Historians Need to Give Steven Spielberg a Break

From The Atlantic: Historians Need to Give Steven Spielberg a Break

Historians are stakeholders in anything that attempts to represent the past. The vast majority of these stories pass us by innocently enough, but when the most popular Hollywood director makes a movie about Lincoln we watch and listen closely. We also feel a strong need to educate the general public and point out interpretive shortcomings in popular films.
Over the past few days I've read numerous reviews of Spielberg's Lincoln by professional historians, both in print and in my circle of social media friends. All of them are informative, even if they tend to reflect individual research agendas much more than the movie itself.
Beyond nitpicking specific moments such as the roll call in the House or whether Lincoln ever slapped Robert, my fellow historians have pointed out the lack of attention on women and abolitionists, as well as the free black community in Washington, D.C. Do any of these critiques help us to better understand the movie? No. They simply reinforce what we already know, which is that Hollywood will never make a movie that satisfies the demands of scholars. Nor should it. In his review of the movie for The Daily Beast, Harold Holzer shares a few remarks from Spielberg's speech at last week's Dedication Day Address at Gettysburg:

For a few weeks, I haven't known quite how I would respond. But yesterday at Gettysburg, Steven Spielberg provided the eloquent answer. "It's a betrayal of the job of the historian," he asserted, to explore the unknown. But it is the job of the filmmaker to use creative "imagination" to recover what is lost to memory. Unavoidably, even at its very best, "this resurrection is a fantasy ... a dream." As Spielberg neatly put it, "one of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places that history must avoid."

As historians, we need to be much more sensitive to the artistic goals of filmmakers and the limitations they face. In short, we need to stop critiquing them as if they were something they are not. They are artists, not historians.

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We go to the movies to be entertained and transported to a different time and place. That's easier said than done when you've spent the better part of the last 15 years reading and writing about the period depicted in a film. After so much research, we historians look for complexity and a certain attention to detail that reflects a careful consideration of the past. I certainly did this while watching Lincoln, but at the same time, we would do well to remember that when we watch films about other subjects, we're able to set aside that kind of analysis and respect the filmmaker's creative decisions. Take Lincoln's opening battle scene. When I first heard that Spielberg was planning on making a moving about the Civil War, I imagined an opening battle scene that approached the realism of Saving Private Ryan. Well, we got an opening battle scene, but it did not approach the scale of his recreation of the landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day.
We have to imagine that Spielberg considered such famous battles as Gettysburg, Antietam, and Shiloh. I have no doubt that he could have translated any of these to the big screen. Instead, Spielberg throws his viewer into the middle of a nameless close-quarter fight within the lesser-known Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. There are no wide shots of carefully formed units waiting for orders to march into battle, and no close-ups of famous commanders behind the lines.
What Spielberg wanted his audience to see was the brutality and hatred that defines any bloody civil war. At times, the loyalties of the men are indistinguishable from one another (except for the African Americans, assuming you already knew that they fought for the Union). The mud functions as a metaphor for the ugliness of war, and perhaps even a war that has lost any sense of meaning for the two parties. The United States flag may be prominent in this scene, but the viewer is left wondering what the struggle was all about.
Spielberg also chose to build his story around emancipation rather than the preservation of the Union. Daniel Day-Lewis gives us a sympathetic portrayal of Lincoln as the central actor in this drama, making the president worthy of his place in our collective memory without mythologizing him. Indeed, one of the movie's strengths is that it depicts Lincoln as one player (albeit an important one) in that not-so-well-oiled machine that is the legislative process. Lincoln does his best to help to steer the amendment through Congress with the help of Thaddeus Stevens, portrayed persuasively by Tommy Lee Jones. We see the messiness, but we also get a sense of Lincoln's and Stevens's sincere interest in ending slavery once and for all.

Spielberg may not get every historical detail right, but it is impossible not to watch this movie as commentary on our own political challenges.

Eric Foner recently criticized the film because it failed to show that it was the abolitionists, and not Lincoln, who were the driving forces behind the Thirteenth Amendment. Kate Masur also takes issue with what she sees as a narrow understanding of how emancipation came about. For Masur, more attention could have been given to the activities of slaves in freeing themselves and to free blacks in the nation's capital. The criticisms of both historians should come as no surprise given their recent scholarship. Foner recently published a wonderful biography of Lincoln and slavery and Masur's book on emancipation in Washington, D.C., is a must read. I am not so concerned about these supposed shortcomings. It is not Spielberg's duty to fill us in on the whole history of emancipation and the black population of D.C. But the spirit of self-emancipation comes through clearly in the opening battle scene (as well as that silly scene where Lincoln is chatting with both black and white soldiers about the war).
I am more concerned about Spielberg's overall portrait of Lincoln, which is tied directly to the timeframe of the movie. We see Lincoln at the end of a very long—and at times confusing—process that extended back to his early years, in which he expressed views about African Americans that may be shocking for some of us to hear today. But Spielberg doesn't give us any sense of these earlier views. At one point in the movie, Elizabeth Keckley asks Lincoln what he thinks African Americans should do once they are freed. If she had asked that question two years earlier Lincoln likely would have advised her that colonization was their best option.
In contrast, I loved the debate on the House floor. As a high school teacher, I've found it challenging to get across the pervasiveness of racism throughout the country at this time. Spielberg accomplishes this very well, showing politicians as they argue passionately about the consequences of emancipation for white Americans: the competition for jobs, the spread of interracial relationships, and the possibility that black people will be allowed to vote. This scene is not only great drama: It ensures that the discerning viewer will be left pondering the challenges the nation still faces, 150 years after slavery ended.
This is the real value of a film like Lincoln. Spielberg may not get every historical detail right, but it is impossible not to watch this movie as commentary on our own political challenges. It shows us that the only way to get anything done in Washington is through compromise, but that this need not preclude embracing moral principles. Even when Spielberg misses the mark, he does what a filmmaker should do: He recreates the spirit of an era and inspires us to think more deeply about the myths and realities of a hugely important time.

US library shows diaries, letters from Civil War

From WNCT:  US library shows diaries, letters from Civil War

WASHINGTON --
WASHINGTON (AP) Letters and diaries from those who lived through the American Civil War offer a new glimpse 150 years later at the arguments that split the nation then and some of the festering debates that survive today.
The Library of Congress, which holds the largest collection of Civil War documents, pulled 200 items from its holdings to reveal both private and public thoughts from dozens of famous and ordinary citizens who lived in the North and the South. Many are being shown for the first time.
Robert E. Lee, for one, was grappling with divided federal and state allegiances. He believed his greater allegiance was to his native Virginia, as he wrote to a friend about resigning his U.S. Army commission to take command of the main army for the secessionist, pro-slavery southern states.
"Sympathizing with you in the troubles that are pressing so heavily upon our beloved country & entirely agreeing with you in your notions of allegiance, I have been unable to make up my mind to raise my hand against my native state, my relatives, my children & my home," he wrote in 1861. "I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army."
Lee's handwritten letter is among dozens of writings from individuals who experienced the war. They are featured in the new exhibit "The Civil War in America" at the library in Washington until June 2013. Their voices also are being heard again in a new blog created for the exhibition.
For a limited time in 2013, the extensive display will feature the original draft of President Abraham Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and rarely shown copies of the Gettysburg Address.
Beyond the generals and famous battles, though, curators set out to tell a broader story about what Lincoln called "a people's contest."
"This is a war that trickled down into almost every home," said Civil War manuscript specialist Michelle Krowl. "Even people who may seem very far removed from the war are going to be impacted on some level. So it's a very human story."
Curators laid out a chronological journey from before the first shots were fired to the deep scars soldiers brought home in the end.
While some still debate the root causes of the war, for Benjamin Tucker Tanner in 1860, the cause was clear, as he wrote from South Carolina in his diary.
"The country seems to be bordering on a civil war all on account of slavery," wrote the future minister. "I pray God to rule and overrule all to his own glory and the good of man."
A personal letter from Mary Todd Lincoln in 1862 was recently acquired by the library and is being publicly displayed for the first time.
In the handwritten note on stationery with a black border, Mary Lincoln reveals her deep grief over the death of her son Willie months earlier. Krowl said Mary Lincoln's grief is also evident in the new movie, "Lincoln."
"When you read this letter ... you just get a palpable feeling of how in the depth that she's been and she's now finally coming out of her grief, at least to resume public affairs," Krowl said.
All the documents in the exhibit are original. They include a massive map Gen. Stonewall Jackson commissioned of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to prepare for a major campaign.
The library also is displaying personal items from Abraham Lincoln, including the contents of his pockets on the night he was assassinated, and the pocket diary of the battlefield nurse Clara Barton who would constantly record details about soldiers she met and would later found the American Red Cross.
Some of the closing words come from soldiers who lost their right arms or hands in battle and had to learn to write left-handed. They joined a left-handed penmanship contest and shared their stories.
"I think this exhibition will have a lot of resonance for people," said exhibit director Cheryl Regan. "Certainly soldiers returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are going to be incredibly moved by these stories."
___
Civil War in America: http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/civil-war-in-america/

 

African-American Faces Of The Civil War

From WLRN.com:  African-American Faces Of The Civil War

Enlarge image

Credit Collection of Andrew Chandler Battaile

This rare portrait shows an identified Confederate noncommissioned officer, Sgt. Andrew Martin Chandler (left), and his named slave, Silas Chandler (right). It is the only Confederate photograph in the book by Rod Coddington, African American Faces of the Civil War. Born into slavery, Silas "was one of thousands of slaves who served as [body servants] during the war," writes Coddington.

 The impulses to collect and to doodle have always been in Ron Coddington's blood. As a kid, it was baseball cards. As a teen, he took an interest in old flea market photos — and simultaneously became "obsessed," he says, "with learning to draw the human face."

That explains a lot. Coddington kicked off a career in journalism as an illustrator doing caricatures — eventually growing into the position of art director at USA Today. These days, he's the head of the data visualization and multimedia team at The Chronicle of Higher Education. And he's still collecting.
"I don't know what my problem is," he says with a laugh on the phone. "When I went to college, I didn't have a lot of belongings, but the one thing I brought in the front seat with me was a cigar box with my collection in it."
These photos are called cartes de visite: little portrait cards that were easily reproduced and therefore immensely popular for decades — especially during the Civil War. And Coddington's obsessive collecting has yielded three books so far: Faces of the Civil War, Confederates of the Civil War and, most recently, African American Faces of the Civil War.
Finding these images is a major investigative undertaking. Because for Coddington, finding the photo isn't enough.
"It's more than just a face," he says.
The story is what's important — and those details are incredibly rare. So what makes Coddington's collection special are the biographical details that accompany the images. If you take the time to read their stories, the individuals spring to life — well after they've died.
The Picture Show asked Coddington to choose 10 highlights from his most recent book. But you can really dig into the rest of the collection on this website (http://facesofthecivilwar.blogspot.com/).

Emancipation Proclamation 150th anniversary celebration planned in Springfield

From Mass Live:  Emancipation Proclamation 150th anniversary celebration planned in Springfield

 
Civil War re-enactors from the Stone Soul Soldiers Peter Brace Brigade include, from left, Raymond McClam Sr., Sheila Fisher, Charleston Morris, Joyce Davis, William Griffin, 

 SPRINGFIELD — When it was formed eight years ago, Jay Griffin’s living history brigade felt much like the newly emancipated black soldiers in the Civil War.
Noble intentions. Nationalism. No shoes.
“We were an orphaned group. Just like the African-American former slave during the Civil War. We felt unattached and we sought some support from a group, a white group, and they provided us with some uniforms and some equipment - just like the African-American soldiers of the Union Army. They didn’t have weapons at first, and no shoes,” Griffin, 68, said, a member of the city-based Peter Brace Brigade.
Their group, which re-enacts the Civil War landscape and battles in authentic costumes, will be central to the 150th anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation this New Year’s Eve.
The event is open to the public and will take place at the Sovereign Bank Building from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. The program will including music, entertainment, refreshments and champagne.
The document signed by President Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, freed slaves in the Confederate states during the Civil War and set a foundation for the civil rights movement over the next century and beyond.
The event begins an educational initiative by a 14-member planning committee.
“We are hoping to use this 150th anniversary commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation as the kickoff of an effort to provide a deeper understanding of the Civil War and its implications, especially to the young people of the area,” Wayne E. Phaneuf, executive editor of The Republican and a member of the committee, said. “We have more than two more years of the Sesquicentennial Celebration in which we hope to bring the story to classrooms.”
On New Year’s Eve many African-American churches hold prayer and worship services from the late evening until midnight when they welcome the new year with praise, thanksgiving, prayer and confession. These services are called watch night meetings. December 31, 1862, was a significant evening for the African-American community, because it was the night before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.
Other committee members noted that there are misconceptions about the history of the proclamation and Lincoln’s evolution as an abolitionist.
“He wasn’t always against slavery, not overtly anyway,” said state Rep. Benjamin Swan, D-Springfield, referring to the nation’s 16th president. “But I see that as critical in the whole change process. We’ve seen that kind of change in philosophy in the lives of members of the U.S. Supreme Court. We’ve seen that in the lives of other presidents. We could say that was true with Truman and Lyndon Johnson.”
Swan will read the Emancipation Proclamation at midnight during the celebration. Griffin noted that organizers hope to attract people of all races and creeds.
“This is not just for black folks, and we’re encouraged that we have diversity in our planning committee,” he said. “The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most critical moments in American history.”
State Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, D-Amherst, another member of the planning committee, said the seeds planted and public policy established by the proclamation forged the way for current strides in racial equality.
“It is the diversity of America that acted Nov. 6 to elect an African-American president for the second time. It was done by whites and blacks and Asians and the whole population of America. This is what President Lincoln envisioned; 150 years later we can celebrate that that has happened,” Rosenberg said.
The committee will sell parchment copies of the original Emancipation Proclamation to help raise money for the associated educational efforts.
IF YOU GO:
What: Springfield's 150th Anniversary Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation
When: Dec. 31, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Where: Sovereign Bank Building, 1350 Main St.
Cost: $25 per person; includes entertainment, refreshments, champagne

 

Peoria, IL: Civil War re-enactors portray soldiers recuperating from battle

From PJStar.com:  Civil War re-enactors portray soldiers recuperating from battle

EDWARDS — Emily Barry lives a double life: one as a stay-at-home mom in 1862, another as a stay-at-home mom in present-day Peoria.

Both require Barry to tend to the cooking, cleaning and raising of her 18-month-old son, Liam. The duo visited their husband and father, Brian, in W.H. Sommer Park on Saturday, or Wolf Creek, Tenn., depending on which life Barry chooses to lead.
The 29-year-old Emily Barry joined about 15 other historical re-enactors to re-create the winter quarters of November 1862, where soldiers from the 47th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment rest from the Second Battle of Corinth, a prominent battle of the Civil War. The troop dressed in period costumes, cooked over fire and shot rifles in honor of the 150th anniversary of the battle.
"You have like-minded people who enjoy that aspect of American history," said Randy Gibbs, who portrayed a sergeant. "We try to portray what our ancestry did in those days."
Gibbs, 60, spent the night in "Buckeye Hotel," a log cabin he shared with five other "soldiers." He said he got up multiple times that night to change the fire - "around four in the morning, temperatures really started to drop" - but that rough bunks and discomfort are part of the weekend's camaraderie.
His brother, Russ Gibbs, 46, of Bartonville, agreed life in the 1860s was no cakewalk; he acted as the weekend's impromptu chef.
"These guys will kill me if I burn the bread," he said, only half joking.
Last year, Russ Gibbs built the oven he used Saturday to roast chicken. He said he was proud of his craft and believed it reflected the work of his ancestors.
"We seem to forget the past," he said.
The cliche was a thought most at the re-enactment agreed with. He related it to some states threatening secession after the 2012 election.
But Emily Barry finds living the past as more of a recreational activity. She believes people can learn from previous mistakes, but that each of her two lives - those of today and yesteryear - are eerily similar.
"People talk different, dress different and thoughts go out of fashion," she said. "But people are still people, and they haven't really changed that much."

 

Amarillo man with connection to Civil War dies

From Amarillo.com:  Amarillo man with connection to Civil War dies 

A former ASARCO worker and one of the last links to the American Civil War died Sunday in Amarillo.
Marion Wilson, 99, was the youngest of 16 children fathered by Confederate soldier Hamilton “Ham” Wilson, a young private from the Smoky Mountains who served in the 29th North Carolina Infantry, according to a news release from the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The brigade comprised four Texas Regiments and two regiments from North Carolina and was led by Gen. Matt Ector, an attorney and judge from Texas. The brigade fought in the battle of Chickamauga, Ga., and was part of the Atlanta and Nashville campaigns.
Ham Wilson was a farmer and served as a justice of the peace in eastern Oklahoma. He had eight children with his first wife. After she died, he remarried at age 44 and fathered eight more children. He spent his twilight years in Rose, Okla., and died in 1938.
Marion Wilson was born in Oklahoma on Feb. 8, 1913, and moved to Amarillo in 1929. He worked at the ASARCO plant refining copper and other metals and was ordered to stay there when he tried to join the Army after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was a founder and 40-year deacon at Cliffside Baptist Church in Amarillo and was most recently a member and deacon at South Georgia Baptist Church. His wife of 67 years, Virginia Lee Henard, died in 2005.
Marion Wilson was one of two sons of Confederate soldiers to attend a reunion in 2009 in Hot Springs, Ark. He said his father had lived so far up in the North Carolina mountains, he knew nothing about slavery when he joined the Confederate Army.
Marion Wilson’s grandfather, Paul Wilson, also served in the Confederate Army. He fought with the 14th North Carolina Calvary and served 10 months in the Rock Island Prisoner of War Camp in Illinois. He returned home to a devastated farm and moved his family to Western Arkansas.
Marion Wilson is survived by his daughter, Sandra Kinser of Amarillo; a son, Larry Wilson and wife Sue of Denton; five grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandaughter.
A memorial service is scheduled at 2:30 p.m. Thursday at South Georgia Baptist Church, 5209 S. Georgia St. He will be buried at Memorial Park Cemetery, 6969 E. Interstate 40.
A uniformed honor guard of Confederate re-enactors will fire a 21-gun salute at the cemetery in Marion Wilson’s honor.

 

Scrapbooking the Civil War

From the New York Times:  Scrapbooking the Civil War

Soon after the Civil War began, a Savannah, Ga., resident named Henrietta Emanuel Solomons – or someone in her household – began to clip items from newspapers. She pasted her clippings over the sheets of a used-up ledger from the family grocery business until sometime in 1863, when she ran out of space. When she finished, they covered 483 large pages.

Solomons’s scrapbook may sound obsessive today, but it was a common practice at the time. More important, it is a window into the emotions of a loyal Southerner living through the war. The scrapbook’s stiff pages are dense with stories about Confederate victories, poems and news reports. They assure readers that enslaved people want to help the Confederacy and would refuse freedom. They tell of women knitting for soldiers or spying for the Confederacy — cross-dressed or in their own clothing. Some are full of rage against the tyranny of Lincoln.

A newspaper-clipping scrapbook like this does not give us the direct information or expression we expect from diaries. Instead, it is a reminder that like us, Northerners and Southerners living through the Civil War relied on the media to tell them what was happening at a distance, or even across town. They looked to the media to support and express their feelings. And like 21st-century Web users sharing links, they saved items that mattered to them and sent them around again to friends, family or strangers.

Newspapers took a new place in people’s lives during the war. Everyone was hungry for information about family and friends on the battlefields, and for news of victories. Northern papers printed telegraphed reports from the battlefield. The “imperious” newspaper called to readers, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote, summoning people to buy it “at unusual hours … by the divine right of its telegraphic dispatches.” Union soldiers pounced on bundles of passed-along newspapers and paid high prices to newsboys who brought fresh papers to the camps, especially if they concerned battles they had been in. Civilians rushed to read newspapers posted in the street.

 

Beck Center at Emory UniversityPeople of different races and classes, including a pickpocket, crowd around to read newspapers on display, in “Reading the War News in Broadway,” London Illustrated News, June 15, 1861.

Confederates, too, sought newspapers. Even before the war, the South published fewer newspapers than the North, and the naval blockade meant that those newspapers had spottier access to information, while publications grew desperate for paper to print news on. Southern readers were as eager for newspapers as Northern readers.

At home, Americans on both sides made scrapbooks from their newspaper reading. They knew they were living through momentous events, and they felt they were saving history. Northern scrapbooks, flush with clippings, carry stories headlined “BY TELEGRAPH,” and include maps and an occasional engraving. Southern scrapbooks are a record of scarcity: the blockade kept out Northern newspapers, and Southern publications had almost no illustrations. The printer’s ink on the clippings is sometimes pale. To make a scrapbook in the South, even used ledgers like Solomons’s might be hard to come by.

And yet Southerners were just as avid about scrapbooking as their Northern counterparts. In Augusta, Ga., Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas wrote worriedly in her diary that newspaper clippings were displacing her diary entries and made it appear that she paid too much attention to events beyond the family circle. By July 1863 she lamented that she’d saved many more clippings beyond the two volumes she had already filled, but could not get another book to paste them into.

 

Thomas Nast’s illustration shows the character Ferguson, from William Mumford Baker’s popular novel “Inside: A Chronicle of Secession,” sharing his massive scrapbook, which he used for critical media analysis of war news.

Many newspaper scrapbooks proceed chronologically, like diaries. Others are arranged carefully by topic, or they group such items as obituaries or poetry. Solomons’ and some other Confederate scrapbooks, however, reflect the fact that with paper shortages, Southern newspapers were in short supply and editions were recirculated for some time before a scrapbook maker felt free to cut them up. Her scrapbook returns repeatedly to the same Confederate victories, clipped from different papers and separated by many pages.

Solomons’s choices of what to clip reveal how dramatically her attitudes toward enslaved people changed in two years. Early in the war she collected poems and stories about slaves so loyal to their masters that they refuse freedom. In the articles she saved, enslaved blacks captured by the Union express themselves “very anxious to get back to their masters.” In one poem, “Yankee Doodle, to the Georgia Volunteers,” “Uncle Tom” asks to “jine de boys” in fighting the Yankees, and gleefully narrates the Confederate victories at Bethel Church and Manassas (Bull Run). The poem offered the added bonus of being singable to “Yankee Doodle,” thus recapturing a patriotic American tune for Confederate use.

In another poem, from 1861, “A Southern Scene from Life,” the “little Missis” tells her “Mammy” that Lincoln means to free her, but Mammy explains that the difference between her coal-black face and the child’s “red and white … soft and fine” skin “with yeller ringlets” self-evidently results in Mammy’s slavery and the little girl’s liberty and wealth. Mammy declares that she’ll wait for freedom in heaven, and ends by insulting Lincoln.

Solomons was not the only white Southerner who wanted to believe that enslaved people hoped for a Confederate victory. “A Southern Scene from Life” was reprinted in Southern newspapers. The Macon Telegraph asserted it was the “versification of a conversation that actually took place,” and praised it for its “truth and feeling.” Other Southern scrapbook makers savored it, too. One liked it enough to carry it around before pasting it, so that it was heavily frayed and partially torn, and corrected by hand to make up for a tear.

But once the Emancipation Proclamation began circulating in the fall of 1862, a new strain appeared in Solomons’s scrapbook, beginning with an anonymous bombastic poem, “For Abraham Lincoln. On Reading the Emancipation Proclamation.” The poem worries that Lincoln “wou’st unband/the negro from his easy chain” and arm black people. Black figures are no longer asking to “jine de boys,” nor do they denounce Lincoln in her later items; rather, with emancipation on the horizon, they are armed and turning into “brutal fiends, whose reeking knives/Would spare nor sex, nor youth, nor age.” The result would be that “wholesale murder clot our land.” Solomons notebook presents a vision of the murder resulting from arming blacks as terrifyingly different from the bloodshed the war was already engaged in.

The Southern newspapers’ reports of brutal black fiends were, of course, no more accurate than their reports of slaves cheerfully giving their lives to protect their masters. In collecting both strains, Solomons hints at a Southerner’s increasingly conflicted beliefs about what enslaved people might actually think and feel, and what they might do if the Confederacy lost and the Emancipation Proclamation became effective.

Solomons’s scrapbook carries no notes or pointed juxtapositions to suggest that she took any of these newspaper accounts with a grain of salt, or thought they contradicted one another. But other scrapbook makers used their scrapbooks precisely to monitor and uncover the deceptions of the press – the press of the other side, of course.

Daniel Hundley, a Confederate officer and prisoner of the Union forces in Sandusky, Ohio, read the Northern newspapers he had access to with relentless skepticism. He bought a scrapbook in 1864 and proposed “to fill it with the newspaper history of the times, which if I can preserve it until the war is ended, will be of incalculable service to me” in showing the contradictions he had found among stories. He escaped from prison, presumably leaving his scrapbook behind.

Reading from the Union side, in William Mumford Baker’s 1866 novel “Inside: A Chronicle of Secession,” on the lives of Union sympathizers living in a Confederate town during the war, everyone is hungry for newspapers. Union sympathizers furtively pass Northern newspapers to one another, and fear they will be lynched if their leanings are known. Neither side wants to believe news of its side’s reverses. Ferguson, a Union man, compiles a scrapbook just to follow the “inaccuracy” of the Confederate news reports. Saving items and comparing the fanfare around each assertion of a battlefield or diplomatic victory allows him to notice the nearly imperceptible way it is dropped.

Ferguson retrieves the assertions from oblivion and pastes them into a record meant for critical media analysis. “Yesterday’s news is forgotten because to-day’s news is so much more glorious; then, yesterday’s rumor was false, it seems, but that of to-day is certainly true,” he explains to a friend, before he hides his scrapbook away in a safe. Evidence of paying too close attention to how news is reported could be dangerous.

For her part, Solomons did not forget yesterday’s news. Instead, she kept returning to it. Her scrapbook was an ideal newspaper, holding what she chose to pluck and remember from the swirling stream of the press.

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'American Tapestry' brings history, music to Morgan County

From Fort Morgan Times:  'American Tapestry' brings history, music to Morgan County

The reverberating sounds of "American Tapestry," a talented musical ensemble of nine harmonious voices, filled the Carnegie Room of the East Morgan County Library in Brush last week, transporting an audience of nearly 50 who attended the monthly Brush Museum lunch program, back to a time when the nation was bracing for the eruption of the American Civil War.
The group, composed of members Mark Carlson, Peggy Hunter, Peggy Warrick, Holly Mellas, Linda Smith, Heather Heady, Cathy and John Von Riesen and Wylie Smith, traveled to other venues around Morgan County as well the same day, including for spectators at Eben Ezer in Brush and at the Life Fellowship Church in Fort Morgan.
"We are not professional musicians," noted troupe member

The American Tapestry group performed â The Blue and the Grayâ ? in Brush last week at East Morgan County Library and other places. ( Picasa )

Wylie Smith, one of several familiar faces on hand to the delight of local audience members. "This is simply something we just do for the love of putting on a show." Smith, who served as a junior high band and choir teacher from 1978 to 1982 in Brush, was just one entertainer with local ties. "American Tapestry" organizer and director Cathy von Riesen also served as a music instructor in Brush for 16 years beginning in 1977. Along with husband John Von Riesen, Cathy helped bring together the "American Tapestry" ensemble group of actors and singers based centrally in Fort Collins.
Among the tuneful voices that echoed through the venue was Brush's own Heather Heady, a 1993 graduate and daughter of Brush residents Teresa and Pat Stover, who beamed with pride upon hearing the talented and beautiful voice that emanated from their child. Heather performed a finale solo during the groups rendition of "Amazing Grace" that had the entire audience clinging to each note and her booming vocals stood out during a number that had her singing the sweet sounds of freedom during a portion of the act that recalled the plight of slaves during the Civil War.
In the style of representative theatre, the first act of the play entitled, "The

American Tapestry performer John Von Reisen played the role of Abraham Lincoln in â The Blue and the Gray.â ? ( Picasa )

Blue and the Gray" began with the arrival of three soldiers who set the mood with songs in a capella such as "Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Yellow Rose of Texas" with the ensemble joining in for renditions of "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Camp Town Ladies," "To Arms in Dixie" and "America the Beautiful." According to lines uttered in the second half of the performance, which was more theater-based and included musical accompaniment, "A soldier's best weapon against boredom was music." Songs such as "Jimmy-Crack-Corn" and "Oh Susanna" set a more energetic mood before the actors created scenes from first-hand accounts of letters written during the Civil War, detailing the life as a soldier and the plight of slaves and women who'd begun shipping off

Actor Mark Carlson played a Confederate soldier weary of the death and fighting in the Civil War during American Tapestryâ s performance of â The Blue and the Gray.â ?

Civil War re-enactors in Moorpark teach students about history

From Ventura County Star: Civil War re-enactors in Moorpark teach students about history

Photo by Juan Carlo, Ventura County Star // Buy this photo

Don Ancell, of Oxnard, plays President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War re-enactment Friday behind Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark. Children from area schools learned about Civil War era life, met re-enactors and got to see equipment from the 1800s. The re-enactment events continue this weekend.

It's not every day that one gets to fire an authentic 3-inch ordnance rifle, the most widely used cannon during the American Civil War.
But that's exactly what 14-year-old Lauren Siler had the opportunity to do Friday when she visited the 12th annual "The Blue and the Gray" Civil War re-enactment at Tierra Rejada Ranch behind Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark.
The re-enactment, sponsored by the Moorpark Rotary Club and hosted by the Richmond Howitzers, continues through Sunday. Gates open at 10 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.
The event this year showcases "The Battle of Antietam — America's Most Tragic Day."
Antietam was the first major battle in the Civil War to take place on Union soil. It is considered the bloodiest single-day battle in U.S. history.
Re-enactment Chairman Dale Parvin said the annual event is the major fundraiser for the Rotary Club, and money raised supports charitable programs in the community and scholarships.
More than 800 re-enactors participate in the popular event that attracts thousands of visitors each year. It features cannons, cavalry, infantry, encampments and merchants in full uniform or dress of the day. Cooking demonstrations, abolitionist rallies and speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis re-enactors also are featured.
Returning this year is the popular "Twilight Battle" late Saturday afternoon.
Siler joined her fellow classmates from Mesa Verde Middle School and hundreds of students from other schools throughout Moorpark on Friday for a day set aside just so they could learn more about the Civil War.
"It was very cool," she said after she pulled the rope on the cannon that set off a loud boom throughout the farm field.
Clay Peal, a Newbury Park resident who has participated in the re-enactment for the past six years, said the re-enactors have two of the original cannons that were used in 1862.
The cannon was at Knott's Berry Farm for many years, and it was saved before it was about to be junked. During the event, it is loaded with gunpowder so it can produce noise and smoke. However, there is no projectile, so it is safe to use.
Daniel Lookabill from North Carolina traveled to the Moorpark event, where he portrays William Pettigrew, a Confederate general.
This is the fifth year he has participated in the Moorpark event.
"I absolutely adore (this event)," he said. "This is the largest event west of the Mississippi, so no real re-enactor ever misses this. This is the place to be. We're very happy the way it's managed, and the Moorpark Rotary Club does a fabulous job. We really appreciate it."
Lookabill said participating in the battles is a lot of fun for a re-enactor, but the real joy is being able to educate the public about the Civil War. He said the event also gives the participants the chance to give a Confederate point of view, something he said is not always presented in public schools.
"The Civil war continues to shape us today. There's no event in our history, including our own revolution that has shaped us as much as this war," Lookabill said. "If we can infect just a small percentage of people with a sense of excitement over this kind of history, that's really what we're here to do."
On Friday, 11-year-old Quintt Landis from Mountain Meadows Home Independent Studies enjoyed a presentation of Civil War guns owned by Steve Pavich, of Fountain Valley.
Chaparral Middle School student Nick Fanella, 13, listened to a presentation from an Abraham Lincoln re-enactor.
"I'm enjoying this today because I'm learning and experiencing the real history of our country," Nick said.
• • •
IF YOU GO
What: 12th annual "The Blue and The Gray" Civil War Reenactment
When: Gates open at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. Battles begin at noon, 3 and 5:15 p.m. Saturday, and noon and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Veterans will be honored during a special ceremony after the first battle Sunday.
Where: Tierra Rejada Ranch behind Underwood Family Farms, 3370 Sunset Valley Road in Moorpark.
Cost: Tickets are $17 for adults, $12 for students with school ID and free for children age 5 and younger. Veterans in uniform or with veteran ID will receive a $7 discount off admission Sunday. Credit cards will be accepted.
Information: Event details are at http://www.MoorparkRotary.com. Battle background is at http://www.civilwaralliance.com/CWA/Moorpark1.html.

Nov 7: GCC lecture explores role of Native Americans in Civil War

From Daily News Online:  GCC lecture explores role of Native Americans in Civil War

BATAVIA -- Genesee Community College history instructor Dan Hamner explores the wide range of challenges faced by Native American individuals and communities during the American Civil War in a lecture scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday in Room T102 of GCC's Conable Technology Building, 1 College Rd.
"Among the Many Fires: Trials, Opportunities and Experiences of Native Americans in the Civil War" will look at how American Indians capitalized on the war to advance their agendas within the broader American society.

The free lecture is part of GCC's ongoing initiative exploring the Civil War. You can learn more about it by visiting the history department's blog: http://civilwaratgcc.wordpress.com/ .

 

Richard N. Current, Civil War Historian, Dies at 100

From Post-Gazette:  Richard N. Current, Civil War Historian, Dies at 100

Richard N. Current, a Civil War historian whose award-winning scholarship helped demythologize Abraham Lincoln and raise Lincoln studies to a professional level of scholarly inquiry, died on Oct. 26 in Boston. He was 100.
The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, his wife, Marcia Ewing Current, said.
Professor Current had a wide-ranging portfolio as a historian. His first five books, written in the 1940s and early '50s, included a history of the typewriter and a study of Daniel Webster. But over the next 40 years he wrote or edited a number of volumes about Lincoln and his times that elevated him to eminence in Civil War studies, and by the mid-'60s he had joined David Herbert Donald and Don E. Fehrenbacher as groundbreaking leaders of a new, more scrupulous and objective generation in Lincoln scholarship.
"He was a giant in the field from the era that made Lincoln the subject of professional historical study," said Gerald J. Prokopowicz, a former Lincoln scholar at the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Ind., and now the chairman of the history department at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.
Professor Current, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and taught American history at a number of colleges and universities, established his Lincoln credentials in 1955 with publication of "Lincoln the President: The Last Full Measure," the fourth and final volume of a widely admired biography begun by J. G. Randall. Randall had died with the fourth volume unwritten; Professor Current completed it from Randall's notes, and the book won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American history, awarded annually by Columbia University.
Previous writers about Lincoln, including Ida Tarbell and Carl Sandburg, were untrained academically, Professor Prokopowicz said, "as opposed to Randall and his successors -- Donald, Fehrenbacher and Current." "Lincoln the President" supplanted Sandburg's expansive biography, generally viewed as long on poetic majesty and short on rigorous research, as the standard work of Lincoln scholarship.
Professor Current's next book was "The Lincoln Nobody Knows" (1958), a collection of essays in which he confronted many of the often contradictory arguments about Lincoln and his presidency. (Was he a military genius? A military naif?) The book was known for its judiciousness in considering the validity of previous perspectives on Lincoln and the various claims made about him, many based on questionable recollections of contemporary witnesses. It especially examined Lincoln's evolving thinking on matters of race.
The book did not take Lincoln from the pedestal -- Professor Current was a Lincoln admirer -- but fleshed out his human complexities.
"Without cynicism but with scrupulous detachment," David C. Mearns wrote in The New York Times Book Review, Professor Current "has produced a learned, lively 'portrait in contrasts' at once provocative, captivating and punctilious. It may well serve as preface and exhortation to scores of monographs not yet begun."
In an interview on Thursday, Mark E. Neely, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln scholar and a professor of Civil War history at Penn State, said of Professor Current: "Was he a demythologizer? Absolutely. Was he a debunker? No. I like 'The Lincoln Nobody Knows' as well as any Lincoln book I've ever read. The reason is that he presented Lincoln as a problem and not a solution, advanced the idea that Lincoln's legacy was a set of questions, really, rather than a set of answers."
Richard Nelson Current was born in Colorado City, now part of Colorado Springs, into a family known for its longevity. His father, Park, a carpenter, died at 94; his mother, the former Anna Christiansen, at 97. A bone disease, osteomyelitis, contracted as a teenager, left him unable to straighten his right arm and kept him out of the armed services, though not from writing the first draft of his books in longhand. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned a master's from Tufts University before receiving his Ph.D. at Wisconsin.
Professor Current wrote, co-wrote or edited more than 30 books, including "Lincoln and the First Shot" (1963), about the run-up to Fort Sumter and the Civil War, and "Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation" (1978), which revises the stereotype of the greedy, corrupt Northerners who went South after the Civil War to facilitate Reconstruction, focusing on 10 representatives of the archetype and showing them to be educated and generally well-intentioned men whose attempts to help transform the South to a biracial democracy failed largely because of the resistance of Southern whites. In "Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers From the Confederacy" (1994), he wrote about white Southerners who fought for the North.
Among his non-Civil War books are a history of Wisconsin and the biography of a dancer who was an innovator in theatrical lighting, "Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light" (1997), written with his wife.
He taught American history at Rutgers, Hamilton College, Mills College, the University Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Professor Current's first marriage, to Rose Bonar, ended with her death in 1983. He married Marcia Ewing in 1984. He is also survived by two sisters, Maloa Reed and Irma Hilfers; a son, Dana; a daughter, Annabelle Current; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Known as a stickler for solid research and an occasionally sharp critical tongue, Professor Current engaged in an entertaining literary spat in 1988 -- carried out in an exchange of letters in The New York Review of Books -- with Gore Vidal, whose novel "Lincoln" he had found not up to snuff.
"He was a very tough critic," Professor Neely said. "I remember one of the phrases he used when he was commenting on a paper he didn't like: 'What was new in it wasn't true and what was true in it wasn't new.' "

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/richard-n-current-civil-war-historian-dies-at-100-660617/#ixzz2BOE8MGDp