Harpers Ferry Research Articles

The Challenge of Public History

Harpers Ferry, situated on the Potomac River where the Shenandoah and the Allegheny Rivers converge, about 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., was an industrial village during the nineteenth century. It is now a small, quiet West Virginia town and a national historic park administered by the National Park Service and noted as the site of John Brown's raid. Some think of Old John Brown as a mad man following illusionary visions of open slave warfare. Some see him as a dedicated abolitionist, a revolutionary in the name of liberty. Many believe that he was black. He did have five blacks among his small band, but whatever else was true about him, John Brown was not black. He was, however, a central figure in African-American history and in the history of race in nineteenth-century America. It is fitting, then, that African-American history should be critical to the annals of Harpers Ferry, and not only for the town's connection with John Brown. For, as Black Voices of Harpers Ferry, a new permanent National Park Service exhibition there, makes clear, black people were an integral part of the town's early life. At mid-nineteenth century, almost 12 percent of town residents were black, and although Virginia was a state largely supported by slave labor, half of the blacks in Harpers Ferry were free. The exhibit tells the story of the town's African Americans with dramatic words, impressive pictures, creative audio and video presentations, and a striking map lighted to display the places where the town's blacks, free and slave, lived.

The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie (review)

86CIVIL WAR HISTORY describing the entire incident with convincing detail. His source for this claim is an orderly on Reno's staff, A. H. Wood, who wrote an article concerning Reno's death for the National Tribune in 1883. Yet Priest fails to explain in his notes that Wood was not actually present when Reno was shot. He also does not mention that three other Ninth Corps veterans responded to Wood's article in the Tribune, challenged it, and claimed instead that Reno was fatally wounded by enemy fire. Why did he discount the testimony of the majority to accept that of the minority? An explanation is necessary. In another instance he criticizes McClellan's 12:00 p.m., September 13, dispatch to Lincoln , which informed the president that he had "all the plans of the rebels" (113), an effort by the general to absolve himself of any blame if the effort to relieve Harpers Ferry was unsuccessful. It may well have been, but the author claims in his notes that he arrived at this conclusion based upon his experience as a "school teacher and manager of personnel," which qualified him to "judge when a person is covering his rear." Besides the textual and historiographical problems which plague this book, the text lacks an overview that places the battle in the context of the campaign . There is also little comprehensible analysis or summary to link the chapters together to weave an understandable story. Adding to the confusion are the seventy maps. Positions of troops are hand-drawn black lines upon a black-and-white map, leaving the reader puzzled over whether they are looking at fence lines or troop positions. The accuracy of troop positions on some maps is also questionable. Another irritating point is the fact that the print is not typeset. Considering the book's cost, the reader should expect this. D. Scott Hartwig Gettysburg, Pa. The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life ofRanald Slidell Mackenzie. By Michael D. Pierce. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Pp. xiii, 304. $24.95.) With this biography of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, Michael D. Pierce attempts to correct what he sees as an omission in the scholarship of the leaders of the Civil War and postwar army. Mackenzie was a West Point graduate who served successfully in the Civil War and held commands in the West, where, according to Pierce, he had major successes but still remained lesser known than such contemporaries as Nelson Miles, George Crook, and George Armstrong Custer. Pierce is correct in saying that Mackenzie's short career lessened the recognition he received. This biography attempts to place Mackenzie at the same level as better-known generals of the era, especially Miles, whom Mackenzie continually competed with for promotions and better postings. Using a variety of primary sources but also an abundance of secondary sources, Pierce provides a solid, though perhaps too favorable, sketch of BOOK REVIEWS87 Mackenzie's life. Mackenzie was born in 1840 and was a son of a prominent naval officer. Eschewing his father's career, Mackenzie entered West Point in 1858. The Civil War shortened his time there, and he received his commission a year early in 1862. Mackenzie's first combat experience was at the Second Battle of Manassas, where he was wounded. He quickly rose through the ranks. In November of 1864 he was breveted a brigadier general, and by the end of the war he was breveted major general. Soon after the war, Mackenzie assumed command ofthe 41st Infantry Regiment , a black unit, and, as Pierce points out, he took the posting mainly because it offered a chance for faster promotion. This incident is important, for it was his first service in the West, and it offers a good example of Mackenzie 's characteristic ambition. He was willing to take a less appealing assignment to more quickly advance in rank. Mackenzie held commands and served in various commands throughout Texas and the West for the rest of his career. He gained his greatest renown as a leader in the army's efforts to quell Indian hostilities that erupted in the Red River War and other Indian-white conflicts on the Southern Plains...

Journey into Speech-A Writer between Two Worlds: An Interview with Michelle Cliff

Among the subjects Jamaican born writer Michelle Cliff explores in her writings are ancestry, the impact of colonization on the Caribbean, the relationships among and interconnection of African people in the diaspora, racism, and the often erroneous way in which the history of black people is recoreded. In her latest novel, Free Enterprise (1993), Cliff attempts to rewrite the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant, the African American woman who supplied money with which John Brown bought arms for the raid at Harper's Ferry. Her other two novels, No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Abeng (1984), are semi-autobiographical and explore the life of Clare Savage, a fair-skinned girl raised between Jamaica and North America, who must reconcile her mixed heritage in a changing society. Other works by Cliff include Bodies of Water (1990), The Land of Look Behind (1985), and Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (1980). The following text is based on two separate interviews: one done in person in Albany, California, in December 1989, and the other conducted over the telephone in September 1993. Adisa: When did you find your voice, when did you decide that you wanted to be a writer? Cliff: I always wanted to write. Actually there was a terrible incident. I don't know if I should tell you, but I will. When I was at Saint Andres,(1) I was keeping a diary. I had been very influenced by The Diary of Anne Frank, and as a result of seeing the movie and reading her diary, I got a diary of my own. I wasn't living with my mother and father at this time; I was living with my aunt in Kingston [Jamaica] and going to Saint Andrews. This aunt also had a house in Saint Ann, where we used to stay on the weekends. Anyway, my parents broke into my bedroom in Kingston when we were not at the house. They went into my room, broke open my drawer, took out and broke the lock on my diary, and read it. Then they arrived at the other house. My father and mother had my diary in their hands and sat down and read it out loud in front of me, my aunt, and everybody else. My sister was there. There were very intimate details; there were a lot of things about leaving school and not going to class and playing hookey, but there was also the experience of the first time I menstruated, and I remember just being shattered. My father read it, and my mother was in total collaboration. (Pause.) Anyway I remember just crying and being sad and whatnot. I spoke to my sister about it once, and she remembered, even though she was seven at the time. And she said, Don't you remember screaming and saying, 'Don't I have any rights?' (Pause.) That incident really shut me down as a writer. I had wanted to be a writer from a very early age; I always wanted to write. The subject I liked most in school was English, and I read an enormous amount as a kid. But that really shut me down until quite late. Adisa: How late? Cliff: Until the mid-seventies. The only thing I wrote after the diary was my dissertation. Then I wrote Notes on Speechlessness. the reason I wrote Speechlessness was ... I guess it was all working inside of me for a while. I was involved with a group of women in New York who got together and discussed their works. We met once a month, and each person had to present something--and it was my turn. I was terrified, and I had a hell of a time just speaking. I was shy and tongued-tied a lot of the time. I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd write something and just read it, because that would be easier than speaking. So I wrote this thing about feeling speechless. I wrote that in 1977. Adisa: So that is your first piece towards being a writer. Cliff: That was the first piece, and that led me to Obsolete Geography.(2) For a long time I hadn't thought about what it meant to be a Jamaican, even though I was going back there a lot. I was sort of creating myself but not really dealing with a lot of different things. …

Chipping Away at "The Marble Man": Robert E. Lee in Civil War History

Few figures in American past travel so easily and so frequently between realms of myth and history as does Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Scion of a proud Virginia family that had played a prominent role in nation's founding, a model cadet in his West Point days, a tireless and reliable army engineer in Mexico, and captor of John Brown at Harper's Ferry, Lee led a noteworthy life even before days of secession and civil war. As commander of Army of Northern Virginia, however, he became elevated to pantheon of American military heroes. In battle, he was ferocious. In camp, he lived abstemiously and looked first to his men's needs. Even in defeat his conduct was, according to early biographers, sublime. Indeed, he seemed so entirely admirable that even Northern civilians were heard to say, as one young Pennsylvania woman allegedly exclaimed during Gettysburg campaign of 1863: Ooh, I wish he were ours! He was, in short, stuff of legend even while he still lived, and his earliest biographers, especially James Dabney McCabe, Edward A. Pollard, and John Esten Cooke, drew as heavily upon intangibles of his character as they did upon his demonstrated accomplishments to define his place in American and southern history. Still, Lee did not become the marble man, apparent distillation into a single persona of all that was good and moral and right about Lost Cause, until after his death in 1870. Shortly thereafter, his fellow Virginians in Southern Historical Society took control over much of writing of Confederate history and began to embellish Lee's character, praise his accomplishments, relieve him of all blame for military mistakes, and even purposefully designed elements of what historians now call Lee myth. A number of

Ingenious Yankees: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures in the Private Sector by Donald R. Hoke

416 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Ingenious Yankees: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures in the Private Sector. By Donald R. Hoke. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 345; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00. Ingenious Yankees sets out to document the collaborative effort of en­ trepreneurs and mechanics that led to the creation of the “American system” of manufactures. Donald Hoke, beginning in 1800, uses the example ofEli Terry’s work in wooden clock manufacturing to document the industrialization of a craft industry. Next, Hoke examines Elisha Root’s axe manufacturing from 1832 to 1845, a chapter that culminates with the installation of a complete production line in S. W. Collins and Company’s new plant in Collinsville, Connecticut, in 1845. Then Hoke analyzes typewriter production from 1875 to 1910 to illustrate the ad­ aptation of armory practice, specifically the model-based system devel­ oped at Remington and other arms factories. He emphasizes that me­ chanics employed by the private sectordesigned products and production processes to cut costs and expand the market. Watchmaking at Waltham and Elgin marked the end of the model system. At this point automatic machinery was being developed in many manufacturing industries, as well as more sophisticated measuring devices that would make the elab­ orate system of models, jigs, and fixtures less important. Hoke has nicely illustrated the increasing efficiencies of American production methods during the 19th century. He clearly demon­ strates that economic factors were most significant in tire private sector. The specialization of labor, increased accuracy of measuring and machining, and the development of special-purpose machinery were the elements that allowed American manufacturers to cut costs and reach an expanding mass market. Hoke also has another mission—to refute the assertion made in earlier scholarship that the various elements of the system all had their roots in Eli Whitney’s work at New Haven and later work at Springfield and other armories where the model system reached its height. Perhaps this scholarship on 19th-century American manufac­ turers, including Merritt Roe Smith’s seminal work on Harpers Ferry, focused on the armories because of the readier availability of primary source materials. Scholars like Smith made use of these sources in order to examine the production process closely. They found that the process of mass-producing arms entailed the creation of a “perfect” prototype and a series ofjigs, fixtures, and gauges made from each part of the model that were then used in production to ensure interchangeability. This system also incorporated the use of powered machinery where possible to make the parts faster, more easily, and, in many cases, more accurately than could be done by hand. The work of David Hounshell and others has reinforced the concept of the military origins of the American system by tracing its adoptions in the sewing machine, bicycle, and auto industries. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 417 Ingenious Yankees, however, asserts that elements of the system were developed in the private sector before their use in armories, and that private-sector mechanics adapted innovations developed in armories only selectively. Hoke’s analysis of wooden clock making and type­ writer production, for example, shows that mechanics built in adjust­ ability to allow for lack of precision that was simply not needed. The result in the case of Terry’s wooden clocks was a cheap, dependable, and more easily assembled product that broadened the lower end of the market. Hoke believes, quite correctly, that the history of technology should be grounded in a thorough understanding of machines and process, and his analysis of complex production processes is outstanding. However, he does not spend the time or space to make the reader comfortable with the details before getting to larger issues. In addition, one wishes that this book had focused more on the people who helped create and worked in these industries. Waltham, for example, was a city where nearly everyone worked in the watch industry. Who were they? Were they native born? Immigrants? Men or women? Who held the skilledjobs and who held the unskilled? The mechanization described in these pages created many jobs that did not require Yankee ingenuity. Why did the Irish...

The Civil War in the American West (review)

BOOK REVIEWS249 all relevant sites in the Fairfax-Warrenton-Front Royal-Leesburg quadrangle . Two additional tours cover outlying areas pertinent to Mosby's life and military operations, notably the Harpers Ferry area and central Virginia. Most of the sites are structures of one kind or another, but a significant number of skirmishes and burial places are included. Privately owned sites are identified as such in order to prevent possibly unpleasant confrontations with property owners. No effort is made in the book to analyze critically Mosby's campaigns and his significance or lack of same in the eastern theater. The work is simply a guidebook, and, although overly adulatory in places, it fulfills the requirements of the genre quite adequately. Those readers who want more details and a chronology of Mosby's activities will turn to the works of Virgil C. Jones and Jeffry Wert; those who want to ride where Mosby rode and stand where he stood will be thankful for the work of Evans and Moyers. They, like James I. Robertson, have produced a book that will provide pleasure to segments of the general reading public, who may then turn to more substantive treatments of the subject for further study. William Glenn Robertson U.S. Army Command and General Staff College The Civil War in the American West. By Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Pp. xiv, 448. $27.50.) This book contains five vignettes on military movements in the transMississippi West during the Civil War: the battles of Glorieta Pass and Pea Ridge, General Nathaniel Banks's campaigns in Louisiana, and Indian warfare in Minnesota and on the High Plains. Mr. Josephy describes background events leading up to each movement and offers detailed descriptions of the military action. For example, his narrative of Glorieta Pass begins with a discussion about the repercussions of secession on army units in Texas and the Southwest and its impact on reducing United States military strength in the region. Similarly, his description of the Sand Creek Massacre includes an account of Caucasian-Indian difficulties on the plains as well as those leading to the massacre itself. Each section of the book contains a detailed map, which permits the reader to follow the account more easily. As one might expect, given Mr. Josephy's background, the book is well written and the narrative uncomplicated. Author of a number of books on Native Americans in the West, Mr. Josephy also served as an associate editor for Time and as editor of American Heritage before retiring. Josephy's study is the first major publication that describes military events in both western states and territories under one cover, and for that reason it is a worthwhile contribution to the literature of the Civil War. Roy Colton's Civil War in the Western Territories (1959) focuses 250CIVIL WAR HISTORY on the Southwest, and LeRoy Fisher's The Western Territories in the Civil War (1977) is a collection of graduate seminar papers that deal with territories only. Despite its contribution, Josephy's book is, in some respects, a disappointment . For one thing, it suffers from jumpy organization. Josephy intersperses military events that had some relationship to the Civil War with Indian troubles and warfare. Thus in the first section he describes the fighting at Glorieta Pass in New Mexico, and in the second he moves on to the Sioux outbreak in Minnesota. From there the narrative focuses on Banks's efforts in Louisiana before returning to the central plains for descriptions of the Sand Creek Massacre, the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, and bushwhacking in Missouri and Kansas. In addition, Josephy does not follow a strict chronological order; nor does he define the West for his reader. While placing events in chronological order is not an essential requirement in writing history, it is somewhat disconcerting to read about the 1864 occurrence at Sand Creek before an account of the Battle of Pea Ridge, which occurred in 1862. And some readers might consider Banks's Port Hudson and Red River campaigns integral to the military movements along the entire Mississippi River rather than separate from them. Except for the fact that they took place on...

Symbolic martyrdom: The ultimate apology

Earlier characterization of “scaffold confessions” and “martyrdom speeches” as a discrete genre of discourse were flawed because the speeches were delivered in dissimilar situations, sought different purposes, and employed diverse rhetorical strategies. Those speeches are better viewed as a distinctive subgenre of apologia. Analysis of John Brown's final speech at his trial following the Harper's Ferry raid illuminates that subgenre.

History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment

Journal Article History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment Get access History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment. Edited by Leon Warren Rosenzweig Roy. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. xxvi + 333 pp. Illustrations, table, notes, index. $34.95, cloth; $14.95, paper.) William W. Gwaltney William W. Gwaltney Harper's Ferry, West Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 2, May 1991, Pages 241–242, https://doi.org/10.2307/969241 Published: 01 May 1991

Harpers Ferry: An Examination of the Theory of "Objective Conflict" in the Plays of Barrie Stavis

Harpers Ferry: An Examination of the Theory of "Objective Conflict" in the Plays of Barrie Stavis

Harpers Ferry: An Examination of the Theory of "Objective Conflict" in the Plays of Barrie Stavis

Harpers Ferry: An Examination of the Theory of "Objective Conflict" in the Plays of Barrie Stavis

Echoes from the Homesite

wanted the trains to go through, and Jackson seemed content to allow that at first, complaining only about the heavy trains disturbing his soldiers' rest at night. The Yankee railroaders, wanting no stoppage of their freight line, decided to "humor" Jackson, who soon had all the trains running both ways in the middaylight hours. Jackson bided his time for a few days, then struck, blocking the tracks at both towns and capturing most of the rolling stock of the B and O in his trap. Ashby's raiders burned the bridge and tried unsuccessfully to blast rocks down onto the tracks with dynamite. They returned a little later to burn the grain warehouse. Later in the war Jackson crossed at Point of Rocks on his way to capture Harper's Ferry again, this time just before the battle of Antietam. Near the town he was given a fine horse by a farmer who was a Confederate sympathizer . The horse proved to be a "Yankee horse," throwing its rider and inflicting enough damage so that the General missed the poetic "encounter" with Barbara Fritchie, riding through the city of Frederick in an ambulance. Sniping and quick attacks on the canal and railroad were common. What seems to have been the first armored railroad car was tied, and the Point agent, Mr. Schoch, boarded it for the run to Harper's Ferry. Fire from the south bank of the river was so severe that the car was abandoned at Sandy Hook and several of its occupants were killed. Random sniping resulted in the death of a civilian, Miss Fisher, who was leaning out of the upstairs window at the old station while talking to a soldier. Later in the war Colonel Mosby made frequent raids on the town, particularly on the store of a Yankee bearing the unlikely name of "Noble Means." On another of his expeditions he unloaded for Confederate use the store of Henry Besant, who traded with both sides, telling Henry that he "ought to have chosen friends more carefully." Historians claim that more skirmishes took place at the Point during the war than at any other location in Maryland. The bridge of Virginia was replaced in 1908 and destroyed again, this time in the flood of 1936. In building the new bridge, placed higher to prevent another flood from removing it, the final "Point" of rock was blasted off the mountain's face. Very contemporary plans call for another transportation link—a feeder to the outer Washington, D.C. beltway. A new bridge will be needed and the old town will face other challenges, including a considerable growth in population. The new highway, with cloverleaves as planned, will open the lower end of the Catoctin-Monocacy Valley to increase building of "bedroom" communities. Still a gateway to the rest of Appalachia and from it, Point of Rocks' railroad station is the town's symbol. Few trains go by without at least a photographer or two taking pictures of train and station. Point of Rocks has been and remains a slice of Appalachia in many of its varied forms. Echoes from the Homesite Everything was fine when banjo strings plucked the corn husk air and possum ghosts pattered the dust with quick feet. The family slept for years beneath rag quilts, patterned sunbursts. Their warmth evaded the chill of time. Always enough corn bread and pinto beans; never a consideration for the cloud's close contour or the moon's curved slip. —Mattie F. Quesenberry 38 ...

Harpers Ferry:An Examination of the Theory of “Objective Conflict” in the Plays of Barrie Stavis

Barrie Stavis is not your run of the mill playwright. Some consider him the only playwright today writing serious plays embodying a social, political and historical awareness. And yet, respected as he is by those who have come in contact with his work, he remains something of a forgotten artist, unknown to the public, even theater-goers. As Arthur H. Ballet says in his remarks on Stavis in Contemporary Dramatists, He is a 'pro.' Methodical, organized, enthusiastic, and almost pristinely professional as he is, there is a double irony in the fact that he has never really had a hit on Broadway.' Of course, a Broadway hit is not the only way to establish a successful career as a playwright. There is, however, a discrepancy between Stavis' lack of impact on the general theater-going public and the respect that his work receives from a number of thoughtful critics. This is particularly noteworthy in light of Ballet's assertion that, To non-Americans ... Stavis represents the clearest and 'most' American voice of the time. As perhaps is still true of O'Neill, Stavis seems most American to those who are least American, and he seems most 'universal' to his American audiences.2

To Side with the Light: Conscience and Power in the Drama of Barrie Stavis

When the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis chose Harpers Ferry in 1967 as the first new play that it would produce, Tyrone Guthrie wrote: The play been included in our classical repertoire because we believed it to be an interpretation of noble and monumental simplicity of a piece of American history, small almost local in scale, but like many apparently small events, of large symbolic importance .... Furthermore the architectural design of the play disregards the conventions of the naturalistic theater. Even if technical means could be found (and they probably could) of changing from scene to realistic scene without slowing up the play's progress, literal indications of locality would reduce the legendary nature of John Brown's extraordinary exploit to the level of prosaic fact.' Like all of the Barrie Stavis plays, Harpers Ferry is a play of history, but it is not an historical play in the conventional sense. It does not treat the facts of history realistically. To quote Tyrone Guthrie again, Barrie Stavis has selected and simplified, not with the intention of grinding a moral or political axe, nor to magnify or minimize John Brown's achievement, nor to glorify or denigrate his character; but rather to show that a person of such character cannot, literally cannot, act otherwise than as he believes right. (8) Pure in his idealism, John Brown was ready to pay with his life for his

The Trial of John Brown: Barrie Stavis and History

Trials have been essential to most of Barrie Stavis' plays. Galileo is tried for heresy in Lamp at Midnight; Joe Hill is on trial for his life in The Man Who Never Died; a court martial with deadly implications is convened by George Washington in The Raw Edge of Victory. But, because Stavis has also written a nonfiction life of John Brown, The Sword and the Word, it is only in Harpers Ferry that we see how he has made dramatic use of his legal materials. Stavis' method seems parallel to Bernard Shaw's in Saint Joan. For stage use, Shaw explained in his preface, I have had to condense into three-and-a-half hours a series of events which in their

The Laws of History and the Laws of Drama: Barrie Stavis'The Raw Edge of Victory

When I first read Barrie Stavis' The Raw Edge of Victory (1976) I was struck by the thought: What an unusual play for an American to write! For it deals with the political history of the United States. American plays usually do not do that. They have a more limited vision, dealing with personal relationships in romantic melodramas that at best shed some light on the immediate surroundings of the protagonists. Daniel Larner has contrasted this norm with the power of what he calls Stavis' heroic realism.' Reading this powerful drama today, in the midst of exciting changes in my own country that have led to the abolition of the German Democratic Republic and, I hope, to some changes in the unified entity within which that country is incorporated, an intensified sense of historical mutability discloses how profound and how topical is Stavis' dramatic treatment of historical events. A dominant contemporary challenge lies in the necessity and the chance to transform the two superpower blocks of NATO and Warsaw Pact from a military instrument of the past cold war into political units of security and global peace. Stavis sees the struggle about the superiority of the civil over the military as pivotal for the life of a nation; today his view seems to have gained a new dimension and an unprecedented actuality. Change, indeed, is the mark of history and, accordingly, of Barrie Stavis' concept of historical drama. About his first four plays Lamp at Midnight (about Galileo Galilei), The Man Who Never Died (about Joe Hill), Harpers Ferry (about John Brown) and Coat of Many Colors (about Joseph in Egypt), he said:

A Union Military Intelligence Failure: Jubal Early's Raid, June 12-July 14, 1864

A Union Military Intelligence Failure: Jubal Early's Raid, June 12-July 14, 1864 William B. Feis In the late afternoon of July 3, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant received at his City Point, Virginia, headquarters an alarming dispatch from Chief-of-Staff Henry W Halleck in Washington. Halleck informed the commanding general that current rumors depicted the Confederate Second Corps under General Jubal A. Early marching down the Shenandoah Valley towards the Potomac River. Without hesitation, Grant replied that "Early's Corps is now here" and assured Halleck that no sizeable Confederate forces operated in the Valley. The general-inchief based his response on earlier intelligence reports that showed Early's command still defending Richmond from the onslaught of the Federal siege that had begun a month earlier. However, as Grant telegraphed his message to Washington, the twelve thousand troops under "Old Jube" Early inched northward from Winchester in the Shenandoah towards the Potomac and Maryland, over one hundred miles from the siege lines before Richmond and Petersburg. From June 12 to July 3, 1864, after the Army of the Potomac's move south of the James River, Grant felt certain that few Confederate troops occupied the Shenandoah. His confidence in that assessment eroded after Halleck apprised him of the burgeoning rumors of Confederate activity in the Valley. After further investigation, Grant realized that previous intelligence reports concerning Early's whereabouts were inaccurate . The Valley teemed with Early's men and the gray tide neared the Maryland shore. On July 5, twenty-two days after the Second Corps departed Cold Harbor for the Valley, Grant admitted to the War The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to Professor John Y. Simon, Mr. Edwin C. Fishel, and Professor Peter Maslowski for reading early drafts of this essay. Civil War History, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, c 1990 by the Kent State University Press 210CIVIL WAR HISTORY Department that there remained "no doubt but Ewell's [Early's] Corps is away from here."1 Before Grant's awakening, Early's force had expelled Union General David Hunter's forces from the Valley and had marched the distance to Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. On the same day as Grant's revelation about his absence, "Old Jube" stood on the banks of the Potomac. Washington lay barely fifty miles away. How Early and his corps departed the lines opposite Grant's army unnoticed and eluded detection until they had reached the gates of the Federal capital was a remarkable feat and one that few historians have endeavored to explain. Scholars have examined the famous raid from varying viewpoints, but no one has studied Early's trek from Richmond to Washington from the perspective of Grant's military intelligence establishment. For example, in his Jubal's Raid: General Early's Famous Attack on Washington in 1864, Frank Vandiver masterfully recounted the Second Corps' journey down the Valley to Washington's door but made no attempt to show how the detachment got so near to the capital without attracting Grant's attention.2 Other historians have emphasized only Grant's deception of Lee during his shift south of the James. In R. E. Lee: A Biography, Douglas Southall Freeman examined this movement and the problems Lee faced in determining the scale of the maneuver, Federal intentions, and how he would respond. Freeman devoted a lengthy chapter to scrutinizing the scant information Lee had concerning the positions and movements of the Army of the Potomac. He flirted with the issue of Early's secret exodus when he stated that on the morning of June 13, "Lee's skirmishers brought back the long expected word at the very hour when the men of Early's corps were turning westward: The long trenches in front of Cold Harbor were empty; Grant was gone."3 Freeman did not attach any special significance to the simultaneous movements of Grant and Early 1 Grant to Henry W. Halleck, July 3, 1864, in John Y. Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (henceforth USG), 16 vols, to date (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1967-), vol. 9, 166; the Confederates named their...

Another Nothospecies in the Appalachian Asplenium Complex

Based on three endemic diploid spleenwort species-mountain spleenwort, Aspienium montarum Willd., ebony spleenwort, A. platyneuron (L.) B.S.P.; and walking fern, A. rhizophyllum L-a hybrid polyploid system of great complexity has developed, involving not only the interactions of these ferns but also more widespread taxa such as wall rue, A. ruta-muraria L.; forked spleenwort, A. septentrionale L.; and maidenhair spleenwort, A. trichomanes L. These hybrids are often of great interest because they combine widely different morphologies, producing striking intermediates. Recently Thomas N. Morgan of Carmel, New York, has turned up some unusual natural hybrids during his studies of the spleenworts in the Harper's Ferry region of Maryland and adjacent Virginia and West Virginia. Included is the very distinctive new one described here, which we attribute to the combination of A. platyneuron with A. ruta-muraria. Asplenium x morganii W. Wagner, nothosp. nov. Folia partim dimorpha, usque ad 10.5 cm alta; petiolus et pars proximalis rhachidis atrobrunneae; lamina bipinnata, anguste deltoidea, pinnis basalibus usque ad 1.7 cm longis; pinna terminalis pinnatifida, usque ad 0.9 cm longa; pinnae laterales et pinnulae stipitibus angustis usque ad 1.5-2.0 mm longis; apices pinnatifidi pinnarum usque ad 6 mm longi; sori 0.5-1.5 mm longi indusiis tenuibus denticulatis; chromosomatum numerus 3x = 108,

An Iowan's Death at Harpers Ferry

An Iowan's Death at Harpers Ferry

Fort Lyon to Harper's Ferry: On the Border of North and South with "Ramblin Jour." The Civil War Letters and Newspaper Dispatches of Charles H. Moulton

Fort Lyon to Harper's Ferry: On the Border of North and South with "Ramblin Jour." The Civil War Letters and Newspaper Dispatches of Charles H. Moulton

Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930–1975

Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930—1975 EDWARD W. CONSTANT II Current attitudes about technological determinism fall all over the lot. Metaphysicians, who see technology as autonomous and out of control, driving civilization to social or literal doom, shade off into neo-Marxists, who see technology solely as the pernicious instrument of class oppression.1 Others see technology purely as social construct, the creature and product of evanescent social relations.2 Some his­ torians of technology see technology as a singularly powerful, al­ though hardly singular, factor in transforming social relations,3 while others see it as integral to the “seamless web” of history itself.'4 Still others perceive technology as distinctive but highly variable, both in its intrinsic properties and in its social consequences.5 In this mixed Dr. Constant is associate professor of history at Carnegie-Mellon University and is the author of The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution. ‘See Hugh G.J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900— 1932 (Princeton, N.J., 1985), for his excellent summary and discussion of the work of Jacques Ellul, Langdon Winner, and David Noble. 2See the essays by Michel Calion, Bruno Latour, Wiebe Bijker, and Trevor Pinch in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). 3David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800—1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, 1984); Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977). ‘Thomas P. Hughes, “The Seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera,” Social Studies of Science 16 (May 1986): 281—92. ’’See Aitken (n. 1 above) for a superb analysis of technologies as lying along dimen­ sions of manageable-unmanageable, predictable-unpredictable, and evolutionaryrevolutionary . Kranzberg’s first law also applies: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”—“Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’ ” Technology and Culture 27 (July 1986): 545. Other recent studies that stress the multiple goals and purposes, and the sometimes quite unintended consequences, technological development may have include: Leonard S. Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876—1926 (New York, 1985); Stuart W. Leslie, Boss Kettering (New York, 1983); and George S. Wise, Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research (New York, 1985).©1989 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/89/3002-0002$01.00 426 The Oil Business in Texas, 1930—1975 427 company, Carl Condit long ago staked out a large middle ground. In the vast and diverse corpus of his scholarship, Condit typically por­ trays technology, whether building technique, architectural design, urban planning, or electrified railways, as inextricably interwoven with the social fabric of which it is a part. I take it that, for him, this integral quality that technology has entails more than just responsiveness to the usual economic, political, and social factors. For Condit, technol­ ogy expresses, or ought to express, both values and cultural aspira­ tions, and therefore cannot be understood without attention to its cultural meaning.6 The four episodes from the history of the oil business in Texas (admittedly a topic far from Condit’s interests and sympathies) that are discussed in this article are intended to convey a similar message. The core argument these examples are meant to illustrate and support can be stated with some precision: In any empirical sense, technology is in principle both indeterminant and indeterminate. Technology is indeterminant in two ways. It is not autonomous, that is, it is not selfdetermining : the future course of technology cannot be predicted from its current state or previous trajectory alone, nor can the past course of technological change be explained retrospectively purely by reference to technology alone. Neither is technology alone determi­ nant of anything else: Its consequences cannot be derived only from a particular state of technology or prior technological trajectory. While assuredly possessed of its own internal dynamic, technology, like sci­ ence, does not determine in and of itself its...