{"id":448,"date":"2021-09-28T11:39:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T15:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/?p=448"},"modified":"2021-09-28T11:39:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T15:39:27","slug":"rediscovering-the-civil-war-how-we-are-building-truth-from-its-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/issue-2\/rediscovering-the-civil-war-how-we-are-building-truth-from-its-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Rediscovering the Civil War: How We Are Building Truth from Its Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drawing on her experiences of living in the South and the mysteries within her family\u2019s history, Georgia Coats passionately investigates the origins of the collective white memories of the Civil War. By questioning the ways in which history is passed down and altered over time, she deftly assesses the reasons why certain histories are preserved, erased, or fabricated to serve different ends. Through her personal experience, Coats demonstrates the importance of truth-telling and historical contextualization in the pursuit of a more honest and accountable America. –Caty Maloney \u201822, Editorial Assistant<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Rediscovering the Civil War: How We Are Building Truth from Its Myths<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
Georgia Coats ’24<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Deep in my earliest memories is a distinct image of a magnet that was once placed on my home refrigerator. It was a copy of <\/span>The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson<\/span><\/i>\u2014and it was my favorite of all the other magnets, because I loved the vivid red and chestnut colors of Stonewall Jackson\u2019s horse, Little Sorrel.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Everett B.D. Julio. \u201cThe Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson.” 1869.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though I was still too young to\u00a0<\/span>understand the Civil War as a concept, I already felt the pull of\u00a0<\/span>nostalgia towards these Confederate figures. But the narrative that\u00a0<\/span>gave me this nostalgia was false, concocted by followers of the\u00a0<\/span>Lost Cause\u2014a conglomeration of falsehoods that insist the\u00a0<\/span>Confederacy was a noble\u00a0 country which was simply outgunned by\u00a0<\/span>the Union in 1865. As a result of Lost Cause, the memory of the\u00a0<\/span>white South has become selective regarding the Civil War, over time losing sight of the nuances of history in favor of parroting an untrue narrative. As monuments fall, history is reassessed, and myths brought to light, the war has become a battleground of legacy and memory. Which legacies are true, and which ones are based in fabrication? Has our collective memory been shaped towards myth, or the facts of reality? These difficult questions are what we must ask if we are to finally leave the Lost Cause behind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A unique experience of living in the American South is how much the Civil War intrudes upon everyday life. Louisville, Kentucky especially is an odd background for my own experiences with the war. Kentucky was a border state, locked in a struggle between the Union and Confederacy. Our state capitol went back and forth between the two sides, a reflection of the fact that President Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, both hailed from central Kentucky. It seems as if Kentucky was destined to be forever torn in two, a <\/span>state that stayed with the Union but contained a populace filled with Confederate hearts. A common, wry saying is that Kentucky joined the Confederacy after the Civil War, and I believe this is true. Many of the local monuments to Confederate icons were erected long after the war, during that period of nativism, isolationist theory, and nostalgia found between 1900 and 1940. A statue of Jefferson Davis, erected in 1936, stood in our state capitol in Frankfort, a plaque proclaiming his patriotism and heroic nature accompanying his grand pose. He faced off against Abe Lincoln in the capitol rotunda for nearly a century before his loss of the war was finally accepted. He left in defeat during the summer of 2020, sent away by Kentucky\u2019s governor and historical commission. Though I have little memory of the trip I made to the state capitol with my fifth-grade class, I doubtlessly saw this statue and heard an explanation of Jefferson Davis\u2019 presence in the capitol. Like everyone else, I swallowed what little platitudes were offered about memorializing a traitorous man who fought tooth and nail to keep humans in bondage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While contemplating my earliest thoughts on the war, I recollected a tale my mother enjoyed telling me as I got older. In 1969, my third-great uncle Everett Pitman on my mother\u2019s side passed away in Dallas County, Missouri. According to family legend, great treasures were hidden in his attic, and rumor claimed it contained relics of our own Civil War hero, who honorably lost his life in battle. The hero would have been Everett\u2019s uncle, having come with his brother and mother from North Carolina. Oddly enough, it had always been assumed our ancestor was a Union soldier. When my grandmother\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>great-aunts, Alice and Laura, came to clean out the\u00a0<\/span>attic, they found an old trunk <\/span>full of the promise of\u00a0 <\/span>Civil War heroes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photograph my grandmother took of the trunk that held the Pittman uniform, placed next\u00a0to the guest bedroom bed where I often sleep when I come to visit. The trunk itself was\u00a0refinished in the 1960s and is now used to hold quilts.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They excitedly opened it, avidly <\/span>awaiting the familial relic. A pristine, folded <\/span>gray <\/span><\/i>uniform met their eyes, with a bullet hole in the chest. <\/span>I first heard this story from my mother, who recounted it a few times over the years and always ended the story claiming the uniform was anonymously donated for posterity. When I decided to write about the uniform, I called my grandmother to make sure I recorded the details correctly. I was told that the uniform was <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>anonymously donated. In fact, it had been given to the Wilson\u2019s Creek National Battlefield, located in central Missouri, in commemoration of its opening in 1966. A dinner was even given by the battlefield to honor the donation (Light).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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U.S. Census, 1850<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some aspects of the story made little sense to me at first. Why was the soldier assumed to be Union during the 1960s, a hey-day of Confederate nostalgia? Clearly, there was some shame in the family relating to the Confederacy, but when or why was a mystery. I discovered while looking at old census records that there were <\/span>three\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Pitman sons, rather than two as I had always been told.\u00a0<\/span>Why had one been entirely forgotten? The only record\u00a0<\/span>showing that he, <\/span>Jeremiah Pitman, ever existed is in <\/span>the 1850 North Carolina census<\/span>, though he was born\u00a0<\/span>in 1836 (U.S. Census 1850).<\/span> He is <\/span>mysteriously absent from the family\u2019s\u00a01860 census\u00a0in Arkansas (U.S. Census 1860). Perhaps he died, but two <\/span>Jeremiah Pitmans enlisted in the Confederate army in Tennessee\u2014a state the family would have travelled through to reach Arkansas from North Carolina. This may be more wishful thinking, but I can imagine a family argument over politics and ideology,\u00a0<\/span>resulting in a split-off near Nashville. <\/span><\/p>\n

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U.S. Census, 1860<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then a few years later, a gray\u00a0<\/span>uniform reaches the family, announcing their estranged son\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/span>Perhaps Jeremiah was forgotten because his family, in the years <\/span>after the war, felt ashamed of their son\u2019s involvement on the losing side. The youngest brother, William (my fourth-great grandfather), would have hardly <\/span>remembered his oldest brother, being born in 1856. He might have been told fictitious stories by his widowed mother in the 1870s, which grew and grew until that chest contained not a traitorous Rebel, but a heroic Yankee.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I found this story an incredible parallel with the selective memory of the white South, although my family went in the opposite direction. The idea of William\u2019s widowed mother being the guardian of her family history brought to my mind the many Southern women diarists of the Civil War era. One of the most well-known Southern diarists is Sarah Morgan, a woman from Louisiana who was only nineteen when war broke out in 1861. Like other women diarists in the same period and region, Sarah Morgan expresses a lot of hatred, grief, and anger within her private writings. She writes:<\/span> \u201c\u2018A Dead Confederacy.\u2019 Fools! The flames are smoldering! They<\/span> will burst out presently and consume you!\u201d (Dawson 517)<\/span>. <\/span>I asked my father what he thought of her writings, and he described Sarah Morgan as a \u201ccharcoal fire\u201d\u2014a flame which smolders harmlessly on the outside, but burns more violently than any other in the center. Thousands of Southern women like Sarah Morgan became charcoal fires during and after the war. Many of these women coalesced to form the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the guardians of the Lost Cause. The Daughters of the Confederacy are the scorching flame that has set Civil War historiography alight for the last century, driving many families and communities to eliminate what is deemed \u201cunkind and unfair to the South\u201d (McPherson 160).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>James McPherson, a well-regarded Civil War historian, writes in \u201cLong-Legged Yankee Lies,\u201d a history of Southern censorship in school textbooks, <\/span>\u201cthe [United Confederate Veterans] was a powerful lobby in Southern politics and the [United Daughters of the Confederacy] enjoyed great prestige in Southern communities\u2026the crusade to purge Yankee lies from the schools achieved great <\/span>success…no book or author was either too important and powerful or too marginal and obscure to escape the censure of UCV and UDC watchdogs\u201d (127).<\/span>\u00a0The charcoal fire of the United Daughters of the Confederacy has slowly eviscerated the memories of the Union and former enslaved people, leaving many white Americans with a nostalgic pull towards Confederate figures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, this generations-long narrative has shifted. As a result of the Charleston massacre, the Charlottesville Ku Klux Klan rally, and the Black Lives Matter movement, the nation has finally begun to take a hard look at itself regarding Lost Cause indoctrination. It is a true period of historic upheaval, with the toppling of monuments, the lowering of flags, and even the removal of the \u201cstars and bars\u201d from Mississippi\u2019s state colors. We are now looking towards a future (no matter how far-flung still) where the Lost Cause will be finally left behind. Now instead of a battle to keep white southern propaganda in power, the Civil War has become the battleground for truth among the history once purged to preserve the \u201cdignity\u201d of Southern soldiers\u2014never mind the dignity of the millions of people treated as chattel for four hundred years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But in this upheaval, it isn\u2019t just Civil War history that\u2019s being reconsidered. Along with monuments of long-dead Confederates, the United States is full of physical markers of segregation\u2014a direct consequence of the botched Reconstruction era, where freedpeople\u2019s rights were taken away by white \u201credeemers.\u201d Richard Frishman writes in an article about his series of photographs of these physical reminders, or what he calls \u201cghosts\u201d of segregation: \u201c<\/span>Does such<\/span> erasure remedy the inequalities and relieve the suffering caused by systemic racism? Or does it<\/span> facilitate denial and obfuscation?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>In this passage, Frishman is referring specifically to the<\/span> demolition of segregation-era signs, such as one advertising \u201cAll White Help\u201d at a restaurant in <\/span>Oregon. This question not only relates to the physical remnants of the segregation era, but the<\/span> ideological remnants of the Lost Cause, because one really could not exist without the other. The<\/span> whole nation is finally beginning to understand the lies of the Lost Cause and the white South.<\/span> But is destroying the remnants of the narrative, like how segregation-era signs are being<\/span> demolished, just another way of hiding the dark side of our nation\u2019s history? It is clear we have<\/span> to eliminate this misleading narrative of glorification\u2014<\/span>b<\/span>ut it is still important to make clear its<\/span> effects for the sake of memory. If we forget, just as my family forgot the truth of our ancestor, we<\/span> lose sight of our mistakes, and the cycle repeats. We must continue to fight for the truth of Civil<\/span> War history, but we also can\u2019t simply disregard the false narratives in our battle.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Scott Oldham. “General Grant National Memorial, New York, NY.”<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One more casualty of the Lost Cause is Ulysses S. Grant, whose legacy has been erased.<\/span> Known as the great general who preserved the Union, his 1885 funeral procession was attended<\/span> b<\/span>y more than a million people. He was laid to rest j<\/span>ust off Riverside Drive in Manhattan, in North America\u2019s largest mausoleum. Though grand, it is perhaps the loneliest spot in the city\u2014treated as if burned to the ground by Sarah Morgan\u2019s flames back in 1863. While New York City bustles all around him, he lays forgotten in a quiet corner near the river, hidden in plain sight. Appomattox Courthouse (the place where Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865, located in rural Virginia) received over 6 million visitors in the last 20 years, while Grant\u2019s Tomb<\/span>\u00a0welcomed fewer than 800 thousand (U.S. Department of the Interior).\u00a0<\/span>Robert E.\u00a0<\/span>Lee is laid to rest in a small chapel at his beloved\u00a0<\/span>university Washington and Lee, greeted by\u00a0<\/span>tourists and students every day. No such love is\u00a0<\/span>found for Grant. Sarah Morgan\u2019s warning speaks <\/span>to me when I think of Grant\u2019s tomb, her anger ironically penned just after the fall of Vicksburg. Frederick Douglass once reprimanded a New York audience 168 years ago on the Fourth of July: \u201c<\/span>your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass<\/span> fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery\u2026 your sermons and<\/span> thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are\u2026 mere\u2026 hypocrisy\u2014a thin<\/span> veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages\u201d (608)<\/span>. Although Douglass gave<\/span> this speech eight years before the war, it rings true with the endless censorship of textbooks, and<\/span> the erection of thousands of Confederate monuments. We cannot let Sarah Morgan\u2019s charcoal fire<\/span> continue to eviscerate the history of the Civil War and beyond, because the grief and anger she<\/span> felt, and many people today still feel on behalf of the Lost Cause, are incredibly powerful<\/span> weapons that can destroy anything put in their pathway. The war is still being fought today on<\/span> the grounds of truth and reality versus lies and myth, whether the discussion is about systemic<\/span> racism or the effectiveness of President Ulysses S. Grant, with both attacked with incredible<\/span> fierceness and bombarded with lies. Our responsibility is to meet these onslaughts with history,<\/span> truth, and judicious plans for the future, rising above the people who are still burning in 2021<\/span> from Sherman\u2019s flames sparked in 1865.<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Dawson, Sarah Morgan, and Charles East.\u00a0Sarah Morgan: the Civil War Diary of a<\/i>\u00a0Southern Woman<\/i>. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2011.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Douglass, Frederick. \u201cWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? .\u201d American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation. <\/em>Ed. James G. Basker. New York, NY: <\/span>The Library of America, 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frishman, Richard. “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation.” The New York Times.<\/em> 30 Nov. 2020. www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/30\/travel\/ghosts-of-segregation.html?action=click.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Julio, Everett B.D. <\/span>\u201cThe Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson.\u201d [Original painting] 1869. American Civil War Museum, Richmond. Oil on canvas; [Digital Image of Print] \u00a0Library of Congress Civil War<\/i> Online<\/i>, Library of Congress, 0AD, www.loc.gov\/pictures\/item\/2004666431\/.<\/p>\n

Light, Farron. “Interviews with Farron Light (My Grandmother) about the Pitman Confederate<\/span> Uniform.” Telephone interviews by Georgia Coats. 5 Dec. 2020 and 12 Dec. 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

McPherson, James. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture<\/i>, by Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, University of North Carolina Press, 2004.<\/p>\n

Oldham, Scott. \u201cGrant’s Tomb.\u201d Flickr, 22 Sept. 2009, distribution allowed by Creative Commons License: https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/legalcode.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. Census Bureau. “Census of the United States, 1850; <\/span>Census Place:\u00a0Yancey, North Carolina<\/i>.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls: Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Year. Roll: 649<\/i>; Page: 448b.<\/i><\/p>\n

U.S. Census Bureau. “Census of the United States, 1860; population schedule; <\/span>Census Place:\u00a0Jefferson, Carroll, Arkansas<\/i>.”\u00a0National Archives and Records Administration\u00a0microfilm publication M653, 1,438 rolls. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.\u00a0Family History Library Film: 803038,\u00a0<\/i>p711.<\/p>\n

U.S. Department of the Interior. \u201cStats Report Viewer.\u201d National Parks Service<\/i>,. irma.nps.gov\/STATS\/SSRSReports\/Park%20Specific%20Reports\/Annual%20Park%20R ecreation%20Visitation%20(1904%20-%20Last%20Calendar%20Year)?Park=APCO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drawing on her experiences of living in the South and the mysteries within her family\u2019s history, Georgia Coats passionately investigates the origins of the collective white memories of the Civil War. By questioning the ways in which history is passed down and altered over time, she deftly assesses the reasons why certain histories are preserved, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[27,26,12],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-2","tag-american-civil-war","tag-history","tag-memoir"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/368\/2021\/08\/Civil-War-horses.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/smithwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}