Whatever we think about Civil War history, it provides a lot of material for ghost stories.
The level of historical detail varies a great deal in these Civil War ghost stories. For instance:
“She said she and five others watched the ghost of a Confederate soldier hide behind some nearby bushes for several minutes...”
You could be a high school dropout and file a report like that. “How was it dressed, ma’am?” “Uh, kind of a Civil War era uniform, I think.” “What color, ma’am?” “Mmmm, gray, I think.”
On the other hand, if you have read deeply in the Civil War, you can use that in the ghost witness department.
“Civil War general and senator John Logan is also said to return to the old Military Affairs Committee room, with the door to the room quietly opening and the general appearing, surrounded by a blue haze.”
“Who’s that ghost in the door, surrounded by the Union blue haze, sir?”
“Why, let’s see … handlebar mustache, dark hair, medium build … That would have to be Black Jack Logan!”
If you are a PhD or doctor of veterinary science, there’s even something for your level of analysis.
“In the 1930s workmen discovered a sealed-up room containing what many believed was Logan's stuffed horse.” Imagine the list of Civil War generals’ horses they would have had to go through before they reached L - Logan. ‘Here it is, at last!”
This would have been like Curse of the Mummy, except there was no curse. Just a horse mummy in a tomb in Congress positively linked to a ghost, still in Congress, still actively attending meetings.
Civil War history is a “living” tradition.
10/31/2003
10/30/2003
Cold Mountain, the Civil War novel, was shot in Romania. Imagine that. Romanians got re-enactor lessons so they could function as Civil War infantry extras. Cheaper than taking American reenactors over.
But lest you think this the work of a cheapskate studio, let it be known that they hired authenticity experts Brian Pohanka and Don Troiani to advise on realistic touches. Have authenticity, will travel...
The studio's logic is very pretty. They think there is more danger in people noticing a wrong uniform or bridle than the Carpathian landscape which in no way matches the Appalachians.
I'll be waiting for the scene where the European magpie alights on the hand-carved windowsill of the Romanian peasant hut wherein the correctly dressed Civil War character drinks his coffee and plots his next very authentic move.
But lest you think this the work of a cheapskate studio, let it be known that they hired authenticity experts Brian Pohanka and Don Troiani to advise on realistic touches. Have authenticity, will travel...
The studio's logic is very pretty. They think there is more danger in people noticing a wrong uniform or bridle than the Carpathian landscape which in no way matches the Appalachians.
I'll be waiting for the scene where the European magpie alights on the hand-carved windowsill of the Romanian peasant hut wherein the correctly dressed Civil War character drinks his coffee and plots his next very authentic move.
All is fair in heritage tourism:
"Look at your feet," he said, as lightning punctuated the darkened night sky behind him. "You are probably standing where some soldier died. But don't bother moving, because wherever you end up, odds are some soldier died there, too."
Odds are also that some history happened around here somewhere, too. But right now, focus on visualizing great piles of corpses at your feet.
"Look at your feet," he said, as lightning punctuated the darkened night sky behind him. "You are probably standing where some soldier died. But don't bother moving, because wherever you end up, odds are some soldier died there, too."
Odds are also that some history happened around here somewhere, too. But right now, focus on visualizing great piles of corpses at your feet.
10/29/2003
Baltimore is poised to make a mistake.
It wants to move tourists out of the Inner Harbor and around town on a marked history trail of some sort. The planners, using Boston's Heritage Trail as a model, are stumped because the Heritage Trail has a single theme ... the Revolutionary War sites around Boston. Baltimore, well it just has too much history to limit one walk to one theme. So somebody in Baltimore has to write a unifying narrative to marry disparate historical periods into a single story associated with a single walk.
This is all wrong, of course. Multiple stories can be mapped to multiple walks (I would love to walk the route of the Massachussetts regiments mobbed en route to Baltimore's train station in 1861). Likewise, a walk with many points of interest and no unifying theme will also do very well, because tourists like variety and surprises. Drafting a single story covering multiple sites will produce a phony concept underpinning a politically acceptable civics lesson. It will be bad history and no fun.
Really, Baltimore and Boston both have too much history to limit one walk to one theme. The pity is that Boston has thrown away 350 years in favor of what it currently likes best about the itself, its revolution against the Crown of England.
You have to experience the political-historical culture of Massachusetts to understand life in a post-communist or post-fascist state. Its political concept of itself seems to be based on the good guys having overthrown the bad guys, except that now all the old history is unpalatable: Utah celebrates Thanksgiving with more zest that Massachusetts. One can imagine a Bay State politician referring publicly to the Founders of the Republic, but never, ever to the Puritan founders. Senator John Kerry once wittily compared the Commonwealth to Bosnia-Herzogovina. Yes. There are historical figures who no longer exist because the public cannot emphathize with them.
Georgia is currently trying to solve the same problem by deciding whether its state history should be taught from Reconstruction forward. We instinctively understand that the current population of Georgia can better identify with post-reconstruction society and politics than with the antebellum polity. We sympathize. And this resembles the situation in Boston that produced the travesty of an an "anti-Heritage Trail," the single theme suitable for public consumption.
There are places where the people are less alientated from their state's histories; the mid-Atlantic states, for example. Maryland should seek its own way and Baltimore should ground historical tourism in, yes, history.
Let all the history be seen, be taught, be visited. Let the city supply the trail, the markers, the police. Let the tourists supply their own information and opinions.
It wants to move tourists out of the Inner Harbor and around town on a marked history trail of some sort. The planners, using Boston's Heritage Trail as a model, are stumped because the Heritage Trail has a single theme ... the Revolutionary War sites around Boston. Baltimore, well it just has too much history to limit one walk to one theme. So somebody in Baltimore has to write a unifying narrative to marry disparate historical periods into a single story associated with a single walk.
This is all wrong, of course. Multiple stories can be mapped to multiple walks (I would love to walk the route of the Massachussetts regiments mobbed en route to Baltimore's train station in 1861). Likewise, a walk with many points of interest and no unifying theme will also do very well, because tourists like variety and surprises. Drafting a single story covering multiple sites will produce a phony concept underpinning a politically acceptable civics lesson. It will be bad history and no fun.
Really, Baltimore and Boston both have too much history to limit one walk to one theme. The pity is that Boston has thrown away 350 years in favor of what it currently likes best about the itself, its revolution against the Crown of England.
You have to experience the political-historical culture of Massachusetts to understand life in a post-communist or post-fascist state. Its political concept of itself seems to be based on the good guys having overthrown the bad guys, except that now all the old history is unpalatable: Utah celebrates Thanksgiving with more zest that Massachusetts. One can imagine a Bay State politician referring publicly to the Founders of the Republic, but never, ever to the Puritan founders. Senator John Kerry once wittily compared the Commonwealth to Bosnia-Herzogovina. Yes. There are historical figures who no longer exist because the public cannot emphathize with them.
Georgia is currently trying to solve the same problem by deciding whether its state history should be taught from Reconstruction forward. We instinctively understand that the current population of Georgia can better identify with post-reconstruction society and politics than with the antebellum polity. We sympathize. And this resembles the situation in Boston that produced the travesty of an an "anti-Heritage Trail," the single theme suitable for public consumption.
There are places where the people are less alientated from their state's histories; the mid-Atlantic states, for example. Maryland should seek its own way and Baltimore should ground historical tourism in, yes, history.
Let all the history be seen, be taught, be visited. Let the city supply the trail, the markers, the police. Let the tourists supply their own information and opinions.
10/28/2003
Again it happens. The election of 1864 was invoked as a pop culture topic, this time by a caller to the Bob Grant radio talk show on WOR radio in New York City between 6:00 and 7:00 pm last night.
This 1864 election has the makings of a permanent political cliche, except that the central "lesson" or "meaning" of the event has not yet stabilized. And as for Lincoln's opponent McClellan, none of the talk show hosts has any idea he was a war Democrat or a conservative. Karl Marx and Friederich Engels backed Lincoln over McClellan, which should be all a talk show host needs to know.
There is an unusual poem that alludes to the Marx/Lincoln connection - and the election - written by the eccentric Mississippi personality and U.S. vice presidential aspirant Charles Granville Hamilton:
McClellan with the innocence of prewar
Democracy thought that he had a chance
And that votes would be counted as they were cast.
That is not the lesson of 1864 that is likely to gel in the current cycle of allusions.
This 1864 election has the makings of a permanent political cliche, except that the central "lesson" or "meaning" of the event has not yet stabilized. And as for Lincoln's opponent McClellan, none of the talk show hosts has any idea he was a war Democrat or a conservative. Karl Marx and Friederich Engels backed Lincoln over McClellan, which should be all a talk show host needs to know.
There is an unusual poem that alludes to the Marx/Lincoln connection - and the election - written by the eccentric Mississippi personality and U.S. vice presidential aspirant Charles Granville Hamilton:
McClellan with the innocence of prewar
Democracy thought that he had a chance
And that votes would be counted as they were cast.
That is not the lesson of 1864 that is likely to gel in the current cycle of allusions.
10/27/2003
I have been reading Robert Bruce Murray's Legal Cases of the Civil War, a new book from Stackpole.
The chapter on procurement cases, especially the parts on Fremont's contracts for river gunboats, left me with the impression that Fremont made decent bargains that were overturned in political witch hunts.
Murray's summary of the case of Clement Vallandigham is also interesting. Vallandigham was a prominent Democrat arrested by the military for giving peace speeches in Ohio, and the military proposed to dispose of him. An appellate court, considering the challenge of military jurisdiction, was loathe to interfere:
He [the presiding judge] began this analysis by pointing out that in time of war, the president derived his authority and power expressly from the Constitution's provisions that he should be the commander-in-chief of the army and navy. This, the judge added, invested the president with very high powers that were not defined in the Constitution or by any legislation.
This is a terrifying analysis, when you think of it.
The president must use his own judgement in the exercise of these powers. The only control was ... impeachment.
This is a concept currently beyong our sense of the possible: unlimited power that is constitutional. Unlimited power, exercised in an unprecedented way, and then held up by the courts as constitutional.
The chapter on procurement cases, especially the parts on Fremont's contracts for river gunboats, left me with the impression that Fremont made decent bargains that were overturned in political witch hunts.
Murray's summary of the case of Clement Vallandigham is also interesting. Vallandigham was a prominent Democrat arrested by the military for giving peace speeches in Ohio, and the military proposed to dispose of him. An appellate court, considering the challenge of military jurisdiction, was loathe to interfere:
He [the presiding judge] began this analysis by pointing out that in time of war, the president derived his authority and power expressly from the Constitution's provisions that he should be the commander-in-chief of the army and navy. This, the judge added, invested the president with very high powers that were not defined in the Constitution or by any legislation.
This is a terrifying analysis, when you think of it.
The president must use his own judgement in the exercise of these powers. The only control was ... impeachment.
This is a concept currently beyong our sense of the possible: unlimited power that is constitutional. Unlimited power, exercised in an unprecedented way, and then held up by the courts as constitutional.
As mentioned last week, "Ben Stein's Diary" was full of rhetorical Civil War related questions. I thought I'd run these queries for a few months, starting with this one, which reminded me strongly of McClellan's wartime comment that he would like to hang the secessionists of South Carolina, followed by the abolitionists of Massachusetts. Generally, I'll run these without comment.
10/24/2003
And now we have historical affairs with no historical content.
This event celebrates Edgar Allan Poe's last meal in a tavern he did not visit on the last night of his life, by serving food that might have been general tavern fare at the time. Hey, Baltimore, have you heard of research? Anybody can do it.
Oh, and I forgot. As a crowning touch of dissimilitude, this tavern has hired a John Wilkes Booth impersonator to play Poe.
The curse of heritage tourism ... not a story by Poe but scary nonetheless.
This event celebrates Edgar Allan Poe's last meal in a tavern he did not visit on the last night of his life, by serving food that might have been general tavern fare at the time. Hey, Baltimore, have you heard of research? Anybody can do it.
Oh, and I forgot. As a crowning touch of dissimilitude, this tavern has hired a John Wilkes Booth impersonator to play Poe.
The curse of heritage tourism ... not a story by Poe but scary nonetheless.
After a lot of head scratching, I think I have figured out what Civil War paintings are. They are souvenirs. If we criticize them as art or history, we err.
The contradictions that make them difficult to identify as souvenirs are: (1) they are recently made/manufactured, unlike battlefield artifacts; (2) the historical (factual) content is completely overshadowed by the fantasy arrangement of characters and situations; and (3) they are executed in a contemporary (ahistorical) style.
The painting makes tangible some episode from a familiar story. It affirms the interpretation of that event. It has very low historical content (correct uniforms, the right bridles) and very high historiographical content (interpreting the history of the event).
I remark on this to raise the question of whether Mike Lynaugh is trying to outmaneuver the entire Civil War prints and paintings business with a totally new kind of souvenir. Mixed historical contexts. Another conundrum.
The contradictions that make them difficult to identify as souvenirs are: (1) they are recently made/manufactured, unlike battlefield artifacts; (2) the historical (factual) content is completely overshadowed by the fantasy arrangement of characters and situations; and (3) they are executed in a contemporary (ahistorical) style.
The painting makes tangible some episode from a familiar story. It affirms the interpretation of that event. It has very low historical content (correct uniforms, the right bridles) and very high historiographical content (interpreting the history of the event).
I remark on this to raise the question of whether Mike Lynaugh is trying to outmaneuver the entire Civil War prints and paintings business with a totally new kind of souvenir. Mixed historical contexts. Another conundrum.
President Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" of broadening the Republican Party to accommodate Southern Democrats has frayed consensus within the Republican Party about its own history. Here is a vivid example from Tennessee.
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