Current Affairs

We Could Just As Easily Have Waited For the Civil War Bicentennial

September 1, 2010 By Kevin Levin 17 Comments

Gettysburg College historian, Allen Guelzo, has a short op-ed piece in the Gettysburg Times on the ongoing efforts to commemorate the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Guelzo assumes a rather gloomy posture owing to the small number of states that have organized commissions, the inability of the federal government to get involved, and the continued difficulty to attract African Americans to Civil War related events. All of these point, especially, the last one, deserve our attention and even concern, but I tend to think that Guelzo’s skepticism is misplaced.

To be completely honest, I am surprised as to what has been done already to acknowledge the 150th anniversary of the war. There is no reason why we must officially acknowledge this milestone. We could just as easily wait for the bicentennial year. It would be nice to see a few more states approach the level of activity to be found in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, but let’s not hold our breadth. What Guelzo misses entirely is the number of museums along with state and local historical societies, which will organize events, teaching materials, and other resources for their local communities. How about the attention that the National Park Service will bring to all of this? Yes, their exhibitions and events will vary in quality, but that should not be of any great concern. Perhaps Guelzo’s concern about the number of state commissions is more about how it reflects on Americans’ overall attitude to its collective past. He may be asking, “Are we this disinterested in our past?” Yes and no. On the one hand we are in the middle of a pretty bad recession, which has no end in sight. It’s no surprise that remembering events that took place long ago through the spending of millions of dollars may not seem like the best use of tax dollars. I happen to agree with that sentiment. On the other hand, perhaps one can make the case that there is no longer a need for a top-down model of national historic commemoration. Information is much more easily shared via the Internet and information is much more easily accessible by a broader spectrum of the general public. We can see this in action here in Virginia as local communities are taking the lead in organizing Civil War commissions.

Guelzo concludes with the following:

There is a much to celebrate in the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. There is also a great deal of anger and disappointment, and in some places, downright contempt. The Civil War re-enactment community mistrusts academic Civil War historians; the academics, in turn, are regarded by the public historians as gate-crashers of their collections and exhibitions; public historians suspect relic and memorabilia dealers of piracy; and the general public seems interested in history only when it’s painted-up in bizarre, horror-movie formats. These are all obstacles in the path of a worthwhile Sesquicentennial. But the greatest challenge of the Sesquicentennial will be how to synthesize the Civil War’s “old” story of battles-and-reunion with the Civil War’s “new” story of race and gender. Until that begins to happen, and until the competing re-enactment, academic, and public empires decide that they all have a common stake in the Sesquicentennial, state legislatures, historical societies, and organizations are likely to take the safe road, and call the whole thing off.

There is something to this, but it smacks of arm-chair navel gazing. The divisions between various constituencies cannot be so easily drawn and in the case of the relationship between reenactors (general public) and academic historians, I would argue that it is simply false. I also think that Guelzo’s characterization of the general public’s interest in the past is also way off the mark. It doesn’t explain the popularity of Glory or the fact that last year’s Signature Conference, sponsored by the University of Richmond and Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission attracted over 2,000 people. Guelzo is absolutely right that the biggest challenge is expanding the general public’s understanding of the war beyond the battlefield, but even here I would suggest that he misses the mark. Here in Virginia I’ve traveled to numerous historical institutions for exhibits and lectures over the past ten years that focus on issues of race and gender. You can even find it at the Museum of the Confederacy. ["Before Freedom Came" takes us all the way back to 1992.] No doubt, public historians have struggled with the question of how to attract African Americans to Civil War related events, but there is no magic bullet here. All you can do is continue to work to present the general public with projects that reflect solid scholarship and a commitment to inclusiveness.

The extent and scope of our national Civil War commemoration will reflect local urges to take steps to organize. No doubt, we will see much more of it in certain places around the country, but we should keep in mind that it does not have to be all or nothing.

“Ground Zero,” Civil War Memory, and Contested Landscapes

August 23, 2010 By Kevin Levin 25 Comments

Like many of you I’ve been closely following the heated controversy surrounding the plans to locate the Cordoba Institute within a few blocks of “Ground Zero” in Manhattan. While I have an opinion about this I’ve tried my best to maintain a safe distance from the debate in order to take in the broader picture. Admittedly, such a step is difficult for me to maintain since I lost my cousin on 9-11. Alisha Levin was 34 yrs. old and worked as a Human Resources manager for Fuji Bank in the South Tower. She left a message on her parent’s answering machine to say that she was safe just after the first tower was hit.

For those of us interested in the emotion that often accompanies questions about how to commemorate historical landscapes this recent debate is instructive. The lines between different historical memories are already well entrenched. The many interest groups who lay claim to the site of 9-11 are also easily delineated. Various stakeholders in this contest have already voiced positions on the architecture of the proposed new complex as well as a planned memorial for the site. That an Islamic Center located 2-blocks from Ground Zer0 – as opposed to the schlock that has been sold on the actual site for some time – can generate such a response is also instructive. It should come as no surprise that the debate has been defined by such passion given the nature of the attack, the scale of the destruction, and the death toll. In my view every American has a stake in how the landscape is shaped in the coming years regardless of the legal and constitutional questions involved.

At the same time it is clear that the strong passions of those who claim ownership of this site are a function of different factors. The families are moved by the memories and loss of loved ones; others are clearly using this issue for political purposes; and, a third group is driven as much by fear of Islam as they are by a sense of national loss and a desire to assign blame. Of course, the spectrum of interested parties is much broader. How our collective memory of this site will shift in the coming decades is anyone’s guess. After all, it was probably difficult to imagine reunions between Japanese and American veterans of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The passage of time shifts our focus as subsequent generations become more removed from the emotions of those who lived through the event. With time we are able to explore aspects of a remembered past in a way that cushions still latent emotions. At some point those emotions are more a result of choice than a direct connection to the generation that directly experienced some aspect of the event. Even for those who experienced the event itself or as an extension of one of the victims the passage of time leaves the rememberer in a very different place.

This controversy has also reinforced my own understanding of the way in which certain people lay claim to our Civil War past. You don’t have to look far for the passions that stir our personal and intellectual connections to the Civil War in reference to a public space or document. I experience it first hand on this blog in the form of comments and private emails that express bitterness over something I’ve written. Of course, I do my best to parse out the content from the emotion, and while I am interested in both I give much more attention to the former. It would be a mistake to judge the emotion as right or wrong, but I do question its legitimacy. I don’t believe that the emotion attached to people’s Civil War memory today ought to be understood as a moral claim on the historical event in the way that competing memories of 9-11 continue to do so. The difference for me is the relative remoteness of the rememberer. I find it difficult to pinpoint the psychological difference between the two examples, but I have a sense of what is going on here. On the one hand the events of 9-11 are part of our lived history. It’s a history that for many of us has left a void in the structure of our immediate families; even for those removed from the personal tragedy of the story it continues to give meaning to our lives and to the way we view the nation and rest of the world. I simply fail to see how such a dynamic holds for descendants of Civil War soldiers (Union and Confederate) and the rest of the general population. We may feel connected to some aspect of the war, but the overly moralistic tone and claims to an exclusive ownership of the past or even some aspect of the past is in my view completely unjustified. It’s what I understand when I hear: “Get over it.” Perhaps a better way of putting it is: “Get over yourself.”

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Current Affairs, Memory, Public History

Update on Glenn Beck’s Lincoln

July 21, 2010 By Kevin Levin 16 Comments

I wondered whether folks in the conservative movement would take Glenn Beck to task for his recent broadcasts in which he celebrates Lincoln’s respect for the Constitution as well as his role in ending slavery. Well, what do you know, Thomas DiLorenzo has recently weighed in at Lew Rockwell. Unfortunately, he does little more than infer some kind of conspiracy over at FOX News:

I suspect that the reason for this disconnect with historical reality is that: 1) The Fox News Channel is essentially a propaganda arm of the neoconservative political cabal that has captured the Republican Party; 2) One of the cornerstones of neocon ideology is Lincoln idolatry and hatred of the South and Southerners. (Professor Paul Gottfried, for one, has written extensively about this.) 3) Therefore, if Glenn wants to keep his gig at Fox, he must toe the party line on Lincoln. Being otherwise libertarian – while the Democrats are in power – serves the purposes of the neocon cabal nicely.

Over at Southern Heritage News and Views, Bob Hurst laments Beck’s inability to embrace the “Lincoln the Tyrant” narrative:

Whatever the reason, I am very disappointed in Glenn Beck and have lost a degree of confidence in the accuracy and truthfulness of other statements he has made or will make in the future. I hate this because I have had such confidence in his truthfulness and admire his courage in revealing many of his findings about powerful people and potentially explosive situations.

We will have to wait and see whether Beck recants and returns to the embrace of a view that has almost nothing to do with history. As far as I can tell, all three individuals lack a serious understanding of Lincoln and the Civil War, but for some reason I find myself rooting for Beck.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Current Affairs, Memory Tagged With: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas DiLorenzo

Nikki Haley’s Civil War Memory (when the SCV asks)

June 14, 2010 By Kevin Levin 25 Comments

Update: The interviews were conducted by the Palmetto Patriots with all the candidates and are available on the organization’s website. A wide range of issues were covered. McMaster discusses the flag in Part 2 at 2:55. Bauer comments on the flag in Part 2 at 4:50 after one of the interviewers admits that there is some crossover between the SCV and Palmetto Patriots. Barrett is a member of an SCV camp and in Part 1 at 2:25 pledged to defend the Confederate flag against “cultural genocide.” One of the interviewers also encouraged Barrett to resist calls to remove the statue of Ben Tillman from the statehouse. There is nothing surprising in any of this.

This is a wonderful example of a behind-the scenes-look at the way in which Civil War/Confederate heritage continues to shape politics. I’m not sure Nikki Haley, who recently won the Republican Gubernatorial Primary in South Carolina, knows anything about the American Civil War, but she is clearly being put through the ringer by an unknown group. I suspect that the interviewers are with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, but I can’t be sure. Haley reduces the war to a matter of “tradition vs. change” and is clearly doing her best not to offend. Around the 5 minute mark one of the interviewers demands to know Haley’s position on the ongoing debate about the Confederate flag and reminds her of their work to remove Governor Beasley for proposing to remove the flag from atop the statehouse.

I’m not sure if I am more upset about the complete lack of historical understanding by everyone in this video or that this is an issue that demands serious attention by our candidates for public office.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Current Affairs, Lost Cause Tagged With: Sons of Confederate Veterans

Mainstream Media Tackles Confederate History Month = Fail

April 12, 2010 By Kevin Levin 40 Comments

Thankfully the media circus is beginning to die down over last week’s Confederate History Month proclamation. I ended up watching more of the “debate” on the major news channels than I care to admit. It was downright painful to watch. The most disappointing aspect of it all was the almost complete absence of any professional historians. You would think that the major networks could have mustered up at least one legitimate historian. The closest I saw was a half-way decent interview that Rachel Maddow conducted with Patricia Harris-Lacewell, who teaches politics and African American Studies at Princeton. Unfortunately, the professor’s distinction between two southern pasts didn’t quite address all of the salient issues involved.

More often than not the audience was treated to the same talking heads who clearly do not understand the relevant history. CNN’s Roland Martin had a field day with this issue, which included a lively debate with Brag Bowling. No surprise that Bowling was at times inarticulate, but Martin’s comparison of Confederate soldiers with Nazis and suggestion that they were “domestic terrorists” shut the door on any chance of rational debate. You can read Martin’s recent essay comparing Confederates with terrorists on the CNN site. It is one of the most incoherent arguments that I’ve seen in a long time; I would love for someone to explain it to me. Finally, check out Martin in this little clip with Republican adviser Mary Matalin, who retreats to the old saw that most white southerners were not slaveowners and that most northerners were not abolitionists.

Next, we head on over to Hardball where we find Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews in full combat. Neither of these guys is capable of doing much more than jabbing back and forth at one another and Buchanan’s constant referencing of the Founding Fathers as slaveowners makes little sense. Also on MSNBC is something called the Dylan Rattigan Show. I have no idea who he is nor can I identify the guests beyond their names. Regardless, there is almost nothing worth repeating from this interview. Finally, I share with you a real doozy of an interview with the chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Jeff Davis. Davis does a fabulous job towing the SCV party line and we learn from the woman conducting the interview that there were 500,000 slaves in West Virginia. Oh boy.

It’s hard to believe that with the resources available to these “news” outlets that this was the best they could do in communicating much needed information to the general public. I am tired of hearing those cries about how little our students understand about this nation’s history. If the rest of the nation’s understanding of the past is anything like what was presented as news on this issue over the past week than our children are the least of our problems. In the end our mainstream news reflects our mainstream culture.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Current Affairs Tagged With: Confederate History Month

Barack Obama, Bob McDonnell, and Civil War Memory

April 10, 2010 By Kevin Levin 16 Comments

This post originally ran in April 2007. I thought it might be worth re-posting given the recent debate here in Virginia and throughout the country over Confederate History Month. I am wondering whether we are witnessing a decisive shift in our collective memory of the war? Is the governor’s apology an indication that it is no longer possible to use the Lost Cause for political gain?

One of my readers recently pointed out that the Civil War Sesquicentennial observances may coincide with the election of our first black president. How will that shape the national narrative that will arise out of political speeches, state sesquicentennial commission plans, and other observances? My friendly emailer asks:

As the bellowing over the Confederate battle flag seems to be nearing crescendo, how relevant will Confederate heritage appear four years from now? And with, perhaps, a black president, how empty will any Confederate legacy be revealed to be?

The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that an Obama presidency could reshape our understanding of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the rest of American history right down to the Civil Rights Movement. We’ve already seen how a push for black civil rights in the 1950s and 60s served to challenge the work of various centennial commissions. This led to a noticeable waning in enthusiasm among white Americans for centennial celebrations by 1963. The difference this time around could be that with Obama potentially elected in 2008 that this will leave plenty of time for the nation to begin to rethink its history and the place of slavery and emancipation within the overall narrative. Think about it: We will hear about how far the nation has come since before the Civil War. Part of that narrative will highlight the Civil War as leading to emancipation through the sacrifice and bravery of black soldiers themselves along with the actions of countless others. It is reasonable to expect that the work of various organizations involved in setting up events for the sesquicentennial would be influenced to some extent by this natural curiosity as to how the nation has come to elect its first black president. In short, the “emancipationist legacy” of the Civil War would return to center stage. It does have the potential of becoming overly celebratory and I would resist this urge for the sake of maintaining the focus on better understanding the relevant history.

Returning to the passage quoted above it is necessary to point out that the “emptiness” referred to in connection with “Confederate heritage” is not meant to denigrate the very strong desire on the part of Southern whites to remember and acknowledge the service of ancestors. I’ve said before that there is nothing necessarily wrong or even strange about this personal need to remember. It is meant, however, to point out that this view reduces both the war years, Reconstruction, and the history of race and slavery in a way that fails to acknowledge salient factors and relevant perspectives as part of the overall historical narrative. It tends to reduce Southern history and the Civil War to the perspective of white Southerners and equates the Confederacy with the South. More importantly, Southern history is equated or understood along the overly narrow lines of the four years of the Confederacy. In short, the narratives coming out of Confederate Heritage groups would be inadequate to explain a black president.

More to the point, the attention among professional historians in recent years to better understanding the ways in which slavery shaped the Confederate experience will potentially occupy a central place in future narratives that purport to explain the historical background of a black president. We will be forced to acknowledge secession and the Confederacy as an attempt to maintain slavery and a racial hierarchy and not simply as a constitutional right or a defense of hearth and home; both points figure prominently in our collective memory while race and slavery linger on the fringes. Of course, understanding the Civil War years does not in any way come close to defining the black experience in America nor does an emphasis on the American South. What it does do, however, is highlight the importance that was attached to emancipation both during the war and in the decades to follow before it was overshadowed by reunion, reconciliation and Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century.

We shall see.

Filed Under: Civil War Culture, Current Affairs, Lost Cause, Memory, Slavery, Southern History, Teaching Tagged With: Barack Obama, Civil War Sesquicentennial, Confederate History Month

The Late Night War

January 22, 2010 By Kevin Levin 1 Comment

This Jimmy Kimmel Live skit about the Leno-O’Brien/NBC feud suggests that the Ken Burns-style documentary has become a permanent fixture in our cultural lexicon. Other examples can be found here and here. You will have to look closely, but when they get to photoshopping the famous photograph of Lincoln and McClellan in the tent at Antietam the audio doesn’t match the video. It’s a funny little video. By the way I am Conan supporter all the way.