Comments on: “Long-Legged Yankee Lies”

By: Chris Meekins

Chris Meekins — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:35:55 +0000

Point well made and well taken. I certainly should not have suggested something was left out due to its possible negative effect – there is plenty left in that makes that a silly comment. Sorry about that.
I am pleased to be in agreement with you regarding selection coloring interpretation. And take your point about the process being influenced by the context of the times.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:55:52 +0000

While I agree entirely that the selection of documents in the OR colors the interpretation of the war, I might point out that the point of Series I of the OR was to relate the paperwork relating to the operations of armies in the field. Of course, focusing on the armies does lead to a specific story being told. From what I have read about the process behind the OR, there was immense pressure on the War Department to process the documents and get the series out. Likewise, the calls for the OR centered around the activities of the major armies in the field. I agree with you Chris that the document selection shapes memory, but I think with the OR the process is the reverse – popular sentiment at the time placed importance upon the actions of the armies in the field (rather than administrative, routine, or lower-level paperwork [how often do you run across regimental level documents outside of formal reports of battles?]). For us today, the OR is often the first place to go when starting to research a particular topic, but keep in mind by the time the first volume appeared in 1880, a vast literature about the Civil War had already appeared. For the most part this work concentrated on battles, leaders, and military operations. In other words, those behind the OR responded to popular public sentiment regarding what was worthy of inclusion. I find the insinuation that the editors left out documents simply because they portrayed the US in a negative light a bit unconvincing because of the amount of material that does paint a negative picture of the US war effort that found its way into the OR.

By: chris meekins

chris meekins — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:31:49 +0000

Hey Robert,
They, all the various OR’s, are an amazing resource. And I think all Civil War historians can be thankful we have such a touchstone. And the OR’s seem so very exhaustive in materials presented. But an easy extra step for historians is to see if there are more documents pertinent to their research in the records at Archives I.
I guess it was seeing the purple circular stamp on documents denoting their selection to be used in the OR that began me thinking that not everything got in. And if it did not get in did that mean it was not important? When I found items I thought important to my work it crystallized for me that documents included were there to give an account of particular narrative lines. Someone had to chose those narrative lines. And with a title like “War of the Rebellion” we may be seeing a clue as to the general thrust of those narrative lines.
I am pleased to have contributed to the general discussion here – as I find Kevin’s work here of much benefit and appreciate everyone’s efforts to contribute. Thanks Robert for the dialog!

By: Robert Moore

Robert Moore — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:07:43 +0000

Hi Chris,

Not meaning to sound like there was something “sinister” about the OR, but I am compelled by the way you suggest how selection of specific documents “colors” the way we reflect on events as we read about them in the OR. I mean, it makes sense, but I never thought of the ORs that way before.

By: chris meekins

chris meekins — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:04:48 +0000

Hey Robert,

Nothing so insidious as what you might be suggesting (not wishing to place an argument in your question). Although I had not checked, specifically, against Confederate reports. What I found in letters sent and received to the US Dept of NC offered more evidence on NC unionism and also on the issue of trade in the NC waterways. By excluding these documents from the OR our understanding of what is happening in the Dept of NC is altered. The editors were forced to choose documents that depicted key moments, as they understood what moments or actions were key. When a document is chosen it is rendered faithfully. But I submit that “what to leave in and what to leave out” colors our understanding in a particular direction. Even though it might be subtle. Maybe the editors did not think the trade issue important or maybe it does not portray the US in a positive light. But by not including those documents at all the reader of the OR would never know one way or the other.
Control the information, control the argument, control the memory. Its about as 1984 as it gets.

By: Bob Pollock

Bob Pollock — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:52:11 +0000

OOPS! my finger hit the wrong key. Anyway… Grant freed his slave at a time when he could have used the money.

By: Bob Pollock

Bob Pollock — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:50:27 +0000

Thank you for responding to this, Brooks. I have only been at White Haven a few months, and visitation has been slow due to weather and other factors, but I frequently have to try to correct visitors’ false impressions. A few days ago, for example, after talking about Grant and slavery at White Haven, a man from Mobile, Alabama visiting with his wife, said to me, “Robert E. Lee didn’t own any slaves.” A Google search of Grant, Lee, and slavery shows just how much misinformation is out there. I think it is also important to note that we don’t know how or why Grant acquired the one slave he owned and that he could have sold him at a t

By: TF Smith

TF Smith — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:47:35 +0000

In reference to the state of art in terms of Civil War remembrance in 1960-61, something that might be worth considering are the names assigned to the USN’s 41 SSBNs equipped with Polaris and/or Posiedon SLBMs.

These ships were authorized during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and the choices made for nomenclature (“American patriots” as opposed to the then-traditional “marine life” names for subs) are interesting:

Of the 41 boats, only four (USS Robert E. Lee, SSBN-601; Abraham Lincoln (602), Ulysses S. Grant (631), and Stonewall Jackson (634)) would come to mind as figures from the Civil War period (although there were SLBMs named after Sam Houston and James K. Polk, among others, whose lives were intimately connected with the Civil War.)

Overall, all 42 individuals (counting USS Lewis and Clark as a two-fer) honored are male, although not all are soldiers/statesmen types – Thomas Edison was honored, for example, as was the humorist Will Rogers. Rogers is fairly quixotic, but there are some others that sort of make you scratch your head in terms of “what were they thinking?”…

Four foreign nationals (Lafayette, Von Steuben, Pulaski, and Bolivar) were honored, as was one (Mariano Vallejo) who became a US citizen more or less by force; also honored were two “natives” (Kamehameha and Tecumseh); Kamehameha died without any knowledge of the existence of the United States, presumably, and Tecumseh, of course, actually fought against the US as a British ally in the 1812-15 war.

Exactly one African-American is honored, and he was not, for example, Frederick Douglas; instead, USS George Washington Carver was christened as such.

The memoranda back-and-forth about the names selected for these ships could offer some real insight, I’d think.

By: Robert Moore

Robert Moore — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:42:34 +0000

Chris… Wow! I never considered the OR as a form of persuasion or argument to prove a point. Are you saying that the War Department, ultimately, only allowed Confederate reports that would support a particular argument?

By: Ken Noe

Ken Noe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:41:04 +0000

Going through the records of the 1862 Mountain Department at least, it was easy to pick out what ended up in the OR and what didn’t–there’s a little pencil checkmark on the former. Leaving those items out didn’t give the OR a Northern bias–the editors as I remember worked hard to find and even buy Confederate documents–but it did sanitize the war somewhat. That is, items related to traditional warfare routinely were included in the OR, but items related to guerrilla activities often were not.

By: Brooks Simpson

Brooks Simpson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:26:05 +0000

As Grant freed the only slave he actually owned before the war, and as the Dent slaves freed themselves during the war (and this freedom was rendered into law when Missouri abolished slavery early in 1865), there’s a host of factual misstatements here, although even the editor of Mrs. Grant’s autobiography, the late John Simon, perpetuated the misapprehension in the notes to that volume.

By: Robert Moore

Robert Moore — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:28:05 +0000

But, if Union regimentals written after the war make the claim that emancipation was behind the “cause” of the men serving, does this not also mean that we should consider the claims made in Confederate regimentals written soon after the war, where the soldiers said they were not fighting for slavery?