shots for the black workers of the hotel and toasting the Yankees. When asked by a Union officer if he wanted to be free, his response was “by all means” (a true master of understatement).

Blight then told of how he had the opportunity to talk to Washington’s 90 year old granddaughter who, after he explained that he was publishing her grandfather’s memoir of slavery, stated – “don’t call me on Wednesdays during Grey’s Anatomy”!!!

Recommended Reading:

David W. Blight. A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2007.

John Washington and Crandall A. Shifflett. John Washington's Civil War: A Slave Narrative. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

James McPherson - Slavery, Freedom, and the Union Navy

James M. McPherson was born in North Dakota and grew up in Minnesota, where he graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1958. In 1963 he received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. From 1962 until retirement in 2004 he taught American history at Princeton University, where he is now the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American History Emeritus. He is the author of 15 books and editor of another 10 books, most of them on the era of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. His books have won several prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize (1989) for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, a Lincoln Prize (1998) for For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, and a second Lincoln Prize (2009) for Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. He has received a number of other awards, including the Pritzker Prize for lifetime achievement in military writing. In addition to his membership in several professional associations and historical preservation societies, he is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is now working on a book about the navies in the Civil War.

Dr. McPherson began by telling the familiar story of Robert Smalls, the slave from South Carolina who famously escaped from slavery by stealing a steamboat and piloting it into Union lines. He then stated that this famous story was by no means unique.

McPherson told of 15 slaves who had escaped to the Union Navy just weeks before Small’s celebrated exploit. He then told of Butler’s famous “contraband” decree at Fortress Monroe and how modern day images of contraband slaves escaping into Union “lines” tend to portray slaves escaping on land to the Union army – not by water to the Union Navy. Using the Official Records, McPherson detailed many instances were contraband slaves hailed Union gunboats to come and set them free. This grew to be so common that Gideon Welles (Secretary of the Navy) allowed the young men in these groups to serve in the Union Navy. Thus blacks were allowed to serve in the military in the navy a full year before they could serve in the army.

McPherson made sure to stress that the navy during the Civil War was by no means a free-thinking group of abolitionists, and he pointed out Admiral DuPont and his aristocratic family lineage. DuPont was pro-slavery and noted that none of his officers had voted for Lincoln. Yet still, the demands of war caused them to adapt to the vagaries of war and they were soon singing the praises of the African Americans serving on their vessels.

This paved the way for the Emancipation that would come one year later.

Recommended Reading:

Barbara Tomblin. Bluejackets and Contrabands: African Americans and the Union Navy. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2009.

Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867: Series 1, Volume 1: The Destruction of Slavery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Afternoon Remarks by Dr. Horton – The Unfinished Civil War

The afternoon session will now turn its gaze to the memory of the Civil War.

Dr. Horton started by telling a story about a lecture that he gave at Harper’s Ferry called “Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War” that was attended by a large number of Confederate re-enactors. He said it was evident that the “rebs” in the crowd did NOT like the fact that he was saying that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War.

Since there were slaves in the North and the Border States, Horton asserts that some people have a very hard time believing that the war was fought over slavery. He quoted John S. Mosby’s famous post war comment that admitted that war was indeed fought over slavery to the crowd.

He said that people know that there was a Civil War, but they don’t understand the complexity of what caused the war and how that still affects the nation today.

Dr. Horton then introduced the next panel.