Civil War Battlefield Research Articles

The Army’s battlefield parks in the US national park system: From grafted branch to poisoned fruit

The first set of parks created by the United States government under uniform administration was a set of Civil War battlefields under the control of the War Department, or Army. The first battlefield parks were created in the 1890s and expanded into a much larger system stretching across the country. The Army developed these parks with visitor facilities and extensive memorials and monuments. In 1933 the entire system was transferred to the National Park Service and became part of the national park system. These units had been sought by the Park Service to expand the geographical and thematic diversity of its holdings. This work explores the creation of this system by the Army and what has happened to these units after their absorption into the park system. While most were expanded and became more typical park units, others were removed from the system, leaving two in their original condition.

Response of grassland birds to management in national battlefield parks

AbstractGrassland birds are in steep decline, with population declines reported in 74% of North American grassland species in the past 50 years. Declines are particularly severe in the eastern United States where they are influenced by habitat loss and alteration due to urbanization, forest regrowth, and agricultural intensification. The United States National Park Service maintains civil war battlefields in the eastern United States as historical and cultural parks that may also provide habitat refuge for grassland birds within an increasingly urbanized matrix. To assess the conservation importance of battlefield parks and the role of park management in sustaining grassland birds, we surveyed for 2 declining grassland‐breeding species, eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna) and grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), at 242 points across 4 battlefield parks in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, USA, from 2014–2019 and in 2021. We modeled the effects of park management activities (prescribed fire, agricultural leases, and delayed harvest) and habitat and landscape characteristics on breeding‐season occupancy. There was support for the influence of local habitat features, landscape, and management. Breeding‐season occupancy of both species was consistently higher in hayfields and pasture than in row crops, and both species responded positively to hay and crop harvest delays intended for grassland bird conservation. Prescribed fire within the past 2 years had a positive effect on occupancy of grasshopper sparrows but did not influence eastern meadowlarks. Eastern meadowlarks responded to land cover at multiple spatial scales that are influenced by land use within and outside the parks. Management activities that maintain the parks' cultural goals, including partnerships between national parks and private agricultural operators, are likely to provide valuable habitat for these 2 obligate grassland birds.

Assessing tradeoffs between current and desired vegetation condition in a National Park using historical maps and high‐resolution lidar data

In the United States, National Park Service Civil War battlefield units are managed for both historical accuracy (i.e. to represent landscape conditions at the time of the conflict for historical interpretation), and for natural resource protection. However, managing for both goals can create conflicts as many battlefields were largely open or in second growth forests historically, but now harbor significant forest resources after more than 100 years of preservation. Managing for historical accuracy therefore may require maintenance of the landscape in a successional stage out of phase with the current landscape. We use historical landscape maps and current high‐resolution forest structure data derived from lidar to examine tradeoffs in returning the landscape of a major Civil War battlefield (Wilderness Battlefield) to conditions present at the time of the battle. We demonstrate that National Park battlefield units can harbor significant forest resources in contrast to the surrounding landscape, especially in areas of intense commercial, urban, and suburban development. Managing for or restoring landscapes to historical conditions could have important ecological implications.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Protected Areas of the American Southeast

Guest Editors' Introduction:Protected Areas of the American Southeast Joe Weber and John A. Kupfer Protected areas (PAs) in the United States are lands and waters that are: 1) dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity and other natural, recreational, and cultural uses, and 2) managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means (U.S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Project 2022). Such areas are overseen by a suite of federal, state, tribal, and local authorities and encompass everything from national and state parks and forests to wildlife refuges, tribal lands, military bases, regional land and water management areas, county and local parks, and privately owned lands protected through conservation easements. Because of the diverse nature of PAs and the organizations charged with managing them, their goals, missions, and permissible activities are highly varied, ranging from conservation of biodiversity, recreation, farming and forestry, protection of water supply and quality, hazard prevention, scenic protection, and much more. Protected areas are also places that connect Americans to their history and heritage and that provide sources of inspiration and personal renewal (Kupfer et al. 2021). The southeastern United States contains an array of endemic species and unique ecosystems that occupy habitats from the highest peaks of the Appalachian Mountains to marine environments along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, making it one of the world's thirty-six biodiversity hotspots (Noss et al. 2015). The region is also home to a range of cultures, fascinating urban and rural landscapes, scenes of conflict, and artistic triumphs. The rich biological, cultural, social, and historical heritage of the region is reflected in the important role that it has played in the genesis, growth, and diversification of PAs nationally. The first national wildlife refuge was created in Florida in 1903 to protect brown pelicans and other birds from slaughter by market and plume hunters; and national wildlife refuges throughout the region continue to provide habitat for threatened and endangered species such as the American crocodile, gopher tortoise, and Mississippi sandhill crane as well as critical stopover points along the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways. Following passage of the Weeks Act in 1911, Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina was the first national forest created from private lands when it was established in 1916. It is now considered to be part of the Cradle of American Forestry. Everglades National Park was the first National Park System unit created primarily to protect an [End Page 6] ecosystem, and it remains the largest tropical wilderness in the US and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River (Lodge 2016). Military installations protect numerous imperiled species and ecosystems (Stein et al. 2008) and provide valuable examples of approaches for balancing conflicting uses as part of ecosystem-based management (Christensen et al. 2021). And, while the majority of US protected lands are in the American West, more vulnerable species are found in the Southeast, emphasizing the importance of protecting private lands in the region (Jenkins et al. 2015). The Nature Conservancy's first large protection project was on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi in the 1970s (Schueler 2002), and more than 1 million hectares throughout the region are protected under conservation easements (National Conservation Easement Database 2022). These examples, and numerous others not mentioned here, underscore the important role of PAs in the protection and management of biodiversity in the Southeast. The Southeast is also home to the first federal attempts at protecting cultural and historical sites. These efforts began in the 1890s when five Civil War battlefields (Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg) were purchased by the U.S. Army (using the powers of eminent domain, when needed) and preserved as national military parks (Lee 1973, Smith 2008). The Army restored these battlefields to their wartime appearance, established roads, put up interpretive and commemorative markers, and hired staff to protect and maintain the parks. These sites were joined by many others in the Southeast before eventually being transferred to the National Park Service (NPS) in 1933. The transfer of these sites was part of a larger effort by the NPS to expand into units focused more on history and recreation and represented a geographic strategy to...

The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe

Reviewed by: The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe Adam H. Petty (bio) The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War. Kenneth W. Noe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana States University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-8071-7320-6. 680 pp., cloth, $59.95. Kenneth Noe’s latest book, The Howling Storm, investigates the role weather played in the American Civil War. In particular, it focuses on weather’s effect on military campaigns. The book is foremost a narrative history. Most of its chapters are dedicated to retelling events in Virginia or the western theater, although there are occasional excursions to the Trans-Mississippi. The weather’s impact on Northern and Southern agriculture also receives some attention in Noe’s book, as does the soldiers’ yearly struggle to make themselves comfortable in winter quarters. While The Howling Storm is not encyclopedic, it covers a remarkable amount of ground for a single volume. As for the book’s argument, Noe contends that “a full understanding of the war requires regrounding it in the physical environment” (1). Not surprisingly, he concludes that “weather shaped every campaign, often more decisively than we have fathomed” (9). Moreover, in many instances, the weather “favored the Union cause and—perhaps even more—emancipation” (493). Better equipped boys in blue could withstand the elements with greater ease then their counterparts in gray. He also observes that Northern agriculture did not suffer the [End Page 433] catastrophic damage that spring rains and summer droughts inflicted on the Confederacy, resulting in food shortages south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Howling Storm, with just shy of five hundred pages of text, is not a quick read. Nor is it a page-turner. The many descriptions of soldiers suffering through the mud, rain, heat, and cold might prove monotonous to some readers. That being said, The Howling Storm is a very useful book. Its achievement lies in gathering an enormous amount of information about Civil War weather in one volume. In the past, good military historians included information about the weather in their campaign studies, but Noe’s book provides a relatively compact resource that historians can reference to see what the weather was up to at crucial moments of the Civil War. Because of the book’s broad approach, Noe is able to see larger patterns in the weather, conclusions that would escape more focused studies. For instance, he will note when a cold snap or a torrential downpour that affected one campaign was part of a larger weather system that was also affecting operations in a different theater. One concern that I have about this book is that it could mislead those who read it to think that weather was the most important factor controlling the events of the war. I do not mean to say that Noe asserts this or intended this outcome. Rather, it is simply a danger that comes with relying on any one analytical lens to tell a story. While Noe’s work provides a nice corrective to those who might have been tempted to ignore the weather’s influence, I think it is best read in conjunction with other military histories of the war, allowing readers to weigh the merits of weather as an explanatory tool. The Howling Storm is a great resource for those wanting to add a little information about the weather to their Civil War course, especially for historians who do not specialize in military history. All in all, lay readers and historians alike owe Noe a collective “Huzzah!” for this mammoth work and important contribution to Civil War history. Adam H. Petty History Department Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Adam H. Petty ADAM H. PETTY is a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers. He is the author of The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield (2019). Copyright © 2022 The Kent State University Press

Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt

Reviewed by: Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt Carol Degrasse (bio) Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War. Lawrence Lee Hewitt. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2021. ISBN 978-1621904830. xi, 352 pp. $49.95. The photographic history of the American Civil War—although extensive—has only recently begun to receive the meticulous attention it deserves, particularly in terms of engaging with the historical and geographical context of extant images. Although broad photographic collections of the “decisive” Civil War battles have been compiled, few have undergone the type of comprehensive examination that Lawrence Lee Hewitt accomplishes in Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War. Hewitt not only provides an expansive visual record of the Battle of Port Hudson, he also decisively corrects the many inconsistencies and inaccuracies associated with these photographs. Hewitt’s book—the product of four decades of research and collecting—takes on greater historical significance when one considers that military occupation and natural erosion have markedly changed the terrain, further complicating the visual record of the battlefield and surrounding landscape. This notable distinction sets the book apart from earlier collections that examine Civil War battle-fields in which the landscapes have been accurately preserved or restored. Here, Hewitt makes a concerted effort to correct topographical inaccuracies by supplying revised maps that depict the photographs’ proper orientations. Perhaps more importantly, he also painstakingly strives to provide proper attribution of the photographs, amend erroneous captions, and include photographs omitted from earlier collections, including those of Black troops and some of the first known “action shots” of any Civil War battle. The book contains 173 of the most representative photographs of Hewitt’s massive collection, covering a diverse range of subjects that include military and civilian spaces taken both during and after the siege. The photographs—some published for the first time—are arranged in chronological order to depict the topographical changes that occurred during battle as well as after its conclusion. Hewitt’s first two chapters provide historical context for those that follow— first, foregrounding Civil War photography both as an art and a business venture and second, providing a brief but thorough historical context for the Port Hudson battles. The other chapters are arranged chronologically, each focusing on one or more of the seven photographers whose works this volume includes. Each chapter contains biographical information on the artists, along with accounts of the photographic techniques they used at Port Hudson. William D. McPherson and his partner, A. J. Oliver, are given two chapters, with the duo’s [End Page 326] photographs of Port Hudson during and after the siege appearing separately. Apart from its sheer abundance, McPherson and Oliver’s work merits a second chapter for its uniqueness. For example, the pair’s work demonstrates some of the earliest attempts to produce combination printing as well as night-time and time-lapse photographs. Hewitt even suggests that some of McPherson and Oliver’s photographs are the first to show troops “engaged” in battle, although to do so, he extends the meaning of engaged to include photographs simply taken while the siege was under way. One of Port Hudson’s defining characteristics is that Hewitt does not simply present the photographs with a historical and geographical emphasis. Instead, he skillfully weaves the historical and geographical information into a narrative that also delves into photographic history and technology, battlefield archaeology, and cartography. The Port Hudson collection will likely never attain the level of recognition of photos of other battle sites; however, this type of in-depth visual study will provoke new scholarship on other Civil War battles and on Civil War photography as a whole. Carol Degrasse Southern Methodist University Carol Degrasse CAROL DEGRASSE is a PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a 2021 NEH Summer Scholar. She has published on Rebecca Harding Davis, Emily Dickenson, Henry David Thoreau, and effective pedagogical practices. Her dissertation, “Visualizing Identity: Photography and Social Performances of Race in the American Nineteenth Century,” challenges widely accepted theories of race, visual culture, and performance by examining the roles played by aesthetics in framing social identities of...

Civil War Battlefield: Culpeper, Virginia 2019

Civil War Battlefield:Culpeper, Virginia 2019 Michael Pittard (bio) There's no one else here.Only the rusty cutoutsilhouettes of riflemen,fingers waiting to fire. On the cedar mountain,radio antennae blinkblue & green lights.Ticks crawl on every blade of grass & chest-high weed & purple flower.I read that these battlesonly matter moment by moment. A cannonball here, an unsheathedsaber there, allflourishes & folderol. Some men come hereevery August, sleeptogether in the thicket,rush & stab & hold each other, reenacthunger, pain, a dyingcall. Why have wecome here? [End Page 77] The signage talksof trampled corn & wheat.You gather buttercups& dragonfly husks. I trace names on allthe headstones, myfingers steady & true. [End Page 78] Michael Pittard Michael Pittard is an English lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He currently serves as the Book Recommendations editor for The Bookends Review. He has an MFA in Poetry from UNCG and is a former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. His poetry has appeared in such places as Poetry South, Coffin Bell, and The Citron Review. Copyright © 2022 Berea College ...

Exhibition Review: Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970

Exhibition Review: <i>Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970</i>

Crossroads of Change: The People and the Land of Pecos by Cori Knudten and Maren Bzdek

Reviewed by: Crossroads of Change: The People and the Land of Pecos by Cori Knudten and Maren Bzdek Jen Corrinne Brown Crossroads of Change: The People and the Land of Pecos. By Cori Knudten and Maren Bzdek. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. 224. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Part of the Public Lands History series at the University of Oklahoma Press, Crossroads of Change is an environmental history of Pecos National Historic Park. The park is a thirty-minute drive southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico, near the headwaters of the Pecos River in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and it offers a unique overview of southwestern history. It protects the ruins of Pecos Pueblo, one of the largest pueblos at the time of Spanish arrival, a Spanish mission, a Civil War battlefield, and a former cattle ranch. Authors Cori Knudten and Maren Bzdek cover these shifting [End Page 479] land uses within the changing political and social landscape of the upper Pecos Valley. Arranged chronologically, the book highlights the successive management regimes of the Indigenous Pecos people, Hispanic settlers, Anglo settlers, Civil War soldiers, later ranchers (including dude ranches), and finally the state and federal managers. Subsistence farming, commercial livestock grazing, mining, timber cutting, and tourism all affected, and sometimes degraded, the arid, mountainous environs of the upper Pecos Valley. In addition to changing land practices, Knudten and Bzdek cover the contentious land claims common in U.S. Southwest history. For Indigenous people, centuries of disease, Apache and Comanche raiding, Hispano land grabs, and other challenges made life at Pecos Pueblo increasingly untenable. They moved to Jemez Pueblo in 1838. For the Hispanic settlers, the aftermath of the Mexican-American War led to more American settlement in the area and loss of previous land grants. Given the layered history of dispossession, conflicts continued far into the twentieth century. The book's coverage reflects its own origins. It started out as a National Park Service (NPS) contract and historical report by the two authors. The early chapters synthesize archaeological studies, translated documents, and secondary sources. Southwestern historians will not find much new here, but the focus on the upper Pecos Valley offers an entry point into this larger history for general readers and tourists. In later chapters, the authors use more archival sources, manuscript collections, and the occasional interview. Given these origins, the chapters that focus on the twentieth century and federal management remain the strongest. In 1935, the lands around Pecos Pueblo were transferred to the state of New Mexico. The lack of funding and protections for the ruins that followed from state-monument status proved problematic. This eventually led to Pecos Pueblo becoming a national monument administered by the National Park Service, a designation that became official in 1966. The site also benefited from philanthropic neighbors. Oil tycoon Elijah E. "Buddy" Fogelson and his actress wife, Greer Garson Fogelson, donated money and parts of their massive ranch to the monument. In the late 1980s, after Fogelson died, the Mellon Foundation bought a 5,500-acre parcel of the ranch to donate to NPS. Southwest writer and conservationist William deBuys helped broker the deal. Such an addition required administrative changes, and in 1990, the monument became Pecos National Historic Park. Despite NPS's success in preserving the history of Pecos Pueblo, until recently few management decisions included the involvement of Pecos descendants from Jemez Pueblo and elsewhere. The authors noted that policies changed in the 1990s to include Pecos people as stakeholders in NPS management. But given its importance, I wished for more coverage [End Page 480] and analysis of this topic. Overall, Crossroads of Change offers a succinct resource for historians interested in federal management of southwestern public lands and should make a fine addition to the park store's shelves at Pecos National Historic Park. Jen Corrinne Brown Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Copyright © 2021 The Texas State Historical Association

The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia's Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield by Adam H. Petty

The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia's Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield by Adam H. Petty

The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield by Adam H. Petty

Reviewed by: The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield by Adam H. Petty Angela M. Riotto (bio) The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield. By Adam H. Petty. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. Pp. 208. Cloth, $42.00.) Arguing that historians of the American Civil War have provided few focused analyses of the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, Adam Petty offers this military-environmental history of the region and the Civil War battles that occurred there, including Chancellorsville (April–May 1863), Mine Run (November–December 1863), and the Wilderness (May 1864). Identifying the gap in the scholarship, Petty reconsiders traditional interpretations of the Wilderness environment, especially how it affected military operations and combat. Furthermore, unlike other traditional histories, this one examines the changing memory of the interaction between military and environmental factors. To provide a more comprehensive history of the Battle of the Wilderness, Petty begins by identifying what he terms the “Wilderness myth” (x), a set of prevailing arguments emphasizing the dense forest vegetation, [End Page 119] the area’s uniqueness and mystique, and Confederate superiority within the terrain. Petty traces the conception of the myth to 1864 and William Swinton, a wartime correspondent for the New York Times. Shortly after the battle’s conclusion, Swinton published a report detailing its setting and the environmental obstacles within it. Petty contends that Swinton’s conclusions laid the foundation for professional historians’ assessments of the battle, and thus the Wilderness myth. In both his 1864 article and his 1866 Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, Swinton claimed that it was a horrific engagement that occurred in a unique forest. Moreover, Swinton reasoned, because of the advantages the Confederate army enjoyed in the Wilderness, General Robert E. Lee planned to fight there. Petty thus credits Swinton with the creation of a singular and much-replicated campaign narrative. After tracing the origins of the Wilderness myth, Petty explicates the five main tenets of the myth for his readers. First, the Wilderness was a nearly unbroken forest composed of thick, second-growth trees and underbrush. Second, the Wilderness’s extraordinary—perhaps even supernatural—characteristics imposed certain conditions on military actions, such as the inability to see for any distance, properly maneuver or maintain a battle line, and profitably employ artillery and cavalry. Third, the Wilderness exuded a mystique associated with death, destruction, fire, and hell. Fourth, because of the Confederates’ alleged superior knowledge of the region and the forest’s diminishing effect on Union military superiority, the Confederates excelled in combat. Fifth, Lee purposefully trapped the Federals in the woods to exploit these advantages. Petty uses the five elements of the myth to organize the chapters of his book. As a traditional environmental history, chapter 1 reconsiders the ecology and origins of the Wilderness. Petty argues that, contrary to the more familiar descriptions, the Wilderness was not a monolithic forest, but a patchwork. Chapter 2 merges environmental history with memory studies to analyze the oft-repeated notion that the Battle of the Wilderness was a unique engagement because of the environment in which it was fought. Comparing this action to both Chancellorsville and Chickamauga, Petty reveals that the battles of the Wilderness and Chancellorsville, which took place over the same terrain, were not the twins that many historians imply them to be. Rather, the Wilderness of Spotsylvania shared many similarities with the Chickamauga battlefield, and the Battle of the Wilderness was just one manifestation of the tactical problems that Civil War armies faced when operating in a forested region. Chapter 3 presents a more traditional memory study. Drawing on soldiers’ letters and diaries, Petty dissects the [End Page 120] mystique surrounding the Wilderness. Given the chaos of battle and the fires that consumed wounded and dead alike, Petty assesses that it is no surprise that individuals have described the Wilderness as a malevolent landscape associated with death, devastation, fire, and the supernatural. In chapter 4, Petty relies on conventional military histories, such as those written by Earl Hess, to reject the notion that the Confederates had an advantage in the Wilderness. In Chapter...

Angolan battlefield tourism: Impact on the quality-of-life of South African Defence Force (SADF) veterans

This study sought to determine the tourism travel motives of former South African Defence Force veterans with Angolan civil war battlefield experience . Nine veterans completed qualitative interviews on their travel motives, influences across their life domains, and quality-of-life overall, three months pre- and post the tour . Thematic analysis yielded travel motives of social, camaraderie, and friendship as well as a sense of family belongingness . The veterans reported with a heightened quality-of-life overall from achieving a sense of closure to the battlefield experience events that troubled them for many years . The findings contribute to the knowledge base on the travel motives of military veterans with psychological trauma from historical conflicts, and the psychological recovery they would benefit post-conflict from visiting as tourists.

The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President. By Matthew R. Costello (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2019) 316 pp. $45.00

During his second term (1793–1797), President George Washington became an increasingly polarizing figure, accused by Jeffersonian-Republican critics of being the leader—or worse, the dupe—of a High Federalist plot to monarchize America. Licking his wounds at his Mount Vernon estate, the former president stood ready to take up his sword once again, as commander of American forces against a (highly unlikely) French invasion. Happily for his everlasting reputation, the war scare subsided and the dead Washington could be restored to his exalted status as “father of his country.”Costello’s study of Washington’s afterlife juxtaposes a fresh history of his tomb, its controversial site, and public access to it with a more conventional account of the evolving Washington image in the American mind. Costello concludes with a strong chapter about the ultimately successful effort of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (mvla) to save the tomb and the estate from the assaults of an adoring public—and, when the Civil War came, from the depredations of opposing armies. Although Mount Vernon remained under Union control throughout the war, mvla president Ann Pamela Cunningham of South Carolina successfully “advocated a policy of neutrality for both the estate and the organization” (204). Preservation of this tiny patch of neutral ground was an ironic tribute to the memory of a provincial Virginian who envisioned a new and rising nation of imperial dimensions.The conventional understanding is that Parson Mason Locke Weems’ perennially best-selling Life of Washington, first published in 1806, secured his subject’s preeminent position in the American pantheon. When Washington died, Jeffersonians recanted their partisan attacks; Jefferson himself extolled the virtues of “our first and greatest revolutionary character” as he called for an end to party strife in his Inaugural Address. Costello acknowledges Weems’ critical importance to the supposed “democratization” of the Washington image but develops an alternative narrative by focusing on the experiences of visitors to Mount Vernon, owners of the estate who regulated access, and enslaved workers there who sold relics and told (often apocryphal) stories about their former master (115).From early in Washington’s afterlife, clamorous citizens insisted, with editor–politician Alexander Contee Hanson, that the “Mount, rendered so dear by the burial of Washington…ought to be the property of the nation” (28). That claim was a constant, but the rise of history tourism, and the ability of canny capitalists to monetize the “civic pilgrimage” to Washington’s tomb, transformed the patriotic aspiration to a concrete threat to the family’s property interests—interests that the mvla and donors across the country would, finally, generously compensate. Costello is at his best in charting the rising tide of visitors facilitated by improved transport, which led to regular steamship crossing, and the resulting “production of memorabilia and images” that enabled “consumers to own a tangible piece of Washington’s legacy” (75). The grounds and gardens were pillaged by patriots, exercising a kind of eminent domain, in the name of the sovereign “people.” By the time the mvla stepped in, the need to protect and preserve Washington’s “tangible” legacy was acute. The failure of previous public and private initiatives instead suggested that the federal union itself—Washington’s most cherished, and increasingly intangible legacy—was on the verge of collapse.The Property of the Nation illuminates important issues in early American cultural history, particularly the ways in which Americans understood—and consumed—their own unfolding history. Costello is much less persuasive in aligning his stories about Mount Vernon with the supposed transformation of Washington from “a republican aristocrat” to “a democratic self-made man.” Washington, after all, remained the people’s “father,” a demi-god whom they adored and venerated and who would not be brought “down from the clouds to stand alongside ordinary Americans” (214). When the mvla created an appropriate shrine for the great man, Americans could worship him properly, suppressing the memory that they had betrayed and despoiled the union, his most precious legacy, on Civil War battlefields. The union that forgetful combatants eventually “restored” would perpetuate white supremacy, another, more enduring and more pernicious legacy of Washington’s founding generation.

PalmitoAR: The Last Battle of the U.S. Civil War Reenacted Using Augmented Reality

Various efforts are used to preserve American history including relying on formal education, distributing information (text, video or visual aids) on social channels, displaying artifacts in historical centers or more recently, virtual reality applications posted on a shared medium. However, many of the newly developed applications are designed specifically for dedicated hardware rather than for a broad audience, thus creating a barrier for disseminating cultural values. In this paper, we propose a web-based Augmented Reality (AR) application, namely PalmitoAR, which provides an intuitive way of observing one of the most significant historical Civil War battlefields, Palmito Ranch Battlefield located in Cameron County, Texas. The proposed AR application is designed to resurrect a series of events through (i) a printed map of Palmito Ranch with embedded markers that enables viewers to experience the battle without being present at the site, (ii) a mobile device with a WebGL supported browser that allows 3D contents to be rendered, and (iii) an AR library (A-Frame.io) that enables enthusiasts to recreate similar work. Our methodology strongly relies on the benefits of a simple, robust algorithm for AR marker recognition to position 3D models in a specific context and time. As a result, the proposed AR application is complementary to existing work and provides a seamless experience for a wide range of viewers. We evaluated and improved the application with the help of twenty-six users to gather perspectives on the specific benefits of employing AR in learning about battlefields and reenactment. The technology acceptance model was adapted to access an individual’s acceptance of information technology.

The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield

The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield

Defoe's Tour and the Historiography of Early Modern Britain

AbstractThe most heavily quarried contemporary source on Britain in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is Daniel Defoe's Tour (1724‐6). Its findings have been exploited in accounts of the politics, society, economy, architecture, literature and geography of the early modern nation. It has been used by historians of the family, women, religion, art, popular culture, shopping, weather, landscape, transport, leisure, travel and tourism, topography, antiquarianism, archaeology, gambling, the Navy, Civil War battlefields, dialect and industrial archaeology. This article charts the extent of Defoe's influence on our understanding of the age, analysing its value as a connected survey of Britain.

War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era ed. by Joan E. Cashin

Reviewed by: War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era ed. by Joan E. Cashin Christine E. Sears War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era. Edited by Joan E. Cashin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. [xiv], 263. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-4320-5; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-4319-9.) The ten authors in Joan E. Cashin’s pithily named War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era demonstrate the potential richness of marrying Civil War studies with material culture. The essays range from prewar to postwar, from pikes to lymph, and from personal belongings to landscapes. They aim to illuminate common soldiers’ experiences, women’s support of political ideology, and plain folks’ loyalty to the Confederacy. Some brilliantly show what the material turn offers. Others offer a less object-centric analysis, though they nevertheless extend our understanding of Civil War culture. Jason Phillips and Peter S. Carmichael tease out how the same objects conveyed different meanings to different communities. Phillips explores how the “things that captivated Americans when they anticipated civil war mattered” (p. 24). In 1857, John Brown commissioned pikes consisting of bowie knives affixed to hoe handles and shipped them separately to avoid detection. Bowie knives bespoke progress and expansion, while pikes were linked with the “overthrow of aristocracy” (p. 17). To Brown and his followers, pikes were the “harbinger of the modern insurrection” (p. 19). Secessionist Edmund Ruffin saw not pikes but spears wielded by savages who must be answered by southern white revolt. Relics collected at war’s end suggested how contemporaries “understood Union victory and the downfall of the Confederacy,” according to Carmichael in his chapter, “The Trophies of Victory and the Relics of Defeat: Returning Home in the Spring of 1865” (p. 201). Soldiers of both armies shredded an Appomattox apple tree into splinters because Robert E. Lee lingered long under the tree’s shade waiting for Ulysses S. Grant’s reply to his surrender. For Confederates, a tree sliver denoted “a sacred link to the incomparable Robert E. Lee” and proved that the soldier had stuck with Lee to the end (p. 204). For Union soldiers, the splinters paid “tribute to a complete and smashing victory” they earned in the Army of the Potomac (p. 203). Certainly, Carmichael’s impressive reflection on the “material culture of defeat,” which shows how war souvenirs collected in a “spirit of reconciliation” later stirred “feelings of white solidarity,” will interest many scholars (pp. 217, 218). Cashin looks at how white southerners laid claim to the legacy of the American Revolution through objects and landscapes. A surfeit of Revolutionary War artifacts changed how people interacted with those objects. In 1858, a farmer in South Carolina found and had repaired a British musket, which he then utilized. Cashin posits that the farmer and others who manipulated Revolutionary items did not respect those objects. This merits more [End Page 914] exploration. Perhaps the farmer felt a visceral connection to a Revolutionary past each time he raised that weapon. Sarah Jones Weicksel highlights conflict between refugees and white reformers over refugees’ living conditions in “Fitted Up for Freedom: The Material Culture of Refugee Relief.” Freedpeople asserted control over their built environment, constructing dwellings out of the mismatched materials available. Relief workers read the haphazard temporary housing as indicative of external and internal disorder. In “Nature as Material Culture: Antietam National Battlefield,” Lisa M. Brady and Timothy Silver trace Antietam’s landscape from the area’s prehistory to the National Park Service’s attempt to “stop time” at Civil War battlefields, “transforming the living, material world into static, cultural sites” (p. 54). The authors consider how the site shaped the battle and how the fighting strained the landscape “to its ecological limits” (p. 55). Other contributors use textual sources to reveal objects’ meanings. Earl J. Hess offers a needed corrective to the view that all nineteenth-century men had extensive experience with guns. In fact, few Union or Confederate soldiers were “gun-adept” (p. 104). Only the “gun-adept” forged bonds with their weapons; others were glad to ditch their weapons at war’s end. Ronald J. Zboray...

This War Ain't Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America by Nina Silber

Reviewed by: This War Ain't Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America by Nina Silber Gaines M. Foster (bio) This War Ain't Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America. By Nina Silber. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 248. Cloth, $32.95.) This War Ain't Over provides a fascinating exploration of "how Americans used a troubled past," not just the Civil War but also slavery and Reconstruction, "to navigate a complicated present," the Great Depression and World War II (1). In the midst of the suffering of the Depression, Nina Silber shows, Americans turned their attention to the Civil War, an earlier national trial that foretold ultimate survival and "shaped a history that often spoke directly to their present-day political concerns" (2). Silber has done extensive research in a wide variety of sources and wisely and carefully shows how various groups viewed that troubled past differently and employed its memory for differing purposes. She looks at "conservative southern Democrats; anticommunists; New Dealers; civil rights activists; and the communists and Popular Fronters" (3). If any group gets less attention than it deserves, it may be white northerners, particularly the more conservative of them. The book begins with a discussion of the state of Civil War memory on the eve of the Depression. The Lost Cause, with its utility in maintaining white supremacy, remained important in the South, Silber argues. A "more muted" and "diffused" vision of the war survived in the North, with African Americans doing the most to keep the memory of the war alive there, but even among them the importance of the war had declined (17). Nevertheless, "the story of the white family feud, now healed in defense of sectional reconciliation and white supremacy, had a strong presence in American culture" (21). With the Civil War generation having passed from the scene, however, Americans could and did reshape the war's meaning. They did so in "messages . . . less tethered to events and emotions of the 1860s and far more to the concerns, sensibilities, and structural imperatives of twentieth-century life" (36). Silber then discusses the role of New Deal arts programs in exploring slavery and the Civil War and the shift of responsibility for Civil War battlefields from the War Department to the National Park Service. The Park Service deemphasized the war's bloodshed and instead put the war into [End Page 669] a longer sweep of history, often with a southern bias. She also makes a convincing case for the role of movies in shaping the new messages, and throughout the book they serve as important sources for understanding memory. During the Depression, Silber shows, factory workers, sharecroppers, labor leaders, and many other Americans came to see themselves as slaves, most prominently whites. Some portrayed whites and blacks as united in slavery, but a "key argument of this book," and a compelling one, is that "slavery was increasingly portrayed, in speeches, novels, and films, as a problem with particular applicability to white suffering." White Americans, in other words, "appropriated the legacy of black enslavement" (5). At the same time, the federal arts programs tended to treat the African American experience of slavery as "either quaint, inconsequential, or a subject best left unexplored" (85). Along with its fascinating analysis of whites' appropriation of slavery, the book provides an equally insightful discussion of the changing image of Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe "underwent," Silber convincingly demonstrates, "a series of remarkable transformations: no longer a bland symbol of reconciliation, he emerged as a figure more firmly associated with federal power and racial justice, although the racial message was often tempered by an appreciation of Lincoln's racially neutral 'humanitarianism'" (100). Silber then turns to the South and the role of the Lost Cause. The white South had always had a special tie to its Civil War past, she argues, but its interest in the war intensified and the Lost Cause became more conservative in response to the New Deal, particularly in the late 1930s after the Democrats and the federal government displayed a new interest in intervening in southern race relations. Even before that, the white South blamed its poverty...

Palmito Ranch: From Civil War Battlefield to National Historic Landmark by Jody Edward Ginn and William Alexander McWhorter

Reviewed by: Palmito Ranch: From Civil War Battlefield to National Historic Landmark by Jody Edward Ginn and William Alexander McWhorter Jeffrey William Hunt Palmito Ranch: From Civil War Battlefield to National Historic Landmark. By Jody Edward Ginn and William Alexander McWhorter. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2018. Pp. 136. Notes, bibliography, index.) The battle of Palmito (Palmetto) Ranch, which occurred along the banks of the Rio Grande from May 12–13, 1865, is both one of the most famous and least known events in Texas and U.S. history. It has a certain notoriety as the last land action of the Civil War and has the added irony of being a Confederate victory. It is also one of the big three Texas battles, [End Page 124] along with Galveston (December 31, 1862) and Sabine Pass (September 8, 1863). In the last half of the nineteenth century and even in the early decades of the twentieth, as Jody Ginn and William McWhorter point out in their carefully researched and well-written work, most Texans once knew about this last fight. Today, however, many Texans are unaware of the battle or only familiar with it as a myth-encrusted factoid attached to the larger story of the great sectional contest. This is in spite of the fact that, since the dawn of the twenty-first century scholarship on the battle has vastly improved. Ginn and McWhorter begin by giving us a primer on the battle’s history and that of a previous fight at Palmito Ranch in September 1864. Along the way, they acknowledge reliable scholarship and dispel the folklore that has surrounded the struggle almost since its conclusion. Attention is also given to Colonel John S. “Rip” Ford, one of the most famous Texans of his day and the Rebel leader whose cavalry and artillery defeated Union infantry forces commanded by Colonel Theodore H. Barrett. The strength and focus of the book, however, is the careful documentation of the fight’s key artifact, the battleground itself. Ginn and McWhorter painstakingly detail how the location of the contest has been confirmed and why it remains in almost pristine condition. They rightly observe that this is as much fortunate happenstance as intent. From 1865 to the present, the field’s location and geography have rendered Palmito Ranch unattractive to developers. Thus it has not disappeared under concrete or been lost to the appetite of a voracious river, as have most Texas battlefields. The authors do a wonderful job tracing the battleground’s history and documenting the tireless efforts of dedicated individuals and organizations such as the Battlefield Trust (formerly Civil War Trust), the Texas Historical Commission, the Cameron County Historical Commission, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which have worked diligently—usually separately but increasingly in concert—to protect, preserve and better interpret the fight. Consequently, this book not only records the history of a battlefield and its survival, it also provides a roadmap of sorts for those who hope to maintain similar sites. It is obvious throughout this book that the authors have done their homework, care deeply about their subject matter, and are themselves part of the story they tell. Helpful maps and marvelous photographs enhance and reinforce their story, each offering its own fascinating glimpse into the battlefield’s history. The book is visually compelling and beautifully printed on high-quality paper, which makes it feel like a hardback rather than the paperback it is. For anyone interested in the Palmito Ranch battles, interpretation of the site, or preservation efforts in general, this is a must read. [End Page 125] Jeffrey William Hunt Texas Military Forces Museum (Austin) Copyright © 2019 The Texas State Historical Association

Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields

Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields