Georgia: Civil War generals in Oak

From News and Sentinel:  Civil War generals in Oak Grove Cemetery
MARIETTA - Coming off a heated election season, one of the many accomplishments in the storied lives of Rufus Dawes and Adoniram J. Warner may seem particularly hard to believe. The two Civil War generals, both of whom are buried in Marietta's Oak Grove Cemetery, remained friends even as they faced each other in a pair of elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.
"It was a very civil political opposition," local historian Scott Britton said. "These guys had a lot of respect for each other because they knew what they had gone through in their service."

In Oak Grove Cemetery Thursday, Marietta resident Barb Moberg looks at the grave monument for her great-great-grandfather, Rufus Dawes, a Civil War general who faced fellow Gen. Adoniram J. Warner in two Congressional elections in 1880 and 1882. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Although they both lived in Marietta after the war, Dawes and Warner didn't meet until the eve of the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Md., in 1862.
Dawes was a major with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, having joined a company there while working for his father's lumber business. Warner was a lieutenant colonel with the 10th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry.
Dawes assumed command of his unit when his commander was wounded during the battle. Despite being in some of the most intense fighting in the cornfield at Antietam, Dawes came through the battle with nothing more serious than a bullet having grazed his calf, said Dan Hinton, commander of the local Gen. Benjamin D. Fearing Camp No. 2 of the Sons of Union Veterans.
Meanwhile, Warner was shot as he directed his troops into a nearby cornfield. Although the bullet shattered his pelvis, an injury causing effects he felt for the rest of his life, it wasn't his last military action. Britton said he returned to duty less than a year later, just prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, where he and Dawes once again fought on the same battlefield.
To get there, he left the hospital in Washington, D.C., and rode on horseback to Pennsylvania.
"I can't even imagine the excruciating pain for him," Britton said. "He was going back to defend his home state no matter what."
Although Dawes went through the war without serious injury, he suffered effects that "weren't as visible," Hinton said. He recalled a letter Dawes wrote to his wife while serving in Congress, describing how he went to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the graves of each of the men who'd died under his command.
"He was proud of his service, but he had some survivor's guilt," Hinton said.
Dawes was born in Morgan County, but his family moved to Marietta at an early age and he settled there after the war. Warner was assigned to court martial duty at different points in the United States, including Indiana where he served as a pallbearer when President Abraham Lincoln's body was transported through the area en route to his final resting place at Springfield, Ill. Later he was assigned to Cambridge, Ohio, and eventually settled farther south at Marietta, Britton said.
Warner, a Democrat, was elected to Congress as a representative of Ohio's 13th Congressional District. Redistricting apparently moved him to the 15th District in 1880 where he faced Dawes, the Republican nominee.
The campaign was described as "fiercely partisan (but) personally friendly" in "Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes," a biography of Rufus Dawes' son, who served as vice president of the United States under President Calvin Coolidge.
The men differed on various political issues, including on what the U.S. currency system should be based. Dawes favored the gold standard, while Warner was a "bimetallist," supporting the use of gold and silver.
Apparently there was some limit to the friendliness, although young Charles Dawes stepped over that line the night before the election. According to the biography, written by Bascom N. Timmons, Warner's campaign organized a parade and the procession was led by a band that included the future vice president, playing the flute.
"He explained, when he returned home that night, that it was purely a professional appearance for which he had been paid," the biography says. "But to others of the family, it was heresy, compounded by the fact that the remuneration he had received had not even been in sound money; the pay had been a silver dollar!"
Nevertheless, Dawes unseated the incumbent Warner by 502 votes, according to www.ourcampaigns.com, a website community centered around discussion of politics. Two years later, in the rematch, Warner was the victor by 691 votes.
The region recently saw another Congressional rematch, with Democrat Charlie Wilson trying to regain the 6th District seat he'd held for two terms from Republican Bill Johnson. There were great partisan differences there too, and a debate at Marietta College seemed particularly heated, with supporters of both men offering cheers for their candidate and jeers for the opponent.
Britton noted that while many people think the political tone in recent years is at an all-time low, campaigns like those between Warner and Dawes were neither the exception nor the rule in the 19th century. He pointed to the 1856 incident in which South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beat Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate with a cane.
"Politics has changed, but it's not quite as bad as people think," Britton said.

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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Fact-Checking 'Lincoln': Lincoln's Mostly Realistic; His Advisers Aren't

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.