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Author Interview: Joseph Yannielli

Author Interview: Joseph Yannielli

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Today we share an interview with Joseph Yannielli, who published an article in our special issue on abolition in June 2018, titled “Mo Tappan: Transnational Abolitionism and the Making of a Mende-American Town.” Joseph is a lecturer in Modern History at Aston University. His work can be found in the Journal of American History and the British Journal for the History of Science, among other places. He is also interested in digital history and has developed several projects, most recently the Princeton and Slavery Project.

Thank you so much, Joe, for speaking with us about this fascinating topic. How did you first learn about the existence of this town?

I’m writing a book about the Mendi Mission, which was a community of American abolitionists in Africa, established in the wake of the Amistad slave rebellion. Mo Tappan was the mission’s most remote station, so I knew part of the story. But its founder, John Brooks, was something of a mystery. Apart from his career in Canada, I knew very little about him. I spent years researching his genealogy, and eventually I got in touch with a distant relative who had saved his papers. It was a stunning discovery – thousands of pages of documents shedding light on Mo Tappan (and other aspects of the Mendi Mission) in minute detail. I’ve only just scratched the surface. Yale’s Beinecke Library acquired the collection last year, so other researchers can benefit from this treasure trove of new data.

It is always fun when a side project takes you in interesting directions! What questions guided your investigation into this village called Mo Tappan, and what is the main point that you hope to communicate through this story?

As far as I can tell, Mo Tappan was the first town named after an American abolitionist anywhere in the world. It was a place of tremendous significance. I wanted to understand, why did this happen in Africa? How does this reorient our approach to both African and American history?

The origin myth I discuss at the beginning of the article was my point of entry. It’s an important example of Mende culture and their experience of race and labor. In a way, it tells the story of Mo Tappan from an African perspective. Really the whole article is an attempt to put that folktale into its proper context and understand its meaning and implications. I reproduce the story in its entirety at the beginning of the article because I want readers to dwell on it and draw their own conclusions.

Chief Bunda Amadu and local residents near the site of Mo Tappan on the Sewa River in Sierra Leone. Photo by Joseph Yannielli.

What do we know about the experiences of its residents? What was life like in Mo Tappan?

Mo Tappan was a polyglot community located in modern-day Sierra Leone. Some of its residents were Mende people looking for education or to escape enslavement. Others were migrants from colonial Sierra Leone, Liberia, and adjoining territories. Language study was a central activity. Mo Tappan produced the first printed material in Mende and the missionaries communicated using a custom phonetic script. Residents also studied English and Arabic and collected magic talismans and other artifacts.

As you might imagine, there were conflicts. Local chiefs expressed concern about an abolitionist outpost operating so close to their land. There were also conflicts within the community. There were disputes over wages and responsibilities, and there were a series of interracial marriages. Even among abolitionists, interracial intimacy was controversial. I didn’t have the time or the space to tell the full story in the article, but more on that topic is coming soon!

Excellent! I know I speak for our readers when I say we look forward to learning more. Thinking more broadly, how does an understanding of this town help us understand the abolition movement writ large, especially in terms of trans-Atlantic connections?

Consider William Alcott, who corresponded with John Brooks at Mo Tappan. The Alcotts were famous in the United States as social reformers, educators, and authors. Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, grew up in that environment. Yet here is a member of the family exchanging information with abolitionist missionaries in Africa. Brooks and Alcott discussed sex, disease, and veganism, among other things. That dialogue shows how ideas circulated across the Atlantic, and in doing so, it alters the coordinates of American history.

The Underground Railroad is another example. Before the Civil War, almost every member of the Mendi Mission was involved, to some extent, in Underground Railroad activities. Brooks, as well as his first two wives, taught American refugees in Canada, and Brooks continued to correspond with Canadian operatives. Their work was very much part of a transnational movement with global implications, and we can’t understand it apart from that context.

Early in your article, you mention that there is “confusion about the relationship between abolitionism and imperialism” (192). This struck me as an especially important point—could you elaborate on what the relationship between imperialism and abolitionism is, in your estimation?

I’m hesitant to make sweeping statements about such a complex problem. I agree with Manisha Sinha that abolitionism, at its core, is deeply subversive.[1] As Natalie Joy argues in her contribution to this special issue, support for indigenous rights and opposition to slaveholder imperialism were central to the movement.[2] Critique of African colonization was another key element of the movement. Ultimately, I think abolitionism can be imperial or anti-imperial, or some murky mix of the two, depending on the context, and depending on how you define the terms.

The Mendi missionaries covered the whole spectrum. Some were skeptical of imperialism and actively opposed British and American encroachment on African territory. Others felt they could leverage imperial authority to their advantage. I think John Brooks and Mo Tappan got caught up in the middle of this and both paid a price for it.

Thank you again, Joe, for participating in this interview. As the issue’s guest editor, Manisha Sinha noted, all of these articles “challenge the oft repeated, virtually reflexive, received historical wisdom on abolition by both broadening our conception of what constitutes abolition and deeply engaging abolitionist archives.”[3] Joe’s article is an excellent example of how scholars of abolition, slavery, and emancipation must expand their geographic scope. We hope readers will find much food for thought in the issue.

 

[1] Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

[2] Natalie Joy, “The Indian’s Cause: Abolitionists and Native American Rights,” Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 2 (June 2018): 215-242.

[3] Manisha Sinha, “Guest Editor’s Introduction: The Future of Abolition Studies” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 2 (June 2018), 187.

Call for Papers: Inaugural Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award

Call for Papers: Inaugural Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award

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The Society of Civil War Historians and The Journal of the Civil War Era invite submissions from early career scholars (doctoral candidates at the writing stage and PhDs not more than two years removed from having earned their degree) for the inaugural Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award. Papers on any topic concerning the history of the Civil War era, broadly defined, will be considered.

The winning submission will earn the author a $1,000 award and an additional $500 travel stipend to the Society of Civil War Historians biennial conference in 2020 where the award will be presented. Authors must be willing to attend the conference in order to be eligible for the award. The winning essay also will be eligible for publication in the December 2020 issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era.

Submission information: The submission deadline is June 1, 2019. Submissions should be sent to the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center (RichardsCenter@psu.edu) with the subject line “Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award.” Submissions should be double-spaced and not exceed 10,000 to 11,000 words, including notes. The award committee prefers submissions written according to The Chicago Manual of Style. The winning essay will be selected by a three-person panel chosen by the JCWE editor.

The award honors Anthony Kaye (1962-2017), a pioneering scholar of slavery at Penn State University and the National Humanities Center. Tony was an active member of the Society of Civil War Historians and one of the founding editors of The Journal of the Civil War Era. This award honors his passion for putting scholars in disparate fields in conversation with each other to enrich our understanding of the past.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Secession? Mail Delivery and the Experience of Disunion in 1861

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Secession? Mail Delivery and the Experience of Disunion in 1861

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Post Office, Mooresville, Alabama. The oldest post office in Alabama, this Mooresville structure dates to the early nineteenth century and exemplifies the humble but significant nodes of the postal network that connected antebellum Americans to each other – and to their government. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

If your state seceded from the United States today, how would it first affect your daily life? Scholars typically study the secession crisis of 1860 to 1861 in terms of high politics, with the action unfolding in Washington and southern state capitals. For humbler residents of the seceding states, however, a distant convention did not necessarily make disunion a tangible reality. Instead, many literate white southerners first encountered the practical consequences of secession through the mail.

Historians have long noted that the Post Office was a primary connection between antebellum Americans and the federal government. “For many Americans of that time,” writes one scholar, “mail service was the only daily – or even regular – contact they had with their government. Indeed, in some of the country’s smaller settlements, the post office was the only manifestation of the federal government that people would ever come in direct contact with.”[1] One should not overstate this point: it would be difficult to convince a Cherokee survivor of the Trail of Tears, a post-1848 resident of California or New Mexico, or a fugitive slave captured after 1850, that the antebellum federal government was small and unobtrusive. But the Post Office theme does dramatize changes wrought by the Civil War, during which the federal government conscripted citizens, taxed incomes, and otherwise extended its reach. Less well-known, however, are the ways in which rituals of sending and receiving mail brought the reality of secession into routines of daily life.

Portrait of Postmaster-general John H. Reagan. John H. Reagan of Texas was the Confederacy’s first and only Postmaster-General. After fleeing from Richmond in 1865, Reagan was captured with Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials in Georgia on May 10. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

U.S. and Confederate policymakers knew that mail delivery was significant as both a public service and an expression of sovereign power. After February 1861, Confederate Postmaster-General John H. Reagan swiftly built a new postal system upon the foundation of the extant U.S. network, aided by postal clerks who brought skills – and all manner of blank forms and other bureaucratic supplies – with them from Washington. Local postmasters, route agents, and other personnel were directed to continue the work they had done under US authority. Reagan would be one of the Confederacy’s most capable cabinet-level officials.[2]

For his part, Abraham Lincoln vowed in his inaugural message to continue delivering the mail in the seceded states, unless such efforts were “repelled” by secessionist attacks.[3] This was part of Lincoln’s policy of maintaining normal relations with the seceded states so far as possible, and it was up to his Postmaster-General, Montgomery Blair, to execute Lincoln’s order. Anticipating trouble, however, Congress had already passed a law in February 1861 authorizing the discontinuance of service on routes where delivery was unsafe; eventually, under this authority, Blair suspended mail delivery in the seceded states (exempting the future state of West Virginia) in late May. Subsequently, mail addressed to a seceded state was routed to the Dead Letter Office in Washington, although later some carefully scrutinized letters did pass between the lines under flag of truce.[4]

The son of Francis Preston Blair, Montgomery Blair was born in Kentucky and spent much of his professional life as an attorney in Missouri and Maryland. Blair, a former Democrat, helped to organize the Republican Party in the mid-1850s and served as Lincoln’s Postmaster-General until September 1864. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Despite the swift movements of Union and Confederate leaders, the situation on the ground was confusing and uncertain, particularly during the secession winter of 1860 to 1861. It was in these wrenching months that Americans first grappled with secession’s sometimes unexpected intrusions into previously mundane daily tasks.

Secession left southern postmasters – who in that era were political appointees, not trained professionals – in a precarious position. Customers continued to buy stamps and post letters, even as a collision between state and federal authorities seemed imminent. Rumors proliferated, and while attention fixated on federal forts (particularly Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina), there was talk of disrupted mail service, too. Knowing that this could leave them dangerously perched between competing sovereignties, postmasters sought guidance. James R. Gates, a postmaster in Mississippi, wrote to Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas for counsel in mid-February. His state had seceded a month before, but he pleaded for assistance from a well-placed US senator who could offer insight into what president-elect Lincoln might do. “Let me know if the mails will be stoped [sic],” he asked, and “when it will take place.”[5]

Postal customers were similarly uneasy. Stephen W. Church, a northern-born merchant living in Charleston, wrote his uncle two weeks after South Carolina seceded to report that everything was “in a complete state of anarchy.” Exhibit A was the pending collapse of the mail system due to a shortage of postage stamps. The local supply had run out, and the Postmaster General had refused to resupply the city. “This of course is one of the least of the troubles,” Church admitted, “but it annoys me very much,” as he had struggled to find a single stamp for the letter to his uncle in New York.[6] For a displaced Yankee, life in Charleston was necessarily nerve-wracking, but the interruption of mail service threatened to isolate him entirely from sympathetic kin.

In secession’s immediate aftermath, addressing a letter sometimes brought home the magnitude of the moment. When Andrew McCollam penned a note to his wife the day after Louisiana’s state convention voted to secede, he dated it from the “Republic of Louisiana.” “From the above caption,” he solemnly reflected, “you will see and perhaps realise the fact that…you are no longer a citizen of our Glorious Republic of North America.” McCollam, a convention delegate, had tried to delay disunion but ultimately accepted that it was inevitable.[7] The gravity of his failure struck him when he first dated a letter from outside the United States.

Disunion was similarly vexing for those seeking to send mail into seceded states. In mid-November 1860, one Washington, DC, resident hastily scribbled a letter to South Carolina fire-eater William Porcher Miles, determined to mail the message before he would “be required to pay ‘foreign postage’ on a letter to Charleston.”[8]

Perhaps no one felt the disruption of mail delivery more keenly than Unionists who were also young and in love. John Wesley Halliburton, a Tennessean attending the University of North Carolina, regularly corresponded with his fiancée (and second cousin) Juliet Halliburton, who lived in Little Rock. Divided from her by distance and politics – Juliet was an avowed secessionist – John worried that disunion would halt mail delivery and permanently divide the star-crossed lovers. “No more to feel the joy which nothing but her letters or presence can inspire,” he lamented. “No more can you render me perfectly happy by telling me you love me….I among the first will suffer from the dissolution of this mighty fabric.” For the lovesick Halliburton, isolation from Juliet would likely be among the “first fruits of that disastrous course” pursued by secessionists.[9]

Envelope Showing Confederate Flag, addressed to Miss Lou Taylor, c. 1861-1865. Patriotic stationery flourished in the Union and Confederacy alike, allowing partisans on both sides to affirm their political loyalties whenever they wrote a letter. This interesting envelope bears the image of the Confederacy’s first national flag, but the recipient lived in Ohio. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In time, however, Unionists and Confederates alike soon found that the mail could also reaffirm new political identities. Hence the abundance of patriotic stationery, emblazoned with flags, slogans, martial imagery, and portraits of national heroes.[10] By using these items, partisans on both sides could express their national loyalties every time they mailed a letter. Some of these nationalistic materials crossed the lines; one can only imagine what Lou Taylor of Cincinnati thought if and when she received the envelope bearing a Confederate flag. Unless she was a displaced rebel, this letter reflects the continued desire to correspond with friends and family living on the other side of the Civil War’s bloody chasm. Thus, whether it ran smoothly or ground to a halt, the mail offered daily reminders that the hard hand of war touched every aspect of life.

 

[1] Bruce T. Harpham, “Postal Service, U.S.,” in The Early Republic and Antebellum America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History, ed. Christopher G. Bates, 4 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2015), III, 836. See also Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 5; Adam I. P. Smith, The American Civil War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 5; and James McPherson, The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 6.

[2] Walter Flavius McCaleb, “The Organization of the Post-Office Department of the Confederacy,” American Historical Review 12, no. 1 (October 1906): 66-74.

[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Inaugural Address,” The American Presidency Project, accessed June 4, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25818.

[4] Report of the Postmaster General Respecting the Operations and Condition of the Post Office Department during the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1861 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1861), 10; Amy Murrell Taylor, The Divided Family in Civil War America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 107-116.

[5] James R. Gates to Stephen A. Douglas, February 19, 1861, Box 39, Folder 4, Stephen A. Douglas Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago.

[6] Stephen W. Church to Thomas J. Coggeshall, January 3, 1861, Stephen W. Church Papers, Clements Library, University of Michigan.

[7] Andrew McCollam to Ellen McCollam, January 27, 1861, Andrew McCollam Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

[8] [?] Nelson to William Porcher Miles, November 18, 1860, William Porcher Miles Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

[9] John Halliburton to Juliet Halliburton, February 12, 1861, John Wesley Halliburton Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

[10] See Stephen W. Berry, “When Mail Was Armor: Envelopes of the Great Rebellion, 1861-1865,” Southern Cultures 4, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 63-83.

Michael E. Woods

Michael E. Woods is Associate Professor of History at University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is the author of Bleeding Kansas: Slavery, Sectionalism, and Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (Routledge, 2016) and Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States (Cambridge, 2014), which received the 2015 James A. Rawley Award from the Southern Historical Association. His most recent book is entitled Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy (North Carolina, 2020).

“What soldiers are for”: Jersey Boys Wait for War

“What soldiers are for”: Jersey Boys Wait for War

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A certain cohort of the baby boomer generation—boys born between the late 1940s and mid-1950s—spent their high school years wondering if they would be drawn into the Vietnam War. With older brothers, neighbors, and older friends anxiously awaiting their lottery numbers; with the nightly news and weekly news magazines providing images of the bloody and frustrating fighting a world away; and with no clear end in sight, most young boys spent their adolescence wondering if they would end up at the sharp end of war.

Those same forebodings or yearnings no doubt shaped the lives of Civil War-era teenagers, virtually all of whom would have had a family member or close neighbor in the army. In the Confederacy, almost complete mobilization occurred; in the United States, although the percentage of males of military age who served was closer to 40 percent, 81 percent of boys born in 1844 joined the Union army.[1]

Newark High School, c. 1860s. Courtesy of the Barringer High School Alumni Association.

A few boys—just a year or two younger than that martial cohort—attending Newark High School in New Jersey worked through their thoughts and some of their fears in the pages of the Athenaeum, a hand-written school paper published during the war. It was the second iteration of the paper. The “old Athenaeum,” as the current editors called it, had been born at the beginning of the conflict, but much had changed since then, and it was impossible for these men-in-the-making to ignore the war. At least a few of the original editors had actually gone off to war; one was an officer in the Army of the Potomac. An editorial in May 1864 remarked that the number of boys at school had dropped by half. “What makes this change[?] War! War!.” Some had joined the army but others had gone into business to replace older brothers and fathers. “They are no more,” continued the editorial in sentimental wartime rhetoric, “the vacant seats seem to proclaim.”[2]

The boys produced a few short pieces of romantic fiction, poems, and a few strained jokes (although a humorous piece on “Shaving” effectively chided fifteen and sixteen-year-olds for thinking that the “fuzz’ they managed to grow on their lips or chins earned them the right to shave every Sunday). But the bulk of the articles are painfully sincere (but also rather pompous) essays on “Perfection,” Success,” “Faithfulness,” “Home,” “Revenge,” “Perseverance,” and, somewhat improbably, “First Baby.” In the way of nineteenth century writing for young adults, most are aspirational, and they reflect both a nostalgia for childhood and a certain amount of angst about making a living in the world.[3]

At the same time, they were clearly processing their concerns about the war. Numerous pieces dealt with the war; like the juvenile magazines they seemed to be using as models of style and content, they approached the war as a source of inherently interesting news, as a fundamental threat to the nation, and as a chance to demonstrate political loyalty and masculine values. A story that could easily have been published in The Student or Schoolmate or Our Young Folks or any other juvenile magazine from the period told a typical tale of a soldier training, fighting, being captured, and escaping from Libby Prison—but this time, through a story told from the point of view of his boot![4]

A typical page from the Athenaeum. Courtesy of the New Jersey Historical Society.

But a close reading of the boys’ essays reveal the fact that they are preparing themselves for the possibility of fighting. They describe hardships, but frame the war as survivable. They acknowledge the terrible sacrifices made by many soldiers but present those sacrifices as necessary for the greater good. Throughout, they balance fear with loyalty, loss with the benefit of Union, and hardship with motivation.

Although a few essays employed humor, most were dead serious. A piece on “Courage” equated moral courage with the kind of courage that “enable[d] men to encounter difficulties and dangers with firmness or without fear,” while a Christmas editorial acknowledged the joys of the season—including a welcome break from school—but urged readers not to forget “the poor soldiers . . . fighting the enemies of our country and enduring hardships to save our much-loved Union and secure freedom to all.” A reflection on “The Soldier” acknowledged that life in the army inevitably led to dissolution and sin, but also deserved our sympathy and gratitude.[5]

In a piece called “Blighted Hopes,” the boys indicated they understood the personal stake each American had in the conflict. “Thousands have died on the field of carnage,” it began. “Thousands in whose bosoms have been kindled some high some noble flame aspiring to some great object of which the power of their imagination has enabled them almost to obtain a sweet fore-sight rising up before them like some luminous orb in the far off future.” They died doing their duty, which could be a “hard master.” Some men survive the “leaden hail of the enemy” and return to happy homes, where family members wept tears of joy. But in other homes, where loved ones have failed to return safely, “vacant chairs seem to proclaim to us in loud accents, ‘Blighted Hopes.’” Widows and orphans mourn fallen husbands and fathers’ “war is indeed dashing down the anticipations of many.”[6]

The editors featured sentimental domesticity in a number of articles and a few drawings. Courtesy of the New Jersey Historical Society.

A poem published in May 1864 tried to imagine the war ending, when, even as the last victims of the war were being buried and their widows began to mourn them, surviving soldiers march home: “The soldiers are coming,/from carnage and gore./They come to their homes,/to be happy once more./They have tasted the hardships,/and dangers of war;/they have learned to know well,/what soldiers are for.” A few months earlier, another poem, “The Dying Soldier,” captured with unusual poignancy—if little literary flair—the conflict between the individual tragedies of soldiers’ deaths and the necessity of those deaths in winning the war. The poem features the thoughts of a dying soldier, who understands that news of his death would break many hearts but understands that it really didn’t matter: “He thought of the tears,/Twould be shed ‘ore his fate,/he thought of the hearts,/that for him would await./It mattered but little,/he was but one./One soldier was naught;/Victory was won.”[7]

The somewhat war-weary and knowing tone of many of the essays and poems in the Athenaeum show teenaged boys, assuming—fearing—that they would eventually play their parts in the war that had been raging for most of their adolescence. They sought to create credibility, to begin to prepare for something they may have instinctively known they could never prepare themselves for, to understand the causes and reasons that the war had to be fought, to talk themselves into thinking that they would be ready when the call came.

 

[1] Dora L. Costa, The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 198.

[2] Newark High School Athenaeum, October 1863; May 1864, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, NJ.

[3] Athenaeum, April 1864. For a short overview of children’s magazines, see James Marten, “For the Good, the True, and the Beautiful: Northern Children’s Magazines and the Civil War,” Civil War History 41 (March 1995): 57-75.

[4] Athenaeum, April 1864.

[5] Athenaeum, October 1863; December 1863; April 1864.

[6] Athenaeum, June 1864.

[7] Athenaeum, May 1864; December 1863.

James Marten

James Marten is professor emeritus of history at Marquette University and a former president of the Society of Civil War Historians. He is author or editor of nearly two dozen books, including his most recent, The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2025).

Every Social Media Manager a Historian: Reflections on Interpreting History Through NPS Social Media

Every Social Media Manager a Historian: Reflections on Interpreting History Through NPS Social Media

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In one of his final acts as President of the United States, Barack Obama utilized the power of the 1906 Antiquities Act to establish Reconstruction Era National Monument (REER) in Beaufort, South Carolina, as a unit of the National Park Service (NPS) on January 12, 2017. Like many historians of the Civil War era, I was thrilled to hear that the NPS would finally have a site dedicated to interpreting the Reconstruction era on its own terms. For public history, no longer would Reconstruction exist only as a brief interpretive footnote or be simply ignored at a Civil War history site. Finally, Americans from all backgrounds would get to see a tangible representation of a greatly misunderstood era in this country’s history; a time in which dynamic changes to America’s political, social, and economic life transformed the country after the Civil War.[1]

The Old Beaufort Fire House will function as the Visitor Center for Reconstruction Era National Monument when it opens to the public. Courtesy of the Reconstruction Era National Monument, National Park Service.

Given the significance of this event for the future of Civil War era history, it came as a great surprise and a high honor when I was asked in April 2017 to manage REER’s social media accounts. Over the next year I created more than 250 Facebook and Twitter posts dedicated to interpreting Reconstruction. With these posts I aimed to discuss significant events and people from the era, the historiography of Reconstruction, and why Beaufort is a remarkable symbol of Reconstruction’s enduring significance. I tried to move beyond common stories of allegedly corrupt carpetbaggers and scalawags towards posts about African Americans, women, Native American Indians, and others. My overarching goal was to portray Reconstruction as a fluid, dynamic era that was in some ways the country’s first civil rights movement.[2]

It is hard to determine the true success of these social media posts. Counting the number of likes, retweets, and reactions is one way to measure success, but it is tough to determine if those reacting to the posts actually do anything beyond the act of tapping their phone screen. Do they mention REER to a friend in polite conversation, go to the library to read about Reconstruction, or make plans to travel to South Carolina to learn about the Civil War era?[3] What I do know is that by the end of my experience this past April, REER’s Facebook page had more than 1,100 followers and its Twitter page had more than 700 followers.

In the course of my work I learned a lot about interpreting history on social media. I believe some of the strategies I developed for REER’s social media posts can be relevant for others looking to create compelling social media posts about the history of the Civil War era. What follows are three takeaways for interpreting the past on social media.

Build alliances with like-minded historical sites: When I began working for REER I received valuable assistance from Chris Barr and Emmanuel Dabney, two talented public historians working at NPS Civil War battlefields. They helped REER during its early months and started using the #ParkSpotlight hashtag to highlight other NPS units with connections to the Reconstruction era. I found this to be a useful strategy in a number of ways. For one, it gives credit to and celebrates the work of other NPS units working to interpret the Civil War era. Equally important, by tagging these sites in our posts, we made them aware of REER’s social media presence. For instance, I highlighted places like Nicodemus National Historic Site, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and Appomattox National Historical Park while working for REER.

Know your platform and always share interesting photos and links: One of the most important realizations I made during this experience is that one cannot assume that all social media platforms have the same user base. Facebook is most heavily used by millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers; young people under twenty-one are much more likely to use Instagram and/or Twitter on a regular basis than Facebook. Conversely, Twitter is fun for emojis and GIF-based tweets, but it can be awkward to use those tools when creating Facebook posts.

No one wants to read a dissertation-length post on Facebook. Brevity is a virtue on social media. I found, however, that one- or two-paragraph FB posts received positive reactions from users.[4] A good example of a well-received post is the one below about Congressman Joseph Rainey.

Screenshot of Facebook post about Congressman Joseph Rainey for Reconstruction Era National Monument. Courtesy of the author.

In my opinion, there are three crucial keys to a good post, regardless of platform:

1.  An attractive picture that draws attention to the post.
2. Clear, concise text that is not overwhelming for readers.
3. When possible, provide clickable links for users to learn more. Whenever there exists a good article on a historical topic, direct readers to that article rather than trying to tell the whole story yourself. I am not an expert on all things Reconstruction; sometimes it’s best to highlight other historians and resources that can do an effective job of discussing a particular topic for users.

Establish a cohesive theme for your posts: About halfway through my experience I talked with historian Kate Masur—a leader in the effort to establish REER—about what I could do to improve my posts. She recommended that I develop a monthly theme to help guide the direction of my interpretations. It was a valuable idea that did much to boost the reach of my posts.

The most notable example occurred this past February. To celebrate Black History Month, I decided to highlight the experiences of fourteen African American men and women who were politically active in South Carolina during Reconstruction. On Facebook I wrote short descriptions for each individual that were posted throughout the month, while on Twitter I created a tweet thread that I periodically updated (you can see the thread here). Several individuals and organizations sent me messages saying how exciting it was to check their social media every morning to learn a new tidbit about the Reconstruction era.

A screenshot from Reconstruction Era National Monument’s Twitter page. Courtesy of the author.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Civil War sesquicentennial was the use of social media as a medium for conversations about the Civil War’s legacy. No longer confined solely to the classroom or historical site, the stuff of the past is shared on the internet by historians and lay audiences alike on a literal minute-by-minute basis. Social media is already and will continue to be an active medium for the creation of historical knowledge and memories, but also for misinformation and myths. As historian and educator Kevin M. Levin points out, “the ease with which we can access and contribute to the web makes it possible for everyone to be his or her own historian, which is both a blessing and a curse. The internet is both a goldmine of information as well as a minefield of misinformation and distortion.”[5]

The work of managing social media at a Civil War era historic site may not be considered a top priority by a site’s leaders. Conducting historical research, crafting clear and concise language, and interpreting complex history in a roughly 100-word post is very time consuming. For public historians trying to balance on-site educational programming with social media outreach, establishing a consistent presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms can be difficult. But social media managers at these sites can play an important role in the sharing of accurate, fascinating, and even inspiring historical content if they make it a priority in their daily work.

 

 

[1] Jennifer Schuessler, “President Obama Designates First National Monument to Reconstruction,” New York Times, January 12, 2017, accessed May 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/arts/president-obama-designates-national-monuments-to-civil-rights-history.html; Sarah Jones Weicksel, “The Struggle to Commemorate Reconstruction,” AHA Today, March 8, 2018, accessed May 29, 2018, http://blog.historians.org/2018/03/struggle-commemorate-reconstruction/.

[2] In addition to standard overviews of Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois, Douglas Egerton, Eric Foner, and Heather Cox Richardson, I read the following books on Reconstruction in South Carolina: Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1977); Peggy Lamson, The Glorious Failure: Black Congressman Robert Brown Elliott and the Reconstruction in South Carolina (New York: Norton, 1973); Willie Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964); Lou Faulkner Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996).

[3] Reconstruction Era National Monument is not yet open to the public, reinforcing the importance of having a strong social media presence to provide contact info and assistance to those wanting to learn more about the site.

[4] Not all NPS social media managers agree with me, and I did receive some criticism for occasionally making my posts too long.

[5] Kevin M. Levin, “The Remedy for the Spread of Fake News? History Teachers,” Smithsonian Magazine, December 6, 2016, accessed June 9, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remedy-spread-fake-news-history-teachers-180961310/.

Nick Sacco

NICK SACCO is a public historian and writer based in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds a master’s degree in History with a concentration in Public History from IUPUI (2014). In the past he has worked for the National Council on Public History, the Indiana State House, the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center, and as a teaching assistant in both middle and high school settings. Nick recently had a journal article about Ulysses S. Grant’s relationship with slavery published in the September 2019 issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era. He has written several other journal articles, digital essays, and book reviews for a range of publications, including the Indiana Magazine of History, The Confluence, The Civil War Monitor, Emerging Civil War, History@Work, AASLH, and Society for U.S. Intellectual History. He also blogs regularly about history at his personal website, Exploring the Past. You can contact Nick at PastExplore@gmail.com.

A Recap of 2018 CLAW’s “Freedoms Gained and Lost” Conference

A Recap of 2018 CLAW’s “Freedoms Gained and Lost” Conference

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The 2018 Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) conference is in the books. Reconstruction-era scholars, museum professionals, and non-academics converged on the city of Charleston for an insightful and productive conference. Though the chronology debate remains unresolved, the 2018 CLAW conference was one of the most important conferences on Reconstruction in recent memory. With so many panels, plenaries, and public history events, I share a few highlights below.

Plenaries and roundtables served as generative spaces for discussing the issues, challenges, and opportunities for Reconstruction Studies. After the wonderful dedication of the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868 marker, the plenary on W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction provided the opening salvo for the rest of the conference. Brian Kelley considered the work as the starting point for future directions of Reconstruction Studies. Heather Cox Richardson characterized the massive tome as a political document and a meditation. On the other hand, Thavolia Glymph offered the text as a call to action, indictment, and a monument to African Americans. Following this stimulating opening roundtable, Bruce Baker asked that we grapple with the major question of “Who was Reconstruction For?” in his keynote address. The Saturday plenary brought together Eric Foner, Kate Masur, Michael Allen, and other key individuals involved with the creation of the Reconstruction Era National Monument. The remarks of Mayor Billy Keyserling of Beaufort, South Carolina, drove home the site’s importance. It allows local residents, white and black, to “know the truth,” use history as a vehicle for reconciliation, and answer “why has Reconstruction been muted?”

Two intriguing panels explored the possibilities yielded from an international perspective of Reconstruction in the Atlantic World. These panels demonstrated some of the benefits of moving toward an international history of Reconstruction, to borrow from Don Doyle’s wonderful paper title. Comparative frameworks of slavery have been instructive for understanding the institutions, motivations of enslavers, modes of resistance, and even the experiences of the diverse enslaved communities. Can Reconstruction provide an appropriate comparative framework? Or does a Reconstruction framework have any utility for understanding its legacy within a global African Diaspora, as suggested by Alison McLetchie? Does an international perspective simply provide unintentional fodder to individuals desiring the overturn of current Reconstruction Studies toward a Neo-Dunning School? While I am not sure what this direction will do for the overall field of Reconstruction Studies, I know that these scholars are actively addressing this aspect of Luke Harlow’s introduction to the JCWE’s “Future of Reconstructions Studies” forum.[1]

After spending time with these non-academics throughout the 2018 CLAW conference, I renew my call to Reconstruction scholars to enter the fray of public engagement as we contemplate the future of Reconstruction Studies. Multi-disciplinary and intersectional narratives demonstrate our relevance to popular audiences. Public schools remain an important site in the struggle for creating a better society. Yet, our work does not reach the predominantly black and brown communities educated within the system. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates are addressing the needs of individuals who are seeking to correct their K-12 education and/or the misinformation circulating on the internet (i.e. Black Confederates and most recently, Kanye West). AAIHS’s Black Perspectives, the Muster blog, Twitter crowdsourced syllabi, digital humanities projects, and even the new Reconstruction Era National Monument are solid attempts to reach these audiences through accessible scholarship, advisory roles in exhibitions, documentaries and textbooks, public lectures, and writing the occasional op-ed. To echo Kidada Williams, the field of Reconstruction Studies requires “more narrative histories of African Americans in the whirlwinds of freedom” that span time and the “geographic divides while covering a variety of subjects for African Americans across the nation and world.”[3]

We, as Reconstruction scholars, must be intentional in our chronologies, audiences, and scholarship. The conference demonstrates the need as well as the rewards of historical consulting on museum exhibitions, public lectures outside of the ivory walls of the academy, and writing accessible scholarship. It is hard work. It is, however, necessary. The important question that must guides our reflection on the future of Reconstruction Studies is “whether or not we are ready and willing to come through.”[4]

Thanks to Adam Domby and other CLAW organizers for providing a space for new scholarship, approaches, and essential conversations for addressing the scope, content, and future directions of Reconstruction Studies. I am excited to see how these conversations turn into action whether its public engagement or engaging scholarship. In short, the Reconstruction confab in Charleston was a resounding success.

Now, the real work begins.

 

[1] Luke Harlow, “Introduction to Forum: The Future of Reconstruction Studies,” Online Forum: The Future of Reconstruction Studies, The Journal of Civil War Era, accessed May 15, 2018, https://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/. This forum also appeared in the March 2017 issue.

[2] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43 (July 1991): 1244-1291.

[3] Kidada E. Williams, “Maintaining A Radical Vision of African Americans in the Age of Freedom,” Online Forum: The Future of Reconstruction Studies, The Journal of Civil War Era, accessed May 15, 2018, https://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/maintaining-a-radicalvision/.

[4] Williams, “Maintaining A Radical Vision of African Americans in the Age of Freedom.”

 

Hilary N. Green

Hilary N. Green is the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. She previously worked in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama where she developed the Hallowed Grounds Project. She earned her M.A. in History from Tufts University in 2003, and Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010. Her research and teaching interests include the intersections of race, class, and gender in African American history, the American Civil War, Reconstruction, as well as Civil War memory, African American education, and the Black Atlantic. She is the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (Fordham, 2016).

Editor’s Note: June 2018 Issue

Editor’s Note: June 2018 Issue

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When Judy Giesberg asked me to guest edit a special issue on abolition and solicit essays that would showcase new directions in abolition studies, I welcomed the opportunity. For a field that has been ploughed thoroughly—from global syntheses of the transition from slavery to freedom in the western world by some of the most eminent historians of slavery and abolition such as Robin Blackburn, Seymour Drescher, and David Brion Davis to numerous finely grained studies of African Americans, women, Garrisonian, political, and evangelical abolitionists in the last few decades—it might seem that we have nothing new left to say about abolition. In fact, as the original essays in this issue illustrate, we have barely begun to uncover the long, diverse, and multifaceted history of the abolition movement that goes well beyond old caricatures of irresponsible religious fanatics on the one hand and the simple portrayal of heroic freedom fighters on the other. More importantly, individually and collectively, they challenge the oft repeated, virtually reflexive, received historical wisdom on abolition by both broadening our conception of what constitutes abolition and deeply engaging abolitionist archives.

Joseph Yannielli’s article on the abolitionist town Mo Tappan in West Africa exemplifies this simultaneous broadening and deepening of our understanding of abolition. Much of the recent work on transnational abolition has concentrated mainly on the Anglo-American connection. Even those who have sought to include West Africa in the story of abolition, including myself, have done so mainly through the lens of the debates over colonization and emigration. In his nuanced article on the founding of an abolitionist town in West Africa as part of the American Missionary Association’s Mendi mission composed of the returning Amistad rebels, African participants, and American abolitionists, Yannielli recovers the lost history of Mo Tappan. Eschewing ahistorical equations of abolition with western imperialism—while remaining mindful of the racial, economic, and gendered fault lines in this interracial abolitionist community—Yannielli’s article reveals not only the course of American abolition in Africa but also the Africanization of American abolition.

Similarly, Natalie Joy expands and deepens our understanding of abolition by showing how the Indian’s cause was tightly braided with the slave’s cause in antebellum America. Joy uncovers the crucial impact of opposition to Indian dispossession, or what she terms “antiremovalism,” in influencing black and white abolitionists’ opposition to colonization and shaping its anti-imperialist nature. Abolitionists further linked the ongoing violations of Indian treaties and sovereignty with the expansion of slavery into western territories, making “Indian wrongs” an important part of their argument against slavery. Indeed, the very notion of an aggressive and expansive Slave Power attributed to later political abolitionists actually emerged from the abolitionist critique of U.S.-Indian relations. Native American spokesmen as well as antislavery politicians such as Joshua Giddings ensured that Indian rights occupied a conspicuous place in the abolitionist program well into the 1860s. Unlike recent attempts to equate the emergence of the antislavery state during the Civil War and Reconstruction with Indian dispossession in western history, Joy recounts a different history of the relationship between abolition and Indian sovereignty.

Like Joy’s, Sean Griffin’s article, on the overlap between communitarian labor reform and abolition, qualifies longstanding generalizations on the divisions between the early labor and abolition movements. It also points toward a reevaluation of the relationship between abolition and the emergence of capitalism, a paradigm shift that compliments the revived interest in the relationship between slavery and capitalism. Griffin recovers the history of the forgotten abolitionist communitarian experiment led by the freethinking Frances Wright, an advocate of women’s rights, workingmen’s rights, and abolition. While most historians have emphasized the early friction between Fourierist labor leaders and abolitionists, Griffin shows that they moved closer to each other on the eve of the Civil War. Rather than just a capitulation to free labor ideology, this convergence laid the foundation of the postwar labor movement. Griffin’s essay underscores the importance of not subsuming the more radical positions of abolitionists on labor and market society under the free labor umbrella of the antislavery Republican Party described by Eric Foner a long time ago.

As Corey Brooks argues in the concluding historiographical essay, much of the recent work on American abolition has centered on African Americans, including the enslaved, but with very different evaluations of the nature of black abolitionism. David Brion Davis, for instance, questions the radical nature of black abolitionism emphasizing and subsuming notions of uplift and elevation within his broader, now contested, understanding of abolition’s hegemonic role in legitimizing the rise of early capitalism. Peter Wirzbicki’s essay on William Cooper Nell and the black abolitionist intellectual tradition unearths an unknown aspect of black transcendentalism that qualifies this argument. Nell’s Adelphic Union brought together African Americans, abolitionists, and transcendentalist intellectuals; hosted the leading lights of the day for lectures; and created a space for the cross-fertilization of abolitionist activism with transcendentalist ideas. Wirzbicki’s close reading of the union’s activities allows him to reconstruct a vibrant black abolitionist intellectual culture virtually ignored by previous historians.

I regret that events conspired against our including an article on women abolitionists, many of them pioneers of the first women’s rights movement. But as Brooks points out in his essay, the study of women abolitionists is an established and growing one. Promising work by young scholars such as Kabria Baumgartner, whom Brooks mentions, and Johanna Ortner, who has just recovered an early collection of poems by Frances Harper, are poised to deepen our understanding of female abolitionism and further highlight the role of black women abolitionists in the making of the movement.[1]

Corey Brooks concludes this issue with an essay that emphasizes the relationship between abolition and political antislavery, one that would bear fruit during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The future of abolitionist studies lies in its ongoing reevaluation as a radical, interracial, social movement, which the essays in this volume amply illustrate. It also lies in the progress of what W. E. B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy” during Reconstruction. My own book on abolition stops at 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Exploring more fully what happened to the abolitionist political project with emancipation during the Civil War and Reconstruction when the realm of movement politics intersected with high politics is indeed the next frontier in abolition studies.

 

[1] Johanna Ortner, “Lost No More: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Forest Leaves,” Common-place 15, no. 4 (Summer 2015): http://common-place.org/book/lost-no-more-recovering-frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-forest-leaves/.

Manisha Sinha

Manisha Sinha is professor and the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. Sinha’s research interests lie in United States history, especially the transnational histories of slavery and abolition and the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her award winning book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, was published by Yale University Press in 2016.

Author Interview: Elizabeth Belanger

Author Interview: Elizabeth Belanger

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This month, we are sharing an interview with Elizabeth Belanger, author of “‘A Perfect Nuisance’: Working-Class Women and Neighborhood Development in Civil War St. Louis,” which appeared in our March 2018 issue. Elizabeth is an associate professor of American Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and has published in the Journal of American History, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, and the Public Historian.

Thanks so much for talking with us, Beth, especially during such a busy point in the semester! I want to begin by hearing more about how you became interested in this subject. What led you to pursue this line of research?

My article draws from the wonderful collection of complaints, investigations, and official correspondence that make up the Missouri Union Provost Marshal papers. During the Civil War, the Union Army, and specifically the Provost Marshal, was tasked with keeping order in St. Louis. His office compiled large amounts of paperwork, including original complaints filed by Union women against Confederate sympathizing women. As I began to sort out St. Louis women’s complaints from the much larger collection of materials, I was struck, apart from the multiple misspellings and name variations employed by different officials for the same person, by the tone and vehemence of working class women’s testimonies. Their zealousness in asserting Union loyalties were matched only by the number of profanities they slung at their Confederate sympathizing counterparts. Looking at these documents, two patterns emerged. First, the use of the term “nuisance” to describe Confederate sympathizing women. Second, the fact that (thanks to the thoroughness of the Provost Marshal’s office) almost every complaint made sure to note where the accused and accuser lived. Who were these women? What was it about the setting of Civil War St. Louis that brought out such strong emotions? Why did they use term “nuisance” to describe other women? And finally, what did all of these questions have to do with the geographical space in which these women lived? These are the questions that animated my research.

That sounds like a real treasure trove of documents. Given your emphasis on examining neighborhoods, can you share with us the value of urban history for scholars of the Civil War era?

Scholarship in urban history adds new dimensions to our study and conceptualization of the “home front” and “battlefield” in the Civil War era. One of the points I make in my article is that many inhabitants of St. Louis considered the city as an extension of the battlefield. Even though historians might not classify the many skirmishes that happened on St. Louis’s streets as “battles,” it’s clear to me that St. Louis’s residents believed they were part of a larger war effort long after the Confederate Army had left the region.

What you do see as your contribution to the historiography of women’s loyalty during the war? And, how does your work inform our understanding of the unique situation in border states like Missouri?

My work examines the role women played in shaping the home front political climate. Like most historians, I build on a foundation of previous historical scholarship. In my case, I looked to other women’s historians: Anne Marshall, Judith Giesberg, and Sharon Romeo, to name a few. In my article, I took a close look at the spatial politics of women’s war activism. In St. Louis, working class women used an administrative apparatus of war, the Union Provost Marshal’s Office, to wage political battles against their neighbors. Mapping the arena in which these women acted, the streets and buildings of their neighborhood, illuminates the role of women in shaping dialogues about political, ethnic, and, to some extent, class differences, in a city that lived and breathed the war.

As a Union occupied city in the Upper South, St. Louis is a fascinating case study of the material effects the Civil War had on an occupied populace. As historians LeeAnn Whites, Adam Arenson, and others have noted, St. Louis also became a testing ground for the Union to develop occupation policies and protocols. How was the Union going to deal with city residents who supported the Confederacy? Looking closely at a border city like St. Louis shines light on the extent to which everyday city residents, in my case working class women, worked in, around, and with these developing protocols. It demonstrates how occupation was a process, an ongoing negotiation that reveals how residents thought of themselves in relation to their neighbors, their city, and their government.

Your article also embraces the “spatial turn” in historical scholarship. Can you explain what the spatial turn is, and how you approached this research?

Um….. how much time do you have for this interview? All joking aside, I would describe the “spatial turn” in historical scholarship as a renewed interest into how questions of space and place intersect with the many other questions that categorize historical scholarship. For example, in my own research I asked how the experience of neighborhood space shaped and was shaped by working class women’s political loyalties in a Civil War border city. I would hesitate to call these questions new. Since the beginning of the profession, historians have understood the importance of situating their work within a larger geographical context. What characterizes today’s spatial turn, however, is the accessibility of mapping software that makes it easier for researchers to visualize the spatial contours of their work. I’m not sure I could have discovered the patterns I discovered in my data without GIS technology. Just to give you an idea of my methods, here is how the visual elements of the project unfolded.

Because of its historic nature, I had to transfer location data by hand. So I would find an address in the Provost Marshal’s records, locate the address on a historic map, and then transfer the historic data into a latitude and longitude on a computer map. Each type of location, home of accuser and accused, market, streetcar line, public building etc., was on a separate map “layer.” Once I was done placing these sites, the GIS software allowed me to combine, sort, and overlay the various layers. It allowed me to visualize the relationship between, let’s say, the homes of my accused women and the locations of streetcar lines. I do think it’s important to note, however, while technology allowed me to store and present my data, at the end of the day, I approached my research just like any other historian–I looked for patterns, relationships, and silences in the data.

That sounds complicated and time consuming, but it can clearly help you see your data in new and interesting ways, as we learned from your article. Do you have any advice for those who might be interested in exploring this spatial turn? Are there any specific resources that novices might find helpful?

It’s been amazing for me to watch just how quickly mapping technology has advanced since I first found the Missouri Union Provost Marshal Papers. I used desktop ArcGIS to construct my maps, but I made that decision, in part, because my institution had ArcGIS software and support staff. Today there are a multitude of free and subscription services designed for individuals who are new to GIS including Carto, Mapbox, and Google Maps. ArcGIS also has an online platform. All of these sites have online tutorials although I have to confess I benefited immensely from working with a member of our support staff to learn the ArcGIS program. Equally, if not more important, is the incredibly body of scholarship (both online and in print) which draws from spatial technologies. Kelly Knowles and May Hillier’s book Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship was one of the first I read. Stephen Robertson’s work on Digital Harlem (digitalharlem.org) broadened my vision of the types of questions maps could help answer. I also found it valuable to look for models outside of the discipline of history and found the work of geographers Mona Domosh and Don Mitchell compelling examples of the difference place and space make in historical scholarship.[1]

Thank you so much for participating in the interview, Beth. To learn more about Civil War St. Louis, please check out her article in our March 2018 issue, on Project Muse. And readers, if you have questions, please leave them in the comments here or on Facebook!

 

 

[1] Anne Kelley Knowles, ed., Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship (Redlands, CA: Esri Press, 2008); Mona Domosh, “Those “gorgeous incongruities”: Polite Politics and Public Space on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century New York City,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, no. 2 (1998);209-226; Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford, 2003).

 

Preventing War after Fort Sumter: The Schleiden-Seward-Stephens Negotiations

Preventing War after Fort Sumter: The Schleiden-Seward-Stephens Negotiations

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With the firing on Fort Sumter, the secession crisis escalated into bloody conflict. Weeks of work to mend sectional relations in Congress and with the Peace Conference had failed; Secretary of State William H. Seward’s conversations with the southern peace commissioners had similarly lead to nothing when President Abraham Lincoln determined to make a stand at Fort Sumter. Seward had been a driving force trying to prevent sectional war, but the outbreak of hostilities meant he fell in line and supported the administration’s war effort. Meanwhile, Rudolph Schleiden, the representative of the Hanseatic City of Bremen, had closely watched Seward’s belligerent attitude leading up to Inauguration Day, sharing the Secretary of State’s hope for a peaceful reunion of the country.[1] Even by late April, Seward had not given up on his assumption that peace was still a possibility, if Unionists got sufficient time to reassert their influence in the seceded states.

In April 1861, Seward supported Bremen’s Minister Resident Rudolph Schleiden’s visit to the soon-to-be enemy capital Richmond, but Seward did not explicitly send the minister to meet with Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens.[2] The meeting, which did occur, came to nothing because of the mutual distrust between the two sections. However, Seward’s support for Schleiden’s peace initiative indicates the continued perception that Unionists eventually could regain power in the seceded states and prevent further hostilities. Schleiden’s often overlooked trip to Richmond indicates how even a month into the war, the Union government continued its search for a peaceful solution, but not at any price.

Even after the first shots at Fort Sumter and the violence in Baltimore, Seward remained interested in preserving the Union and Bremen’s Rudolph Schleiden offered him an opportunity to do so. The violence in Baltimore had a deep impact on Schleiden, who had a humanitarian, even pacifist, streak in him.[3] In response to the foreseeable bloodshed, he contemplated mediating a truce between the two belligerents. As a former revolutionary, Schleiden approved of the right to revolution but like many Forty-Eighters, Schleiden did not grant the South that right. He believed that southerners had acted preemptively, or as he often termed it, on “sudden impulses.”[4] Furthermore, Schleiden knew from his experience how difficult it was for a state to survive against a larger, more powerful foe if the international situation was against that state.

Secretary of State William Seward and a Delegation of Diplomats at Trenton Falls, New York, 1863. 1. William H. Seward, Secretary of State; 4. Lord Lyons, British Minister; 5. M. Mercier, French Minister; 6. M. Schleiden, Hanseatic Minister. Taken by W. J. Baker, Utica, New York. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

The idea of the diplomatic corps mediating was not new. In early January, Edward Everett approached the British minister Lord Lyons to inquire whether Great Britain, France, or Russia could mediate the sectional differences. Nothing came of the idea.[5] In March and April, foreign representatives in Washington were active trying to find some reconciliation between the two sides.[6] Schleiden’s attempt to mediate a truce was only one of many ideas that circulated in the diplomatic corps.

On the morning of April 24, 1861, Schleiden heard that Vice President Alexander Stephens was in Richmond. Knowing Stephens from his time in Congress when the two had resided in the same house, Schleiden secretly broached his idea to mediate a truce to both Salmon P. Chase and Seward. Where Chase refused to make any comment, Seward responded favorably, but with reservations. Schleiden’s concern to prevent bloodshed received Seward’s support and he reassured the minister that making contact with Stephens would not be held against Schleiden. However, Seward cautioned that the president and the government could not authorize such negotiations or provide specific terms. Nevertheless, Seward suggested that Schleiden talk with President Lincoln.[7]

That afternoon, Seward and Schleiden met Lincoln. The president thanked Schleiden for his willingness to help prevent bloodshed. He expressed a certain regret that he could no longer claim ignorance and wished that Schleiden had just gone to Richmond on his own. Schleiden countered that it would have been wrong for him to do so and would have exposed him to accusations of conspiring with the enemy against the only legitimate government.[8] Schleiden was painfully aware of why he was in the United States and not at home in Schleswig-Holstein. His role as an insurgent had made him an outcast once, but there was no need to become one for a cause Schleiden did not believe in.

Worried about the press misinterpreting his intentions, Lincoln insisted that the conversation be kept confidential. Despite his unwillingness to authorize negotiations, Lincoln promised that he would consider “with equal respect and care” all propositions that he would receive. Schleiden left the meeting with the impression that Seward and Lincoln wished for him, without official authorization, to consult with Stephens.[9] His official report and journal do not support the claim that Seward sent Schleiden.

On the way to Richmond, Schleiden noticed that his mission was unlikely to succeed. Throngs of young men filled the railroad stations eager to fight. The newspapers contained a belligerent tone. Richmond itself resembled an army camp. In the lobby of Richmond’s Spotwood Hotel, Schleiden found Senator Hunter and a few other prominent Virginians anxious to inquire about the reason for the journey.[10]

Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, c. 1865. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Schleiden immediately contacted Stephens and the two had a three-hour long conversation. Favorable inclined, Stephens doubted the prospects for success. Reminding Schleiden of the treatment the Southern commissioners had received in Washington, Stephens argued that Seward’s peacefulness could be easily discredited.

Recent developments increased Southern mistrust, according to Stephens. To him, Maryland had seceded by the actions of the mob in Baltimore and the Confederacy was honor bound to come to the state’s assistance if requested, which made the Potomac as a boundary unacceptable. Thus one aspect of the ceasefire had to be either Maryland’s inclusion in the Confederacy or the end of troop movements thought the state. In addition, the government could not risk demoralizing the people with a ceasefire. Finally, Stephens had no authority to negotiate. Nevertheless, Stephens decided to think about the offer. Schleiden requested a formal written statement.[11]

In the statement, Stephens regretted the “threatening prospect of a general war,” stressing that it was not the intention of the Confederacy to provoke a war. However, peace without independence was not acceptable. Stephens stressed his lack of authority, but provided some suggestions. The main point, which Lincoln would never accept, was to abstain from waging “a war for the recapture of former possessions . . . and subjugation of the people of the Confederate States to their former dominion.” Stephens asked the Lincoln government to make an authoritative proposal for consideration.[12]

With the formal statement as basis, Stephens and Schleiden debated for another two hours during which Schleiden impressed upon Stephens the need to modify passages of Stephens’s initial proposal. Schleiden told Stephens, “a significant amount of mistrust shined through the letter coupled with . . . a substantial amount of misplaced honor which threatened the impact of the letter because in Washington the letter would meet a similar mistrust and false, misplaced honor.” At the end of their conversation, both agreed to keep their talks confidential. Schleiden had lost faith and did not even record his second conversation with Stephens in his diary.[13]

After the final conversation, Schleiden returned to Washington on April 27. He immediately copied the proposal and correspondence, and added a cover letter, which he personally delivered to Seward. Seward listened attentively to the verbal report. Seward answered in Lincoln’s stead, thanking Schleiden for his effort. Seward confirmed that the Union was supreme and that restoration of the Union was the primary goal of the government. Lincoln saw no use to pursue the matter any further. Schleiden informed Stephens of the failure.[14]

The trip to Richmond shows Seward’s continued interest in using any means at his disposal to stall hostilities and allow Unionists time to regain control in the Southern states. Even by late April 1861, Seward was still under the assumption of strong Unionist sentiment in the South. However, there is no evidence that Seward was the instigator or that he directly provided Schleiden with terms and conditions to present to the Confederate Vice-President. Schleiden, as a former secessionist revolutionary, knew all too well how a civil war could tear a country apart and what violence and bloodshed that entailed. He brought his personal experiences along to Richmond. If anything, Schleiden’s trip in late April, one month into the war, illustrate the continued desire to find a peaceful solution. To some, the war, despite the firing on Fort Sumter, was not yet inevitable.

 

[1] Niels Eichhorn, “William H. Seward’s Foreign War Panacea Reconsidered,” Muster (blog), The Journal of the Civil War Era, March 23, 2018, https://journalofthecivilwarera.org/2018/03/william-h-sewards-foreign-war-panacea-reconsidered/.

[2] Ralph H. Lutz, “Rudolph Schleiden and the Visit to Richmond, April 25, 1861,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1917): 207-16.

[3] Rudolph M. Schleiden, Schleswig-Holsteins erste Erhebung, 1848-1849 (Wiesbaden, Germany: Verlag von J. F. Bergmann, 1891), 352-360.

[4] Rudolf Schleiden to Syndicus Dr. Theodor Curtius, January 2, 1863, No. 8, US 27, Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck.

[5] Lyons to Russell, February 4, 1861, James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844-67 (Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), 240.

[6] Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1952), 56-59.

[7] May 4, 1858, 159, Book 18, 13 Tagebücher 12-20 (1849-1865), Box 653, Cb 44, Schleiden Nachlass, Landesbliothek Kiel; Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, April 24, 1861, morning letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[8] Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, April 24, 1861, evening letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[9] Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, April 24, 1861, evening letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[10] Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, May 2, 1861, evening letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[11] Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, May 2, 1861, evening letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[12] Stephens to Schleiden, April 28, 1861, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[13] April 27, 1861, 237-38, book 19, 13 Tagebücher 12-20 (1849-1865), box 653, Cb 44, Schleiden Nachlass, Landesbibliothek Kiel; Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, May 2, 1861, evening letter letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

[14] April 27, 1861, 238, book 19, 13 Tagebücher 12-20 (1849-1865), box 653, Cb 44, Schleiden Nachlass, Landesbibliothek Kiel; Seward to Schleiden, April 29, 1861, Schleiden to Stephens, April 30, 1861, Schleiden to the Senate foreign relations committee, May 2, 1861, evening letter, 2-B.13.b.1.a.2.c.I, Ministerresident, Bremen, Staatsarchiv.

Niels Eichhorn

holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas and has taught history courses at Middle Georgia State University and Central Georgia Technical College. He has published Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War (LSU Press, 2019) and Atlantic History in the Nineteenth Century: Migration, Trade, Conflict, and Ideas (Palgrave, 2019). He is currently working with Duncan Campbell on The Civil War in the Age of Nationalism. He has published articles on Civil War diplomacy in Civil War History and American Nineteenth Century History. You can find more information on his personal website, and he can be contacted at eichhorn.niels@gmail.com.

“Starbucks is Not Just a Place To Buy a Cup of Coffee”: Race and the Boundaries of Urban Public Life

“Starbucks is Not Just a Place To Buy a Cup of Coffee”: Race and the Boundaries of Urban Public Life

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When Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, two young African American entrepreneurs, entered a Starbucks coffee shop on April 12, 2018, for a business meeting in downtown Philadelphia, neither expected to be caught in the boundary between urban public and private space. The two men arrived at the café and awaited another associate to discuss a potential business opportunity. Shortly after entering, Nelson asked the manager to use the restroom and was told that the facility was for paying customers exclusively. Nelson and Robinson thought little of the interaction; similar policies around bathroom use are common. “I just left it at that,” Nelson later told a reporter.[1] Moments later, the manager, while never asking the men to leave directly, phoned the Philadelphia police requesting assistance with “two gentlemen in my cafe that are refusing to make a purchase or leave.” Two officers arrived soon after and demanded Nelson and Robinson vacate the premises. Police placed handcuffs on the two men and escorted them out, charging them with trespassing and creating a disturbance, despite no witness testimony of misbehavior. Interviewed later, Robinson stated he understood the company guidance restricting non-paying patrons, but that he disagreed with how the manager applied the policy. “I understand that rules are rules,” he said, “but what’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong.”[2]

Images of the incident, captured by other café patrons, went viral across the Internet and commenters from across the country shared outrage at similar experiences. The mayor of Philadelphia condemned the incident lamenting that the expulsion of Nelson and Robinson “appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018.”[3]

Spaces like Starbucks are an important part of the social and cultural fabric of modern cities. They sit as a middle ground between public and private space; a private business, yet used by the public for work, business, and social life sometimes with or without a purchase. As the company’s chief executive explained, “Our concept has always been that Starbucks is in the community. It’s a gathering place…a warm and welcoming environment for all customers.”[4] Philadelphia’s mayor reiterated the place of Starbucks in city life: “Starbucks is not just a place to buy a cup of coffee, but a place to meet up with friends or family members, or to get some work done.”[5] This overlap, however, has limits, as Robinson and Nelson discovered when the police intervened on behalf of the business.

The battle between an individual’s right to access and the right of a business proprietor to remove undesirable patrons has long been waged around places of public accommodation, particularly in American cities. Race has long been a central catalyst for conflict. In the nineteenth century, African Americans forced white business owners to contend with their participation in urban public life. Following the Civil War, in particular, as black men and women began to demand entry to urban businesses they challenged this boundary, asserting their right to patronize any business and rejecting a businesses owner’s supposed “private right” to exclude. Indeed, in Philadelphia, just blocks from the present day Starbucks, in 1876 the Bingham House denied accommodation to southern African American minister Fields Cook. The manager denied a room to Cook, even as he served white patrons. He told Cook, he was welcome to remain in the lobby, however. Cook sued the proprietor, arguing that the recently passed Fourteenth Amendment protected his right to accommodation. A judge agreed, marking the first successful use of the amendment in such a case.[6]

Racial discrimination in venues like the Boston Theater prompted African Americans to seek changes to Massachusetts law. “Stage and Auditorium of the Boston Theater,” Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion 9, no. 19 (November 10, 1855): 296.

Elsewhere in the Northeast, as explored in my 2015 article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era, African Americans had a history of challenging a business’s right to exclude, and in doing so, they redefined the boundaries of urban public life.[7] It was a challenging process, however, and activists faced major setbacks. In December 1856, African American barber Julian McCrea purchased a ticket in the upper balcony for a performance at Boston’s Howard Athenaeum. As he ascended the stairs, a doorman barred McCrea from entering the theater. He refused to leave and in response the doorman summoned the police. Confronted by the officers, McCrea invoked the U.S. Constitution in his defense. “I have a right to enter,” he explained furiously, “and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights make no difference by my color.”[8] The police then escorted the still angry McCrea from the building. McCrea sued the proprietor for his removal and assault, but the Massachusetts court upheld the actions of the theater, declaring that “the plaintiff’s attempts to enter were unwarranted, and the defendant rightfully used the force necessary to prevent his entry.”[9] In a similar case several years later, a judge ruled that a black man who refused to leave a theater when told by the management, “became a trespasser, and the defendant had the right to remove him by such a degree of force as his resistance should render necessary for that purpose.”[10]

Despite these early setbacks, following the Civil War, Boston’s black community organized and succeeded in pressing the state government for some of the nation’s first laws prohibiting public accommodation discrimination.[11] Yet these new statutes did not mean an end to the expulsion of black patrons by white business owners. In the 1880s, black Bostonians again faced business owners asserting their right to exclude; this time in the city’s newly-opened roller-skating rinks. In January 1885, the ticket agent of the Boston Roller Skating Rink denied entry to Richard Brown and his two young grandchildren. Brown rejected the agent’s declaration that the rink was private. “It is not private,” Brown argued, “you publically advertise it and call for the patronage of the public.”[12] When Brown refused to leave, several men grabbed him by the collar and he was “violently thrust out of the building” in front of his now crying grandchildren.[13]

Challenges to exclusion in places of public amusement are significant for the way they chart the boundaries of public accommodation. Opponents of anti-discrimination laws argued that individuals had no inherent right to access such seemingly frivolous spaces. A skating rink, they argued, was not an accommodation in the same way as a streetcar, hotel, or restaurant. Black advocates, however, argued that they held the right to access all places. “It is the principle that underlies the whole thing that we argue for,” one black activist argued to the Massachusetts legislature, “if a notice should be put up over the gates of hell that colored men would not be admitted, we would try to enter, because we have a right to.”[14] In response to these challenges, the legislature passed a new law further restricting the power of a business owner to deny service to patrons based on race.[15]

The Boston Roller Skating Rink enticed patrons with advertisements in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student publication, The Tech. The rink proprietors made clear the policy of refusing service “to any objectionable person”; a strategy used to prohibit African American skaters. “Boston Roller Skating Rink,” Tech, 2, no. 13 (March 21, 1883): 18.

Enforcement of the laws, however, continued to be sporadic and activists fought for decades to expand the types of business included in the scope of the law. Business’s also came up with new schemes to deny service and continued to enforce policies reserving the right to exclude or deny service to “any objectionable person.”[16] The echoes of these business practices are clear in today’s Philadelphia when police took Nelson and Robinson into custody outside of Starbucks.

While black activists in the Northeast were unable to end all racial discrimination, their success shows the power of organization and action to push back against racism and force the state to act. In our own time, in the aftermath of the removal of Nelson and Robinson from Starbucks, demonstrators and activists took to the streets and occupied the business to express their outrage. The two men at the center of the story are now in arbitration with Starbucks working for new policies prohibiting future incidents, including a customer “bill of rights.” “We need a different type of action … not words,” Robinson told a reporter. “It’s a time to pay attention and understand what’s really going on. We do want a seat at the table.”[17] Taking inspiration from earlier generations of activists, present day opponents of racism continue to press both business owners and the state for the protection of the equal right to occupy and use any public accommodation. Like before, continued vigilance is necessary to secure free and equal access to urban public life for all people.

 

[1] Rachel Siegel, “’They can’t be here for us’: Black men arrested at Starbucks tell their story for the first time,” Washington Post, April 18, 2018, accessed April 26, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/04/19/they-cant-be-here-for-us-black-men-arrested-at-starbucks-tell-their-story-for-the-first-time/?utm_term=.c5b77c8e8914.

[2] “’They can’t be here for us,'” accessed April 26, 2018.

[3] Michael Tanenbaum, “Protests over controversial arrests at Center City Starbucks; Police commissioner says officers did nothing wrong,” Philly Voice, April 14, 2018, accessed April 26, 2018, http://www.phillyvoice.com/starbucks-arrest-philadelphia-center-city-police-investigating/.

[4] Samantha Melamed, “Starbucks arrests in Philadelphia: CEO Kevin Johnson promises unconscious-bias training for managers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 16, 2018, accessed April 26, 2018, http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/philadelphia/starbucks-ceo-kevin-johnson-philadelphia-arrests-black-men-20180416.html.

[5] Jenny Garthright and Emily Sullivan, “Starbucks, Police And Mayor Respond To Controversial Arrest Of 2 Black Men In Philly,” National Public Radio, April 14, 2018, accessed April 26, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/14/602556973/starbucks-police-and-mayor-weigh-in-on-controversial-arrest-of-2-black-men-in-ph.

[6] Leslie Patrick, “African American and Civil Rights in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Heritage, Spring 2010, accessed April 27, 2018, http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/pa-heritage/african-americans-civil-rights-pennsylvania.html.

[7] Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, “We Do Not Care Particularly About the Skating Rinks”: African American Challenges to Racial Discrimination in Places of Public Amusement in Nineteenth Century Boston, Massachusetts,” Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 2 (June 2015): 254-288.

[8] “Plaintiffs Exceptions,” McCrea v. Marsh (September 1, 1857), Suffolk County Superior Court, Judicial Archives, Massachusetts Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.

[9] McCrea v. Marsh, 78 Mass. 211 (1858).

[10] Burton v. Scherpf, 83 Mass. 133 (1861).

[11] “An Act Forbidding Unjust Discrimination on Account of Color or Race,” 1865 Mass. Acts 277; “An Act in Relation to Public Places of Amusement,” 1866 Mass. Acts 252.

[12] “A Question of Civil Rights,” Boston Daily Globe, January 17, 1885.

[13] “Petition of Richard S. Brown with Thomas Russell and Others,” February 2, 1885, Docket Documents, Mayor and Board of Aldermen, City of Boston Archives, Boston, Mass.; “A Question of Civil Rights”; “Brown at the Skating Rink,” Boston Daily Globe, January 24, 1885; “Contending for the Right,” New York Freeman, January 31, 1885; “Costly Discrimination,” Boston Daily Globe, January 24, 1885; “The Color Line,” Boston Daily Globe, January 16, 1885.

[14] “Even in Tophet,” Boston Daily Globe, March 14, 1885; “The Color Line,” Boston Daily Advertiser, March 14, 1885.

[15] “An Act to Punish Persons Making Discrimination in Public Places on Account of Race or Color,” 1885 Mass. Acts 316.

[16] “Boston Roller Skating Rink,” Tech 2, no. 13 (March 21, 1883): 18.

[17] Associated Press, “Black men arrested at Philadelphia Starbucks feared for their lives,” The Guardian, April 19, 2018, accessed April 26, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/19/starbucks-black-men-feared-for-lives-philadelphia.

 

Millington Bergeson-Lockwood

Millington Bergeson-Lockwood is a historian of African American history, race, law and politics. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2011. His book, Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston was published with the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. His article “‘We Do Not Care Particularly About the Skating Rinks’: African Americans Challenges to Racial Discrimination in Places of Public Accommodation in Nineteenth-Century Boston, Massachusetts” was awarded the Richards Prize by the Journal of the Civil War Era for best article published in 2015.

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