William T. Sherman in St. Louis: Remarks Given at the Sherman Commemoration Day, March 8, 2026

I was invited by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, U.S. Grant Camp #68, to deliver prepared remarks about General William T. Sherman for an annual event commemorating his life at Calvary Cemetery in North St. Louis, where General Sherman, his wife Ellen, and several children are buried. The event took place on Sunday, March 8, 2026. I decided to focus on Sherman’s life in St. Louis. My remarks are below.

Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman’s partnership on the battlefield played a pivotal role in defeating the Confederacy, keeping a badly torn nation intact after four years of civil war. Off the battlefield, the two men had a close friendship shaped by very similar life experiences. Both men were born in Ohio. Both men attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Both men served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican American War, and both men left the Army in the 1850s to pursue civilian careers. Most notable for our purposes today, both men maintained deep attachments to St. Louis. Both called St. Louis home at various points in their lives. They raised their children, supported their families, and developed deep friendships with residents of this city. Both men aspired to make St. Louis their permanent home, but public duties and personal circumstances pushed them in different directions.

William T. Sherman’s connections to St. Louis began in the summer of 1843. After completing a five-month furlough from the U.S. Army, he traveled along the Mississippi River to his duty station in Charleston, South Carolina. It was the first time the young officer had traveled in this region, and he kept an extensive travel diary. Sherman expressed wonderment at the hustle and bustle of St. Louis, taking interest in the sights, sounds, and activity of its riverfront. He noted an art gallery that captured his attention and visited the relatively new St. Louis Cathedral, what we here call the Old Cathedral today.

Sherman returned to St. Louis with Company C of the 3^rd Artillery Regiment in September 1850 for deployment at Jefferson Barracks. He initially lived alone, but within four months his wife Ellen and newborn daughter Minnie joined him at a boarding house in the city. Life was good. Sherman wrote to his father-in-law Thomas Ewing about St. Louis, remarking that “beyond doubt in time it will be one of the greatest places on the Continent.” He tried to get Ewing to move to St. Louis, arguing that it was not worth his time to remain in “that insignificant town of Lancaster,” Ohio.

Sherman remained in St. Louis until 1853, when he decided to resign his commission in the U.S. Army for better career prospects as a civilian. He decided to move his family to San Francisco, but the St. Louis connections remained. James H. Lucas and Henry Turner, two prominent businessmen and personal friends of Sherman’s in St. Louis, owned the Bank of Lucas, Turner, & Co. They looked to establish a branch in San Franscisco and hired Sherman to work as the branch manager. Sherman managed the bank competently and responsibly. When a serious financial panic hit San Francisco in 1855, a run of creditors stretched many banks thin, with several forced to shut their doors. Sherman managed to keep his bank open and operating amid the panic while ensuring that all creditors received the funds they called in. The bank closed in 1857, but his responsible management of the bank limited the damage. Sherman then worked several different jobs, eventually becoming Commissioner of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (now Louisiana State University). However, events soon brought Sherman back to St. Louis.

The secession crisis that followed President Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 sparked open discussion of Southern independence. Staff and cadets alike at the Louisiana State Seminary openly supported secession, which Sherman opposed and considered treasonous. When state troops seized the arsenal at Baton Rouge on January 10, Sherman offered his resignation. He considered offering his services to the U.S. military, but a chance meeting with President Lincoln convinced him that Unionists were not prepared for the fight that the secessionists were prepared to give. Sherman knew that any conflict would be long and bloody. An opportunity to become President of the Fifth Street Railroad Company brought Sherman back to St. Louis in early 1861. He followed events closely, occasionally visiting the federal arsenal in the city and witnessing the Camp Jackson Affair on May 10, a particularly scary event in which Sherman laid over his son Willie in a ditch as shots fired over their heads. He soon offered his services to the U.S. Army.

Sherman’s return to the Army and his service in the Civil War made him internationally famous, but St. Louis remained on his mind. At the end of the war in 1865, business leaders in St. Louis spent $30,000 on a mansion for the Sherman family at 912 N. Garrison Ave., just a little northeast of what is now the Fox Theater and Powell Symphony Hall. Over the next 11 years the Shermans lived on and off at this residence. Conflicts with Secretary of War William Belknap left Sherman feeling that he had little authority to command U.S. forces. In protest of Belknap’s influence over the military and President Grant, General Sherman moved his Army headquarters to St. Louis in 1874. During this time, he wrote his Personal Memoirs at the home on Garrison Avenue, becoming one of the first generals on either side to tell his story about the war. The Shermans also purchased this cemetery plot at Calvary Cemetery, ensuring that their family legacy would be permanently commemorated in St. Louis.

General Sherman lived in New York City following his retirement from the Army in 1884, but he maintained connections to St. Louis. He was a founder of Ransom Post #131 of the Grand Army of the Republic and awarded honorary memberships in the St. Louis Commercial Club and the St. Louis Club. He attended a funeral pageant in the city for General Grant in 1885 and was elected President of the Grant Monument Association of Missouri. Sherman played a significant role in raising $70,000 to erect a statue to General Grant, the first of its kind anywhere in the U.S. Sherman preferred that the statue be housed at Forest Park alongside General Frank Blair’s statue, but the board voted for 12^th and Olive. The Grant statue now stands at St. Louis City Hall.

General Sherman was a complex person, far from perfect but more nuanced than the crude caricature he is sometimes portrayed as. He valued order, discipline, and vigorous enforcement of the law. His tactics could be seen as harsh and unforgiving, but his surrender terms to Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston were so generous that General Grant had to travel to North Carolina to rewrite those terms. He held racial prejudices against African Americans and despised abolitionist opposition to slavery in the United States. However, in later years Sherman defended Black voting rights. He was beloved and respected in the South after the war and was greeted by thousands of admirers during a tour of the region. And even though he displayed a strict military persona in his professional capacity, Sherman exuded a jovial disposition in his private life. He was a passionate supporter of the arts, a regular theater-goer who often attended the same play multiple nights, an avid reader, and a student of history. He loved to entertain and be entertained.

When General Sherman died in 1891 at the age of 71, city leaders prepared for his return to St. Louis and burial at Calvary Cemetery. On February 21, 1891, 12,000 soldiers, veterans, and dignitaries marched past tens of thousands of mourners on a seven-mile march from downtown St. Louis to Calvary, where Sherman’s son Thomas, a Catholic priest, led the funeral ceremonies. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called this event “the greatest funeral pageant ever seen in the West.”

General Sherman asked that his epitaph read “Faithful and Honorable.” In all facets of his life—as a military officer, citizen, and family man—William T. Sherman lived up to that standard. As we reflect on General Sherman’s life today, let us remember the ways St. Louis shaped his—and a nation’s—legacy during the Civil War era. Thank you.

Facebook History Groups and the Problem of Not Including Appropriate Photo Credits in Posts

Daguerreotype by Thomas Easterly of the intersection of 3rd and Olive Streets, early 1850s. Missouri Historical Society

I have been on Facebook for nearly twenty years, but 2025 started off with me being kicked out of a group for the very first time. Interestingly, I was kicked out of a group focused on . . . history. It’s a very small concern in the grand scheme of where the world is at this moment in time, but I felt like it was worth a few paragraphs to explain what happened.

As the name implies, “St. Louis Pictures of the Past” is just one of many groups dedicated to sharing old photos about the city’s history. I believe there is something around 144,000 people who follow the page. I was kicked out because I asked a habitual poster to provide photo credits in his posts as a courtesy so that others could find, access, and download the photos he shared for their own purposes. I left only one comment on the post. I did not engage in a back and forth or personally attack anyone, but I did complain that the lack of photo credits was a frequent problem with posts in the group, and I suppose that was what did me in. After no longer being able to access the group through my own account, I saw through a different account that an admin deleted my comment and left her own comment saying I was kicked out because I was being negative and “trying to tell the admins how to do their job.”

I guess I am guilty as charged!

Photo credits matter when sharing historical photos for two reasons. One is to promote access. Where did this photo come from? Is there a copyright on it, or is it public domain? Is it housed by a public institution or does it come from a private collection? Does the person have permission to share this photo? Some people who posted in the group had a habit of sharing low resolution photos that appeared to be cell phone screen shots. If I want to find the original at a higher resolution, where can I go to find it? How do I know the information being shared in a post is accurate? How can we help others conduct online research that interests them? A simple photo credit can help others on their learning journey.

The second is acknowledgment, courtesy, and credit. Somebody took the original photo. Somebody else undertook the effort of preserving the photo and in some cases undertaking conservation work to maintain the photo’s integrity. Somebody else digitized the photo. Somebody else manages a digital infrastructure where the photos are housed and made available to the public. It took many hands to get one photo from the photographer’s camera 50 to 180 years ago to your computer today. When we acknowledge that a photo came from the Missouri Historical Society or the Library of Congress, we acknowledge this preservation work and provide an avenue for further inquiry by others. When someone shares a bunch of photos and stories without attribution, it comes off to me as uncharitable, gatekeeping, and as if the original poster is trying to get attention, clicks, and reactions for themselves.

So . . . even though we see daily instances on Facebook where content is stolen from creators without attribution and without punishment to the person doing the stealing, when it comes to historical photos we should just take that extra second to offer a photo credit to promote transparency, access, and acknowledgement.

Cheers

(Please don’t kick me off WordPress for this post, and read this post from 2018 if you’d like some other commentary from me about Facebook history groups and their tendency to focus on nostalgia rather than accurate history).

The Complexities of Race and Early Photography

Last week the well-respected auction house Freeman’s/Hindman hosted a giant auction of early photographs dating back to the early 1840s. Many interesting daguerreotypes–the earliest form of commercial photography and my favorite kind of photo to collect–were offered for sale. None were in my budget! The most compelling daguerreotype was the one seen below.

“A remarkable ninth plate daguerreotype of an interracial couple.”

The listing makes some very bold claims. It states that the auction house researchers “have been unable to locate another daguerreotype of a black man and white woman in an overtly romantic display,” making this photo historic and one-of-a-kind. They also state “the purpose of the image was likely political, though this is far from certain,” especially considering that abolitionist photography has been studied in depth and this particular photo has never been included in any such collection. And, most audaciously, the listing argues that “in a world where racial stereotypes about the humanity of blacks and the notion that they were incapable of the same emotions as whites, this image stands alone. Posed or not, the message of this small treasure is clear: in matters of the heart, white and black could be equal partners.” As seen in the photo above, the auction house estimated that the image would fetch between $30,000 and $50,000.

Make no mistake about it, the pose in this daguerreotype is extremely unique and the image has lots of value. But is the message of this image that clear? The subjects are unidentified. Are they even a couple, or are they just actors engaging for a pose? How do we know this image depicts an interracial couple? How do we know the man is Black or “mixed race”? How can the speculations made in the auction listing be verified?

Race is a very fluid concept and the reality is that a lot of people—both then and now—have a complicated racial identity that goes much deeper than their skin tone. The man seen here is described on the listing as an “African American or mixed race man,” and perhaps he is. But he could also be Indigenous, Hispanic, or…a dark-skinned man of European ancestry. If the subject were identified, we could conduct genealogical research and provide what would be a fascinating background story, but the absence of any identifying information makes that task extremely difficult.

I want to be clear that I am not making an argument about what I think the man’s race is. He could be Black, and if he is in fact Black he would be no “less” Black that anyone else who identified as such. What I am arguing is that this is a case where we can’t make a definitive determination one way or the other about the man’s racial identity, and that the concept of race itself is fraught with all sorts of ambiguity that leads us into some weird, quack nineteenth century race science when we begin speculating about someone’s race based on their hair, nose, etc. What bugs me is that the man’s racial identity seems to be the big focus of the listing and the reason why they estimate a $30-50k winning bid, rather than making the uniqueness of the pose and the artistry of the original photographer the focus of the listing. Instead, the auction house placed the image’s monetary value on a purely speculative claim about the man’s supposed racial identity.

The daguerreotype camera is ultimately an interpretation of a person’s likeness during the moment of exposure. The final product is shaped by all sorts of factors, including light, the space where the image is taken, the subject’s pose and angle, and the chemicals used to produce the photo. Moreover, it’s hard to determine a person’s race when you have only one photo to go off of. A different image of the same person may yield an entirely different skin tone and even overall appearance of the subject.

Dave S. Wilson also pointed out on The Daguerreian Society’s Facebook page that early photographs tended to darken many peoples’ skin. People with red or yellowing skin tones tend to show up much darker in daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes.

Photo courtesy of Dave S. Wilson, The Daguerreian Society

For those of us who buy and sell 19th century photos, I believe we have an obligation to proceed very carefully before making grand declarations about the racial identities of the subjects in our photos. “Maybe” is an important qualifier. Sometimes we can look at a photo and say, “I know it when I see it,” but likewise there are times when we should refrain from making racial identity the focal point of an image when the subject is unidentified and a lot of ambiguity exists. For this photo specifically, I suppose it is all in the eye of the beholder who is willing to spend the money to own it. The photo did not meet the estimated auction price, but it did sell for $20,320 on October 25. I suppose the buyer’s interpretation of the photo is the one that matters the most, or, is at least the most expensive interpretation of them all.

Cheers

Reflections on Visiting the Greenwood Rising Museum and Racial Diversity in Museum Education Staffing

The Greenwood Rising Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo by me.

One memorable experience from the summer of 2024 was the opportunity to do some contract work for the National Council for History Education. I was hired to work as a historical consultant and joined NCHE staff and fifty teachers from the St. Louis area on a one-week bus tour of historic sites throughout Missouri and Oklahoma. I got to see a lot of Missouri that I hadn’t been familiar with and it was my first time traveling to Oklahoma, so that experience alone made it worthwhile. More importantly, it was very fulfilling to work alongside teachers to contemplate how historic sites and museums can help inform students as they study history. At each site we did a debriefing where we analyzed everything from historical content to questions of narrative, exhibit design, and organizational structure. I would like to think the teachers left the experience with a renewed excitement about the educational power of museums.

Most of us pointed to Greenwood Rising in Tulsa as the most thought-provoking museum of the entire experience. Opened to the public only three years ago, the sprawling museum interprets the story of a racially segregated Black community in Tulsa that was, economically speaking, one of the wealthiest of its kind in the entire nation. Despite segregation laws in Tulsa that had been passed in 1916, the Greenwood community benefitted from an oil boom in the area and established itself as a place of Black economic prosperity. That is until May 31, 1921, when a White 21-year-old woman accused a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner of assaulting her in an elevator. As these false rumors spread through the White community in Tulsa, a mob of 400 White men armed themselves, barricaded Greenwood to prevent Black residents from escaping, and proceeded to destroy more than 35 square blocks of the area within 24 hours of the rumors first spreading. The White mob set houses and businesses on fire and murdered at least 150 Black residents if not more (accounts differ). Nobody was ever held accountable for what is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In my opinion, the quick reaction by the White mob to the so-called “elevator incident” demonstrates that White Tulsans were jealous of Greenwood’s success and were waiting for a pretext to destroy the community.

An interesting element of the Greenwood Rising museum is how much attention the Tulsa Race Massacre has received in recent years. I had never heard of the episode at any level of my education and I suspect that many longtime residents in Tulsa didn’t even know about the event until the past three years. None other than actor and self-described “lay historian” Tom Hanks wrote an op-ed for the New York Times lamenting his own ignorance of the event even though he has studied history extensively for much of his life. But the present shapes the past as much as the past shapes the present. There have been many racial massacres of Black Americans throughout this country’s history that deserve more study and popular attention. However, recent debates over race and racism in today’s society combined with the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 2021 seemingly thrust this particular event into the mainstream. I suspect that every academic historian of 20th century U.S. history now understands terms like “Greenwood” and “Black Wall Street” if they did not understand what they meant before 2020. And it is interesting to see the Greenwood Rising Museum’s transparency on its website about various corporate sponsorships contributing funds to their institution, including Boeing and Bank of America.

During the debriefing after the visit, some of the teachers brought up that our group’s tour of the museum was facilitated by a white docent. While all agreed that she did a fine job, we understood that Greenwood Rising was unique in that the museum’s leadership is largely composed of Black Tulsans and that the museum’s interpretive thrust was no doubt shaped by the descendants of the victims of this horrible event. Why, these teachers asked, wasn’t a Black docent around to lead the tour? I tried to give an answer to this complicated question.

Historic sites and museums are organized very similarly to schools when it comes to compensation models. The premise is simple. In education, the farther away you are from the student, the more money you make. The superintendent always makes more than the principal, who makes more than the teacher. In public history, the farther away you are from the visitor, the more money you make. Generally speaking, docents, guides, museum educators, and interpreters are the lowest paid employees save for possibly maintenance/janitorial staff. The issue is compounded further when considering that a lot public facing staff in these educational roles are interns, part-time, seasonal, temporary, or something else besides full-time, permanent. And those who are full-time permanent often struggle to make ends meet. For example, a spreadsheet posted by the American Association of Museums in 2019 showed that a Director of Education at a museum in upstate New York made $40,000 that year, while others in the Midwest made between $30,000 and $50,000. Part time workers are often lucky to make between $15-18 dollars an hour.

When working a frontline job at a place of traumatic history like the Greenwood Rising Museum, educators are reliving the trauma of that event on a daily basis alongside visitors—strangers—who are working through their own emotions as they experience the history on display. The museum educator is simultaneously interpreting history, facilitating dialogue, and an emotional caretaker trying to help visitors navigate a highly charged historical landscape. This work is delicate and challenging. When we ask museum educators to undertake this very difficult work on a daily basis while working in an unstable, contingent employment structure, we should not be surprised when BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) workers choose to take their talents elsewhere.

I do not mean to argue here that White workers don’t also struggle with unstable work conditions in this field, that they aren’t also emotionally affected by traumatic history, that BIPOC workers aren’t interested in or unable to interpret traumatic history, or that White workers can’t interpret Black history (such an argument would make much of my work in the field null and void). What I am arguing is that the socio-economic structure of many museums and public history sites does not incentivize BIPOC representation in frontline staff positions. More broadly, contingent jobs make it hard for workers to climb onto a career ladder. Expanding racial diversity in public history requires leadership at these sites to invest in opportunities for employees to advance their careers and to prepare them for expanded leadership opportunities in the future. Contingent employment doesn’t accomplish that. The solution is easier said than done, yes, but we ultimately cannot lament talented people leaving the field if we don’t give them the opportunity to put food on the table, a roof over their head, and some hope about their future career prospects.

Cheers

Grant Writing for Museums and Historic Sites: A Few Do’s and Don’ts

The Second Bank of the United States at Independence Hall in Philadelphia (National Park Service)

In the world of public history, grant funding matters a great deal. While tax dollars, admission fees, and donations may generate enough revenue to maintain baseline operations at a museum or historic site, these sources are often not enough to supplant major projects that are central to the site’s mission. Whether it’s replacing a decaying roof, designing new exhibits, conducting oral histories, creating a collections management plan, or hosting a cultural festival, grants can offer crucial funding opportunities when project costs reach the tens and hundreds of thousands. As such, it is very important for these sites to be adept at using grant applications to communicate why their work matters. Being able to communicate your purpose to an entity for which you are asking for money is quite literally a valuable skill to posses.

I have been a practicing public historian in one form or another for nearly fifteen years, but over the past couple years I’ve been a lot more involved in the world of grant funding. I’ve been fortunate to have authored or co-authored a few projects that won funding. I’ve also had multiple opportunities to be on the other side of the table as a grant application reviewer. What follows below are a few recommendations based on those experiences that I would offer to any public history sites seeking grant funding, especially small sites with shoestring budgets.

Many applicants focus too much on the WHAT instead of the HOW and WHY

Any site applying for grant funding must explain who they are and what their mission is, but it should not take up 80% of their project description. Many years ago I read Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick. The Heaths argue that organizations are good at telling potential stakeholders WHAT they do, but they struggle to explain WHY their work matters. I have seen the same struggles in many grant applications. Applicants often provide too much detail about the history of their site, including important events and people associated with the place, at the expense of providing a sufficient overview of the project at hand and why it is crucial to fund this project now.

This point reinforces the importance of well-designed website. Let your homepage do the explaining of who you are and what you do. As a reviewer, I will gladly take the time to review websites, social media, and other online information to learn about the site’s operation. With grant applications, I want a description of the specific project being funded and an explanation of HOW and WHY the work matters.

The WHY is covered with fluff rather than substance

I once reviewed a grant application that offered an extended commentary on the value of history and museums in local communities. It discussed the ways history provided insight into the present and how museums could bring communities together by creating meaningful experiences through programming. It used often-stated but poorly defined words like “impact” and “engagement” multiple times to describe the value of history museums for students.

This commentary attempted to explain why the applicant’s work matters, but it did not inspire me to offer a favorable review of the project.

The problem is that most grant application reviewers already understand and believe in the value of history and museums as places where meaningful experiences occur. In fact, the reviewers were probably selected specifically because they work in the field and are passionate about our mission!

I don’t need to be convinced about the value of public history. What I need to be convinced of is WHY your specific project is valuable.

The Target Audience is poorly defined

Who is this project for? Who does the public history site want to connect with on this project? Who stands to benefit from this project?

Applicants often run the risk of using too broad a definition that renders their target audience meaningless. The “General Public” does not exist and the term should be removed from your vocabulary. What constitutes a member of the general public? Who is excluded from the general public? With all due respect, “The Nation” is not a definable target audience for a small site in rural Mississippi. While that site might get a few out of town tourists as visitors or a few clicks to their website from people out of the state, your application to repair the front door or create a children’s program should not have “The Nation” as its target audience. And there is never one “local community” but always local communities that can and should be reached with your project. Wherever you live, there are all sorts of different groups that could be targeted for your programming.

What are some examples of clearly defined target audiences?

“Fourth graders at two local school districts within 25 miles of the museum”

“Vietnam veterans and their families within the region”

“Members of the local Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs”

“All Tribal Nations with historical connections to this state”

“Local farmers who are willing to share their stories for an oral history project about agricultural practices in the region.”

The Project’s Tangible Outcomes are Exaggerated

Will the installation of six interpretive panels spread throughout a historic main street boost tourism to a small town of less than 1,000 people? Will a new exhibit not only increase revenue for a museum, but also spark new economic spending at local businesses in the long term? Will the applicant’s project boost tax revenue and facilitate population growth to the local area?

I recently reviewed a grant application that proposed to create two new interpretive signs and to do some work on a historic structure in a very small town of a few thousand people. Both are worthy initiatives that should be considered for funding. When explaining the benefits of the project, however, the applicant focused mostly on the benefits it would provide to tourists. This initiative will boost tourism to the area, increase tax revenue, promote job growth, and encourage more people to move to the town, they said.

My response when reading that was, “how do you know that?”

All of these outcomes are possible. And . . . it’s possible that none of these outcomes will be met. Applicants should really consider what tangible outcomes are possible for a project and be realistic about what can be achieved. If the outcomes sound unrealistic, I am more likely to not support funding of the project.

Which gets me to my final point:

Applicants struggle to define what will count as success for their project and have no method for measuring succcess through data

What does success look like for this project? It’s a question many grant fund applicants struggle to answer. For example, I once reviewed an application for new interpretive signage at a historic structure. In explaining intended outcomes for the project, the applicant said the project would “promote education” and anecdotally remarked that they had once spoken to a student who had no clue what the history was behind this historic structure., which they found troubling.

We can see here that “education” is used so broadly that it’s essentially a meaningless term. How many people live in this community? Who will be educated by the signage? What learning standards will be met with the signage? What is the intended educational outcome? What will local community members, once they have been “educated,” do with this newly acquired knowledge?

A better approach takes data into account to measure for success. For example, this applicant could have proposed, say, getting at least 80% of the community’s elementary students to the site to see the signage and then complete a project back at school about the importance of historic preservation in their community. If 10,000 residents and tourists currently see the historic structure on an annual basis, “success” will be measured by getting 15,000 to 20,000 residents and tourists to the structure annually within the next five years. 75% of residents in the poorest areas within the region will see this structure within the next two years. You get the idea.

Using data to measure success also demands a more extensive evaluation process. How will numbers be captured for this project? To this end, applicants should also consider how professional museum evaluators might be able to help them capture useful numbers to better determine the success of a project.

These are just a few suggestions I have to offer about successful grant writing. Good luck!

Cheers

Personal Identity, Intellectual Humility, and Different Ways of Remembering History

The Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Memorial at the Gettysburg Battlefield. Photo taken by the author in 2013.

I like to think of myself as someone who is able to consume a high volume of information in a discerning way. I try not to get too emotionally high or low about anything I read online. I try to think critically about a source’s motivations and potential biases. I think Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew are on to something when they discuss the importance of lateral reading, or the idea that when you see a claim online, it’s important to search broadly to see where else the claim is being repeated.

Sometimes I read or watch things from divergent perspectives and find myself making unexpected connections.

I recently finished reading Ty Seidule’s fine book, Robert E. Lee and Me. Seidule grew up in a strongly Southern household. He idolized Robert E. Lee, loved watching movies like Gone with the Wind and Song of the South, and read books by people like Joel Chandler Harris who romanticized the plantation life of the pre-Civil War South. Early in his Army career, he considered himself a Virginian more so than an American. But Seidule’s academic studies and his eventual transition into a historian at West Point challenged the foundation his personal identity was built on. He began to understand that the version of history he consumed was inaccurate and quite racist. He initially idolized the statuesque, “marble man” version of General Lee that portrayed him as a virtuous, Christian soldier who had no choice but to fight for the imperiled South in a valiant cause against the Lincoln administration’s tyranny. But Seidule eventually realized that other Virginians like Winfield Scott, George Thomas, and even most of Lee’s own extended family considered themselves Americans first and chose to defend their country. He came to understand that after more than thirty years of serving in the United States Army, Lee had the power to make a choice in 1861 and chose to fight against the Army that he had previously served.

And yet, as Seidule evolved in his own thinking he found himself confused by the views and behaviors of fellow Army officers who, when presented with scholarly resources and primary source documents about the Civil War, refused to abandon the same sort of Lost Cause/Moonlight and Magnolia’s understanding of history that Seidule had once embraced.

I also recently watched a video by musician Rick Beato. He discussed a recent trend of popular YouTubers giving up the platform and reflected on his perceptions towards online comment sections. One thing that stuck out to Beato about these influencers was that many of them cited the stress they felt about views and comments on their video as one reason for leaving YouTube. While he appreciated the positive comments towards his own work and politely considered constructive criticisms for his own videos, he had likewise learned to not get too high or low about comments in general. That’s because “if somebody writes a negative comment, it’s about them. If somebody writes a positive comment, it’s about them . . . I always realize their comments are talking through their experiences.” In Beato’s mind, the big takeaway was that creative people should focus on things they care about and not get drowned out other peoples’ noise, even if it’s overly positive.

Finally, I recently watched a webinar with the American Association of State and Local History about doing public history during polarizing times. One of the presenters (I don’t remember who), discussed the concept of intellectual humility. The presenter remarked that people who demonstrate intellectual humility are more likely to listen to differing perspectives, ask clarifying questions, seek new ways of understanding a topic, and recognize their own intellectual ignorance and social blind spots. Put simply, people who are intellectually humble are always learning, receptive to constructive feedback, and willing to have meaningful dialogue with others even if not everyone is in full agreement.

All three of these presentations helped me crystallize some of own thoughts about history, memory, and identity.

History is never just about the facts. It is a deeply moral and personal exercise that shapes how people construct their identities. Where did I come from? Who are the people who compose my community and play an influential role in my life? Who are the people from my family’s and my nation’s past who shaped my place in the world today? In the United States, students’ history instruction in the K-12 classroom is tightly embedded within lessons aimed at promoting loyalty to the nation-state, a love of country, and civic participation. History isn’t just about where we’ve been, but where we’re going. Children often receive similar lessons in their home environment when it comes to history.

Vigorous debates about what should be taught in the history classroom are reflective of individual views about the meaning and morality of history as much as teaching good historical scholarship. They are reflective of what people think about the role of history in shaping the present. The present shapes the study of history as much as the study of history shapes the present.

Many people who are invested in teaching what they consider to be good and accurate history in the classroom aren’t necessarily subject matter experts when it comes to primary sources, historiography, or current scholarship. But they understand that how history is taught can be consequential for how students perceive their personal identity and their relationship to the nation-state. For some, history is the glue that creates a shared understanding of what it means to be an American. For others, history provides the blueprint for improving society and avoiding the mistakes of the past (of course, there will always be new and unforeseen mistakes that we’ll commit moving forward). Individual understandings of history are therefore shaped by a complex web of the personal: identity, experience, and politics.

History has been at the forefront of political debates in the present because the past ten years have seen what I would consider to be a fairly successful attempt to elevate the experiences of Black, Indigenous, other People of Color, Women, and LGBTQ people to the forefront of U.S. history. The Cold War era Consensus School of History, which privileges unity, shared values, triumphant historical moments, and the downplaying of previous conflicts, has been criticized for leaving out too many narratives and minimizing the contested nature of U.S. politics over time. Newer interpretations try to highlight “hidden histories” of the past and critically examine the nation’s shortcomings. Most people born in the twentieth century received a consensus interpretation of history in their classrooms growing up. Adherents to consensus history probably support the idea of their children and grandchildren receiving a history education that is very similar to the one they received years ago. Opponents of the consensus approach probably feel that this approach is inadequate for meeting the needs of today. In reality, both consensus history and whatever we want to call the newer school of history have value in the classroom. Adherents to both sides nevertheless view their position through the lens of their personal identity and experiences. They believe that a pendulum swing towards the opposite direction poses a threat to the nation’s young people and their collective understanding of history. I for one certainly support any approach that works towards students receiving an inclusive interpretation of history because an inclusive history is a more accurate history.

All of this is to say that for many people, considerations of identity, experience, and politics loom just as large or even larger than “the facts” when talking about history. The fellow U.S. Army officers who dismissed Seidule when he shared primary sources about the causes of the Civil War probably struggled to move themselves towards a view of the past that was critical of their understanding of history, their family’s history, and their personal identities in the present. They were strongly invested in a worldview that was Too Big to Fail. If the war was really about slavery and General Lee committed treason against the United States, what else could these officers expect to be wrong about when it came to remembering the past? I certainly wouldn’t want to accuse them of lacking intellectual humility, but one could argue that this exchange wasn’t about “the facts” because they were intellectually invested in a particular interpretation that they would not budge on. What Seidule struggled to comprehend about this collective pushback was that it was just as much about them and their perception of their place in the world in that moment as it was about the historical information he shared with the group.

In the end, my work as a historian is undoubtedly shaped by my personal experiences and my perceptions of the world today. My identity, experiences, and politics are both a blessing and a curse for my work. I have learned a lot over the years, but I try to proceed with intellectual humility, doing my best to keep an open mind to information, perspectives, and scholarship that I am unaware or disagree with. And when it comes to the comment section . . . it’s about them, not you.

Cheers

A Review of “Tar Heels in Gray” by John B. Cameron

This is the way a regimental history should be written.

I kept saying that line to myself as I read Tar Heels in Gray (McFarland Press, 2021), John B. Cameron’s fine study of the 30th North Carolina Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. Cameron, a historian of France by trade, grew up in North Carolina reading about the Civil War. This book was in many ways a return to his roots; a personal effort to understand how the men of his community viewed their participation in the war through their military experience in the 30th Infantry.

I found Cameron’s book compelling because he was not interested in re-hashing the 30th Infantry’s military experiences. One brief chapter provides an overview of previous studies and regimental histories that explored the unit’s experiences in battle. Instead, Cameron seeks to use most of the book to interpret significant questions about the men’s lives before the war, their motivations for fighting, their connections to slavery, and their views of the Confederate nation during the war. What emerges from this study is a powerful, empathetic analysis that dramatically conveys the Civil War’s horrific bloodshed to the reader. Clocking in at a brisk 132 pages of main text, the book moves quickly and succinctly.

There are three noteworthy aspects of Cameron’s book that are worth mentioning for the way they challenge previous Civil War historiography while offering new arguments worthy of further consideration.

Soldier Motivations for Fighting: A central aspect Tar Heels in Gray is Cameron’s effort to uncover the motivations behind the common soldier’s desire to fight for the Confederacy. He paints a nuanced portrait. For most men, military service offered several tangible benefits. They believed the war would be a short one, with Confederate victory assured against a weak, divided opponent. By quickly getting into the fight, these men hoped to get some of the action and enjoy some of the “glory” of military conflict. Military service also offered a steady income while the war continued, an especially important consideration for men who did not immediately join the Confederacy when the conflict began but soon realized it would take years and found bounty and monthly payments attractive. Finally, a sense of shared communal participation also influenced the men. As Cameron explains, “The desire to prove your manhood and emerge from the test of battle a hero no doubt motivated many. When friends and relatives are announcing their decision to march off and win the day, the desire to show bravery and be a hero surely brought more than a few to volunteer” (59).

As such, Cameron correctly argues that the personal motivations of the 30th Infantry’s soldiers for fighting reflected a range of motivations: “No doubt there were some who were desperate to maintain slavery. There may have been some who were Southern patriots and felt some Confederate nationalism. However, neither is mentioned or implied in letters or diaries. What the documents do suggest among initial volunteers is a belief that North Carolina had every right to secede, even if it was unwise, and the reaction of the Union was tantamount to armed invasion. There was much talk about the need to defend their homes, to defend North Carolina” (58). In other words, what may have been a deeply political issue for Confederate leaders was a deeply practical and personal issue for many of the enlisted men: they would follow along with their community to defend their state and their personal homes if that was expected of them at the war’s beginning.

But Cameron does not leave these men off the hook when it comes to slavery. The Confederacy’s political leadership was clear about its interest in defending slavery. The various seceding states that issued Declarations of Secession were explicit in their beliefs that slavery was morally right, constitutional, financially important for the Southern economy, and that it was wrong to ban slavery’s expansion into new Western territories. Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency threatened the status quo. Even North Carolina, whose political leaders hesitated to push the state into the Confederacy and only did so after Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to subdue the rebellion after the firing of Ft. Sumter, subtly mentioned its interest in preserving slavery. Weldon N. Edwards, the president of the North Carolina secession convention, announced that he had no interest in partnering with the “Black Republican Union” due to what he perceived as the Republican Party’s desires to end slavery in the South.

Cameron therefore gives readers an important insight about the differences between soldier motivations for fighting and governmental motivations for fighting. The common soldiers who decided to fight for the Confederacy in the 30th North Carolina may have had a range of motivations that did not include a particularly strong view towards protecting slavery. Many of the men were probably poor whites who had limited connections to slavery and no chance of becoming an enslaver someday. But in choosing to enlist for a government that clearly stated its interest in protecting slavery, these men took on that fight and agreed to put their lives on the line for that cause, regardless of how the institution personally affected them.

The same idea can be applied in the other direction. Modern day Confederate defenders are often quick to point out that President Lincoln stated in his First Inaugural Address his wish to not end slavery, only to maintain the Union. Many U.S. soldiers felt the same way. Both of those claims are true. But as the war progressed, the end of slavery became a war measure in the fight to defeat the Confederacy. If a Union soldier who opposed a war to end slavery continued his military service after Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he was now fighting a war to end slavery regardless of his personal views.

One does not need to go into a long dissertation about other U.S. wars where soldier motivations and governmental motivations differed to see other examples of this trend.

Soldiers’ Economic Backgrounds and Class Status: A second insight from Cameron concerns the wealth and status of the men who fought for the 30th North Carolina Infantry. Cameron follows a similar analysis to Joseph Glatthaar in his book about soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia. In that book, Glatthaar used financial data from census records to develop theories about who in Southern society was doing the bulk of the fighting for the Confederacy. Glatthaar broke up the these men into three categories: poor men with less than $800 to their name, middle class men with wealth between $800 and $3,999, and wealthy men with more than $4,000 to their name. Glatthaar’s statistics led him to conclude that the Confederate war was “a rich, moderate, and poor man’s fight.” In other words, Glatthaar argued that all classes of Southern society had a role in fighting for the Confederate cause.

Cameron found that this conclusion did not fit the experiences of the 30th North Carolina and that Glatthaar’s class categories were too broad. He instead broke up the 30th North Carolina into six different classes: Poor laborers who owned no land and had less than $400 to their name, small farmers with less than $5,000 worth of total property, craftsmen/tradesmen, middling farmers with between $5,000 and $25,000, professionals, and wealthy planters with more than $25,000 in personal property.

Using these six categories, Cameron found that 91% of the men in the 30th North Carolina had less than $10,000 worth of personal property and about 78% had less than $4,000. All field and staff officers were professionals or wealthy planters. This data leads to a fairly obvious conclusion: “in military matters as in politics and local society, men of means were assumed to be the natural leaders. Men of no means were assumed to be fit mostly to follow” (45). For the 30th North Carolina, it was indeed a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

Welcoming the End of the War: A final insight from Tar Heels in Gray follows an argument made by historian Kenneth Stampp in his fantastic 1980 book The Imperiled Union. In that book, Stampp made the provocative argument that by the time Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, most Confederate soldiers welcomed the surrender and were not interested in continuing the fight. Cameron makes the same conclusion about the men of the 30th North Carolina. After spending much of 1861 in training and garrison duty, the regiment saw hard fighting for the remainder of the war. Disease, starvation, and desertion was rampant. “Letters from men of the 30th written in the second half of 1864 and into 1865, are filled with despair. Given the lack of food and supplies, large scale desertion and strong anti-Confederate feeling at home, many men of the 30th saw no hope for victory,” argues Cameron (130). They viewed President Davis and General Lee’s continued fighting with anger, despair, and fear. When surrender did arrive, one 30th North Carolina soldier nicely summed up his feelings in a personal diary: “Thank God this war is over.”

Tar Heels in Gray is a great book for a few reasons. By choosing to not solely focus on military matters, Cameron does great work in providing a holistic view of the soldiers and their life experiences. Many of these young men were fairly poor but going about their daily lives in the hopes of moving up in society and, in some case, providing for their own families. Local, state, and eventually Confederate leaders told them that their livelihoods, families, and their state were in danger of being destroyed with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Whatever they felt about the politics of slavery or disunion, the men of the 30th North Carolina choose to fight for the new Confederate nation. The price they paid for that decision was an eighty percent casualty rate, untold death and destruction, the death of comrades from battle and disease, and, for the survivors, a lifetime of trauma.

I recommend Tar Heels in Gray for any student of the Civil War. Unfortunately, this book was Dr. Cameron’s last work of historical scholarship. After reviewing the book I was saddened to learn that he passed away in 2022.

Why I Haven’t Embraced the Terms “Forced Labor Camp” and “Enslaved Labor Camp” in My Work on Slavery

“Words Have Power,” a pop-up exhibit displayed at Fort Pulaski National Monument in 2022. Photo credit: APPPublicHistory on Instagram

In his book Robert E. Lee and Me, Ty Seidule rejects the term “plantation” and instead embraces the term “enslaved labor camp” to describe the conditions enslaved African Americans faced while working on large scale agricultural properties in the U.S. South before the Civil War. In her book I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction, Kidada E. Williams likewise rejects the term “plantation” and calls for using the term “forced labor camp.” According to Williams, “the word ‘plantation’ reflects the enslaving class’s romanticized view of slavery. ‘Labor camp’ or ‘forced labor camp’ more accurately describes the living conditions enslavers forced upon the men, women, and children they held in bondage” (1). Last year, Fort Pulaski National Monument created a pop-up exhibit called “Words have Power” that also embraced the term “forced labor camp” as a suitable replacement for “plantation.”

Seidule and Williams have produced wonderful works of scholarship that should be read by all. Any historic site that takes the work of interpreting slavery seriously should be applauded and encouraged to keep up the good work. However, I do not embrace the terms “forced labor camp” or enslaved labor camp” in my own work interpreting slavery.

Let’s begin with the term “forced labor.” What immediately sticks out to me is that forced labor is not synonymous with enslaved labor or slavery. Forced labor doesn’t always mean “enslavement.” Indentured servitude is a form of forced labor, but it is not slavery. The rapidly industrializing economy of the Gilded Age featured company towns, union busting, poor wages, long hours, child labor, and horrific working conditions. Those company towns could very easily be defined as “labor camps.” Depending on your perspective, they approached something akin to forced labor and enslavement in a certain sense, but it’s nevertheless hard to make a direct comparison with the conditions that existed with antebellum slavery.

What makes chattel slavery in the United States a particularly horrific form of forced labor is that it was premised on the idea of human ownership of other humans as property. Property to be bought, sold, traded, loaned, and insured like livestock animals and tools. The U.S. form of slavery was rooted in the idea of enslavement as inherited, race-based, and for life. “Forced labor” conflates different forms of labor throughout history and minimizes the uniquely brutal conditions of chattel slavery that existed in the United States during its first eighty years of existence.

We now move to “camp.” A camp is a temporary structure. Civil War soldiers established camps in the field during down periods, tore down those camps when it was time to move, and then reestablished those camps once they reached their next destination. Prisoners of war were placed in POW camps such as Andersonville and Libby Prison during the war. Enslaved freedom seekers sought refuge at camps established by the U.S. Army that were often referred to as “contraband camps” at the time. Before the war, freedom seekers sometimes established temporary encampments along their path out of enslavement.

What should be evident here is that a plantation cannot possibly described as a “camp.” For the enslaved, the plantation was an all-encompassing experience that shaped almost every aspect of their lives, for the entire duration of their lives. Enslaved people lacked the basic right to freedom of movement, were constantly under surveillance by their enslavers, and endured any number of harsh conditions that made their daily lives a physical and mental struggle. Countless numbers of enslaved people would have been confined to the small temporal radius of the plantation for the entirety of their lives. Plantation slavery was not a temporary status in a temporary place.

We can also see that “camp” runs the risk of leading people to sloppy comparisons with other horrific episodes in history. The World War II context of concentration camps and internment camps is an obvious comparison point. My friend Emmanuel Dabney argued on Twitter that referring to the plantation as a camp was unhelpful because “people already spend too much time making comparisons with the Holocaust to try to emphasize the pain of American slavery.” In other words, U.S. slavery should be studied on its own terms without having to make comparisons to other horrific episodes in history to generate empathy for slavery’s victims. While comparative historical analysis is a welcomed form of study, it must be done carefully and responsibly. Sloppy comparisons create misunderstandings of both things being compared. I fear that even if a well-meaning scholar uses the term “camp” within the context of plantation slavery, it will still lead to confusion from students and lay audiences.

Williams is undoubtedly correct when she asserts that the term “plantation” was used by the enslaving class to romanticize slavery. Indeed, some historic sites and the visitors who patronize them today are susceptible to falling for the romanticized view of Southern slavery that the enslaving class wished to impart on future generations. A couple years ago I wrote about Julia Dent Grant’s Personal Memoirs and how they reflect what I describe as a “plantation narrative,” a literary genre that emerged in post-Civil War America to romanticize slavery and uphold white supremacy. But I do not see why one group’s attempted appropriation of the term “plantation” necessarily means the term has lost all meaning as a signifier of chattel slavery.

I particularly appreciate the work of six scholars who collectively wrote Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum last year. The authors freely use the term “plantation” throughout their study of fifteen historic sites that interpret slavery. They provide some good definitions of what else the term might uncover besides a romanticization of slavery:

The Southern plantation played a major role numerically, geographically, and politically in establishing the ancestral footprint of Africans in the Americas and shaping the geography of descendant Black communities, some of whose members still live and work in plantation regions.
Remembering Enslavement, Page 4

They also cite the work of Matthew Pratt Gutterl

More than a big white house on a broad stretch of land with a handful of slaves, the plantation is thus a place, a practice, and a politics. As such, it is tied to histories of colonialism and slavery but also fixed on the land, in the way that a lighthouse marks the establishment of waterways. Imagined this way, the plantation has history, though not usually in the way we imagine such things, and not as a fixture of one particular moment in time.
Remembering Enslavement, page 32

A place, a practice, a politics, a history. A complex term with many layers beyond a form of white supremacist nostalgia.

I am not opposed to revising the language of slavery more broadly. In fact, I have previously written on this page about my own evolving embrace of the term “enslaved people,” which I pretty much use exclusively now rather than “slave.” I agree with every other language revision proposed in the above image at Fort Pulaski. I do not agree with Aeon Magazine editor Sam Haselby, who states that “when scholars rely heavily on terminology which they’ve imposed onto the past and that the actors themselves never used (or did not even know), it is often a sign you’ve left history and entered cultural studies.”

While Haselby acknowledges that there are exceptions to his rigid terms, the reality is that language evolves over time as a natural byproduct of human evolution. We don’t talk the same way people did 100 years ago, and they didn’t talk the same way as someone 100 years before that. I don’t feel comfortable saying, for example, that historians of disability who do not use once-popular language to describe disabled people such as idiot, insane, or retarded in their scholarship are actually cultural critics and nothing more.

I think the term “plantation” could be replaced someday, but I also think we can do better than “forced labor camp” or “enslaved labor camp.”

Cheers

The Historical Enterprise and the Future of Twitter

Kevin Levin has an interesting essay on his website, Civil War Memory, in which he asks the question, “Is Twitter Good for History?” Levin recalls being on the website for ten years, developing a strong following, and working hard to use his historical knowledge to correct misinformation about the Civil War era. However, after quitting the site for good two months ago, he questions whether his time was well spent on the website or whether it’s good for the entire discipline of history.

I am still on Twitter for now, but find myself asking similar questions lately.

I was required to join the website as part of a graduate level digital humanities course in 2013. The stereotypes I had in my head about the website made me question why we had to join the website, but I quickly fell in love with the platform. I was blown away by how many historians were using the website to share articles, discuss the state of the field, and share their own scholarship. I spent a lot of time following these conversations and trying to find historians to connect with. The mix of good conversation, scholarship, and a bit of commentary on current events (but not an overwhelming amount) appealed to me.

Twitter eventually became an extension of my professional career, a sort of digital business card to demonstrate my passion for public history and the Civil War era. I have been very, very fortunate to have received invitations to write essays, contribute book chapters, and give presentations because someone found me on Twitter. The website has undoubtedly been good for me.

It is safe to say, however, that I gave up the notion of positively influencing public discussions about history via Twitter a long time ago. Many historians on the website have argued that there is a sort of moral obligation to advance a more thoughtful, nuanced view of history to public audiences, but I think the field’s collective influence is extremely limited in the first place. The fluidity of the Twitter feed means that information is constantly passing through the screen and dying a quick death. A well-written Twitter thread might get a few thousand views and retweets, and even that occurrence is rare. Levin also points out that “Tweets enjoy a short half-life . . . but beyond that they quickly fly off into the dark never to be seen again.” I also mentioned in a different essay on this website two years ago that Twitter lacks basic tools to ensure that past tweets are easily accessible for future audiences.

Twitter is ultimately beneficial to me not because I’ve been able to shape the hearts and minds of lay audiences, but because it’s allowed me to connect with other historians.

Is Twitter good for history? I think it’s been good for building connections and conversations within the field. Put differently, Twitter allows for historians around the world to communicate with each other beyond the annual conference circuit provided by organizations like the AHA, OAH, and NCPH. However, I question whether it has provided much influence beyond our own scholarly communities. Continued cuts to humanities funding, assaults on tenure, few academic or public history jobs, the popularity of questionable Bill O’Reilly/Bret Baier pop histories, and obnoxious laws prohibiting any K-12 history instruction that makes students feel any sort of “discomfort” about the past all point towards the #Twitterstorians community having little influence beyond its own walls. I don’t see many politicians advocating for the history field lately, or at least a form of history education that professionals could get behind.

Don’t get me started on the book bans!

What’s disappointing about the future of Twitter is that it’s become Elon Musk’s play toy for him to do whatever he wants and promote whatever cause he is concerned about. To be frank, the website has become dull and boring. As Levin’s departure shows, a lot of talented people have gladly left the platform. Divisive content from the loudest voices is pushed to the top while the voices of those who pay $8 a month to get a blue checkmark are given privileged placement by the site’s algorithms. So much for “free” speech, right?

I don’t know what the future holds for the historical enterprise when it comes to social media. Some folks have taken their talents to TikTok and Instagram through fascinating video productions. My friend Marvin-Alonzo Greer (@magthehistorian) has mastered these platforms and is doing great work that genuinely seems to be reaching an audience beyond the academy. I thought Post or Mastodon would be suitable replacements for Twitter, but I’ve been greatly disappointed by both. I personally put a lot of hope into Post, but the site has been geared more towards sharing news. Many users seem to only post about Donald Trump or Musk, which I find boring and unproductive. Mastodon’s platform is too siloed and I couldn’t log into the site from my phone, so I gave up on it quickly. I’ll keep tweeting for now, but I have no idea what will happen with the site moving forward.

I guess I will keep trucking along with this little website and see where that takes me 🙂

Cheers

I Exchanged Texts with Robert E. Lee. It Was Weird.

2023 is shaping up to be the year of AI technology. AI can write song lyrics, auto-tune a singer’s voice, modify historical images, and produce videos with silly facial filters on SnapChat. For those of us interested in research and writing, ChatGPT is poised to revolutionize the ways we conduct research, communicate with each other in our personal and professional lives, and perhaps even transform our need to learn how to write in the first place. AI will soon be able to produce wholesale scholarship in the form of blog posts, articles, and books on its own.

As one tech evangelist recently proclaimed on Twitter–seemingly unworried about sharing misinformation herself–so-called “Knowledge workers” need to be very concerned about AI’s ability to replace their skill sets in the future. (She needn’t worry: the academic job industry has been steadily decimated for a long time already).

In learning more about AI, I came across a fascinating app called “Historical Figures Chat” that proposes to simulate the act of exchanging text messages with historical figures from the past. As described by the app’s creators:

Our app, “Historical Figures,” uses advanced A.I. technology to allow users to have conversations with over 20,000 historical figures from the past. With this app, you can chat with deceased individuals who have made a significant impact on history from ancient rulers and philosophers, to modern day politicians and artists. Simply select the historical figure you want to chat with and start a conversation. You can learn about their life, their work, and their impact on the world in a fun and interactive way. Our A.I. is designed to provide you with a realistic conversation experience, making it feel like you’re really talking to these historical figures.

I decided to download the app and try to keep as open a mind as possible. I chose to exchange texts with Robert E. Lee. I started with some basic questions about slavery and secession.

I began by asking “Robert E. Lee” about his views on the Confederacy and slavery. It became evident that Historical Figures essentially grabs content from Wikipedia and tries to mold it into a language that the historical figure would have said in the aftermath of a key moment in their life. Here we see Lee repeating his oft-quoted line about fulfilling his duties to his state over the interests of the federal government that put him through college and employed him through the entirety of his adult life. However, “Robert E. Lee” provides few specifics on what he meant when said it was his duty to “fight for what I believed in.” What about Virginia shaped his decision to fight for Confederacy? Why did Lee place his loyalty to his state and a new government claiming federal powers over much of the South? “I fought for Virginia to fight for what I believed in” tells us little behind Lee’s reasoning for his decision-making.

Continuing, Lee states that he personally opposed the institution of slavery, another line often paraded by Lee defenders. I believe Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s classic biography of Lee, Reading the Man, still offers one of the best explanations of Lee’s relationship with slavery:

Lee’s political views on the subject are remarkably consistent. He thought slavery was an unfortunate historical legacy, an inherited problem for which he was not responsible, and one that could only be resolved over time and probably only by God. As for any injustice to the slaves, he defended a “Christian” logic of at least temporary Black bondage. “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, & physically,” Lee told his wife in the famous 1856 letter. “The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise and Merciful Providence.” He went so far as to believe that the slaves should be appreciative of the situation and showed displeasure at any sign of their “ingratitude.”

. . . Lee might characterize slavery as “an evil in any country” and state that his feelings were “strong enlisted” for the slaves, but he ultimately concluded that it was a “greater evil to the white than to the black race” and admitted that his own sympathies lay with the whites.

Perhaps more telling that words were Lee’s actions in support of slavery. He continued to participate in the system and distance himself from antislavery arguments up to and during the Civil War . . . In 1856, and as late as July 1860, he expressed a willingness to buy slaves. Those blacks who were in his possession were frequently traded away for his own convenience, regardless of the destruction it caused to the bondsman’s family. He ignores injustice to the slaves and defends the rights of the slaveholder in both his 1841 and 1856 letters to his wife, and he continued to uphold laws that constrained blacks well after the war. During the brief time that Lee had authority over the Arlington slaves, he proved to be an unsympathetic and demanding master. When disagreements over slavery brought about the dissolution of the Union and he was forced to take sides, he chose not just to withdraw from the U.S. Army and quietly retire, as did some of his fellow officers, but to lead an opposing army that without question intended to defend the right to hold human property. Even taking into account the notions of his time and place, it is exceedingly hard to square these actions with any rejection of the institution.

Lee may have hated slavery, but it was not because of any ethical dilemma. What disliked about slavery was its inefficiency, the messiness of its relationships, the responsibility it entailed, and the taint of it . . . If Lee believed slavery was an evil, he thought it was a necessary one.
Elizabeth Brown Prior, Reading the Man, p. 144-145.

I continued by asking Lee about a comment he made about Black Americans after the Civil War.

Here, we see Lee reducing his racist statement to the need to find common ground after the Civil War. “We must strive for unity by respecting each other’s views even when we don’t agree with them.” Unless those views were held by Black Americans and their supporters in which case calls for unity and respecting each other’s views can be thrown out the door.

After some conversation about Reconstruction, I asked Lee if it was true that he had whipped enslaved people he claimed ownership of in the 1850s.

There has been much debate among historians on this subject, but evidence suggests that there was at least one incident in which three enslaved freedom seekers were whipped on Lee’s orders. I believe that evidence. That no allusion to this incident is made in the conversation is troubling. The second text from Lee in this screenshot is just absolutely silly and doesn’t reflect anything Lee would have said at that time, but of course that might also be reflective of my question in the first place.

I then asked Lee how he made amends for slavery and worked for the betterment of the United States after the Civil War.

Again, we see comments that any Civil War historian worth their salt would shake their head over. Lee opposed Black voting rights and warned his son that “you will never prosper with the blacks,” and yet he somehow also supported civil rights, the end of racial discrimination, and the rejection of white supremacy as a governing ideology.

Finally, I decided to go all in and try to break this app.

There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that Lee felt this way about Frederick Douglass or the fight against racial discrimination more broadly. Of Lee, Douglass complained at the former’s death in 1870 that “we can scarcely take up a newspaper that is not filled with nauseating flatteries of the late Robert E. Lee . . . It would seem from this that the solider who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian.” Wait ’til Douglass hears what Lee told me about it! Maybe he’ll change his mind.

There are a few things that really trouble me about AI technology used in the context of this app. First, the text replies from historical figures like Lee are a constant string of apologia, whitewashing, and reassurances aimed at putting controversial subjects to rest for twenty-first century audiences. The responses are aimed at tampering down past controversies without thoroughly explaining how and why the emerged in the first place. They aim to make us feel better about historical figures from the past rather than facing tough subjects with the sort of nuanced, complex analysis that the past deserves.

The Robert E. Lee presented in bot form opposed slavery and didn’t join the Confederacy for that reason – he did so because he loved Virginia and nothing else. Lee abhorred racism and white supremacy and was actually anti-racist in asking former White Confederates to treat Black Southerners kindly. In fact, Lee even admired Frederick Douglass! Sure sounds like a Lost Cause argument if I’ve ever heard one made about Lee.

It’s the same for text exchanges with Andrew Jackson, Himmler, Stalin . . . you name it. The app minimizes the words of these people and turns them into tragic figures who regret their past actions and are deserving of our forgiveness and empathy today. The historical figures are constantly rationalizing, explaining, minimizing, and apologizing their actions, even when many of these same figures never expressed such remorse in their lifetimes.

Second, I question the pedagogical value of this technology. What lessons about past historical figures can students learn from engaging in a hypothetical text message conversation that they can’t get from other forms of study already taking place in the history classroom? Does this technology help students better understand these historical figures and the thinking that went behind their actions and words? Is Historical Figures Chat not just a fancy way of delivering content from Wikipedia?

Regardless of my own skepticism of this technology, AI is something that all humanities scholars, practitioners, and supporters must grapple with moving forward. It is not good enough to just say that it should be banned from the classroom. How do we introduce students into the use and abuse of the past by AI technologies? A colleague on Twitter suggested an activity idea in which students are encouraged to “break” the technology by trying to catch historical figures into contradicting themselves or saying things are demonstrably false (which is essentially what I did here).

I also think about the ramifications of AI long term. In discussing the use of AI to write lyrics or create actual music, Rick Beato asks a great question in wondering if the music-listening public would even care if the music they enjoyed was created by AI. I think those of us in the humanities should be asking the same question. I would assume that we as a profession reject the potential eradication of writing skills and critical analysis of society through AI tools like Historical Figures Chat, but our concerns may not matter if university, business, political, and cultural leaders don’t care whether the research they’re reading is created by AI.

There’s a lot to think about here and I’ll be cautiously concerned about new technologies like Historical Figures Chat. Perhaps someone can convince me of the wisdom of AI within the context of scholarly reading and writing, or the technology will improve to such a point that I’ll become convinced of its utility. But one thing is certain: moving forward, I am ghosting Robert E. Lee and removing him from my contacts.

Cheers