The blog entry below that I wrote in 2015, I just read it again today (12/16/2017). Since 2015 and especially this year, there has been a lot of action involving Civil War monuments, most of it very uncivil and even fatally tragic in at least one instance. I still, however, hold to my thoughts as I wrote them in 2015's blog. To add a little more detail to what I was hinting at - NC's true history of the Civil War - you might start with a little research into The Red Strings; discovering this group and its impact was truly enlightening. Also, a book about a cold-blooded racially motivated murder in Oxford, NC in 1970, Blood Done Sign My Name, may also help to open eyes about NC's racial history. Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain, although a fiction, shares a perspective of the plight of the common Tarheel foot soldier that I feel one might be able to project onto "Silent Sam" himself, whether or not that was the intention of the sculptor or the people who had the statue installed. How do I feel personally about statues honoring Confederate soldiers or the Confederacy? To me, it's two different categories, and I'd be more inclined to understand why someone would want to remember the first, but not the latter. My thinking is more in line with Prof. James Loewen (author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Teaching What Really Happened, and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" Behind the "Lost Cause") Some statues and monuments need to come down while others should remain, and other memorials need to be erected, e.g., plaques attached to older monuments that correct misinformation or at least provide an objective summary of current perspective (with a date), statues of children from different ethnic backgrounds playing together, etc. Knowledge can lead to understanding, and understanding to wisdom. Knowledge good, ignorance bad. - cn 12/16/2017
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There have been several articles recently regarding "Silent Sam" on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and the movement known as "Black Lives Matter." I wrote the following entry 4 years ago, in November of 2011:
In yesterday's News & Observer, an article about "Silent Sam," the Confederate monument on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, describes a protest that took place there (see UNC's Confederate statue draws new protests, Sep 2, 2011: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/02/1454360/sam-is-silent-his-detractors-arent.html). In early August, another Confederate monument, this one located in Reidsville, was in the news (see Rebel monument loses its place, Aug 8, 2011: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/08/11/1404663/rebel-monument-loses-its-place.html). A search on the N&O's website pulls other articles and opinion letters regarding these monuments and celebrations or protests of North Carolina's Confederate heritage and continuing adherence to some of the myths fabricated in the decades following the Civil War as well as the actual events and beliefs held at that time. Here are quotes from an opinion letter of 2009 and from an article written in 2006. The letter I agree with; the quote from the article, I do not. “'Silent Sam' does not depict a general astride a horse brandishing a saber high above his head, rallying his troops to attack the foe; rather, that of a common man, a UNC student or alumnus, with his blanket roll and musket trying to obey his obligations, as he saw them, to his native state. It does not undertake to pass moral judgment on the conflict; rather, it seeks to honor his sense of duty and his willingness to lay his life on the line for a larger cause, right or wrong. The perspective of society today on the actions of men almost 150 years ago is bound to be different from that in their time. To suggest that our perspective must wipe out what was valid then is to negate the very reality of our own history. Better to address ourselves to the injustices of our own time and in our own place than to obliterate the contradictions in our shared experience here in Chapel Hill." - opinion letter by Eunice M. Brock and Samuel H. Magill, from Unsung Founders Memorial - what do you think?, N&O, Nov.22, 2009, : http://blogs.newsobserver.com/orangechat/ unsung-founders-memorial-what-do-you-think#storylink=misearch#ixzz1WviI3XDS "Clyde Wilson, a history professor at the University of South Carolina, made it clear that honoring the Confederate soldier is indelibly linked to vindicating the cause of the Confederacy itself. 'If we allowed the cause that the Confederate soldier fought for to be condemned, it would be impossible to defend their good name,' Wilson said. 'You all know there's a vicious campaign against all things Southern. It's not really the flag they hate, it's not really the Confederacy -- it's us, it's the South.'" - from Ceremony salutes flag and its cause, N&O, Mar.5, 2006: http://www.newsobserver.com/2006/03/05/58889/ceremony-salutes-flag-and-its.html#ixzz1WvnU3FZe As I've said before, if North Carolinians really knew the actual history of this state in regards to secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, it would provide a source of pride for all of us in this state: white, black, pro-Confederate, pro-Union, a pride much greater and more genuine because it would reflect the truth of our state's diverse stance in all of those events, and yes, including pride in the history of those who wholeheartedly supported the Confederacy. The letter by Brock and Magill captures some of this while Wilson totally misses the mark, and his misguided comments are unfortunately ones that sadly hold a disproportionate amount of support from those who do not know any better. The attack is not on the South or "all things Southern." The attack is against ignorance. Everyone in the South can have pride in their past, but let's not pretend that all North Carolinians were united in some "solid South" or defending "states' rights." It was what it was. Find out for yourself what it was, and then, armed with knowledge, be proud, be ashamed, whatever, but most of all, be enlightened, and be determined to do better in the future. Recently, I listened to two more books on the Civil War. The first was Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg, a historically-based but fictional account of a possible alter-ending to that battle. In Gingrich's account, Lee actually listened to Longstreet and agreed not to the all-out assault against the entrenched Union army but rather to a midnight flanking movement that took the Confederates away from the field after the 2nd day of fighting and on to the Union army's main supply depot at Westminster, Virginia.
The second book was This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust. I remember reading a similar book a few years ago that specifically focused on the soldiers killed at Gettysburg and the after-battle status of the bodies and their later burial. Faust's work covers the entire war from Bull Run to Appomattox and the many ways that the massive number of deaths during the Civil War affected the soldiers, their families, politics, the media, people's religious beliefs, and the psychological outlook of our nation afterwards. The first book I read by Jay Winik, April 1865, is excellent, and I have reviewed it earlier in this blog. When I saw this audio book in the library, because it had Winik's name on it, I snatched it off the shelf in anticipation of another great learning experience. Granted, The Great Upheaval was definitely harder to get my arms around - the premise is huge: 1788-1800 as the pivotal period of political history marks the end of the Old Order and the beginning of the Modern World, and it is primarily shaped, defined, and changed by the leaders, people, events and interconnected actions and reactions to one another of the fledgling United States, revolutionary/Napoleonic France, and ... Russia, yes, Russia, the Russia of Catherine the Great. As with most books, I listened to this one in my car every day while commuting to and from work; 26 CDs in all; I thought it would never end, but I was in no hurry for it to end. After teaching world history for 14 years, I was asked a few years ago to teach American history, and, reluctantly at first, I left the Pelopponesian Wars behind and began exploring my own country's history. It didn't take long for me to leave the Romans behind (is that really even possible?) and become totally immersed and engrossed by the story of our nation... no, not the red-white-and-blue fireworks version, but the real record of America, both good and bad and in between, the litlle bit of black or white and the tons of gray. I totally forgot about the ancient Mediterranean world, the Middle Ages, etc. BUT... what Winik helped me to see, to re-remember, is that hardly anything (I was tempted to say nothing) happens in isolation, but, for the most part, events around the world are interconnected and occur in some kind of relationship to other events elsewhere in the world, and, like the proverbial pebble in the pond, have their own effect upon future events. Enough: if you want to learn more about so many of the personalities of this era in David McCulloughesque detail, then read/listen to this book. If you want to see how the French Revolution shaped the development of our own republic, how it was responsible for the Russian Revolution of the 20th century, then read/listen to this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, learned tons from it. The Great Upheaval has changed the way I consider the past and the events of our own time that are now shaping our world. Sir Ken Robinson lectures on educational topics. This particular talk will make you think: do we as educators, do our schools, kill the creative spark in our students? This video lasts 20 mins. and is well worth your time. Please listen and then post a comment. Currently, I am listening to Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 by John Ferling. Compared to other works I've read, Adams and Jefferson are given fair treatment by Ferling, and he also provides excellent background on the development of America's first political parties, the Federalists and the (Democratic-)Republicans. Like every other recent work on this period with which I am familiar, Ferling also paints a despicable - but apparently true - picture of Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, as the diabolically scheming, although highly patriotic (albeit a monarchial ultraFederalist), money manager extraordinaire, pulling the strings of the developing national government and office holders in an almost Corleone-like manner. One has to ponder whether Hamilton's financial accomplishments - assuming and relieving the national debt, creating the National Bank, the tariffs, investments, etc. - were really the salvation of the country and best solution for establishing our national solvency, or now, looking back 200 years, if they were not actually the seeds of our current financial problems. (But would we really have been better off as a nation of farmers?) One can plainly see in Ferling's explorations the origins of many of the currently vexing political problems in our country - the insanely frustrating gridlock in Congress the most obvious, but also the democratic pendulum swinging between the extremes of monarchy and mobocracy, and the fears of both envisioned by different ones of our Founding Fathers, a group who were far from united in their political opinions as to what was best for the future of our country. Ferling's book is a very good read on the political climate surrounding 1800, and it is written to be understood in terms of 1800. The fact that its personalities and problems share so much with our current political climate is perhaps a little frightening, but this story also provides me with hope that we too might just weather this time and grow stronger. I recently finished listening to Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson, and, although I don't have time to discuss it right now, I didn't want to forget about it, so I have included its cover and promise to come back here soon to review it. Another mention - Isaacson just published a biography of Steve Jobs, recently deceased founder of Apple. Funny: Franklin and Jobs were alike in some ways. Maybe I need to read the Jobs book. Isaacson squarely blames Franklin for the permanent rift with his son William, and squarely casts Franklin as a hearteless if not philandering cad, abandoning Deborah and always choosing to stay in Europe (even when totally unnecessary) rather than return home to his wife and family. Compare with Jeff Shaara's assessment of Franklin in Rise to Rebellion (2001) where Shaara puts most of the blame on William for the irreconcilability of their relationship, and pretty much white-washes Franklin's abandonment of Deborah.Shaara's book does not appear to carry the weight of research exhibited by other serious works on the pre-Revolutionary era and personalities; also, it is hard to accept Shaara's view in light of other recent work on Franklin. The week before starting on Isaacson's book, I had just finished listening to The life and times of Benjamin Franklin, a Modern Scholar lecture series by Prof. H. W. Brands. Professor Brands paints a picture of Franklin as the most famous person in the world even before the American Revolution, due mostly to his scientific explorations with electricity, but also due to his almanac and popular style of writing about his scientific endeavors. Brands, although not as harshly as Isaacson, also describes Franklin's seeming disinterest in his wife Deborah and other family members; neither offers that Franklin's extended absences from home were seen as sacrifices on his part. If you are interested in the life of Benjamin Franklin, even the dark side of this American "saint," then read Isaacson. I've read too many books and forgotten to post my impressions, even to keep a list of those I've read or listened to in the car while commuting back and forth to work at Athens Drive High. I don't want that bad habit to continue, so, even though I have not finished this book, I want to let someone know just how impressed I've been already with what portion I've read. Jay Winik's April 1865: The Month that Saved America (2001), simply put, and extremely understated, is an eye-opener. While there have been many very good books written on the Civil War, several of those recently, most of them are simply the re-telling of old stories with occasional fresh insights or new primary sources - diary, letter, etc. - here and there. Winik's work, however, for enlightening the reader to new perspectives and considerations alone, deserves to be placed alonside that of Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox. What The Bloody Shirt did for Reconstruction, April 1865 does for the Civil War. If one has not read The Bloody Shirt, one does not know the truth about Reconstruction, and if one is without April 1865, then he is missing the significance of the Civil War, and most hugely, the significance of Lee's decision to surrender. I will say that, and I've only read about a third of Winik so far, mostly from the last half of the book. I have, however, already learned so much from what I've read so far, that I feel confident the rest of the book will prove me true. What I mean is Lee's decision to call an end to the fighting and his decision not to perpetuate the struggle through a call for all-out guerrilla warfare. On the morning of April 9th, 1865, the day Lee would surrender to Grant, the Confederate General John Gordon, starting at 5 a.m., had already led his men in a desperately furious and heroic, but futile, attempt to break out from the surrounding Union forces. I would like to quote from Winik: Three hours later, around 8 A.M., a courier from Gordon hastily carried the apocalyptic message to Lee, "I have fought
my corps to a frazzle," he wrote. "And I fear I can do nothing..." Thus the ominous choice was finally set before Lee: surrender or throw his life on one last murderous fight - Lincoln's feared Armegeddon. Lee summoned General Longstreet, who brought Mahone and Lee's chief of artillery, the twenty-nine-year-old brigadier general, E. Porter Alexander. All were expecting a council of war. Instead, the discussion turned to surrender. When a moment of vacillation came and an opening occurred, Alexander, one of the most talented and innovative men in Lee's command, took it. Pleading with his chief not to give up, Alexander saw another recourse: a third option. "You don't care for military glory or fame," he protested, "but we are proud of your name and the record of this army. We want to leave it to our children... a little more blood more or less now makes no difference." Instead, Alexander suggested, a Confederate trump card, in fact, the specter most dreaded by Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman: that the men take to the woods, evaporate into the hills, and become guerrillas. "Two thirds would get away," Alexander contended. "We would be like rabbits or partridges in the bushes," he said, " and they could not scatter to follow us." ... Alexander was already prepared to take to the bush rather than surrender - and so, he later indicated, were countless other men. In fact, that very morning after Gordon's breakout failed, some cavalry had already slipped away; two elite artillery units had destroyed their gun carriages and headed toward the hills; and hundreds more infantry had vanished into the empty, largely unsettled countryside. At that very moment, in fact, the rest of Lee's men were looking to their commanding general for a signal, to tell them what he wanted them to do. Robert E. Lee paused, weighing his answer, the question of guerrilla warfare ricocheting around in his brain. No less than for Davis, the momentous step of surrender was anathema to him. Here, surely, was seduction. And in this fateful moment, while he considered his response - both what he would decide and what he would reject - the aging general would alter the course of the nation's history for all time. It would constitute perhaps Lee's finest moment ever. (145-47) Winik follows with an excellent consideration and history of guerrilla warfare, including the Confederate John Hunt Morgan, who "was killed in 1864, but this hardly ended the North's woes. By 1865, partisans swarmed across the Confederacy like locusts in ancient Egypt" (158). Then, however, Winik chills readers with the rest of his history and consideration of guerrilla warfare: "But if ever there was a question about the Confederacy's ability to wage guerrilla war in April 1865, or the likely consequences of such a nationwide conflict, it was answered by the mere mention of one word: Missouri." This is how I had run into Winik in the first place: doing research on Missouri bushwackers of the Civil War era. The author describes in detail the likes of William Clarke Quantrill, his successor "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and other cutthroats who used the political issues of the day to wreac havoc on some Union soldiers but mostly pro-Union civilians throughout Missouri and Kansas. For sure, Kansas "jayhawkers" were every bit as cruel as their Missouri counterparts; both groups operated for the most part outside of their regular relative military's jurisdiction, writing their own agendas, carrying out their own raids, and operating according to their own lawless codes. Winik clearly lays out the potential prospect of endless rapine and terror that would be the rule of the day if the Confederacy as a whole embraced guerrilla tactics. Fortunately for the nation, Lee said no, and General Joe Johnston, two weeks later, would defy President Jefferson's direct order to continue the struggle as guerrillas; he too would surrender, to Sherman at Durham Station, NC on April 26, 1865. The remaining Confederate generals would all follow suit (except Joe Shelby, who fled to Mexico, then returned to Missouri in 1867 to farm). For sure, individual outlaws and their gangs remained defiant, or usually turned outlaw and simply exploited their 'unreconstructed" status as a cover-up for their crimes, e.g., Frank and Jesse James, but large-scale guerrilla war was avoided, thanks to Lee, and Johnston, and the other Confederate military leaders. Able to discern defeat and the larger good of accepting it, they triumphed over the political blather of Confederate romantics who would have seen the entire South and rest of the country ruined rather than capitulate. Unfortunately, many of their descendants would remain too proud to learn from their ancestors and thus they perpetuated the false doctrine of white supremacy while continuing to subjugate and enslave in new ways the freedmen. We as a nation, all of us, are still paying for that abuse today. Well, talk about the power of the pen. In just over a month since first publishing my post on the Holden biography and the injustices done to our Reconstruction governor by the KKK-dominated General Assembly of the 1870's, today's state Senate has voted to overturn his impeachment (see today's Opinion page in the N&O). Of course, the timing is just a coincidence, as you can see by the plethora of comments to that post (see post on Holden, 6/17/2011). Nevertheless, I am proud to see it and only hope that the state House will follow suit without some sidestepping from the reps of Alamance or Caswell Counties, the hotbed of the most prolific Klan violence during that period. If the historical marker outside the Caswell County Courthouse is any indication (referring to the brutal and well-documented murder of State Senator John S. Stephens as the "alleged Ku Klux murder"), Holden may be in for a long wait before the House approves his pardon (see http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/memoranda/kirkholdenwar.html). Feelings surrounding the history of North Carolina and the Civil War thru Reconstruction Periods still run very strong throughout this state. Like the Vietnam Era across the United States, the Civil War Era was (and remains) a complex and confusing time for North Carolinians. One can hope that as knowledge of the true history of this era comes to light and is shared with more and more Tarheels that, just as Americans have come to terms with Vietnam, North Carolinians can eventually lay the myths to rest and come to a still proud but more realistic perspective of their ancestors' roles during that period. The N&O's editor is more confident than I am that the General Assembly will complete Holden's pardon, but it would definitely be the right thing to do.
In American History textbooks, the white terrorism during Reconstruction is mostly "white-washed" and downplayed. Terms such as 'carpetbagger' and 'scalawag' are still used and perpetuated, defined as Northern and Southern whites respectively (and some blacks) who took advantage of post-Civil War conditions in the South to get ahead politically and economically. Barely is there any reference to those who came to the South out of a sincere desire to help. The term 'Redeemer' is still used to refer to the Democrats (and a mythical union with white southern Republicans) who rallied to re-establish southern white control after the 'bayonet rule' of Federal troops was removed (Prentice Hall United States History, p.422). Congress is controlled by 'Radical Republicans,' defined as those who "favored punishment and harsh reorganization for the South" and believed in full citizenship including voting rights for African Americans (p.404), and students are misled to believe that "white southerners from all economic classes were united in their insistence that African Americans not have full citizenship (p.416)." Klan violence is discussed, but no numbers are given, no tortures, rapes, or murders are detailed, and, perhaps worst of all, students are left with the inference that blacks were (still are?) incapable of handling the responsibilities of citizenship: "In the end, most northerners came to understand what (white) southerners already knew (p.419)...what difficulties are in the way of the system which has been established by those who are ignorant of the nature and character of the blacks (p.431)." This from a textbook that is currently in use across the country. No wonder the old comedian Jerry Clowers could make us laugh instead of cry when he talked about Yazoo City, Mississippi. After having read Cicelski & Tyson's Democracy Betrayed, I was already very much aware of these missing and sordid details, at least in regard to the white backlash following Reconstruction in North Carolina, but I was not prepared for Budiansky's book which detailed white supremacist violence and political corruption across the entire South from 1866-1876. There are many villains in The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomatox, such as M.C. Butler and Senator Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman who later tutored Strom Thurmond, but Budiansky also provides us with the stories of the tragic heroes who tried - almost always in vain - to ensure the civil rights of formerly enslaved people and to protect them and their white benefactors from harm. Most of these heroes, like South Carolina's Prince Rivers, or Aldebert Ames and Albert T. Morgan in Mississippi, I had never heard of, but one, former Confederate General James Longstreet, certainly stands out anew for such efforts in post-Civil War Louisiana, and Budiansky includes the story of Lewis Merrill and the U.S. 7th Calvary in their efforts to protect freedmen and sympathetic whites in South Carolina before the fateful meeting with Sitting Bull in 1876. I was grateful to learn that the 7th, at least in its pre-Western assignment, was capable of such good. Together, these books have helped me form a more realistic picture of what happened after the Civil War, and helped me to see how, in many ways, "the South" (i.e., the minority of white power brokers before and after the War) actually won the Civil War; it took them losing the actual war to do it, but they did it in the succeeding decades following Appomatox. (See James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me for the details.) The most tragic part is that their efforts actually hurt and crippled the real South - all Southerners - from that time on up to the present. Budiansky's book is a critically important read, if you have the stomach for it. As for me, I'm going to step away from Reconstruction and Jim Crow for a while, maybe concentrate on sudoku or Rummikub; I need a break from discovering much more about our real past, but... if I ever teach American history again, The Bloody Shirt will be required reading. True dat. Oh yeh, your homework assignment: See if you can even find the town of Hamburg, SC on a current map. (Go ahead, fellahs, and play through.) |
Charley NorkusHigh school history teacher for almost 20 years Archives
November 2015
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