Does the Civil War Matter?

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Ely on November 12, 2010 at 3:52pm

Since I live in the Montana city which has the furthest north monument to the Confederacy (in Hill Park across from the Civic Center there is a fountain dedicated by the "Daughters of the Confederacy"), it's not surprising I might have an opinion on this matter. Across from my office is the statue of our Thomas Meagher, that good Republican who disappeared just after the war. Unionville is five miles up the road; Helena was "discovered" by the Four Georgians. The deep rift between Democrats and Republicans which was so evident after the war is still in evidence in Montana, although at this point the two parties seem to have reversed their positions. Watch the battles continue in the next legislative session.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Lehman on November 13, 2010 at 12:21pm

I agree with Kathleen Ely's response that the Civil War mattered a great deal in the early history of the territory. I would like to add two other reasons why the Civil War is important for us today. First, contemporary Montanans care about it. A lot. My students perk up when we get to this part of the course. They challenge basic interpretive frameworks (Civil War? War Between the States? even War of Northern Aggression?) more readily than in most parts of the course. And I have had many conversations with adults in the regions whose passion is the Civil War. So much fighting, so much bloodshed, so much idealism, so much selfishness. What's not to like?

Second, the Civil War was, among other things, a struggle about the shape of the nation in two specific, related ways. What would be the relationship between the states and the federal government? And how would outsiders (slaves, Indians) be admitted into the body politic? Elliott West coined the phrase "Greater Reconstruction" to describe the similarities between integrating Indians into western society just as freed slaves were integrated into southern society, and the way both regions were integrated into the nation. As he puts it provocatively, E Pluribus Unum was always as much a threat as an invitation. Just ask the Nez Perce.

Or maybe its just as simple as this: on some days in the Civil War, more combatants died in a few hours than died in decades of Indian Wars. Something really big, perhaps horrible, perhaps marvelous, probably some of both, must have been at stake.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on November 14, 2010 at 7:52am

Kathleen and Tim, thanks for starting this discussion. Terrific posts. Kathleen, can you tell us more about that "deep rift between Democrats and Republicans"--what were the core issues? What was at stake?

And Tim, can you share more about "Greater Reconstruction"? So Elliott West argues that there's an analogy between incorporating Indians and slaves into the United States? Did the Civil War become a model of how to wage war in the West? How have these processes of assimilation been similar or different? It might be worth checking out this review of a book that links "The Trail of Tears" with the American Civil War: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/books/review/Meacham-t.html?ref=b...

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Permalink Reply by Tim Lehman on November 20, 2010 at 11:06am

West's point about the Greater Reconstruction is more about the (sometimes forcible) assimilation of diverse people into the national polity. For West, this is an explanation of how the Nez Perce, perhaps the most remote tribe and probably the one with the longest-standing friendship with the US, could end up fighting the US in 1877. I like the "Greater Reconstruction" concept because it also suggests how the integration of immigrants into the US was important during this time. After all, Montana's best known Irish immigrant, Thomas Francis Meagher, is probably best known as the leader of the Irish brigade during the Civil War. The army, then as now, provided a powerful experience for assimilation into a national mainstream.

Some students in my class are interested in the Civil War (or as they would have it, War of Northern Aggression) because of how the South resisted this nationalizing tendency. States rights and local control (minus the whole slavery thing) still has a lot of appeal in this part of the country. I'm wondering if other people see in the Civil War a struggle for control of local values and institutions against a distant and foreign-feeling federal government. (Wolf reintroduction, for instance?)

This week I also wondered about the minor flap about Obama's choice of Sitting Bull as a model for children. Curious controversy, because aside from the obvious Obama hating, Sitting Bull did indeed think of himself as an opponent of America, not a "native American." At the Little Bighorn he was defending himself and his people from unwarranted attack by an American military force (composed, by the way, mostly of Irish and German immigrants). Complex loyalties indeed.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on November 25, 2010 at 10:28am

Thanks for this rich comment, Tim. Great question about local vs. national control: What do folks think? Does the federal government have too much power? Should states and localities have more say in their taxes, institutions, and values? When is it appropriate for the federal government to intervene in regional issues (Tim mentions wolves--think also about wilderness designation and agricultural subsidies)?

Another interesting link between present-day Montana and the Civil War: The Homestead Act was passed in 1862, and it's fair to say that law had a profound impact on our state. Can anyone provide more context for that law's enactment--is it a coincidence that the Republicans passed that law during the war?

Finally, I can't resist picking up Kathleen Ely's reference to the markers or signs of the Civil War on Montana's landscape, including the unavoidable Meagher statue in front of the Capitol. Can you point to other signs, statues, or memorabilia? What do they signify about our connection to the Civil War and its aftermath? And is it true that "Copperhead" culture (those who opposed "the War of Northern Aggression") still plays a powerful role in the state's politics?

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Permalink Reply by Bernie Quetchenbach on November 25, 2010 at 4:06pm

I met a rodeo cowboy whose forebears came west during reconstruction because he--rightly--didn't believe in the "forty acres and a mule" promise to freedmen associated with Reconstruction. One reason that the Civil War has resonance in the West is that so many people displaced persons headed west after the war. I don't know how typical this is of Montana (Tim?), but it certainly is farther to our south. And of course, the fate of the West was a major cause of the war to begin with.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on December 2, 2010 at 5:55am

Three quick reading recommendations on the Civil War (yes, I'm a bit obsessed):

First, James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, the best single-volume overview of the war and its long foreground in the political and cultural struggles of the 1840s and 50s. Elegant, brisk prose that reminds us what real civil war looks like (contrast with our contemporary political dust-ups).

Second, Shelby Foote's Stars in Their Courses, a beautiful rendering of Gettysburg. We forget just how near a thing a Confederate victory was in July, 1863--and what extraordinary courage soldiers displayed.

Finally, Randall Fuller's From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, forthcoming from Oxford University Press in January, 2011. Randy shows that American writers contended with the trauma of war in divergent and surprising ways. While Hawthorne was silenced, Dickinson, Whitman, and others found expressive means to respond to the cataclysm.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on December 20, 2010 at 12:22pm

150 years ago today, South Carolina seceded from the Union and set in motion the chain of events that culminated in the American Civil War.  Jump to this link for more insight: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/the-government-disi...

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Ely on December 20, 2010 at 2:15pm

I was going to say there is a big rift between quilt shops, as some carry Civil War fabrics and others do not. The aesthetics of Civil War fabrics is a more traditional, block-oriented quilting. Batiks and wilder fabrics seem to address a different audience, more modern. That being said...

 

I think another reason the Civil War is so important at this juncture in American history is because we have a similiar division of our country, as highly polarized politics fluctuate public opinon and how Congress reacts. What lessons from the Civil War can we learn that will help heal this divide?

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on December 28, 2010 at 8:00am

Thanks for your challenging question, Kathleen.  We do live in a polarized time, though I often think there's more heat than light to our supposed differences.  When you bore through the rhetoric and the caricatures, there is to my eye a core of shared convictions among Americans: a continuing respect for individual liberty (however defined), freedom of religion and expression, faith in a common national project (again, the terms change, but American citizens believe they're part of some larger cause), a continuing belief in the U.S.'s world historical mission (I know, this one gets us into trouble, but I sense this is a strong belief), a tolerance for difference (despite some of our recent anti-immigrant fervor).  In 1860, "Americans" were imagining two antithetical nations--and as the editorial that follows reminds us, it doesn't serve anyone to hide the true source of difference between these two ideas of "America": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2...

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Carol A Buchanan on March 4, 2011 at 5:21pm

Realizing that I'm very late to this discussion, I'd like to chip in anyway because my favorite area of study is Montana in the Civil War. Not only are we on the verge of its 150th anniversary, we're only 3 years from the 150th anniversary of Montana Territory -- May 26, 1864.

The Civil War influenced the formation of our state -- its politics, its economics, and its early administration. The land area east of the Divide that eventually became Montana Ty was part of Idaho Ty (think East Idaho!) in the very beginning (prior to May 26, 1864). It was a confusing situation for law and order in the region, but to end the crime wave that terrorized the Bannack-Alder Gulch area, Confederates and Unionists, slave-owners and radical abolitionists, came together in the Vigilance Committee. Paris Swayze Pfouts, an ardent Confederate sympathizer, was president and mayor of Virginia City, while Wilbur Fisk Sanders, Union Army veteran and radical abolitionist, was the Vigilante prosecutor.

On the one hand, there's the element of cooperation for the common cause of public safety. But that stopped short of election politics. When Sanders ran for election as the Union party candidate for Territorial Senator in the fall of 1864, he lost by a huge margin. In his unpublished papers, he wrote to a relative in Ohio, "I am the only lawyer of the Union persuasion" in the region.

The Unionists believed in the power of the Federal government to, as one Confederate put it, "Tell us what property we shall own." They also believed that the Federal government had the right to invade the South in order to restore the Union. To Confederates, the Union invasion meant that the Federal government was prosecuting an illegal war.

To me, this part of Montana's history is intrinsically fascinating, and knowing that history helps Montanans to understand who we are and where our political fault lines are.

Carol

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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on March 6, 2011 at 8:19am

Great stuff, Carol!  Very informative.  Good news: there will be a panel at the Montana History Conference in Missoula on Friday, September 23 dedicated to "The Civil War in Montana History and Literature."  Tim Lehman, a historian at Rocky Mountain College, Robert Swartout, a historian at Carroll College, and I will participate.  You should definitely attend and share.  Can you point to helpful sources on this topic?

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