The American Civil War, 1861-1865

Teaching American History Session September 17, 2010

Stephen E. TowneIUPUI

Outline

• Phases of Important Civil War Scholarship• Abe Lincoln of Indiana: Lincoln Scholarship• Indiana and the Civil War• Primary Sources on the Civil War

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

• James Ford Rhodes (1848-1927), History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (7 volumes, ca. 1892-1906)

-slavery as overriding cause-nationalism and nation building; focus

on high politics-progress in American society

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

• Ulrich B. Phillips (1877-1934), Life and Labor in the Old South (1929)

-Slavery dying out-Race and racial superiority the driving

forces for White Southerners-African-American slaves benefitted from

a benign Southern slavery

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

• Charles Beard (1874-1948) and Mary Beard (1876-1958), The Rise of American Civilization (1927)

-Progressive movement-economic determinism over ideology-class struggle: conflict of Northern

industrialists v. Southern planters

Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

• James G. Randall (1881-1953), “The Blundering Generation,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27 (June, 1940), 3-28.-”fanaticism” and “overbold leadership” led to a needless war-generation “stumbled into a ghastly war.”

• Avery O. Cravens (1886-1980), The Repressible Conflict, 1830-1861 (1939)-CW as breakdown of the democratic process

Revisionism

James G. Randall

Randall as “revisionist”

“One does not often speak or read of the war in reality, of its blood and filth, of mutilated flesh, and other revolting things. This restraint is necessary, but it ought to be recognized that the war is not presented when one writes of debates in Congress, of flanking movements, of retreats and advances, of cavalry and infantry, of divisions doing this and doing that….For the very word ‘war’ the realist would have to substitute some such term as ‘organized murder’ or ‘human slaughter-house’….”

J.G. Randall, “The Blundering Generation,” (1940).

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

Radicals (especially “fanatical” Northern abolitionists) to blame for coming of war and subsequent mismanagement of Northern war effort:

J.G. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction (1937) and Lincoln the President (4 vols., 1945-1955)

T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (1941)

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

Radical Republicans ReassessedConclusion: Lincoln and the Radical Rs shared goal of the end of slavery and worked together

• Hans Trefousse (1921-2010) The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (1969)

• Biographies of Radical leaders Benjamin Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and others

Phases of Scholarship on the Civil War

• Civil Rights Era brings a reassertion of the centrality of slavery to the Civil War

• Race as the central theme in U.S. history (including significant work on African-Americans in the CW-era: Ira Berlin, et al., : African-Americans as self-emancipators; A-As as actors in Civil War)

• Social history (the study of non-elite groups, gender issues)• Economic history: slavery was profitable and spreading (Robert Fogel

and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross (1974), contra U.B. Phillips, et al.)

• Intellectual history (the study of ideas and their impacts on war causation and experience of war; cultural divisions North v. South)

• “New Military History” (study the experience of the common soldiers/social context of war/relationship of armies to civil societies)

Recent Scholarship Trends

Abraham Lincoln of Indiana

Abraham Lincoln of Indiana• Lincoln was not a typical Hoosier of his day• Lincoln rejected those things that characterized Indiana in his

day; he espoused:-Whig ideology (self-improvement, state support for economic development)-Henry Clay v. Andrew Jackson-urbanite-valued education-family values (rel. to father;spoiled his children)?

Lincoln Scholarship• Important Themes

-Lincoln as Great Emancipator-Lincoln as political genius : Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (2005) [cabinet as foils] and W.B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (1949) [Northern governors as foils]-Lincoln v. the Radical Republicans: J.G. Randall, et al., D.H. Donald, Lincoln (1995) [RRs as foils]-Lincoln as military leader: Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General (1949) James M. McPherson, Trial by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2008) [generals as foils]-Lincoln and civil liberties: J.G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1926), Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty (1991)

Indiana and the Civil War

The New Military History and Indiana• Campaigning with the 67th Indiana 1864 : an annotated diary of service in the Department of the Gulf /

William A. McMillan, diarist ; edited with commentary by Stephen A. Dupree. (2006)• August Willich's gallant Dutchmen : Civil War letters from the 32nd Indiana Infantry / translated and edited

by Joseph R. Reinhart. (2006)• A fierce, wild joy : the Civil War letters of Colonel Edward J. Wood, 48th Indiana Volunteer Infantry

Regiment / edited by Stephen E. Towne. (2007)• A lost American dream : Civil War letters (1862/63) of immigrant Theodor Heinrich Brandes in historical

contexts / Antonius Holtmann ; translated by Eberhard Reichmann. (2005)• Fighting for liberty and right : the Civil War diary of William Bluffton Miller, first sergeant, Company K,

Seventy-Fifth Indiana Volunteer Infantry / edited by Jeffrey L. Patrick and Robert J. Willey. (2004)• Affectionately yours : the Civil War home front letters of the Ovid Butler family / edited by Barbara Butler

Davis ; with a foreword by Alan T. Nolan. (2004). • Three years with Wallace's Zouaves : the Civil War memoirs of Thomas Wise Durham / edited by Jeffery L.

Patrick. (2003)• Letters from Elmira's trunk : an Indiana family in the Civil War / edited by Carolyn S. Bridge and Marilyn

Bridge Brown. (2002)• Phantoms of a blood-stained period : the complete Civil War writings of Ambrose Bierce / edited by Russell

Duncan & David J. Klooster. (2002)• The musick of the mocking birds, the roar of the cannon : the Civil War diary and letters of William Winters

; edited by Steven E. Woodworth. (1998)• This wilderness of war : the Civil War letters of George W. Squier, Hoosier volunteer / edited by Julie A.

Doyle, John David Smith, and Richard M. McMurry. (1998)

The New Military History and IndianaSoldier Motivations

• Thomas E. Rodgers, “Billy Yank and G.I. Joe: An Exploratory Essay on the Sociopolitical Dimensions of Soldier Motivation,” Journal of Military History 69 (January, 2005), 93-121.

• James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997)

• Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (1997)

The New Military History and Indiana

Mental Illness in Civil War VeteransEric T. Dean, Shook Over Hell: Post-

traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (1997)

-based largely on Indiana Hospital for the Insane records of Indiana veterans

Indiana Soldiers by the Numbers

• Nearly 200,000 soldiers from Indiana served• Over 24,000 soldiers from Indiana died of

wounds or disease• 12 % death rate• Many thousands more were seriously

wounded during war

Where Indiana Soldiers Fought

• 150 Indiana volunteer infantry regiments, 13 cavalry regiments, 26 batteries formed

• Only 5 infantry regiments and parts of 3 cavalry regiments from Indiana fought in the East in the Army of the Potomac.

• The rest fought and won the war in the West.

Where Indiana Soldiers Fought

Indiana and the Civil War

• Important themes:-Pre-war politics of slavery in Indiana-Wartime politics in Indiana (Republican

Gov. Oliver P. Morton v. the Democrats)-Dissent and disloyalty in Indiana-violence against the press, military

arrests, and violations of civil liberties

Oliver P. Morton(1823-1877)

Important Scholarship on Indiana and the Civil War

• Kenneth P. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War (1949)

• Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority (1957)

• -------, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850-1880 (1965)

• G.R. Tredway, Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Administration in Indiana (1973)

Indiana: Specialized Studies

• Richard F. Nation, At Home in the Hoosier Hills: Agriculture, Politics, and Religion in Southern Indiana (2005)

• Thomas E. Rodgers, “Republicans and Drifters: Political Affiliation and Union Army Volunteers in West-Central Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 96 (December, 1996), 321-345

• -------, “Hoosier Women and the Civil War Home Front,” Indiana Magazine of History 97 (June, 2001), 105-128

Indiana: Some of My Work

• “ ‘Works of Indiscretion:’ Violence Against the Democratic Press in Indiana during the Civil War,” Journalism History 31 (2005), 138-149

• “Killing the Serpent Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, 1863,” Civil War History 52 (March, 2006), 41-65

• “Worse than Vallandigham: Governor Oliver P. Morton, Lambdin P. Milligan, and the Military Arrest and Trial of Indiana State Senator Alexander J. Douglas during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History 106 (March, 2010), 1-39

https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/

Primary Sources as Teaching Tools

Primary Sources for Indiana in the Civil War Era• Archives and manuscript repositories

-records of government, private letters and diaries

• Newspapers from the era• Printed editions of letters, diaries, and

memoirs• Online sources

Indiana’s War: The Civil War in DocumentsOhio University Press, 2009

Primary Source Reader

Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents

Chapters:• The Politics of Slavery• The Election of 1860 and Secession• Choosing Sides, Making an Army• The Front Lines• The Home Front• Race, Slavery, and the Emancipation Proclamation• The Battle to Control State Government• The Morgan Raid• Dissent, Violence, and Conspiracy• War’s End

Vote to Exclude African-Americans from Indiana, 1852

Kansas Troubles Influenced Indiana Politics

Newspapers of Civil War Era

• Local Indiana Newspapers-county public libraries; IU-Bloomington

library; Indiana State Library• National/regional Newspapers

-IU-B library; online databases; microfilm via Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

• Online Newspaper Projects

Online Newspaper Projects

• ICON: International Coalition for Newspapers newspaper digitization projects listed:http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm

• Library of Congress Chronicling America Project: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

• Pay to view services for New York Times, Chicago Tribune, etc., from CW era

Lincoln Resources Online

• Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congresshttp://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html

• Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/

• Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/ (includes lesson plans)

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/

Indiana and the Civil War Online Sources

• Gov. Oliver P. Morton Telegraph Books http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/digitalscholarship/collections/Telegraph

-Show Morton’s involvement in all areas of war effort, including national war planning and consultations with Lincoln and Cabinet.

Other Indiana Resources

• Brevier Legislative Reports of the Indiana General Assembly http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/metsnav3/law/brevier/#mets=http%3A%2F%2Fpurl.dlib.indiana.edu%2Fiudl%2Flaw%2Fbrevier%2Fmets%2FVAA8558-01&page=1

• Indiana Magazine of History Fulltext http://www.indiana.edu/~imaghist/

For Further Information:

Stephen E. TowneAssociate University Archivist

IUPUI Special Collections and ArchivesUniversity Library UL 0117A755 West Michigan Street

Indianapolis, IN 46202-5195317-278-3445

setowne@iupui.edu