Birthday cake for a failed “leader”

 This Jeff Davis birthday stuff is really nutty.  I think it is OK to recall the man and his place in history, as long as it is done objectively, authentically, and in historical context.  But the stuff we see in the South not only glorifies a traitor, it is just twisted.  One article will illustrate this point.

For instance, in Alabama folks just marked the JD birthday with festivities including a period ball.  No problem there, it may be a fun way to observe an historical event.  But JD’s great-grandson had this to say about his ancestor: 

“His contributions to this country and the leadership that he personifies place Jef­ferson Davis as one of the most influential statesmen and leaders of his time,” in a message printed in the event’s offi­cial program.

Contributions to this country?  I wonder which country he meant–the USA or the CSA?  And I like his statement that Davis was a leader.  If that means leading several states out of the union to defend slavery and thus provoke a war that killed 600,000 men, then yes, he is a leader.  But if leadership means successfully working out political solutions to avoid civil war, then JD is a flat failure.

We also learn in the article that during a program at the Capitol auditorium, emcee Tyrone Crowley of Prattville called Davis “one of the great Americans of all time.”  Again, what the hell is he called great for?  He was an absolute failure at the helm of the CSA, and in his relations with most of his generals he was petty, self-righteous, vindictive, stubborn…  What makes him a great American?  One of the participants in all of this commemoratin’ stated that several people “were unhappy about the size of the crowd and wondered why more weren’t on hand to honor Davis.”

Gee, I wonder why…..

NC Rev War Site “Endangered”

The Trading Ford area along the Yadkin River has been identified by the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program as a site at risk from rapid urban and suburban development.

The park service released its “Report to Congress on the Historic Preservation of Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Sites in the United States” last week.

The Trading Ford was included in the survey along with other historic sites that comprise the “Race to the Dan River.” A linear resource, the inclusive “Race to the Dan River,” is listed in the “Roads, Trails, and Waterways Needing Further Study” section of the report. These are resources that due to their size and complexity had no equivalent survey methodology that allowed them to be represented in an equitable manner.

Do we celebrate Jeff Davis’ 200th?

From an AP story:

It hasn’t been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war. No, not Abraham Lincoln. Last week, President Bush himself helped kick off a two-year celebration of the Great Emancipator’s Feb. 12, 2009, bicentennial that will include dozens of events in Kentucky, Illinois, Washington and beyond.It’s the Jefferson Davis 200th that has turned out to be something of a lost cause.

“The response to date has been timid,” acknowledges Bertram Hayes- Davis, head of the Davis Family Association and great-great grandson of the only president of the short-lived Confederate States of America. “Nobody has said no. Many haven’t said yes.”

I guess they would have the same problem with Benedict Arnold’s birthday as well.

Jefferson Davis, by Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume, c. 1862-65.

Who are the greatest Virginians?

John Marshall, Virginian

This past summer The Richmond Times Dispatch sent a questionnaire across the nation to the scholars who study Virginia and its people, and augmented the list with prominent citizens of the commonwealth — some established, some up and coming — who have an understanding of those who have worn the designation “Virginian” into the history books. 

They asked this jury to nominate (1) a greatest Virginian and (2) a most influential Virginian (who had to be a different person) for each of the commonwealth’s four centuries. The difference between the two? For someone to be termed “greatest,” the paper told the panel a person’s legacy must be almost exclusively of positive benefit. Calling him or her merely “influential” would not capture just how important this person was to society. These folks are a step above. It’s hard to quantify “greatestness,” but as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, we all know it when we see it.

The results:

TheGreatest
Oliver White Hill Sr.
20TH CENTURY: FREEDOM’S BEACON
Hill lived one-fourth of the entire English-language portion of Virginia’s history, and for more than half of that time in the oppressive Jim Crow regime that denied the basic human rights of American citizenship to a huge portion of the South’s citizens.  

John Marshall
19TH CENTURY: TITAN OF THE LAW
John Marshall received more nominations in the survey than any other person for greatest or most influential 19th-century Virginian. He deserved the attention.  

George Washington
18TH CENTURY: LION OF MOUNT VERNON
George Washington had little serious competition for greatest Virginian of the 18th century.  

John Smith and William Berkeley
17TH CENTURY: STABILIZING A NEW WORLD
Our jury argued to a virtual tie when trying to identify the single greatest citizen of 17th-century Virginia. The two nominees most often identified as the greatest were Captain John Smith and Sir William Berkeley, a governor of the colony.  

Paramount Chief Powhatan
16TH CENTURY
Wahunsonacock – who took the name Powhatan sometime in the 1580s when he formed a loose confederation of Algonkian-speaking tribes in the tidewater region of Virginia – received a number of votes as the greatest or most influential person in 17th-century Virginia.  

MostInfluential
Harry Flood Byrd Sr.
20TH CENTURY: ORGANIZER OF POLITICS
Byrd served for 10 years in the Virginia Senate, for four years as governor, and for 32 years he represented the commonwealth in the U.S. Senate.  

Edgar Allan Poe
19TH CENTURY: LITERARY INNOVATOR
“Edgar Allan Poe,” began historian Kevin J. Hayes, without even pausing to admit that anybody else could be considered for the honor, “is the most influential Virginian of the 19th century.”  

James Madison
18TH CENTURY: GOVERNMENT PLANNER
Participants in the survey produced a virtual tie for most influential Virginian of the 18th century, nominating James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in the greatest or most influential categories in almost equal numbers.  

John Rolfe
17TH CENTURY: TOBACCO ROOTS THE COLONY
John Rolfe topped the list of people whom participants identified as the most influential person in 17th century Virginia.  

Interestingly, on the website, readers can vote for the greatest Virginian too, and the result was an overwhelming victory for George Washington.  One of the more interesting things to note about the survey of scholars is that 2 prominent men are missing from the list:  Thomas Jefferson and R. E. Lee, although in 2 separate articles on-line, the paper fails to state why not.

There’s even an essay on “the worst” Virginians, although sadly, Katie Couric is not mentioned!

Marketing the South

“The historical, competitive, and ideological factors that structure the practices of commercial mythmaking remain largely unexplored and undertheorized. Now, a study from the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research investigates these interrelationships by performing a comparative analysis of two prominent New South mythmakers – editors of nationally distributed magazines about the South – who are seeking to ideologically reconstruct the historical legacy of antebellum, confederate, and segregationist South in ways that serve their commercial agendas.”

More here….

Nathanael Greene Essays

 

In 2006, I was involved with the planning and conducting of a symposium in Camden, SC on the subject of Nathanael Greene, which was well attended and featured speakers including Dennis Conrad and Larry Babits.  Two of the speakers, Jim Piecuch and Greg Massey, took the lead in collecting most of the papers and soliciting a few more (including on from me) from those who did not present at the symposium, in order to produce a book of collected essays on Nathanael Greene in the Southern Department.  Jim & Greg signed contract on it last week with a university press, and plan to have all the essays in by late February, then edit them, and have the contributors make any needed changes.  Prof.  Charles Royster of LSU will write the introduction.  Hopefully the manuscript will ready for submission by late fall. Then it will go to peer review. Everything after that depends on how long the reviewers take and what changes they recommend.  No title has been selected for the book, but hopefully we can give it a catchy name from a Greene quote.  It should have 7-8 essays, as well as the introduction.

This Birthday Party is “Killer!”

Now, you can experience all of the horrors of war…at your child’s birthday party!  That’s right, have your 8-12 year old celebrate their joyous, fun-filled birthday among the killing and slaughter of the American Civil War.  Just $10 per person at Pamplin Historical Park near Petersburg, Va., site of months of horrific destruction and death in 1864 and 1865.  All you need to do is bring the cake–the park supplies the rest, including a harmonica for each party-goer.  Isn’t that awesome!?!?  What better way to recognize and revere “these honored dead” than to have a hollering bunch of pre-teens eat cake, run around, and play their new harmonicas at the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier?  As the Park says, the exciting experience “lasts two hours,” so come one and come all.

More fun details here.

History of Augusta

New Website Showcases History of Augusta, Ga.

City Selected for Ongoing NPS “Discover Our Shared Heritage” Itinerary Series

(Washington, D.C.) – The rich history of Augusta, Georgia can now be explored on-line at the new National Park Service website http:www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/augusta.

The on-line travel itinerary highlights 39 sites in Augusta listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The website provides descriptions, maps, photographs, visitor information, and links for each place. There are also essays which chronicle the city’s history, historic preservation, African American community, and religious institutions.

The National Park Service’s Heritage Education Services, Historic Augusta, Inc., and the Augusta Canal National Heritage Area produced the itinerary in partnership with the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. A tourism grant from the City of Augusta and the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau provided part of the funding to produce the itinerary.

Augusta is the 45th itinerary featured in the ongoing Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Series. The series was developed by the National Park Service to promote public awareness of history and encourage visits to historic places.

A Defeat of Historical Proportions

At a recent news conference, a defeated commander described his side’s loss by trying to place it within the outline of history.

“Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event,” he said. “It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, and that was a catastrophic event.”

What was this debacle the leader refered to?  

The University of Alabama’s loss to the University of Louisiana-Monroe on the football field last weekend.   To be accurate, Alabama Coach Nick Saban didn’t compare the embarrassing 21-14 loss to Louisiana-Monroe to those events, but picked those historical references to illustrate that this could be a pivotal week for the Crimson Tide.  Nevertheless, it goes to show us that a little knowledge is dangerous, and that some folks have lost all perspective.

Mind you, Saban is the highest paid coach in NCAA football, and his team has lost 4 games.

The Spanish in Georgia

Update on an earlier post regarding the Spanish in Georgia during the colonial period:

What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans’ earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.

The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.

Archaeologist Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History considers the finds, which he could easily slip in his pocket, “world history in the making.”

Click here for the rest of this story.

Last Rebel Widow “Found”?

From Arkansas, we get the following report:

Some might think it is impossible a Confederate widow is still alive. However, it was recently discovered that a Confederate widow was residing in an assisted living facility in West Helena. Maude Hopkins of Lexa, is very much alive. Mrs. Hopkins married her first husband, Confederate William M. Cantrell, an aging widower, in 1934.

She was 19 and he was 86. Living alone and in his 80’s, he employed Maude to cook and care for him. Being mindful of the moral standards of the time, they agreed to marry so as to not bring disrespect upon her name. Confederate Cantrell was in French’s Battalion, Company A, of the Virginia Infantry. Maude cared for Cantrell until his death on Feb. 26, 1937, at 90 years of age. Following his death, she remarried and had two daughters.

Recently members from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis Chapter #2191, New Orleans, La., visited her.

Members Lea Martin of Mandeville, La, Lynn Dowdy of Jonesboro and prospective member Dayl Taylor of Trumann spent time with Mrs. Hopkins and her granddaughter, Donna.

Mrs. Hopkins was presented with a fall arrangement for her room. During the visit, they learned about her marriage to Cantrell and what life was like when she married him. Mrs. Hopkins was made a member of the David 0. Dodd Chapter #212, Pine Bluff in August of 2004.

Reading the Man

On Wed. night I attended a presentation made at the Alexandria Historical Society at the Lyceum, by Elizabeth Pryor.  She is the author of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters.  It was excellent, as Ms. Pryor is a superb presenter (if not sufficiently loud!) and has done a remarkable job with the “truck letters” recently found at Burke & Herbert Bank in Alexandria.  Among the more interesting points she made:

• Lee was pro-slavery (this flies in the face of some well-know Lee quotes)
• Lee was bitter after the war
• He regretted his decision to enter a military career
• Lee may actually have been born in 1806, not 1807
• Lee’s religious beliefs were complicated and evolving

Here’s some info from the publisher:

Robert E. Lee’s war correspondence is well known, and here and there personal letters have found their way into print, but the great majority of his most intimate messages have never been made public. These letters reveal a far more complex and contradictory man than the one who comes most readily to the imagination, for it is with his family and his friends that Lee is at his most candid, most engaging, and most vulnerable. Over the past several years historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor has uncovered a rich trove of unpublished Lee materials that had been held in both private and public collections. Her new book, a unique blend of analysis, narrative, and historiography, presents dozens of these letters in their entirety, most by Lee but a few by family members. Each letter becomes a departure point for an essay that shows what the letter uniquely reveals about Lee’s time or character. The material covers all aspects of Lee’s life—his early years, West Point, his work as an engineer, his relationships with his children and his slaves, his decision to join the South, his thoughts on military strategy, and his disappointments after defeat in the Civil War. The result is perhaps the most intimate picture to date of Lee, one that deftly analyzes the meaning of his actions within the context of his personality, his relationships, and the social tenor of his times.