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Douglas Southall Freeman Visits the Crater

July 13, 2010 By Kevin Levin 9 Comments

I have culled a number of helpful sources from Google Books.  Today I am sharing a wonderful image of Douglas Southall Freeman that was taken from a Life magazine article published in May 1940.  The article takes the reader to various places from the Petersburg Campaign, including the Crater and follows Freeman as he attempts to make sense of the growing conflict in Europe and its likely outcome based on his understanding of the Civil War.  It’s an interesting piece and the photographs are wonderful.  The article begins with that famous photograph of Freeman saluting the Lee statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond.

I believe that the photograph of the remains of the Crater was taken facing north.  The modern day trail follows the far side to the left and behind the Confederate position.  If you look closely you can see the South Carolina marker in the rear and to the right behind the tree.  I should mention that Freeman’s fascination with the Civil War began at the Crater.  In 1903 he attended the famous Crater reenactment with his father, who served in the 41st Virginia Infantry.  After watching the veterans of Mahone’s Virginia brigade march by the young Freeman pledged to his father that he would tell their story.  Another great find.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Civil War Historians, Memory, William Mahone/Crater Tagged With: ,

Ebony Magazine Remembers USCTs

July 11, 2010 By Kevin Levin 5 Comments

One of the richest sources for a black counter-memory of the Civil War is Ebony magazine.  Throughout the Civil War Centennial in the 1960s and beyond the magazine published articles that addressed the crucial role that African Americans played in Union victory.   No topic received more attention than USCTs.  You can view old issues through Google Books and it has proven to be incredibly helpful as I write about how black Americans remembered the battle of the Crater during this period.

One particular article written by Lerone Bennett Jr., (October 1975) about the battle of Chaffin’s Farm caught my attention.  In addition to Bennett’s text there are five sketches by Orville A. Hurt that add quite a bit of depth to the essay. You can find Hurt’s illustrations in multiple issues of the magazine.

Hurt’s illustrations emphasize the bravery and manliness of USCTs as well as the sacrifice made on the battlefield.  The image above is by far the most powerful.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a stark image of a black soldier plunging his bayonet through a Confederate officer before the movie Glory.

Filed Under: Civil Rights History, Civil War Historians, Memory, Slavery Tagged With:

Congratulations to Dan Sutherland

July 7, 2010 By Kevin Levin 3 Comments

Those of you who attended the meeting of the SCWH in Richmond last month have already heard that Daniel Sutherland has been awarded the inaugural Tom Watson Brown Award for A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War.  The award comes with a cash prize of $50,000.  Not bad.  From the press release:

According to George Rable, who holds the Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama and served as chair of the prize jury, Sutherland’s book “shows the grim and gritty reality of the Civil War beyond the major battlefields and throughout both the Confederacy and border states.” In addition, the “engagingly written” book “reconfigures our understanding of the relationship between the battlefield and the Southern home-front” in a way that makes “a distinguished and lasting contribution to the field.”  The award announcement was made on June 19 at the SCWH biannual conference in Richmond, Virginia. Sutherland will formally accept the award and deliver the keynote address at the Society’s annual banquet at the Southern Historical Association in Charlotte in November. The award is funded by the Watson-Brown Foundation in honor of the broadcaster, philanthropist, and Civil War enthusiast Tom Watson Brown.

“It’s significant that in the inaugural year of the prize, the Watson Brown jury recognized not a book on a battle or a military leader but one that took as its subject the terrible toll of the war on ordinary citizens far from the battlefield and the role that irregular warfare played in undermining popular support for the war,” says UNC Press editor-in-chief, David Perry. “We’re immensely pleased for Dan Sutherland and grateful for the recognition that this prize brings to his important work.”

The book has also won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History and the Jefferson Davis Award from the Museum of the Confederacy.  I read this book when it was first published and can’t recommend it highly enough.  By the way, the last time I talked with Professor Sutherland he was working on a biography about James Whistler.

Filed Under: Civil War Historians

Remembering USCTs at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

July 7, 2010 By Kevin Levin 5 Comments

I am pleased to report that I am making steady progress on revising my Crater manuscript.  In fact, I recently contacted the publisher to inform them that I plan to mail the manuscript no later than the first week of August.  It’s nice to finally be in the home stretch.  Much of my time has been spent cutting content that detracts from the core issue of race and historical memory, which I am now convinced is this project’s most important contribution to the literature.  One section that I am adding is a discussion of the black counter-memory of the battle. It’s not that I didn’t have any references to African American accounts, but there are so few that it was very difficult to weave them together as a coherent analysis.  One of my reviewers suggested that I take another shot at it.

One of the more fruitful sources is the postwar accounts written by white officers from USCT units.  I still don’t necessarily consider these sources to constitute a counter-memory, but they did help to preserve memory of the participation of African Americans at the Crater at the turn of the twentieth century.  The problem for the historian is that so few of these articles actually tell the story of the men in the units or address the larger issues that defined the service of African Americans.  The cultural and social divide between the two groups made it difficult for these individuals to relate to one another and very few officers remained in touch with the men in their units after the war.  I have accounts in which the officers go on and on about the battlefield heroics of their fellow white officers, but say nothing about the men in the ranks.  A few that do end up minimizing their claims to manhood by continuing the argument that black soldiers needed their white officers to control their innate emotional excesses.  One account focuses specifically on denying claims that white officers were drunk during the battle without addressing continued claims that black soldiers were as well.

The few accounts that do attempt to tell the story of the men in Ferrero’s Fourth Division are very important primarily because they preserved a memory of the war at a time when the nation was moving away from a narrative of emancipation and embracing reunion.  The majority of these articles can be found in The National Tribune, which was in publication between 1877 and 1917 and functioned as the principal Grand Army of the Republic’s weekly newspaper.  Two officers in particular stand out for their contributions to this newspaper.  The first is Lt. Freeman Bowley, who served in the 30th USCT.  His writings and memoir were recently compiled and edited by Keith Wilson as Honor in Command (University Press of Flordia, 2006).  The second is Colonel Delavan Bates, who also served in the 30th USCT.

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Filed Under: Civil War Historians, Memory, Slavery, William Mahone/Crater Tagged With: ,

Lights…Camera…Action & Black Confederates

July 6, 2010 By Kevin Levin 12 Comments

This coming Friday I am scheduled to spend the day with a film crew from Eastern Carolina University, which is producing a documentary on the subject of “black Confederates.”  I am excited about my first foray into the world of film and just a little apprehensive about how my commentary will be used.  Still, I do think it is an opportunity that I can’t pass up given that my next book project will be a study of memory and black Confederates.  The filming will be done at my home and we plan on spending about 4-5 hours discussing the subject.

I am going to put together some information sheets that I can refer to during the interview.  My overall goal is first and foremost to help the audience to properly frame the discussion around the correct terms.  This is a discussion about how the Confederate war effort altered the institution of slavery and not one about soldiers.  We need to use the correct terminology.  As anyone who is familiar with the primary evidence can tell you any examples of black southerners who actually served as soldiers are incredibly rare and therefore constitute and exception to this framework.  As I’ve pointed out over the years this is not a problem confined to the general public, but even among those who work as public historians such Earl Ijames of the North Carolina Museum of History.

And if Ijames wasn’t disturbing enough for you than have a look at this essay written by Bernhard Thuersam, who is the director of the Cape Fear Historical Institute in Wilmington, North Carolina.  The essay is a rough survey of the role of black soldiers in the Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War.  I am not going to sum up the entire article.  I neither have the time nor the patience.  On top of some of the same old pieces of evidence that appear in every article/website on the subject consider the following:

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Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Civil War Historians, Lost Cause, Public History, Slavery, Southern History Tagged With:

Did USCTs Massacre Confederates at the Crater?

July 4, 2010 By Kevin Levin 19 Comments

I have already mentioned what a pleasure it was to have the opportunity to talk last week with Earl Hess about our mutual interest in the battle of the Crater.  During our discussion Prof. Hess asked if I dealt in any substantive way with the evidence that USCTs executed surrendered Confederates at the Crater.  I told him that I reference these accounts, but that I had a very difficult time coming to terms with the numbers as well as the timing.  One of the reasons I am looking forward to Hess’s upcoming book on the battle is that he attempts to put a number on it.  I don’t know if this is possible given the scant evidence, but it is definitely an aspect of the battle that is often overlooked and I have no doubt that Hess will give it a good shot.

So, the short answer is, yes, USCTs did massacre Confederates at the Crater.  It occurred during the initial advance of the two brigades of Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero’s Fourth Division, which took place at approximately 8 A.M.  While part of the unit was diverted into the chaos of the crater itself, a substantial portion of the division was able to skirt along its northern rim and advance west toward their objective along the Jerusalem Plank Road.  Elements of the other three divisions were already engaged in this area by this time, but the rush of new soldiers led to the surrender of roughly 200 Confederates who were huddled in the complex chain of earthworks that dotted the landscape behind the salient.

It should come as no surprise that the black soldiers who made this attack did so having been incited by their white officers to “Remember Fort Pillow” and grant, “No Quarter.”  It would be interesting to know what exactly these officers communicated to their men about the recent massacre of black soldiers at Fort Pillow given the levels of illiteracy among USCTs.  These black soldiers would have also gone into battle knowing that it was unlikely they would be allowed to live in the even that they were taken prisoner.  Accounts suggest that they “killed numbers of the enemy in spite of the efforts of their officers to restrain them.”  Another Union officer recalled, “That there was a half determination on the part of a good many of the black soldiers to kill them as fast as they came to them.  They were thinking of Fort Pillow, and small blame to them.”  As far as I know this was the only moment in the battle where this type of killing on the part of USCTs occurred.

While it may be tempting to explain the Confederate massacre of USCTs following the battle as a direct response to these incidents, this would be a mistake.  First, the evidence suggests that the killings were isolated and therefore probably not widely reported throughout the ranks.  Mahone’s counterattack took place after this incident and while these men knew before going into battle that they would meet black soldiers there is no evidence to suggest that they were aware of these killings.  Of course, many of them recalled having been told that the black soldiers would give, “No Quarter.”  Finally, as I’ve argued elsewhere, Confederate soldiers did not need a massacre on the part of USCTs to justify a much larger slaughter of surrendered black soldiers.  There are reasons as to why this happened that extend beyond the battlefield itself.

[Painting of Crater by Tom Lovell]
Filed Under: Civil War Historians, Memory, Slavery, William Mahone/Crater Tagged With: , ,

“War So Terrible”

July 1, 2010 By Kevin Levin 6 Comments

One of the highlights for me during last week’s Petersburg conference was the opportunity to view Pamplin Park’s feature film, “War So Terrible: A Civil War Combat Film.”  Will Greene describes its inception as a response to visitors who reflected on their experience in the park as somehow enjoyable or entertaining.  Greene and the rest of the staff did not want visitors, especially students, finishing their tour with a glorified view of war.  Rather, they wanted to convey the horrors of battle and the changes that soldiers underwent over the course of the war and beyond.  [This is something that I've discussed on this blog on a number of occasions.  See here and here.]

There are two versions of the film, the full length running 48 minutes as well as a less graphic version that runs 23 minutes.  The film is framed around a veterans reunion that takes place somewhere in the South.  During the ceremony both Benjamin Franklin Meyers of the Union and Andrew Jackson Stewart of the Confederacy reflect on their experiences during the war from their first battle to the trench warfare of 1864.  The film delves into questions of why men fought and persevered in the ranks without reducing the war to any one explanation.  There are no transcendent figures and no references to Lincoln, Davis, Lee, Grant or anyone to detract from the focus of the film.  Viewers empathize with both individuals and suffer through some very difficult battle footage, which is emotionally draining.  The film succeeds brilliantly in conveying the emotion of battle.  Finally, the reunion scenes steer clear of the mistaken notion that Lee’s surrender at Appomattox or even later events involving Union and Confederate veterans reflected the healing of old wounds and bitterness.  I don’t want to give too much away about this movie.

At the conclusion of the movie our group remained silent for a few moments before discussing it with Greene and I don’t mind admitting that I had a tear in my eye.  I made it a point to purchase a copy before leaving and I plan on showing the full version to my Civil War class this year.  If you are a teacher I encourage you to purchase a copy through Pamplin Park’s online store.  It’s only $9.95 and I guarantee that you won’t be sorry.

Congratulations to Will Greene and the rest of the staff for this fine film.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Civil War Historians, Public History, Teaching Tagged With: