Disunion, the New York Times, and Lee’s Difficult Decision

Every now and again the media does something right. Shocking, I know. But have you been paying attention to the New York Times Disunion Series? Since the beginning of the year, the NYT has been publishing opinion pieces interpreting events and people of the Civil War. Of course, they are doing this because this year marks 150 years since the war between the states (but about slavery, yes I said it) began. And if there’s something that everyone (Republican, Democrat, Independent) in our nation loves to do, it’s remember a war. And Americans love the Civil War. It seems to me that the reasons for this love is unending: the end of slavery, states rights, Southern pride, the new military technology of the war, brother versus brother… and it just keeps going.

Anyway, the NYT series is an interesting one because it encompasses all of these ideas. Each article takes on an issue, event, or person. The authors make arguments and the pieces often conflict with each other. Many of the articles are also written not by journalists but Civil War historians. And not the pop ones like Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln) but ones like Stephanie McCurry (Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South) or Ethan J. Kytle (Strike the First Blow: Romantic Liberalism and the Struggle Against Slavery in the United States, 1850 -1865). I love the Disunion Series because it demonstrates what’s exciting and interesting about history. It’s not about memorizing the dates and battle names of the War, but about picking apart the war, making interpretations, expressing arguments, and having a discussion. Fun with History’s new blogger expressed this type of sentiment about making and reading history in his recent post “Made Everyday.”

From NYT article, "The General in His Study" Courtesy of Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial Mary Custis Lee

I haven’t read nearly enough of the articles in the series but the ones I have read are interesting, fresh, and illuminating. Today’s piece, “The General in His Study” takes up the oft-argued point that Robert E. Lee struggled between his loyalty to union and his loyalty to his beloved Virginia. Of course, we know he sided with Virginia and served as a great military leader for the Confederacy until 1865. Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through His Private Letters) presents a letter by Lee’s eldest daughter Mary Custis Lee (pictured above) that describes the difficult decision her father made. (The online version of this article includes a scan of this letter!) Lee worried about what his family would think of his decision to take up arms against the Union, apologizing “I suppose you will all think I have done very wrong.” What Brown introduces here isn’t that Lee made a difficult decision, but just how painful, how personal, and how un-inevitable it really was. History is never destiny, any number of realities can change the course, and Brown demonstrates this powerfully in her discussion of Lee.

It’s just this type of discussion and carefully writing of a historical figure’s decision that makes me love this series. In a moment when we remember the Civil War through endless reenactments and Charleston’s disturbing secession ball, the Disunion Series provides a serious and thoughtful discussion of America’s War.

Update: Just found out, you can also follow this series on Twitter: @nytcivilwar

A Reconstruction Compromise

In 1876, Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes campaigned against the Democrat nominee Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote, and the candidates disputes the electoral college results (185 in favor of Tilden, 165 for Hayes and 20 disputes & uncounted votes from South Carolina, Louisiana, and you guessed it, Florida). Sound familiar (Bush/Gore 2000 anyone?). In such circumstances, the Constitution directs that the President of the Senate, with the Senate and House of Representatives present, will open the electoral certificates and count the votes.

Republicans claimed that this meant that the Senate President counted the votes alone with the rest of Congress acting as mere witnesses. Since the Senate President was a Republican, Democrats protested this conclusion. The Democrats wanted to only vote the contested votes by Congress, not the President. With the Democratic majority in the House, this meant they could through out just one votes and give Tilden the victory.

On January 29, 1877 Congress formed a Electoral Committee made up by five members from each house of Congress and the five members of the Supreme Court. This was meant to avoid the potential threat to the Constitution made arguing over its interpretation. The Commission

Why did the Commission sway in Hayes favor? The Compromise of 1877, the end of Reconstruction. While Tilden came from New York, his political party typically represented the Southern states, those who had lost the Civil War in 1865 and had felt repressed by Reconstruction in the intervening twelve years. In the House, the majority of Democrats came from Southern states and they wanted to end Reconstruction. (Reconstruction will have to be a topic for a post on another day). The Republicans, who had generally supported Reconstruction, offered to withdraw the federal troops from the South if the Democrats supported Hayes. Removing the troops essentially equated the end of Reconstruction, at least symbolically.

 

Another Blog Recommendation: Blog Divided

I just keep stumbling upon new great history-geared blogs, and how can I not share them with you. This blog, Blog Divided, is “for anyone teaching or studying the House Divided Era, 1840-1880.”

Well, I know lots of students and amateur historians (as well as professional ones) love to study, talk, and argue about the Civil War and the years leading up to and following it. Based on my initial skimming of the blog, this one seems to do the trick. Plus it has some great links as well. It’s based on an interesting project at Dickinson College.

The blog officially describes itself as the following:

This blog community is designed for teachers and students who are interested in nineteenth-century American history, especially the period before, during and after the Civil War.  This sectional era in American history, roughly 1840 to 1880, is the current focus of the House Divided Project at Dickinson College, an interdisciplinary effort that aims to help make this turbulent and complicated story more accessible within the nation’s classrooms.  We are at the beginning of a multi-year effort to build innovative web-based resources and to host intensive K-12 teacher training workshops on various topics from the period, especially in connection with a series of pivotal anniversaries –such as Abraham Lincoln’s Bicentennial (2009) or the 150th anniversary of the  Civil War (2011-2015).  We hope members of this community will join us in identifying breaking news, the latest scholarship, cool web sites, evocative field trips, useful lesson plans, powerful primary sources, rich images and any other important developments related to the period.  We also hope this space might provide a forum for posing questions, exchanging views and for debating interpretations.  Though we call it “Blog Divided,” however, we don’t really expect this virtual space to re-fight the Civil War.  Instead, we hope that all the members of the community are united in their passion for trying to explore and understand the issues and events that divided an earlier generation of Americans and quite nearly destroyed the republic.

I just added it to my blog roll. Let me know what you think of the blog!

Fight the Rich Man’s Fight

I’ve been thinking about who fights our wars. I don’t know why I thought about it today, but its been on my mind since we discussed it in this quarter’s Vietnam section. The reality of the United States’ wars (and perhaps everywhere) is that privileged leaders and politicians decide our involvement but the impoverished youth give their lives.

Consider this, in the American Revolution, most people who fought participated through militias. They joined when the battle rolled through town, provided their own arms, and then disbanded. This worked for many men, particularly farmers who could not abandon their land for long periods of time to fight in the war. Logistically this was a poor system and George Washington knew it. He wanted (and had) a standing army. However, poor men (sometimes without their own shoes) filled its ranks and suffered the largest causalities. These men needed the salary (however trivial) the Constitutional Army provided because they did not have property.

Fast forward to the Civil War. Much of the nation resorted to a draft system to fight this horrendous war. More Americans died in this war than in all the other wars the U.S. has participated combined. However, wealthy plantation owners often sent their slaves to fight for them or paid others to serve their draft notice. And the poor took the cash and died. This happened across the Union as well, but seemed more prevalent in the South.

World War I partially fills this example, but the U.S. short involvement (just over a year) makes it a poor case study. And the Great Depression combined with the attack on Pearl Harbor made World War II a popular war to fight in.

Moving forward, the impoverished and minorities (often one and the same, due to Jim Crow and practiced segregation in suburbia) fought the first several years in Vietnam. In fact, part of the militant tone that overtook the Civil Rights movement in the latter half of the 1960s came directly from an understanding that African American men fought and died in the war at a much greater rate than their white counterparts. A draft that allowed college enrollment as a reason for deferral partially allowed for this discrepancy in the troops.

But the draft is over now. We are in locked in two (seemingly unending) wars. And yet, the impoverished make up much of our military troops (though not all). These men and women have little economic opportunities outside the military.

It’s an interesting historical dilemma. Invoking a draft (as has been done through much of our history) did not prevent class and racial discrepancies in our military. Removing the draft has left us again with a class discrepancy in the troops. For historians, it poses an interesting question: what does this demonstrate about military in the U.S.? What does it mean (or does it mean anything)?

For you readers: does it even matter?