The High Water Mark of Social History in Civil War Studies

Just hours before the Army of Northern Virginia raised the white flag at Appomattox Court House, Confederate Colonel Edward Porter Alexander approached his commanding officer, Robert E. Lee, with what he hoped was a game-saving plan. Rather than suffer the mortification of surrendering, Alexander begged Lee to scatter his men across the countryside like “rabbits & partridges” where they could continue waging war, not as regular Confederate soldiers, but as elusive guerrilla fighters. Lee listened patiently to his subordinate’s reasoning for irregular warfare. Before Alexander finished, he reminded Lee that the men were utterly devoted to their commanding general, and that such loyalty would continue to inspire the sacrifice of more blood, even if it meant taking to the woods and fighting like common outlaws. When Alexander concluded his impassioned plea, Lee asked his subordinate to imagine what would happen if he turned Alexander’s suggestion into official policy. But before Alexander had a chance to respond, Lee reminded him that virtually every Southern community had been overrun by Union armies, that farms were in disarray, and that crops were ruined. Lee feared that his veterans, upon returning home, would have no choice but to plunder and rob for survival. It would take no time for his disciplined army to descend into a demoralized mob that would take the rest of the South into a downward spiral of unending and unrestrained violence. “As for myself,” Lee concluded, “while you young men might afford to go to bushwhacking, the only proper & dignified course for me would be to surrender myself & take the consequences of my actions.” [excerpt

The Trophies of Victory and the Relics of Defeat: Returning Home in the Spring of 1865

The remains of a lone apple tree, cut down and carved into small pieces by Confederate soldiers, lay along a rutted dirt road that led to the village of Appomattox Court House. Earlier on 9 April 1865, Robert E. Lee had waited under the shade of the apple tree, anxious to hear from Ulysses S.Grant about surrendering his army. Messages between the generals eventually led to a brief meeting between Lee and two Union staff offices who then secured the parlor in Wilmer McLean\u27s house, where Grant dictated the surrender terms to Lee. As soon as the agreement was signed and Lee walked out the door, Union officers decluttered the parlor with Yankee efficiency, cutting strips of upholstery from plush sofas, breaking chair legs into small keepsakes, and appropriating candleholders and chairs until the room was left barren. [excerpt

Is There a Southern Doctor in the House?

Doctoring the South does not go down easily, but a patient reader will benefit immeasurably from this brilliantly conceived and thoroughly researched book. Stephen Stowe has penetrated the scientific and cultural world of southern physicians during the mid-nineteenth century, showing how white doctors made meaning of their lives as they struggled to gain mastery of the sickly bodies of others. The confrontation between patient and physician, between sickness and health, reveals what Stowe calls the country orthodoxy style of southern practitioners. Country orthodoxy inextricably tied a doctor’s understanding of what it meant to be a professional to his local community. It was within a specific locale that the day-to-day reality of practicing medicine gave shape and meaning to the art of healing. [excerpt

Into the Murky World of Class Consciousness

In a 1975 article on the place of yeomen farmers in a slave society, Eugene D. Genovese identified a critical question concerning the nature of the Old South. The issue, he wrote, is to explain “the degree of class collaboration and social unity” that existed among all whites, which to Genovese appeared “all the more impressive in the face of so many internal strains.” Although some critics mistakenly charged that Genovese argued for non-slaveholder passivity in the face of planter hegemony, he was, in actuality, acknowledging that class relations were permeated with tension and discord, causing bitter resentments that occasionally flared into conflict among white folks. Yet Genovese never found evidence of a populist insurgency against slaveholder authority, a struggle in which the very basis of power was contested. He suggested— what scholars such as Steven Hahn, Lacy Ford, and Stephanie McCurry have more recently developed with amazing sophistication—that an intricate web of political, economic, and cultural relations bound whites together through shared material and ideological interests imbedded in human bondage. [excerpt

Relevance, Resonance, and Historiography: Interpreting the Lives and Experiences of Civil War Soldiers

Carmichael shares his experiences of portraying Corporal Bobby Fields at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park in the summer of 1985. He uses Fields as a conduit to explore the scholarship pertaining to the common soldier of the Civil War and how material culture can provide a new window into understanding of making the battlefield come alive for visitors

Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee

Jefferson Davis sent Robert E. Lee an unusual note after the battle of Gettysburg. The dispatch did not contain any presidential recommendations or requests, only a clipped article from the Charleston Mercury criticizing Lee and his subordinates for failure in Pennsylvania. Why Davis sent this article is impossible to say, and Lee apparently was not interested in the president’s motivations. The General dismissed newspaper criticism of himself as “harmless,” but the Mercury’s condemnation of the army disturbed him. He considered the charges harmful to the cause, for his officers and soldiers were beyond reproach. Defeat, Lee insisted, was his responsibility alone. “No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me,” he wrote, “nor should it be censured for the unreasonable expectations of the public. I am alone to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess & valour. [excerpt

The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael\u27s sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war. Digging deeply into his soldiers\u27 writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was a common soldier but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers\u27 experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1146/thumbnail.jp

Use of MAGSAT anomaly data for crustal structure and mineral resources in the US Midcontinent

The analysis and preliminary interpretation of investigator-B MAGSAT data are addressed. The data processing included: (1) removal of spurious data points; (2) statistical smoothing along individual data tracks, to reduce the effect of geomagnetic transient disturbances; (3) comparison of data profiles spatially coincident in track location but acquired at different times; (4) reduction of data by weighted averaging to a grid with 1 deg xl deg latitude/longitude spacing, and with elevations interpolated and weighted to a common datum of 400 km; (5) wavelength filtering; and (6) reduction of the anomaly map to the magnetic pole. Agreement was found between a magnitude data anomaly map and a reduce-to-the-pole map supporting the general assumption that, on a large scale (long wavelength), it is induced crustal magnetization which is responsible for major anamalies. Anomalous features are identified and explanations are suggested with regard to crustal structure, petrologic characteristics, and Curie temperature isotherms

Use of Magsat anomaly data for crustal structure and mineral resources in the US midcontinent

Magnetic profiles on individual satellites tracks were examined to identify bad (nonterrestrially-based) data points r profiles. Anomaly profiles for the same satellite track, but at different passes were compared for parallel tracks and for tracks that cross. The selected and processed data were plotted and contoured to develop a preliminary magnetic anomaly map. The map is similar in general morphology to NASA's Magsat global scalar anomaly map, but has more detail which is related to crustal properties. Efforts have begun to interpret the satellite magnetic anomalies in terms of crustal character. The correlation of magnetics with crustal petrology may have a much larger tectonic implication. Th possibility of there being an ultramafic lower crust along one zone as a consequence of a continental collision/subduction which helped form the midcontinent craton in Precambrian times is being investigated

Use of MAGSAT anomaly data for crustal structure and mineral resources in the US Midcontinent

Personnel matters related to the processing and interpretation of MAGSAT data are reported. Efforts are being initiated to determine the crustal geology, structure, and potential economic consequences to be deduced from the satellite magnetic anomalies in conjuction with correlative data