Blog 4 History

I believe this would be an A++ in any Civil War class. Hat tip to Eric.

WE are 4 weeks into my Civil War graduate class titled ” The Civil War: Seminal Event in American History.” I think the class is going fairly well. The weekly discussion topics have produced interesting correspondences. Most of my classmates have displayed thoughtful reflection and comprehension. I have been surprised by the fairly light reading load. We have been assigned three books, two of which I have already read.

Hattaway, Herman & Jones, Archer. “How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War.” (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.)

McPherson, James. “Battle Cry Of Freedom.” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.)

“This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War.” (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007.)

Our week three and four questions for class discussion were as follows: “Was slavery the issue that led to the Civil War?” and “Should Abraham Lincoln have been the point of no return for the South?”

I was first struck by the universal agreement among my classmates that slavery was the main cause of the war. I teach high school history and we have several staff members who teach that slavery was not the main cause of the war, but one of several important ones: state’s rights, taxes/tariffs, ect.

No doubt our readings helped led us to this common assessment, though I think that is also because McPherson is right.

McPherson describes the causes of the war as: (1) slavery, (2) differences between agricultural and industrial society, (3) states’ rights, and (4) differences in power between the North and the South.

Our class came to the conclusion that to best answer this question we needed to ask a counter-factual question: Had the institution of slavery never existed in the Colonies and hence the United States, would there have been the above differences that led to the conflict? It seemed clear to us that the answer to this questions was obviously, No.

As for Lincoln’s election, this produce a wide swath of answers and debate. Here’s my answer. It generated some debate and overall I am not 100% happy with it:

Of course not, but what it represented to the South was the beginning of the end, though it should not have.

As we know, the South still had the votes in congress to block any attempt by the “radical” republicans to emancipate the slaves or end slavery’s expansion constitutionally.

They still had enough votes to probably win any future election if they could simply unite.

Slave power was still strong legally. Lincoln also made it clear he would abide by the constitution. The only threat to the South was a loss of power in the congress and that was not yet the case. Remember, 2/3 vote to override any veto and to establish legislation. The South was still in control.

So with that being said. The election of Lincoln simply triggered what had become a very animosity ridden and emotionally charged political conflict between North and South that essentially had nothing to do with slavery by this point. The hatred and contention between both sides had reached the boiling point and even though the South still had what they wanted, they threw it away in a heated meltdown that crescendoed out of control.

Any suggestions or help? This week’s discussion is over and I did receive full credit so I can’t nor need not expand on it. I was able to defend it well enough to get my weekly points so…

Welcome to Francis Rose and the Civil War Network website it looks like it is off to a good start and features a nice interview with James M. McPherson. Congrats.

Because of my recent injury I have spent a lot of time at night resting and have thankfully had the 2008 Olympics (along with lots of reading) to occupy my time.

With the conclusion of the 2008 games I can honestly say that I am very proud of our athletes. I love their passion, character, sportsmanship and patriotism. Yes, PATRIOTISM!

American medalist after medalist displayed such glowing appreciation for the United States and all that it has offered them, and all that they have given! Watching them, drapped in American flags taking victory laps and waving to the crowd, I’ve never been prouder of an Olympic team. All spoke with eloquence when interviewed and expressed their passion for their sport AND their country!

Tears and smiles as so many young faces stood proudly while our anthem played, time and time again, with so many of them singing the words quietly to themselves. And one after another, in interview after interivew, expressed their joy and good fortune to live and be a part of this wonderful country!

Whether it was our men’s gymnastics’s team taking a surprising bronze medal or our womens 4×400 team rebounding from disaster, I was in awe of their accomplishments and their respect for country and sport.

With issues rising daily concerning other country’s athletes and possible cheating, internal unrest, and poor sportsmanship, I was thankful that so far American athletes competed with gusto and honor.

These 2008 Summer games have instilled in me a renewed respect for our athletes who have represented us with honor, courage, and success!

Battle: The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat by Kent Gramm; 147 pages; University of Alabama Press (April 2008); ISBN-13: 978-0817354824

The essays in “Battle” do a fine job presenting the conditions on the battlefield that the average soldier faced. Without attempting to interpret what the experience might have accomplished within the psychology of a soldier, instead the writers attempt to take the reader down to ground level.

In addition to an introduction, an afterword, and an essay on the “Numbers” by editor Gramm, Paul Fussell contributes a powerful essay on “The Culture of War”; D. Scott Hartwig examines the face of battle at Gettysburg; Bruce A. Evans discusses “Wounds, Death, and Medical Care in the Civil War”; Eric T. Dean rethinks the meaning and consequences of combat in “The Awful Shock and Rage of Battle”; and Alan T. Nolan looks at the national consequences of battle and the resultant myth of the Lost Cause

Combat was often a close quarter affair during the Civil War, with the average range of engagement around 140 yards. At Gettysburg it was even closer, with a 100 yard average.

After the fighting was just as horrific and Bruce A. Evans has a good essay on the conditions and nature of surviving a fight, which was not always a good thing if severely wounded.

Overall, a solid book that delivers on its promise.

[Get a Masters Degree Online <<< Click Here for more details]

Stuck out here in Western Colorado, opposite Denver and Boulder on the Rocky Mountains, we are limited in where we can find graduate schools. If I wanted to get my master in education or some technology field, no problem. But finding a local Masters in History program is impossible. So I have been looking around for a Master’s Degree online. Even there, the options were limited.

The key is finding a school that was both nationally and regionally accredited. Without these accreditations, your degree may not help you get a job or a pay raise. By finding an online program from an institution that was accredited, I can then take that masters and use it to get a teaching job at a junior college or a pay raise as a teacher in high school.

So with those requirements I discovered just a few options narrowing it down to these two: First, Norwich University, founded in 1819, long tradition, and high standards. The only option here is a MA in Military History, which was something I was considering. The main drawback, expensive as hell. Second option, American Public University. Does not have the long tradition and is a school most of you have never heard of. APU is a product, like Phoenix University, of the Internet. I was hesitant at first, but checked it out. They are accredit by the North Central Association and Distance Education and Training Council, which means a masters from here is, for the most part, like any place else.

I choose APU because it was affordable AND the instructors are flat out good and come from some of the best universities from across the country. The online environment is not for everyone. It’s a lot of discussion via boards with your classmates and instructor. You are also graded on a series of papers you write.

Anyway, I started this week my first class, “The Civil War: Seminal Event in American History” instructed by Dr. Robert Young.

Here is his bio: Robert M. Young received a Bachelor’s degree in History and Political science from St. John’s University and a Master’s Degree in History from Brooklyn College. He earned hid Ph. D. in Military History from the C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center. A veteran of 13 years in the Army (mostly in the National Guard), he is an avid student of armored tactics and strategy. His primary area of interest and study is the Second World War, particularly the Pacific Theatre of Operations. His doctoral dissertation covers the role of the army in the Pacific Theatre’s Southwest Area. He is currently completing articles on the role of the tank in the New Guinea Campaign and a biography of a tanker in Patton’s army.

I will post more later…

10 days ago I hurt my leg during a boating trip, nothing serious, but then 2 days later in the middle of the night I woke up with excruciating pain where I had hurt my leg. My wife took me to the doctor and we found out it was a fairly serious staph infection. I have been bed-ridden, loaded with antibiotics, and in a pain killer fog since Tuesday or so. Anyway, swelling is down, leg will be saved, and my head is clearing up….

Chris

Probably not, but in terms of book sales, one would have to say yes.

Jeremy Cameron Young is a graduate student at Indiana University and the editor of www.progressivehistorians.com. I came across his well thought out “Why Historians Should Write Books Ordinary People Want to Read” on the History News Network.

I highly recommend his article, however, I did have some reactions and they are as follows:

Mr. Young writes: “Thanks to university budget cuts and conservative attacks on their fields, humanities scholars are increasingly forced to defend something many of them have in past taken for granted: the importance of their research to the modern experience.”

This comment surprised and astonished me. I am not a part of academia and do not teach at the University level — I am a just lowly high school history teacher. However, though I understand the attacks on Gary B. Nash and his so-called National Standards for United States History in the 1990s and the U.S. Senate’s denouncing them, I do not know what Mr. Young is speaking of in terms of “attacks,” or is it academic criticism?

The only “attacks” I give any credibility to are those from other historians that challenge the scholarship of some humanities scholars (also known as cultural or progressive historians) who make up the majority of university history departments.

The ones who should be complaining are those who write what Young refers to as “straight-up history” (which I assume centers on: political and military history, biography, and the Founding Fathers, ect.) as they have been forgotten and castoff by universities everywhere. Interestingly enough, if I am not mistaken, traditional historians like Joseph J. Ellis and Gordon S. Wood are among the best selling scholars?

Perhaps history departments need more, well, diversity among their departments?

When Gordon S. Wood “attacks” Gary B. Nash’s “The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America” (New Republic, June 6, 2005) he does not attack the topic or the “importance” of the study, but the study itself. Wood is able to take apart Nash’s thesis as his scholarship is flawed. Too often, Wood notes, these cultural historians attempt to impose their own political beliefs and/or today’s current political climate, on the past. Presentism is cultural history’s downfall, not its importance. (Though one could point out no one buys cultural history, perhaps, because it does not interest main stream America?)

Mr. Young writes: “Though conservative activists have attacked most strongly those fields that represent the political left — race and gender studies, peace studies, and other such interdisciplinary programs.”

Once again, not sure what or who he is speaking of: Sean Hannity, Daniel J. Flynn? If so just recognizing these types of hyperbolic political activists only empowers them. They should be ignored. But in academia, as far as I am concerned, it is not the topic, but the scholarship that is criticized.

Mr. Young writes: “They’re [cultural historians] faced with a truly bizarre situation: write a book that only two hundred people buy, and you’re lauded as a serious, mature scholar; write an op-ed for two million readers and you’re derided as a popularizer.”

Here an excellent point, popular historians are the black sheep of academia and despised by many cultural historians who are jealous of their success.

Finally, Mr. Young writes: “It’s just that the academic community has disengaged itself from that work. We have forgotten that the way to reach out to the general public is not to lecture them on what they should be interested in, but to cater to what they are already interested in.”

Could not agree more, cultural historians who dominate “academia” are out of touch, and it is historians like Wood and Ellis who are not.

I asked a few days ago, What was the Revolution About? Conservative, Radical, or maybe neither? This was during my viewing of “John Adams” the HBO mini-series which I thoroughly enjoyed.

John Adams wrote after the Declaration (on July 2nd):

Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. — This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.

What he was describing is Democracy, though of course no one would have spoken of Democracy at that time as its connotation was equal to that of “anarchy.”

The transformation within Adams himself, along with his countrymen, was seen as radical in his eyes. So convinced was Adams in the cause that he finished his letter to Abigail with the following: “I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” (Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776)

This was the second of two letters he excitedly wrote. The first was an announcement of the news, “Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men.”

But his excitement would soon take on a more somber tone with the realization of what they had really done.

The manner with which Adams tells Abigail of the news strikes me as very ideological. Those closest (and Adams was as close to the pulse of the Revolution as anyone by 1776) to the events seemed to have expressed the excitement that only a great event can produce, indeed. An almost magical affair that surprised and uplifted, though it was difficult and much drawn out.

Though the process that took place within the 13 colonies seemed delayed to Adams, the event as a whole shocked him, “I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution.”

The Revolution was about “the People,” though even today debate often centers squarely on what this implied, or who it was applied to. Wherever that debate leads us, it was still the Revolution, and it meant that “The People will have unbounded Power.”

But was this a good thing he contemplated (once again, Democracy had a different meanig at this time) as “the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great,” admitted Adams. When the choice was between anarchy or tyranny, tyranny always prevailed as it brought some measure of security and order. Thus, the Revolution meant entering dangerous waters.

The transformation within him and his countrymen was in their “hearts and minds,” proclaimed Adams. The sudden shift in power and control was dramatic, dynamic, and extremely dangergous, and every single representative in Philadelphia knew it.

To call the Revolution a game between only elites who controlled the ball and came home with all the runs, at this stage in 1776, seems a bit disingenuous.

So this probably means we have to look at American after 1787?

I spend too much time on ebay, and of late youtube (which is obvious). But it does pay off. I just found this oath for teachers from Kentucky (1864) on ebay, and thought it interesting enough to share:

Teachers Oath

I do Solemly Swear that I will Support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Ky and be true and faithful to the commonwealth so long as I remain a citizen thereof. That I recognize the binding obligation of the Constitution of the United States and the duty of every citizen to submit thereto as the Supreme Law of the land, that I will not give aid to the rebellion against the Government of the United States nor give aid to the so call Provincial government Ky either directly or indirectly, so long as I remain a citizen of or reside in Ky and that this Oath is taken by without any mental reservation So Help Me God

Signed by 2 witnesses and dated July 14 1864.

Several things, I have never seen such a document, though it does not surprise me. I see a date of 1864, have to consider the status of Kentucky (a key border state), and the necessity of such an “oath.” I can’t make out the location in Kentucky. Was this type of oath common?  Why was it necessary at this time and at this location? Also, what it’s asking of the teacher tells us something, does it not? Lots of questions here… Looking forward to hopefully some input from you?