RIP George McGovern

A special blog entry today.  This morning, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota passed away at the age of ninety.  He ran as the Democratic candidate for President in 1972 against Richard Nixon, losing badly.  I met him in 2009 at Capitol Books and News in Montgomery where he signed my copy of his Time-Life book on Abraham Lincoln.  Prior to his political career, McGovern taught history, receiving his doctorate from Northwestern University outside of Chicago.

As part of my academic training, I try to travel and seek out the places that I research and teach about.  I've been to many Civil War sites varying from Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Appomattox, as well as Ford's Theater.  I aim to visit Wheeling, W.V. some day too given its importance in founding the Mountain State.  Meeting Senator McGovern ranks among the rare occurrences when I meet an actual historical figure.  I also met President Jimmy Carter in Plains, GA in 2007.

Rest in peace, Senator.

O, Antietam!

Tomorrow, September 17th, marks the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.  Historians view it as a pivotal moment in the Civil War and in U.S. history in general.  Along the Antietam creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, Union general McLellan stopped rebel general Lee's attempt to carry the war into the North.  The names associated with the battle became legendary: the Corn Field, Bloody Lane, Snavely's Ford, and especially Burnside's Bridge.  

Burnside Bridge

Widely believed to be a Union victory, the savage, all-day battle became the bloodiest day in the War of the Rebellion.  The official tally states that over two thousand Union soldiers fell, with nearly ten thousand wounded, while fifteen hundred rebels fell and almost eight thousand wounded.  These numbers are being revised upwards with new methods.  Antietam now stands equal with the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the September 11th Attacks as the costliest events on American soil.

The battle also gave President Lincoln the opportunity to present his Emancipation Proclamation.  His decree ordered the Army and Navy to free slaves in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863.  It protected those in loyal states, though it encouraged those areas, such as West Virginia, to free them by other means.  In effect, Lincoln tried to ransom the slaves to compel the rebels to quit fighting.  None ultimately took the bait.  The result became the largest slave uprising in history, creating a second front behind rebel lines.  They could not fight both the growing power of Union forces and maintain slavery at the same time.  By including even the partial abolition of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation also deterred Britain and France from intervening in the war - though if you ask me it was highly unlikely in any case.  It was a master stroke from a master politician.  The war would drag on for another three years and cost as much as a million lives, or three percent of the United States population.

I think that there is another international effect that receives almost no attention.  One Canadian-born soldier in the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers ranks among the ten thousand Union wounded at Antietam.  His name was Calixa Lavallee.  Born near Montreal, Quebec, he showed an early musical talent that led him to move to the U.S. as a teenager in the late 1850s.  Aged 18 in 1861, he joined that regiment at the outbreak of the war.  At Antietam, the 4th made the run around the southern flank of the battle at Snavely's Ford as part of General Burnside's IX Corps. [Fun fact: Burnside gave temporary command of his corps to Jacob D. Cox, who like Lavallee was born in Montreal!]  They then ran directly into rebel commander A. P. Hill's men moving along the southern part of the battlefield.  Lavallee would be wounded in the leg during this savage battle.  Later discharged, he returned to Rhode Island and spent the rest of his life moving between the U.S. and Canada.

Calixa Lavallee

Why is Lavallee important?  Many other Canadians fought and died or were wounded in the War of the Rebellion.  He stands out for a tune he composed in 1880.  The Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Theodore Robataille, asked him to set a poem written by lawyer and orator Adolphe-Basile Routhier to music.  That poem was called O Canada.  This song became Canada's national anthem in the 20th Century.  Had he died facing A. P. Hill's troops on that hot September day in 1862 or afterwards of the leg wound he suffered, one important element of Canadian identity today would be radically different.  Imagine if Francis Scott Key had fallen overboard and drowned off HMS Tonnant in Baltimore harbor in 1814.  We probably wouldn't have The Star Spangled Banner.  Lavallee's example should tell us just how important the Civil War is beyond the borders of the United States.  As I said in an earlier blog entry, and other historians agree on this point, Canadian Confederation would not have occurred when it did without the Civil War.  So, when you sing O Canada with gusto at your next hockey game, remember that it links you with that major conflict.  I'm astonished that so few people know about this.

The Lincoln Trailer

Today, Steven Spielberg released the trailer to his long-awaited film Lincoln.  Everyone interested in the Civil War will definitely see this film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiSAbAuLhqs&feature=player_embedded

Judging by the footage here, the film focuses on Lincoln's leadership at the end of the war.  He faces two contradictory challenges - victory over the rebels, and the end of slavery.  I like how the film portrays the numerous factions on each side, from radicals (led by Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones), to conservatives (such as Montgomery Blair, played by Byron Jennings), to members of his own cabinet (David Straitharn as Seward) and even Mary Lincoln (a well-cast Sally Field) bombard the stoic Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) who is determined to do his duty.  We shall see how this movie holds up.  I personally can't wait to see the scene where Lincoln goes to Richmond, and the freedmen and women greet him like the Messiah. The film opens November 16th at a theater near you.  I encourage your comments.

h/t to Kevin Levin: http://cwmemory.com/2012/09/13/trailer-for-spielbergs-lincoln/

September 11th, 2001

Neil Armstrong

Hi again!  Looks like I neglected my blog - three weeks have passed since my last post.  I've been busy working on my dissertation.  Yes, seriously!

I mark the passing of a true, genuine American hero, Neil Armstrong.  The first man to walk on the Moon died last week at the age of 82.  This quiet, retiring man may have shunned his fame but no history book since has failed to mention his exploit.  From earliest times, humans looked up at the Moon with amazement.  Yet, in the Twentieth Century, the technology became available to place people on its surface.  Armstrong was the first, Buzz Aldrin the second, and ten more followed in their steps, so to speak.  It was a childhood dream of mine to meet him, and now I'll never get my chance.  Oh well.  One bit of trivia: he visited the town of Langholm in Scotland in 1972, where a law requiring the summary execution of an Armstrong upon entry still existed on the books.

That's all for now.

Miscellaneous

Hi all!  Sorry for the long pause but July was a busy month.  I helped guide the Moore Center's tour of the Seven Days battlefields around Richmond at the end of June.  While it was HOT, reaching 104 degrees, the tour was a success.  I noticed that the only rebel victory of the battle, Gaines' Mill, was for a long time the only one preserved.  I wonder why!  Only recently has the National Park Service preserved the final and costliest battle, Malvern Hill.  I helped keep everyone organized - we didn't lose anyone, thank goodness - and supplied with water.

August was busy too.  Aside from a trip to Washington, D.C., I spent most of my time researching and writing a paper as part of my fellowship requirements.  My essay dealt with cross-border enlistments in West Virginia.  To my great surprise, many Union soldiers accredited to the future state in fact came from neighboring states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Maryland.  This is separate and distinct from known recruitment in those states.  I concluded that more rebel support existed in West Virginia than previously thought.  I presented these findings to a small audience at Shepherd University on my last day before leaving for home. Thanks to the Center and its excellent staff for a great opportunity.

My trip home included both research and tourism.  I first went to Philadelphia.  The National Archives Mid-Atlantic Office has West Virginia's federal records.  I used one source there in 2006 while researching for my M.A. thesis. It proved so useful that I had to make a second visit.  On this trip, I took a chance of using my digital camera to photograph the records rather than make photocopies.  It worked.  Not only were the images clear, I gathered far more than I originally planned.  Let's hope it pays off like last time.  When not in the archives, I visited many of Philadelphia's historic sights.  I saw Valley Forge, Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin's grave, the excellent National Constitution Center, and the Museum of Art.

After three days in the City of Brotherly Love, I spend three more days traveling back to Alabama.  On day 1, I went to Annapolis, Maryland to see the lovely United States Naval Academy and its great museum, and the state capital - my twenty-ninth.  I noticed something interesting at the capitol: on one side, they honor black attorney and U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall; on the other, Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of that same court who passed the controversial Dred Scott decision in 1857 which denied African Americans any rights at all.  After Annapolis came Dover, Delaware - my thirtieth state capitol.  I've now seen each capitol located east of the Mississippi river save for Augusta, Maine.  I also saw the U.S. Air Force's Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base.  A long drive down the Delmarva Peninsula to Norfolk, Virginia followed.

Day 2: I left Norfolk early for the Outer Banks of North Carolina to see the Atlantic Ocean (literally getting my feet wet!), the Wright Brothers' Memorial at Kitty Hawk, and Fort Raleigh, the site of the lost English colony of Roanoke from 1587.  I later visited Fayetteville, site of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum and the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum at Fort Bragg, before stopping in Columbia, South Carolina for the night.  Day 3 was a simple drive from Columbia to Auburn via Atlanta.  I really wanted to get home after three months away.

I don't have a lot more to report right now.  I saw "Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies," a low-budget (and it shows!) film. Aside from a well-cast actor as the president, it's forgettable.  Civil War specialists will cringe at the deliberate historical errors.  Oh well.  Spielberg's Lincoln comes out on November 9th.

History on the Sly

Look what someone inserted at the Highwater Mark at Gettysburg!  What shall we make of this?  I suspect that a pro-Confederate secretly defiled the Union's most important spot at the battle - the defeat of Pickett's Charge (some call it Longstreet's Assault) on Cemetery Ridge.  For shame.  I suggest that someone put a U.S. flag on a similar rebel spot, like Jefferson Davis' grave - to signify his years of loyal service to the Union before he rebelled.