Transcript Historians and the Civil War Era

Historians and the Civil War Era
Historiography and the quest for
scholarly understanding
General Areas of Scholarly
Inquiry
• Why did Secession and the Civil War
occur?
• What led to the triumph of the Union/the
failure of the Confederacy?
• Was Reconstruction a success or failure and
who’s to blame?
Causation
• Contending Civilizations.
• Fracture of the political system over slavery
in the territories.
Contending Civilizations
• Materialist School: Charles A. Beard, The
Rise of American Civilization; Frank L.
Owsley, The Irrepressible Conflict.
(industrial north v. agrarian South).
• Antagonistic Societies: Eugene Genovese,
The Political Economy of Slavery; Eric
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.
Critique
• Struggles to account for the “timing” of secession
and the “decision” to challenge South Carolina
over Fort Sumter.
• Leads to a reductionism that the Union couldn’t
“permanently endure half-slave and half-free.”
• Tends to create a binary of slave states and free
states, which ignores how free states became free,
how free they actually were, and mutes the
tensions in the slave states about the future of
slavery.
Beard-1874-1948
Genovese-1930-
Fractured National Politics
• Avery O. Craven, The Coming of the Civil War;
Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s.
• James G. Randall, “The Blundering Generation,”
MVHR.
• David Potter, The Impending Crisis.
• Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the
American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and
the Onset of the Civil War.
• Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American
West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny.
Craven-1885-1980
Michael Fitzgibbon Holt
Critique
• Suggests that war was a tragedy to be
avoided through compromise.
• Fails to account for how to end slavery.
• Ignores white racism
Triumph of Union/Failure of
CSA
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Bruce Catton, The Army of the Potomac;
Hattaway and Jones, Why the North Won;
Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War;
Russell Weigley, A Great Civil War;
Frank L. Owsley, States Rights in the
Confederacy;
• Paul Escott, Jefferson Davis and the Failure of
Confederate Nationalism;
• William W. Freehling, The South versus the South.
Catton-1899-1978
Gallagher
Gallagher w/
J. W.
Other War Years issues
• Lincoln as Emancipator: LaWanda Cox v. Armstead
Robinson, Vincent Harding
• Lincoln and habeas corpus—Mark Neeley
• Guerilla war strategy—Peter Berringer
• Who was the best general? (everybody has an opinion, but
only mine is correct: Grant, Grant, and Grant, but Lee was
good, too.)
• “Rich Man’s War, poor man’s fight”—Not. See Joseph
Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse.
• Homefront studies (Gender, ethnic and class issues, and
relationship between homefront and battlefield)
Reconstruction
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Dunning School
Progressives
Revisionists
Post-Revisionists
Dunning School
• William A. Dunning, Reconstruction,
Political and Economic;
• Walter L. Fleming, The Sequel of
Appomattox;
• E. Merton Coulter, The South During
Reconstruction.
Progressive
• George F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew
Johnson and the Radicals;
• Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A
Study of Andrew Johnson and the Radicals.
Revisionists
• W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in
America;
• Eric L. McKitric, Andrew Johnson and
Reconstruction;
• James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality;
• Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction;
• Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction.
McPherson-1936-
DuBois—1868-1963
Post Revisionists
• Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long;
• Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom:
Emancipation and Its Legacy.
Foner—1943-
Critique
• Reconstruction historiography is question driven
and determined by the times of the questioner than
the “realities” of Reconstruction.
• No contemporary consensus—how to link national
policy with biographies of southern whites and
blacks.
• Best single volume: Foner, Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution (1988—which
should tell you something!)