Civil War & Reconstruction Online Course

Dickinson College / Gilder Lehrman Institute

From John Brown to Abraham Lincoln: Distilling a National Consciousness out of the Civil War

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On August 1, 2012

In Discussion, Primary Sources

Professor Pinsker’s close reading of John Brown’s public statement at his trial for treason touched a nerve in me as I struggle to give a cogent narrative to this turning point in American history.  By showing the ideological DNA of that statement in Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, he implies a common thread of awareness between the failed raid at Harper’s Ferry and the commander-in-chief of the Union Army’s attempt to frame the final phase of the nation’s armed struggle.

In our New York-centric curriculum, we’ve worked hard to demonstrate that antebellum and wartime New York City represented a microcosm of the political, racial, and economic state of the nation.  It will be my task to pull apart and analyze Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech of February 27, 1860.  The speech was reformatted by Lincoln the night before to accommodate the different and disparate factions of the expected audience that would attend the next day (now that the venue was changed from Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, to the more accessible Cooper Union Hall on Manhattan Island due to icy weather).  The speech was hailed and acknowledged variously by those who attended (including members of the press and a large number of southern newspaper correspondents).

If we were to take four speeches as part of a rhetorical timeline of the conflict, with John Brown’s speech being one, then we must have the second inaugural address as another.  One of the tragedies of our task with students is to reduce history into class period-sized units, so the idea that we could show an evolution of national consciousness across several public speeches might be too reductionist.  However, Professor Pinsker said that the nation (both northern and southern regions) were impressed by his actions and his rhetorical skill.  In a time when public speeches were expected to last hours, and Lincoln and Douglas debated across the state of Illinois, it might not be farfetched to follow this path with my students.

Remember, this is before the media happened upon the idea of opinion polls.  In fact, the reading public valued opinions in the press as articulated in the editorial pages.  Though they were not given by-lines, they were unabashedly partisan because that was the motivation for investing in and running a newspaper.  Readers aligned themselves with newspapers based upon bias, rather than objective news gathering (a 20th century concept).  So, too, would they cotton to speeches in the same way that they sought inspiration through editorials.

I will research how the Cooper Union speech was received by the press at the time and report back.  In the past, I’ve assigned “roles” or viewpoints to my students who act as audience members hearing Lincoln’s speech.  Then I have them report to the class how the speech resonates with their assigned point of view.  Ultimately, they discuss the electability of Lincoln as president in 1860’s election.

Looking for Harriet

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On August 1, 2012

In Digital Storytelling, Discussion, Memory, Primary Sources

Ready for the adventure to begin! I typed “Harriet Robinson Scott” into the rectangle marked “search” and nothing. Really, it said “zero”. How could that be? I know she’s in the G L database somewhere. Hmm, well, let’s try “women black history” and see what that yields. Okay, more like it. Lots of choices, but Harriet is not among the them. There are lots of goodies though. I’m like a small child wanting to grab the shiny images and click on the weblinks. Even though my mind is chanting history, history, I have to steady my hand away from the mouse. Regroup. Focus. I know Harriet is in here. But she’s not, even when I type in “Adam Arenson” the author of Freeing Dred Scott. The search still says “zero”. I am going to do like my students. Google. Sure enough. There is the article I saw Professor Pinsker discuss twice (I watched the video of the recap session.) Where is the “web guide” he put together for us? Oh, well, time to focus on Harriet. Here’s what I learned from the Arenson essay:

Harriet Robinson Scott (I like referring to people with their whole names–especially those enslaved!) was born in PA, was illiterate, she was Dred Scott’s second wife (interesting!!) she was proud of making a living separate from her husband (early feminist–I like her already) and when a reporter asked her to encourage her husband to go on a speaking tour after the trial, she replied, “Why don’t white man ‘tend his business, and let dat n—– ‘lone?”

She was quite the power house! But, there’s a mystery in Arenson’s article. He mentioned when Harriet died in Missouri on June 17, 1876, she was buried, next to her famous husband, in Greenwood Cemetery’s unmarked grave section.

Huh? Didn’t I have an image of her gorgeous tombstone in my last post? It seems in 1957, the 100th year anniversary of the Dred Scott, the granddaughter of Scott’s owner, donated the monies for a gravestone for Mr. Scott, but nothing was mentioned about Mrs.’s maker. Did the tombstone appear during the 150th anniversary in 2007? Google to the rescue again. Seems the grave yard was abandoned land by 1994, but a group of historically minded folks pitched in time and money to revitalize it. “Harriet’s Hill” complete with the tombstone and pavillion was dedicated in 2010.

Funny how the scavener hunt to find Harriet yielded the most information on her grave, but doggone it, not her. Still looking for Harriet.

 

Mid-19 Century United States in Global Perspective?

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On August 1, 2012

In Discussion, Mapping

  • The bidirectional nature of the UGRR
  • The Northern states rights battles and nullification attempt
  • Harriet Scott as the primary force driving the Dred Scott Case onward
  • Publicizing the UGRR for fundraising purposes

Are all ideas that are running around inside my head since Matt’s lecture yesterday – thanks for the enticing glimpse into your work and the current research in the field today.

After reading Loilaing’s post commenting on connections in the West Indies, I am interested to learn more about the impact of the abolition of slavery  -and serfdom – across Western and Eastern Europe, and South and Central America on mid 19thC North America? I reckon it emboldened and encouraged abolitionists in reverse proportion to the terror it struck in the hearts of those interested in maintaining their ‘peculiar institution’ – but perhaps I am missing nuances and/or other effects?

And beyond slavery, how heavily did global events affect the union preservationists’ thinking? For instance, in McPherson’s For Cause and Country the northern immigrant soldier writes his father in England that preserving the union is important because otherwise the West might decide to break off next and “this country would be as bad as the German states”. What other global events were impacting North America toward war?

I found a great online discussion published in last September’s Journal of American History that treats the last of these questions; looking at nation building and nationalism globally at the time of the Civil War. I recommend a glance if you are remotely interested. Interchange: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Era of the Civil War
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Thinking about the UGRR as a resistance movement is very helpful to my own understanding – I found myself thinking of similarities to the resistance movements across Occupied Europe during WWII. The insight from The Old Carlisle Courthouse clip that this was a resistance being fought in courtrooms can pull my students up out of the underground and into a more accurate understanding of what was happening at that time.

Old Courthouse

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On August 1, 2012

In Digital Storytelling, Discussion

 

Excellent!  I was awed watching the “Old Courthouse”. The video capture the era and tension perfectly. The human elements were there to make it come alive. It spoke of a “national uproar” that took place at the time and the experience was magnified by adding quotes from 15 year old Dickinson student Montigue Conway.  This was very moving.

I was a 15 year old when another “national uproar” occurred, the Kent State shootings.  I was a high school sophomore at the time and remember being confused by what was going on.  My high school was literally three blocks from the University of Pittsburgh campus and I remember the demonstrations going on after the students were shot.  To compound matters, one of the students who was shot and died lived only a few miles away.

The video was very powerful as it added the human elements that are so often left out of historical events.  I believe it is our duty as educators to put a human touch on the history we teach, this video provides excellent examples.

Use of video clips to help students understand the Civil War

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On August 1, 2012

In Digital Storytelling, Discussion

As teachers today, we need to (or are implored to) consider the students learning styles whenever we plan a lesson.  Some students are visual learners, while others are more hands on learners.  If we plan lesson that include a little bit of everything, we ensure that all students are successful.  In the case of my middle school students, I have found that they have a hard time visualizing the whole picture.  From this, I learned to include video clips that help summarize an idea or a whole idea.  I personally do not recommend showing entire videos as students tend to tune out within the first half hour, but short clips 5-15 minutes keeps the students engaged and interested because they know they are going to move on to something else.

One of my favorite videos is the Civil War in four minutes which is offered by the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum.  This video used to be online, but has since been taken down due to copyright issues.  You can still purchase this video for 12.99 and it is totally worth the price!!  It shows how the battles influence the line of control between the north and south.  The fact that it is only four minutes enables students to stay engaged.

Do you have any favorite video clips?

 

 

Why (More) Black People Should Study The Civil War

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On July 31, 2012

In Digital Storytelling, Discussion, Memory

Me on the left with two of my best high school friends, circa 1992

Growing up in Jamaica, I learned virtually nothing of American history as a student. In high school, my classmates and I were taught the history of the Caribbean within a British context. To say I was not interested in history would be an understatement. In my mind, I could not see the value or how it related to me. The fact that I was convinced that my history teacher hated me also turned me off from the subject. She would probably fall out of a chair now if she knew I was a history teacher! In college I took art history as a humanities requirement, and my teacher was fascinating. However, once that course was complete I figured that my engagement with history was too.

Harriet Scott, wife of Dred Scott

Last year, my second as a high school teacher, was the first time I taught American history. Prior to teaching, I practiced law for almost 10 years and people have assumed that I was taught history in law school. Not quite; I learned case law, but not necessarily the complex history in which decisions were handed down. I had never even taken a course in American history. Today Professor Pinsker taught us about the concept of coverture as it related to Harriet Scott’s role in her family’s legal case. It was my first time even hearing the word. (Apologies to my law school property professor if I was sleeping had not paid attention during that particular lesson!) Though not by choice (thank you Principal Chang!), as I waded through unfamiliar academic territory, my love affair with history was ignited. So much, that I am currently working on a Master’s degree in the discipline and now consider myself a historian-in-training. It is never too late to look with new eyes, and an open mind.

Bus Ride to Zora Neale Hurston's Gravesite, July 2012

Technology is a huge passion of mine and I am very excited to share the Gilder Lehrman Resources not only my students, but with my classmates who are also educators. Textbooks often leave the readers feeling that time periods come in neat little packages, with the people in history waiting on standby for the next era to begin. Professor Pinkser offered complex perspectives of Dred Scott, John Brown, and the time period before the Civil War, which left my mind reeling with the possibilities for new approaches to teaching the material. He mentioned a quote (Can I hear that one again please Professor Pinsker?) by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the Dred Scott decision, which sparked my interest in Emerson’s role in the Civil War. The House Divided resources are excellent, especially for discussing quality academic research. With students who are digital natives, new methods must be incorporated into making history come alive and the interactive nature of these primary resources provides just that.

11th Grade History Class Field Trip, April 2012

This past school year I viewed American history through a lens that was not much different from that of my students, and was challenged with making the subject one with which they  (read: we) could relate. I remembered exactly how it felt to be sitting in my high school class thinking, why do I even need to know this? Most of my students were either immigrants or descended from immigrants, and did not believe that American history related to their lives. They did not know the history of their home countries, moreover how any of it related to America. As the first person in my family born in the United States, I could understand how they felt and this perspective helped me to connect our histories.

Members of Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, at Fort Lincoln, Maryland. During the Civil War the regiment lost nearly 300 men. (Library of Congress)

In Why Do So Few Blacks Study The Civil War, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote of how black Americans see no greatness in themselves, and “thus no future glory”.  On a field trip to Gettysburg he felt no connection to the history of the Civil War. Coates’ understanding as a middle-school student at the time, was that the legacy of the Civil War belonged “not to us, but to those who reveled in the costume and technology of a time when we were property”. If this was the case for American students, imagine how it must be for students of different countries and cultures. My district required that I teach from three different history texts, yet in none of them would my students ever read about the role of black people during the Civil War besides Americans. This is one reason why primary source analysis played a crucial role in my classroom; textbooks alone are never enough.

During the Civil War and Reconstruction, radical American abolitionist missionaries drew from their experiences in Jamaica.

My students and I are mostly from the Caribbean, so in order to make the connections for us I pored over the available research. We learned that the Union blockade created an economic hardship for the people of Jamaica, and of the role our Jamaican and Haitian ancestors played in the Civil War. In the Journal of the Civil War Era, Matthew J. Calvin in his analysis of Gale L. Kenny’s Book Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-Emancipation Jamaica 1834-1866 stated, “Historians are only now beginning to recognize what American abolitionists long understood, that the end of slavery outside the United States had an important effect on the movement to secure its end inside the United States.” In the Civil War History Journal in an article titled A Second Haitian Revolution: John Brown, Toussaint Louverture, and the Making of the American Civil War, Calvin discussed how the events leading to revolution in Haiti “had a profound impact on the American mind”. These are some examples of why I am so excited to learn and share with my students about the Civil War, and how much our history as Caribbean blacks is woven into the fabric of the United States.

The cabin floor

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On July 31, 2012

In Discussion, Memory

When Professor Pinsker (I mean Matt) spoke of how Abraham Lincoln used quotes from John Brown’s trial in his second inaugural address it sent shivers down my spine. The two of them were closer idyllically than either wanted to admit.

It was September 20,2009 I was standing on a floor in the Adair cabin. My feet were still upon the floor where 150 years ago escaped slaves had seeked refuge for a night. It was also a place John Brown frequented to be safe. It was the house of  his cousins the Adairs. I was part of the Freedom Festival for the  John Brown Museum in Osawatomie ,Kansas . I stood their in my Lincoln attire feeling proud of who I was about to portray on stage. Yet an uneasy feeling came over me as if someone wanted me to never enter the cabin . I felt some eyes pearcing into me. I slowly turned and saw a women in civil war period dress in Florella Adair’s rocking chair . Her eyes were watery and seemed full of hate. I gracefully and as peacefully as possible extended my hand  “I’m Abraham Lincoln” “I’m Florella Adair  and you have unjustly and cruely ruined the good deeds of John Brown”. We stayed in character for twenty minutes and through many tears and a patient ear we agreed both men wanted the same thing.Somehow I had won  her over . She hugged me and I hugged her . In my speech I stayed true to Lincoln’s words but I did not condem John Brown’s character. The woman I talked to, her real  name was Mary Buster, Florella Adair’s great-great-grandaughter.

What’s good for the goose …

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On July 31, 2012

In Discussion, Memory

Strom Thurmond campaign poster (Smithsonian Institution)

The idea which I’ve been wrestling with today is state’s rights. Here’s how the state’s rights argument has played out for me in the past.

The statement goes something like this. The Civil War wasn’t about slavery. No right thinking person could then or can now defend the institution. It was a moral wrong in 1619 when Dutch traders bartered slaves for ship repairs. It was a moral wrong during our founding and the founders knew it. It was wrong in 1861.

But then the statement takes a left turn:

The war was really fought over the rights of the states. A states right to secede. A states right to manage its economy as it saw fit. The right to an ethos and lifestyle unique to its people and culture; the noble Lost Cause.

When my student’s raise state’s rights, I send them to see Mr. Alexander Stephens of Georgia. Stephens served in the House of Representatives with Mr. Lincoln. He became the Vice-President of the Confederacy when Georgia secedes and will deliver what has become known as the Cornerstone Speech, a portion of which is excerpted here:

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.  This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Alexander Stephens, March 21, 1861

Stephen’s thesis is that the Confederacy’s Constitution is stronger than the Union’s because slavery is the manifestation of a ‘physical, philosophical and moral truth’ on which the federal document is silent.

It makes a pretty persuasive argument for the cause of the war: The second in command of the South says its about slavery. The challenge for me, is that today’s lecture muddies the water a bit.

The concept of states rights predates the Civil War, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really given it its due. In class, we breeze through the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and Calhoun taking up the Jefferson/Madison mantle. We look at Dred Scott as a case about slaves as citizens without looking at Chief Justice Taney’s argument about federal supremacy in this case and Abelman v. Booth.

        

The argument I’m wrestling with is this: if Wisconsin can cry states rights in 1859, why can’t South Carolina in 1860? Dr. Pinsker’s suggestion is that states rights is a mean’s to an end–the end being slavery. But I’m struggling with how cut and dry that feels.

textbooks and URR routes

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On July 31, 2012

In Discussion, Images, Mapping

The American Journey is a ubiquitous middle school text, and I have used it in Michigan and Washington. This screenshot is from page 423 of the 2005 edition:

As mentioned in today’s wrap-up, students typically perceive the URR as having been “Mississippi to Maine.” What this map shows, however, is that the majority of escapees made their flights from starting points along the boundary with the North.

I occasionally have students who paid attention in 1st through 7th grades, and these are sometimes offended by my attempt to disabuse them of their perception of the URR. They remember “follow the drinking gourd” and “Harriet Tubman,” and only reluctantly let go of their certainty that most escaped slaves traversed hundreds of miles of hostile territory to attain freedom. Close study of the map is a bit of a buzzkill; slaves who simply stepped from Maryland into Pennsylvania don’t make for such exciting stories.

We may not get to it in this course, but another Gilder Lehrman contributor, David Blight, offers his perspective on the mythologies surrounding Americans’ views of the Civil War. He talks, quite eloquently, about the different types of memory associated with it. His take on “emancipationist memory” is a nice corollary to this course. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (also in iTunes University)

My son came home from 1st grade to tell me about a railroad that was dug “under the dirt so the bad people won’t find them,” and “they came up at night to find the drinking gourd and get fresh water.”

We have work to do.

 

Elementary Understanding

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On July 31, 2012

In Discussion, Images

As an elementary teacher in Virginia, the Civil War is primarily taught from the borders of Virginia with very little expanse outside of the state.  This proves to be very difficult for students to get a full grasp of the war without at least taking a look at the bigger picture.  The second challenge is taking what I’ve often referred to as “dates and dead people” and making it interesting and worth studying to a 10 year old.

I’ve used a similar method as given in the Dred Scott powerpoint by taking a look at images and allowing students to analyze them for what they see.  Majority of the images I have used have come from the Mathew Brady collection.  I carefully select images that don’t give it away that we’re talking about the Civil War, but just photographs with a variety of items in them that students can identify.  First students view the photographs, listing items, people, and the geography they see.  Then they share with partners their images and discuss what they believe is happening, where was the picture taken, when and why along with what evidence can they use to support their findings.  When students share in small groups they discuss more indepth about what is seen in the photos and can begin to make connections between photographs.  It’s fascinating to watch as the students begin to create their own stories behind what they believe is happening and by matching up items or places in the photos they begin to see a bigger picture, the significance and the problems.  More photographs are added as the activity continues as if adding more pieces to a puzzle.  Eventually I will include images of soldiers which gets those who thought this was a war excited because it’s their personal confirmation.  The discussion is rich and questions begin to come out rapidly.  Midway through the activity there are about 50 to 75 photographs scattered around the room and students are moving about to view them all.  Some students will carry around a favorite to compare with other photos to find a link that they feel will answer the ultimate question – When did this take place and why?  More often than not, students eventually can get that this was a major war, there was a lot of destruction and one of my favorite questions is when someone asks… Did they have a choice or were they forced to fight?  From there I can begin to introduce letters from soldiers both Union and Confederate and try to uncover the reasons.  At this point I’ve officially hooked their interest and have them wanting so much more information that our lessons, both required and extensions, become engaging, interactive and leaving everyone, (myself included) wanting to know more about the Civil War.

Pamplin Park in Petersburg, VA has a museum that inspired me to follow soldiers through the war with my students which is how I got the idea of looking at soldiers letters.  James McPherson’s book For Cause & Comrades is going to be an excellent source for future activities. From what I’ve read so far, this book has done what I have been hoping to find in research for a while.  The Gilder Lehrman site in both History by Era and Primary Sources will help springboard this very simple activity into a more 21st century style of learning all of which I’m looking forward to using.

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