Random comments for Sunday

The Drive-By Truckers brought their "Dirt Underneath" tour to Atlanta Friday night. The Variety Playhouse was rocking. They played for over two hours, the second more raucously than the first, due partly to a very enthusiastic crowd, but even more (I suspect) to the Jack Daniels and beer they were drinking onstage.

So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating
-- "Gravity's Gone," by Mike Cooley/DBT


John McCain's recent interview with BeliefNet shows that he's forgotten his Constitution--either that, or he's pandering. Or both.

Q. Has the candidates’ personal faith become too big an issue in the presidential race?

A. . . . I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'

Q. A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?

A. I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.


The 19th Georgia Carnival is up and ready for your perusal at Georgia on My Mind. As always, good reading.


"What an idiot," one might be tempted to say after reading Michael Medved's recent piece at TownHall.com, "Six Inconvenient Truths about U.S. Slavery." But then his readers come to his rescue with comments that make Medved look almost brilliant by comparison. Timothy Burke's "Knowledge Is Inconvenient" provides a good scholarly smack-down.


"Funniest comic I've heard in a long time," says Blue Gal about Demitri Martin, and she has the proof.

THE Little Rock picture.

I was looking at this photo a few weeks ago in my office with a couple of colleagues, and someone asked about the young white woman shouting at the African American student. None of us knew who she was or what had become of her.

Now, thanks to a tip from Ralph Luker, we know.

Her name is Hazel Bryan, and her changing relationship with Elizabeth Eckford, the African American woman, is the subject of "Through a Lens, Darkly," an article by David Margolick from Vanity Fair. The photo is from Will Counts/Arkansas History Commission; the article is thoughtful and thought-provoking. Bryan's words at the time are lost to history, but can be easily imagined.

Let's Do Something Constitutional on Constitution Day

Two hundred and twenty years ago today, the Constitutional Convention met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, for the last time. Since the middle of May, the 55 delegates had been writing a proposed new government for the United States of America. On this day, their work complete, they signed their draft of the Constitution and sent it out to the states for ratification.

Below, in honor of Constitution Day, is a brief essay by Dr. Joyce Appleby, emerita professor of history at UCLA. This piece was originally written for the History News Service and appears here with HNS's permission.

=====================================

Let's Do Something Constitutional on Constitution Day

by Joyce Appleby

On September 17, Constitution Day, in 2002, scholars presented a petititon, signed by 1,200 American historians, urging members of Congress to assume their constitutional responsibility to determine whether or not to declare war on Iraq. Reminding them that Congress had ignored this provision since its 1941 declarations of war on Japan, Germany and Italy, the petition explained why the Founding Fathers gave this power to them and to no other body.

As the petition explained: "Americans deserve to hear their representatives deliberate about a possible war, lest such a momentous course of action be undertaken by the president alone after a public airing filled with rumors, leaks, and speculations." It continued: "Leaving the president solely in control of war powers" has been "to the detriment of our democracy and in clear violation of the Constitution."

Now, four years into a disastrous war initiated without a congressional declaration, no member of Congress has publicly raised this issue since. A majority of Democratic representatives actually voted against the resolution giving President Bush the okay to invade Iraq, but none has announced that it was time to stop amending the constitution by selective neglect. No one has even suggested a congressional resolution to make the point.

The American people revere their Constitution. They can't seem to get their fill of books about the Founding Fathers either. Yet there's something empty about such reverence if our elected officials ignore key grants of power.

Take the case of the executive authority over the military. Article 2, Section 2, couldn't be clearer: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Military of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States." Nowhere in this concise document is there any grant of the sweeping powers now claimed for the commander in chief.

Indeed, the congressional power to declare war and the president's power to head the military in time of war go together. The men who submitted their constitutional draft to the several states for ratification on September 17, 1787, left the declaring of war to members of Congress because their constituents would bear the brunt of war should they make the awful choice of resorting to violence. The Framers made the president commander in chief for efficiency and to avoid a dangerous concentration of power in Congress.

Passing resolutions giving the president permission to invade a country instead of formally declaring war is an evasion of responsibility on the part of Congress and a disregard of duty, moral as well as constitutional, to the men and women they represent.

Denying writs of habeas corpus, spying on Americans, abrogating treaties have all excited attention in recent years, but no abuse of power has graver consequences than leaving the war-making powers exclusively in the hands of the president.

The national rumor mill is full of stories that President Bush is planning to attack Iran. If ever there were a moment for Congress to reassume its constitutional powers to determine when American forces go to war, now is the time. Let's stop this silent amending of the Constitution that we hold so dear.

Charles Wesley and two blind boys

I'm reading Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America, ed. by Mark Noll and Edith L. Blumhofer. (Isn't that a great dust jacket?) My favorite chapter thus far is John R. Tyson's on "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," the Charles Wesley hymn that Tyson calls "the Methodist national anthem."

I grew up Methodist, and Tyson's about right.

O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The Triumphs of His grace!

A later verse:

Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.

Years ago, when we sang that song in church, that verse always brought to mind a particular poem--and it still does.

One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys stood up to fight.
Back to back, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to arrest the two dead boys.
If you don't believe my story's true,
Just ask the blind man-- he saw it too!

slavery and the Civil War II

I recently posted briefly about the connection between slavery and both secession and the reason Confederates fought.

In comments, Miss Kitty, of Educated & Poor, asked for more information.

All right, here goes--

Correlation does not equal causation, but the following is interesting. The first list shows the percentage of free households that owned slaves in the various states; the second is the southern states in order of secession.

Mississippi: 49%
S. Carolina: 46%
Georgia: 37%
Alabama: 35%
Florida: 34%
Louisiana: 29%
Texas: 28%
North Carolina: 28%
Virginia: 26%
Tennessee: 25%
Kentucky: 23%
Arkansas: 20%
Missouri: 13%
Maryland: 12%
Delaware: 3%

South Carolina (December 20, 1860)
Mississippi (January 9, 1861)
Florida (January 10, 1861)
Alabama (January 11, 1861)
Georgia (January 19, 1861)
Louisiana (January 26, 1861)
Texas (February 1, 1861)
Virginia (April 17, 1861)
Arkansas (May 6, 1861)
North Carolina (May 20, 1861)
Tennessee (June 8, 1861)

(I’ve seen this elsewhere, but I copied the slavery statistics from this site)

Georgia (where Miss Kitty and I both live) voted to secede from the Union on January 19, 1861. The secessionists explained their actions ten days later, in a document called Declaration of the Causes of Secession. Prominent among those causes: the victory of “abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States” who were guided by the principles of “prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, and the equality of the black and white races.”

South Carolina’s “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” was more direct:

On the 4th day of March next, this party [Republican] will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

From Mississippi's document:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

(All the above is from this website.)

Georgian Alexander Stephens, in a speech in Savannah on March 21, 1861, a month after having been elected vice president of the Confederacy, spoke of “our new government”: “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.”

(text available here)

Rebecca Felton, the first woman in the U.S. Senate (and, like me, a resident of Cartersville, Georgia), wrote in her memoirs: “We, in the South, honestly believed we could engineer a peaceable separation. There is no doubt of the sincerity of the belief. It was not an attempt at revolt or insurrection or anything else but a resolute intention to own slaves and regulate slavery just as our forbears had been doing for nearly a hundred years. . . . It was slavery and nothing but slavery that made Georgia secede.”

(from Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth [1919], p. 80-81)

Here is the introduction to William Barney’s review of Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War:

“Will the South give up the institution of slavery and consent that her citizens be stripped of their property, her civilization destroyed, the whole land laid waste by fire and sword? It is impossible. She cannot; she will not” (101). In these words Stephen F. Hale, Alabama’s secession commissioner to Kentucky, laid bare the core argument of the secessionists committed to the break-up of the Union and the creation of a separate Southern nation. The secessionists insisted that Lincoln’s election in November 1860 as the head of the antislavery Republican party posed a direct and an unconscionable threat to the stability and safety of the slaveholding South. Submission to that election meant the certain destruction of slavery and a calamity of horrors for Southern whites that included impoverishment, degradation, and racial humiliation.

In his aptly titled Apostles of Disunion, Charles B. Dew examines the arguments and rhetorical strategies of the special commissioners sent by the seceding states to preach the gospel of disunion to slaveholding states still wavering on the issue of secession. Appointed either by their governors or by the secession conventions, some fifty-two men served as commissioners. . . .

Dew’s analysis of the commissioners’ message yielded one central finding: the absolute centrality of concerns over slavery and race as the prime justification for secession and hence the coming of the Civil War.

(from Civil War History 48 [2002]: 366-67)

There was more to secession than slavery, of course, but slavery was clearly the BIG thing.

Slavery led to secession, which led to the war. But why did Confederates fight? That’s a very different question. In What they Fought For, James McPherson examined the diaries and private correspondence of hundreds of Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate. McPherson noted that unlike memoirs, often written long after the war with an eye toward justifying a particular cause, these more immediate writings--the diaries and letters home--“bring us closer to the real thoughts and emotions of those men than any other kind of surviving evidence.”

McPherson found that about two-thirds of Confederate soldiers expressed patriotic motives for fighting; they fought for their country, the Confederate States of America. “Sink or swim, survive or perish,” wrote one, “I will fight in defense of my country.” Another wrote to his wife: “I confess that I gave you up with reluctance. Yet I love my country dearly. . . . I intend to discharge my duty to my country and to my God.”

About forty percent (there were overlaps) said they were fighting for ideological principles such as liberty, constitutional rights, and resistance to tyranny. McPherson reported that he found hundreds of references in Confederate letters to phrases like “the holy cause of liberty and independence,” “southern rights and southern liberty,” “death before Yankee rule,” and “bursting the bonds of tyranny.”

President Lincoln noted that “the perfect liberty they sigh for is the liberty of making slaves of other people.” Still, only about 20 percent of Confederate soldiers explicitly said they were fighting to maintain slavery.

This is not to suggest that Confederate soldiers were antislavery, of course, or that they didn’t assume that the war would make the South safe for slavery. But it does suggest that the connection between slavery and “what they fought for” is not nearly as strong as that between slavery and secession.

There you go, Miss Kitty-- more than you wanted to know.

slavery and the Civil War

Over at History News Network is a new piece by Robert Cook, author of the recent Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965-- "150 Years after the Civil War, Can We finally Remember It the Way We Should?"

"Southern whites," Cook writes, "must be shown what they were not shown in the 1960s: That they seceded and fought primarily to protect slavery and defend the racial order that was based upon it."

Cook--and everyone else--needs to separate the two. Southern whites seceded to protect slavery; they fought for a variety of reasons. It's two different questions. We can see this in other wars (Vietnam, for example), that there is an obvious distinction between the reason for the war and the reason individuals fought in that war. Why do we have so much trouble understanding that for the Civil War?

just in the nick of time

I thought I was going to have to spend the hour before lunch working on the syllabus for my Georgia History class this fall when, just in the nick of time, I see that Georgia Carnival 15 has shown up at Georgia on My Mind. Yay!! I can read that instead!

And, hey, you should too. As always, good stuff, including the introduction of my favorite Educated & Poor adjunct from west central Georgia as well as postings on travel, "good eatin,'" and more--the best recent postings from Georgia blogs.

our newest (and oldest) graduate

Something pretty cool happened at our graduation ceremony yesterday (we have graduation after every term, including summer): As reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kennesaw State University awarded a diploma to our oldest graduate ever:

Arthur Harris attended college for barely two months--when he was 17--before dropping out and joining the Navy. Decades later, while he was working in the skin-care business, he went to Georgia State University.

Now, at 81, he's finally earned his bachelor's degree.

Harris . . . received his diploma from Kennesaw State University on Monday. In a school that always has attracted nontraditional students, Harris was as nontraditional as it gets: He is the oldest student ever to graduate from the Cobb County university. . . .

For the past three years, not unlike his classmates, Harris took two or three classes a semester and stayed up late to write papers on his computer. He even went to Italy this summer in a study abroad program.

He was an English major. Now, according to the story, Harris is considering going back to school to get a second degree in psychology. I guess he heard those rumors about how tough it is for English majors to get jobs.

A story that has bothered me even more than I thought it would

This story (from The Primate Diaries):

The shocking news that four more critically endangered mountain gorillas were killed last week should make all primates of good conscience wince. Furthermore, one of the females was pregnant and another was nursing a five month old infant who is not expected to live.

According to the World Wildlife Foundation, there are an estimated 700 mountain gorillas alive in the wild. The loss of these six gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo represents 0.86% of the total population. This would be the equivalent of slaughtering 5,910 endangered African elephants or 60 million human beings in a single week. In human terms this is the death of every man, woman and child in England (and nearly as many as the population of Congo).

Actually it was probably the images rather than the story itself.

"Bush justice is a national disgrace"

This past week, the Denver Post carried an op-ed piece by John S. Koppel, identified as "a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981." I came across it on TPM's Muckraker.com, and I've seen it nowhere else.

It begins:

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

Koppel's piece deserves much wider circulation.

UPDATE: "I've seen it nowhere else" referred to a quick search of printed media. Turns out Koppel's piece has been reported in several dozen blogs in the last couple of days. Go blogosphere!

Neal Boortz is an idiot, and he's paid way too much

Folks have noted Neal Boortz's ranting this past week in which he claimed--repeatedly, even after a caller tried to correct him--that "Scooter Libby and Bill Clinton got sentenced and convicted for exactly the same crime."

But what really got me is this Boortzism: "Scooter Libby was sentenced to pay a $250,000 fine. That's a quarter of a million dollars, that's more than a lot of people make in a year." No, Neal. $30,000 is more than a lot of people make in a year.

"Worrying about being fat may make you even fatter"

Ain't that just peachy?

"peachy"

genealogies

Last week, in response to a meme tag from Ed Darrell, I mentioned a couple of facts about my genealogy-- lots of Methodist preachers and at least one presidential assassin (alleged).

Of course, the family tree is just one sort of genealogy. There's also one's academic genealogy. In graduate school, I was a George Tindall student-- "Our father, who art in Chapel Hill," as Bob McMath, another Tindall student, once said. Bob's right; one's grad school advisor is much like a parent figure, guiding and protecting, shaping the student's research, preparing the student for the world of the profession, etc. Tindall was a Fletcher M. Green student, which makes me Green's academic grandson. (I never met him, but I have Grandpa Fletcher's original American Nation series.) Green was a student of Joseph Gregoire de Rhoulhac Hamilton, who in turn was a student at Columbia of William Archibald Dunning, a fact that amused more than impressed my students as we discussed Reconstruction historiography.

And then there's blog genealogy. Blaine Bettinger, writing at The Genetic Genealogist, recently announced that the site has been given a Thinking Blogger Award. Recipients of the award have to name the next generation of winners. Blaine is in the 70th generation, and if one traces his line back to the original (as Blaine does on the site), Another History Blog is number five, the great (times 60-something) grandparent. (And I just realized I'm late coming to this party. Elementary History Teacher, who is number six, has already left a comment at Blaine's site, "I'm one of your blog great grandmothers....") Those seventy blogs would make a very interesting evening's reading!

A Touch of Grey

I had students in my US History survey class read L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Ranjit Dighe's annotated edition, The Historian's Wizard of Oz). Discussion went well. To make sure they read the book before class, I told them they would have a little test on the book. I asked what color Dorothy's slippers were, of course, and I also asked what color Baum used at the very beginning to show the bleakness of prairie life. Most students got it right (gray), but over half spelled it "grey."

I blame it on Grey's Anatomy. What do you think?

I got memed!

Ed Darrell, over at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, did the Eight Random Facts meme and tagged me. Only for you, Ed....

The rules:

• Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
• Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
• Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

OK, here we go:

1. One of my favorite snacks (Ed started his list with food) is graham crackers with peanut butter, washed down with a big glass of cold milk.

2. For years, I thought I was born on the same day that Patsy Cline first recorded “Walking after Midnight,” which would be an interesting fact to include here. But I decided to check first, and it turns out I was wrong: according to a dozen web sites, Patsy recorded on Nov. 8; I was born on Nov. 28, same year (exactly which year isn’t terribly important here). I don’t know what led me to believe that she recorded her first big hit on the wrong day.

3. John Harrison Surratt was my third cousin, six times removed. His wife Mary was hanged for her alleged (alleged, I said!) participation to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

4. I wrote an essay several years ago on how L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz reflected certain aspects of late-nineteenth-century American politics etc. It wasn’t a terribly original essay (nor did it claim to be), but it got picked up and cited/reprinted on a number of web pages and elsewhere. I still get letters and email messages about it. I especially like hearing from students who are doing Oz as a school project.

5. I was a science fiction fan in my younger days--and a huge fan of Isaac Asimov. When I was a senior in high school, some buddies and I went to a science fiction convention where I got to meet Asimov. I got him to autograph my program, and then, not satisfied with that, I picked up a copy of one of his novels from a table in the huckster room and asked him to sign it as well. But, wanting to keep a little of my dignity, I told Asimov that the book was for my English teacher. Asimov said he’d be happy to sign it--and he asked for the teacher’s name. Without a moment’s hesitation, I used my right arm to scratch my left shoulder, hence covering the name tag on my pocket, and said “Mr. Parker.” So my copy of Fantastic Voyage (Asimov wrote the novelization from the movie) is inscribed, “Dedicated to Mr. Parker, with best wishes, Isaac Asimov.”

6. I’m slightly tall (6’ 2”); my parents were both shorter by a foot (5’ 2”).

7. My father was a Methodist minister, as were three of his uncles and his grandfather on the Hamilton side, plus another uncle (I believe) on the Parker side. So when someone tells me I sometimes sound like a preacher, I tell them I come by it naturally.

8. Except when I’m driving, I generally listen to internet (rather than over-the-air) radio. I especially like WFMU.org.

And there you have it--Eight Random Facts about me.

I'm supposed to pass this on. Let's see. . . . I'd like to know 8 facts about: A Typical Joe; South Georgia Liberal; Sweet Georgia Blue; Southern Pasts; Michael at Silly Humans; Ross at Primordial Blog; Djamine at Dark Side of Mars; and Dr. History.

Monday morning

A friend/colleague had a couple of grad school buddies in for the weekend, from Alabama and South Carolina. We spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon at nearby Pickett's Mill Battlefield, a nice site. At one point, conversation turned to how various contemporary journalists might describe that and other Civil War battles, which reminded me of this: How World War II would look if it had been a real-time strategy game. I saw it on the web a couple of years ago, and fortunately I was able to find it again:

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol

And so on (available here, and elsewhere).

On Saturday, a cookout/birthday party with the same folks and others. A lot of fun. We ended up playing a board game. I don't think I ever saw the title, but the basic point was that players have to list as many examples as they can of certain categories. At one point, I had "sexy movie actresses." After one or two names, my mind went blank, and I said "Julie Andrews," which resulted in more ribbing than I thought appropriate. Another time, the category was "famous people whose first and last names begin with the same letter." The others didn't like my "Daniel DeLeon" (late 19th-cent. American socialist--not famous enough, they said), so I raised an objection about Woodrow Wilson (his first name was Thomas). I won on the first point, lost on the second.

A week and a half into summer classes, and things are going well. The pairing of Clio Bluestocking's posting on her town's trauma and Eric Foner's Who Owns History? worked very well for my methodology class-- Thanks again, Clio.

Off to class. This morning, the Populists!

Eric Foner and Clio Bluestocking

The students in my methodology course this summer are reading Eric Foner's Who Owns History? Tomorrow evening we discuss the first couple of chapters, so I'm re-reading the book today.

In the preface, Foner describes how recent changes in the discipline "began to produce a long-overdue diversification of public history." As examples he mentions Boston, where the Freedom Trail "has now been supplemented by a Women's History Trail, a Black Heritage Trail, and a guide to the city's gay and lesbian history"; Greensboro, N.C., home of the sit-ins in 1960; and the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.

As I read this, Clio Bluestocking's recent posting on "The Town Trauma" came immediately to mind. She tells how, in the 1880s, people in a town she has researched decided to erect a statue to the English military leader who, over two centuries earlier, had made the area safe for white settlement by getting rid of the natives, a feat he accomplished by a terrible massacre. His soldiers "surrounded the [native] village, set it on fire and killed anyone who tried to escape. The descriptions, written by the militia captains, are flat out chilling not just for the destruction that they describe, including the killing of children and elderly people, but also for the soldiers' expressions of deep conviction that they were doing the work of god."

Recently, Native Americans in the area expressed some dissatisfaction with the statue. The result was a confrontation that shows that, while Foner is correct about the "long-overdue diversification of public history," we still have a ways to go. I think I'll read Clio's posting to my class tomorrow.