Tension makes for great history. While attending a roundtable discussion at last week’s Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, I witnessed an exchange between public and academic historians that led me to consider yet again the historian’s task – why we do what we do, and should we be doing it differently? The backdrop for the debate was a discussion on the upcoming Civil War sesquicentennial. When asked what state sesquicentennial commissions could do in 2011 to improve on their performances in 1961 during the centennial celebrations, historian Robert J. Cook said simply, “Well, you couldn’t possibly do any worse.” Tension makes for great history, but at what point should tension give way to consensus, and who should decide, and when? Is it the goal of the professional historian to merely write "history" for a particular (and regrettably small) audience or should we also actively shape public consciousness and privilege certain “memories” of the past, particularly if such memories are tantamount to myth?
I’ve always felt that the great recompense of being a historian of the nineteenth century United States, and of the Civil War in particular, is the strong connection between what we do and the interests of the general public. The discrepency between the academic and the general public is narrower for me than it is for most of my colleagues. Of course, many see this as an unfortunate impediment. Who, after all, would want the general perception of their work to be so often shaped by an array of public groups and individuals, ranging from the uninformed to the self-serving to the overtly political? Unfortunately, many historians I know appear content in their parochialism and detachment from the general public. They shy away from public forums and distance themselves from public history and all “common” imperatives in both explicit and subtle, calculated ways. This is where the “ivory tower” image is spawned and perpetuated.
I, however, view this intimacy between the academic’s task, the public appetite, and current political relevance (perverted though the relationship may often be) as an opportunity. It contemporizes and legitimizes the work of the Civil War historian because the language, ideas, symbols, and legacies of the war still pulsate. In other words, my work matters because people, not just academics, still insist that it matters.
Yet, like all other professional historians, I am forced to address the considerable gap between what is understood to be historically obvious within the academy and the public perception of history – its heritage. I have been fortunate enough to work for three fairly dissimilar public history institutions. Two of them (Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site and Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park) privileged interpretations of the Civil War that I felt shortchanged some of its, causes, outcomes, and “uncomfortable” aspects in favor of a narrative containing focusing on the pluck and gallantry of soldiers and generals in which both sides were equally noble in a war somewhat detached from meaning.
In fairness to the National Park Service, however, they are attempting to employ a more inclusive, less Whiggish (and less white) interpretation of the Civil War. Their theme for the Sesquicentennial is “From Civil War to Civil Rights,” which focuses on black struggles for freedom on a historical continuum. Let the backlash begin. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy have already formally protested. Several northern states have opted not to set up sesquicentennial commissions and I expect a continued cascade of reaction against what looks to be the NPS’s inevitable retreat from its former position of focusing of the equivalent honor and sacrifice of North and South and downplaying of the war’s causes, namely slavery.
This interpretive about-face speaks to the historical, moral, and political problems (the three are nearly always indissoluble) I have experienced while working in public history. I have heard it all: “Stonewall Jackson was the greatest American who ever lived,” “just as many black soldiers fought for the South than the North,” “the South will rise again,” and, most repugnantly, “the war had nothing to do with slavery.” And these views don’t exist along a North-South binary or a perforated line; folks from New Jersey are nearly as likely to believe them as those from Alabama. I also witnessed both northern and southern-leaning park visitors address how to “celebrate” the cause or exploits of a particular group who you feel was in the moral wrong. I often question the efficacy of “celebrating” any past at all, aside from remembering through education and personal interaction. Furthermore, I question whether scholars have the authority to critique not just history, but also memory and the ways groups and individuals within our society commemorate and manipulate the past. How should I react when individuals make emotional, authentic attachments to the past, even if – as in the case of a Confederate flag bumper sticker on a truck with Michigan license plates – it is a past they have no rightful claim to? Should we, as historians, attempt to convince people that their identity, their very sense of self, is a sham? Is it even a sham if they believe it to be true? There is a cultural pipeline running from the Civil War era to our own, and these are but a few of its complex moral and political problems.
One resolution, it appears, includes comprehensiveness and inclusiveness. Yet inclusivity is not always synonymous with truth. It simply isn't historically honest to give Mississippi Unionists the same interpretive weight as Tennessee Unionists, for example. Inclusion is shaped by exclusion when one is working within a confined interpretive space. Should some of the more brutal yet previously unaddressed aspects of the war, such as guerilla warfare or atrocities committed by white Confederates on black Union soldiers, have a voice in an interpretive center such as Fredericksburg’s even though such events are mostly unconnected to that particular battle? The obvious solution, of course, is site specificity. But when the guerilla front has virtually no interpretive sites and spaces of African-American soldiers and slaves are either underfunded and unvisited (Fort Pillow) or are not commemorated at all (Morris Island), the tribulations of site specificy become evident. Interpretation must be inclusive because our sites of memory are not balanced.
That voices in the South have reacted with hostility toward the National Parks Service’s aim of inclusivity is not surprising. As Tony Horowitz’s "Confederates in the Attic" demonstrates, the Civil War is still being waged, not in southern fields between men armed with muskets and bayonets, but between political factions and private institutions, various racial and socioeconomic communities, and in the press and on statehouse lawns. Race and politics are still deeply intertwined. When Missouri-born Rush Limbaugh plays “Barack the Magic Negro” on his radio broadcast, when South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson (who has a undeniable history playing the politics of race) undermines the civility and decorum of his title and calls the President a liar in the halls of Congress, and Representative Geoff Davis refers to the President as “that boy” it is nearly impossible not to summon the political racialization of the Civil War era and beyond.
Furthermore, the concept of secession still holds particular resonance with some conservative voters. In Texas, for instance, politicians have recently found it politically expedient to talk of secession in the face of what they perceive to be gratuitous federal spending and a host of conservative websites, including TexasNationalist.com, TexasSecession.com, and tcrf.com, espouse political rupture from the United States. Utilizing a host of political and ethnic buzzwords such as “political correctness,” “socialism,” and “rightful progeny,” Texassecede.com creates a false narrative of the relationship between Texas and secession (it overstates, for example, the “despotic Mexican government” of the 1820s and 1830s and claims that Texas seceded from the Union in 1861 because of “decades of excessive tariffs”) and then insists that modern Texans give credence and consideration to the idea of secession because of those misrepresentations. In short, the language of “secession” and “state’s rights,” which, in a historical context, has usually been code for the handling of “race issues” at the local level, is still remarkably resonant among particular groups of constituents because it conjures an emotionally appealing, though often false, version of the past. By deleting slavery as not only the cause, but also a cause of the Civil War, Texas secessionists, like the Ku Klux Klan, Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Daughters of the American Revolution and so many others before them, are altering history for their own political uses. This is obviously historically and even morally irresponsible. But is it also irresponsible for professional historians to abide or resist false versions of the past only through published scholarship when published scholarship is so rarely affecting general change in public perception on the ground level?
This tension between task and authority reminds of the Orwellian adage, “He who controls the past controls the future.” Politicians have always understood this, and memory, like politics, is power – nothing more. There is a utilitarian element to mythmaking that cannot be explained away be all the academics in all the universities in all the land. The aim, as it were, should be to sway popular historical perception by wading the moats and grinding in the trenches of the public debate. Seclusion will not save us. When asked how best to combat false versions of the past, Robert Cook, who wrote a remarkable book on the Civil War Centennial, urged the audience to “send them back to the documents.” Whether Geoff Davis does not understand the historical context of his words, or Texassecede.com has not yet grasped that the Civil War was so obviously waged over slavery, how can historians simply send one “back to the documents” who not only has no use for authenticity but in fact strategically alters the past to serve their own ends? It appears the only option is for professional historians to become more active, far more active, in the public realm. As Robert Penn Warren reminded us, the Civil War, like all history and historical struggles, was waged in “real blood . . . not tomato catsup.” The more professional historians are able to heave “real blood” upon politically rendered, overly casual and comfortable, and simplistic, sanitized versions of history, the less room exists for false selectors and hijackers of the past. This, I believe, is a good thing.
Union army. Never mind that Mrs. Bixby was a vocal war critic who in fact lost only two sons, not five. Reprinted in a Boston newspapers, the letter struck at the heartstrings of a war-weary constituency. The letter's poigancy, as perceived by Bostonians anyhow, was no less real despite its errors of fact. Carl Sandburg later called in a "piece of the American Bible." The famed letter (read in the 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan") also has its share of doubters regarding authorship, as many historians now believe it was actually penned by Lincoln secretary John Hay. The letter was a phony in almost every sense, except perception.
Union army. Never mind that Mrs. Bixby was a vocal war critic who in fact lost only two sons, not five. Reprinted in a Boston newspapers, the letter struck at the heartstrings of a war-weary constituency. The letter's poigancy, as perceived by Bostonians anyhow, was no less real despite its errors of fact. Carl Sandburg later called in a "piece of the American Bible." The famed letter (read in the 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan") also has its share of doubters regarding authorship, as many historians now believe it was actually penned by Lincoln secretary John Hay. The letter was a phony in almost every sense, except perception.
Interesting article on the nation's only African-American "Army Hall" (Charles Sumner Post #25) in Chestertown, MD