Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Most polls reveal that Abraham Lincoln is the best president in U.S. history. In Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, he discusses the “mystic chords of memory.” Americans have a curious way of remembering Lincoln.
The discerning history student ought to be curious about the ways in which Lincoln has and has not earned his exalted place in American history.
In order to assess the extent to Lincoln was “the greatest” president, “a military genius”, “a master of the English language”, “a true American hero”, etc. we are going to:
- Define great leadership
- Read documents and answer questions about Lincoln’s presidency with a focus on the following themes:
- Lincoln & His Cabinet
- Lincoln & Slavery
- Lincoln as Orator
- Lincoln as Commander in Chief
- Lincoln & Congress
- Analyze these articles in small groups, then present findings to the class
- Based on our reading, assess the extent to which Lincoln earned his exalted place as a great leader in American history.
Lincoln and his Cabinet: Listen to this short interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin and read this Times book review of Goodwin’s Team of Rivals by James MacPherson
Lincoln & Slavery: Listen to this interview with Eric Foner
Lincoln’s Oratory: Read Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Words by Ted Sorensen and listen to this interview with Ronald White about Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Lincoln as Commander in Chief: Read this book review of James MacPherson’s Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief and Lincoln’s letter to McClellan
Lincoln and Congress: Read this review of Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate
There are reading questions for all five themes. Get them here and respond thoughtfully.
If this discussion of Lincoln is of interest, you are cordially invited to:
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Monday, December 26th, 2011
The photos are rich, the facial hair is awesome, and the commentary, provided by David Plotz, is thoughtful and good humored.
Here’s an FYI: “Facial hair was associated with a few things: It was associated with a new idea of manliness. It was associated with new ideas about religion, a new passion for Old Testament religion and a sense that you were stepping back into the righteous days of the Hebrew prophets. It was associated also with militarism, because it really became popular in Anglo-American culture after the Crimean War. And finally, and I think most interestingly, it was identified with radical nationalist politics in Europe. Beards really took off in places like France, Italy, and Austria, that were undergoing liberal revolutions. I think it bespeaks a sense that both the Union and Confederate soldiers felt that they were nationalist revolutionaries.”
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
The “Battle Hymn” became the leading anthem of the Union cause and would emerge as one of the most enduring works of art of the Civil War years. Meanwhile, the tale of the poem’s composition—one of the great creation stories in American letters—became nearly as famous as the poem itself; it became, in a sense, an inextricable part of the poem. The millennial meanings attached to the hymn, with its portrayal of Union forces—God’s “terrible swift sword”—as apocalyptic agents, and the account of the hymn’s origins fed off each other. Together, they encouraged a sense of providential national identity deeply seductive to American audiences—then and now.
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
As America marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the US Civil War this year, German history buffs have been re-enacting the bloody battles between the Union and Confederacy.
Christian Ortschig’s weekdays are spent working in Germany’s social insurance administration. But on any given Saturday, he might be leading Union troops into battle against the Confederate Army.
Ortschig stands in a field overseeing the military drills of a couple dozen men and women as they prepare for the afternoon’s big battles at the Wild West theme park “El Dorado,” which is located on the outskirts of Templin about 50 miles north of Berlin.
“This is like a film, like theatre,” says Ortschig. “I am not a Union boy. I am not a Rebel boy. I am a German. But when I put on this uniform, I play a Union officer.
Like Ortschig’s Scottish uniform, a lot of the history here is an odd mishmash of fact, fancy, and convenience. Men meticulously dressed in period costumes from the 1860s mingle with soldiers in uniforms from the US Revolutionary War. Conversation seems to focus on the physical trappings – the clothes and the weapons – not difficult issues like slavery or the war’s staggering body count.
Such events happening about once a month in Germany do feel a little bit like drama camp for adults. But most of the people say they come for the history, not just the costumes.
“We know that 200,000 Germans served in the US Civil War. That’s more than 10 percent of the Union soldiers,” Ortschig says. “So this is our history too.”
Ute Frevert is the head of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She says the choice for Germans to re-enact the Civil War battles may seem odd on the surface, but she explains it this way: “It’s safe.” In Germany, it’s taboo to glorify anything military-related since World War II. So for Germans who want a taste of the pageantry of battle, the 19th-century American conflict fits the bill.
“It’s safe enough for Germans to re-enact the US Civil War because it is so far away,” says Frevert. “It is not something you associate with Germany.”
When asked why Rebels typically outnumber the Yankees at these re-enactment weekends, Frevert says that might be Germans’ sympathy for the losers, or because the Confederates’ costumes are fancier.
“We also think about how it is cruel that brothers fought against each other. I have friends on the other side in the South and I would never shoot on them in real life,” says Melchurs. “This is only a game.”
And it’s the kind of game where the battles end not in bloodshed – but with German beers around a fire.
Read full text at The Local
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
We knew, of course, about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. But our general sense of the war was that a horrible tragedy somehow had the magical effect of getting us free. Its legacy belonged not to us, but to those who reveled in the costume and technology of a time when we were property.
Our alienation was neither achieved in independence, nor stumbled upon by accident, but produced by American design. The belief that the Civil War wasn’t for us was the result of the country’s long search for a narrative that could reconcile white people with each other, one that avoided what professional historians now know to be true: that one group of Americans attempted to raise a country wholly premised on property in Negroes, and that another group of Americans, including many Negroes, stopped them. In the popular mind, that demonstrable truth has been evaded in favor of a more comforting story of tragedy, failed compromise, and individual gallantry. For that more ennobling narrative, as for so much of American history, the fact of black people is a problem.
Ta Nehisi Coates tries to answer this vexing question
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
Frederick Douglass called it “a sacred effort,” and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address.
Historian Garry Wills does a magnificent job of unpacking Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
Shortly before the 1860 presidential election The Atlantic’s editor, James Russell Lowell, came out in support of Abraham Lincoln (9 pages), whom he commended as a “statesman” and a powerful voice against the spread of slavery. He predicted, accurately, that the election would prove to be “a turning-point in our history.”
Posted in USH: Civil War | No Comments »
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
In this week’s audio book club, Yale historian David Blight talks about the significance of the hit novel The Killer Angels with Emily Bazelon and David Plotz. Published in 1974, the book won a Pulitzer Prize but didn’t become a best-seller until two decades later. What’s its enduring appeal? Is it pro-war or anti-war? Did it rehabilitate the reputation of Confederate commander James Longstreet at the expense of the beloved Robert E. Lee?
Posted in USH: Civil War, USH: Post AP Ideas | No Comments »