The Lost Cause

In 1866, the term "the Lost Cause" first appeared when Edward Pollard, a lawyer and journalist, published a book titled "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." His book was a history of the war that included the rise and progress of the Confederates and how their cause was the "most gigantic struggle of the world's history." Pollard was not the only person to take up this cause and many former Confederate officers, like Lieutenant General Jubal Early, joined him. Their stated goal was to raise the South above politics and rumors and reveal the truth of the matter.

In short, they meant to change history. (https://archive.org/details/lostcausenewsout00poll)

Photo: Edward Pollard nps.gov

Today, 150 years after the war ended, the causes of the war are still being debated. But in 1861, did the men who joined the Confederate cause misunderstand why they were going to war? The historical record is clear that this is not so.

The confusion that is found today is due to the Lost Cause and its revisionist history.

Up until the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union was fighting the war in order to preserve the nation as a whole, while the Confederacy was fighting to keep the institution of slavery. Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens stated unambiguously that slavery was the reason for secession in his "Corner Stone Speech."
(http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/)

In addition, each state that seceded issued a statement for secession and that defending slavery was the reason, one after another in the Declaration of Causes of South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas. In their own words: (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/)

Slavery was the cause of the American Civil War and the cause for which the Confederacy was fighting.

Photo: rockysmith.net (http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/stephens.html)

The post-war period between 1865 and 1877 is known as Reconstruction, the time the nation took to reunite and rebuild. Some advances were made for African Americans but the rights they gained were quickly taken away by Jim Crow Laws. The states that left the Union were required to renounce their secession, to abolish slavery and to pay off war debts. South Carolina has never renounced secession and Mississippi did not ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery until 2013.

Photo: usatoday.com

The war lasted much longer than anyone had anticipated and both sides had believed that they would be victorious by Christmas of 1861. Instead, the war dragged on for four years, took over 600,000 American lives and resulted in the burning of cities and destruction of property. When the war ended, the country was exhausted and ready to put the conflict behind them and move on. This allowed the Southern revisionists to quietly begin promoting the Lost Cause and they were successful to a remarkable degree. 

Photo: americancivilwarstory.com

What the Lost Causers wished to convey to posterity were the atrocities committed by the Union army, the disadvantage that the Confederates faced, their noble perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, and, primarily, to distance the cause of war from slavery. Instead, they claimed that they simply wanted to maintain their idyllic and pastoral way of life. The Lost Cause placed the blame of the war on President Lincoln and the Union for limiting states' rights. Their efforts were advanced by the Daughters of the Confederacy, United Confederate Veterans, former President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis's writings as well as the films Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. 

Photo: imdb.com

Not only were their efforts successful in romanticizing the antebellum South, changing attitudes about the cause of the war and creating sympathy for the South, they also changed what the flag of the Confederacy meant. The flag that today is known as the Confederate flag is the Battle Flag of Army of Tennessee and flew above the army during conflicts.

But the flag was not widely used immediately after the war. In fact, its prominence in the South did not occur until 1948 when the Dixiecrats were running on a platform of racial segregation. As the nation moved towards desegregation, more and more Confederate flags were raised in protest. 

Photo: cwmemory.com

Today, proponents for the flag claim that it is not indicative of racism, but that it represents their pride in the heritage of the South that the Lost Cause created. However, its use over time demonstrates that it does indeed represent racism. It was flown above armies fighting to maintain the status quo and keep an entire race of people enslaved. It is used by the Ku Klux Klan, a racist hate group. And it was flown in support of segregation, a time of extreme racial hatred in America. To argue that the flag represents heritage and not hatred is to perpetuate the lie that is the Lost Cause.

Photo: newsweek.com

"It will rise again now as a place of peace"

52 years ago, the nation experienced an act of white supremacy terrorism when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. Four little girls were killed in that bombing that Dr. King described as "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetuated against humanity." Yesterday, another act of white supremacy terrorism took place at another historically black church, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Photo: nydailynews.com

Also known as "Mother Emanuel," the church was established in 1818 under the leadership of Reverend Morris Brown. Brown was a free African American and a member of the Methodist Church in Charleston, but due to racial segregation he established Mother Emanuel as a church for persons of color. 4000 African Americans followed him and became the congregation of Emanuel AME Church. 

Photo: blackpast.org (Reverend Morris Brown)

In 1822, Denmark Vesey, who had bought his own freedom and tried futilely to purchase the freedom of his enslaved family, planned a slave uprising in Charleston. Ultimately, his plan was revealed to white authorities. The uprising never occurred and Vesey was caught and executed. In addition, Mother Emanuel was investigated by the authorities to discover if the church and congregation had had any role in the conspiracy, since Vesey had been a founding member. Reverend Brown was also investigated but not convicted; instead, he was banished north to Philadelphia where he took over as Reverend for AME Bethel Church. White supremacists burned Mother Emanuel.

Photo: huffingtonpost.com (Denmark Vesey)

Mother Emanuel was rebuilt but the congregation could not return because in the 1830s, all-black churches were banned. Despite the ban, services continued but were conducted in secret until the end of the American Civil War. On August 31, 1886, the church was destroyed again but this time the cause was an earthquake. It was rebuilt as a brick structure, rather than wooden, and was completed by 1891.

During the Civil Rights Movement, both Dr. King and Coretta Scott King visited Mother Emanuel and urged the congregation to become involved. 

Photo: thegospelcoalition.org

Mother Emanuel is the oldest AME Church in the South and has the oldest black congregation south of Baltimore. Mother Emanuel's history is intertwined with the African American struggle to gain equality. Violence towards African Americans for racial reasons illustrates that the end of white male supremacy is inevitable; thus, their acts of terror, hatred and fear. 

Photo: emanuelamechurch.org

Today, President Obama spoke about the shooting and offered his condolences: "Mother Emanuel Church and its congregation have risen before from flames, from an earthquake, from other dark times to give hope to generations of Charlestonians, and with our prayer and our love and the buoyancy of hope, it will rise again now as a place of peace."

Please keep the victims of the shooting and the members of Mother Emanuel in your heart during this time of pain and healing. 

Moonshine

The Appalachian Mountains are often associated with moonshine, an illegally produced whiskey. Moonshine has been tied to the region since the 1700s when the Scotch-Irish came to North America from Northern Ireland and brought their recipes with them. Oftentimes, corn farmers would turn some of their crop into moonshine in order to more easily transport their goods. But moonshine gained notoriety during Prohibition.

Photo: jamestown-ri.info

In 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was passed and alcoholic beverages were banned in the United States. However, the law was not enforced rigorously and moonshiners made a profit. The temperance movement had succeeded in officially banning the sale and purchase of alcohol, but many people did not agree with the temperance movement and, during Prohibition, an easy way to obtain alcohol was to purchase it from moonshiners. 

Photo: pbs.org

In the Catoctin Range of the Appalachian Mountains was the Blue Blazes Still. Generally, moonshine operations were small, family-owned stills, but the Blue Blazes Still was a large-scale, commercial level production facility. Despite its size, knowledge of the Blue Blazes Still was a well-kept secret, until 1929. 

Photo: thurmontfirst.com

Eventually, the Frederick County Sheriff's Department caught wind of an illegal whiskey still outside of Thurmont, Maryland. Deputy Sheriff Verner Redmond was given the task of raiding the still in order to shut it down. Redmond arranged with the informant, Charles Lewis, that two of his deputies would meet with Lewis near the still and then go and purchase a gallon of whiskey. Redmond and three other deputies would follow behind to complete the raid. 

On July 31, 1929, Deputies John Hemp and Leslie Hoffman arrived at the meeting spot with Lewis, but the informant was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the moonshiners were hiding nearby, waiting for the police. Unaware of their observers, the police advanced to the till where the moonshiners began firing guns at the police. The deputies returned fire and a fire fight ensued, in which one officer was fatally shot. After chasing the moonshiners away, the police completed the raid by destroying the still and eventually, some of the moonshiners were caught and put on trial. 

Photo: livingnewdeal.org

Today, the site of the Blue Blazes Still is in Catoctin Mountain Park. A whiskey still can be seen there, but it is not like the commercial Blue Blazes Still, which was destroyed in 1929. Instead, it is a small-scale still that represents what more typical Appalachian stills looked like. 

Photo: Hilary Grabowska

Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death

April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted in one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in human history. This eruption was even more significant because it occurred during the Little Ice Age and contributed to climate change. 

Photo: nbcnews.com

A year later, in June, 1816, ten inches of snow fell in New England. This was not good news for farmers because it prevented their crops from growing. They had already been struggling with a persistent fog that was created by the volcano. The backwards weather continued through the summer, freezing crops and causing a food shortage. Life in New England was especially difficult because what little food they did have could not be supplemented by foodstuffs from the west, since railroads did not yet exist to connect the frontier with the east. 

Photo: faculty.washington.edu

Frost was reported in Virginia; former President Thomas Jefferson suffered crop losses at Monticello and he was thrust further into debt. While Virginia felt the affects, it was New England that suffered the most and tens of thousands of people began to leave the region, relocating to the west and helping to expand the young country. Joseph Smith was among those who left Vermont and he would go on to found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Europe, Mary Shelley and friends were forced to remain indoors during their Swiss holiday and challenged each other to write scary stories and it was then that Frankenstein was written. That cold summer was called "the year without a summer," and it changed the world. 

Photo: pbs.org (Joseph Smith, born in Vermont in 1805)

Photo: biography.com (Mary Shelley)

The Best Idea Liz Putnam Ever Had

August 25, 2016 will mark the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. But in 1953, there was an article in Harper's Magazine by historian Bernard DeVoto in which he suggested that the National Parks be surrounded by the US Army in order to protect the parks from the hoards of visitors. The parks and the Park Service were struggling in the '50s because of the expendable income that Americans had after the war and the parks and the National Park Service were underfunded. DeVoto's proposal to solve a very real problem caught the attention of college student Liz Putnam.

Photo: thesca.org

Liz Putnam was a student at Vasser College and, after reading DeVoto's article, she switched her major to Geology and wrote "A Proposal for A Student Conservation Corps" as her senior thesis. Since she had changed her major so late in her college career, she missed a required summer course, but her advisor arranged a unique experience for her. She spent the summer volunteering with the newly formed Upper Hoosick Valley Watershed Association. This experience allowed her to see what did and did not work when setting up a new organization. 

Photo: hudsonhoosicpartnership.org

In August 1955, Putnam went on an excursion to the National Parks to propose her idea of a student conservation corps and to hear what park staff thought about it. Putnam was joined by Marty Hayne Talbot and, at the suggestion of former National Park Service Director Horace Albright, they visited Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. After submitting the report to Albright, her proposal became a reality and Olympic and Mount Rainier requested to be test parks for the first trial of the Student Conservation Association. In 1957, 53 college and high school student volunteers were sent into parks to assist in a number of different projects. 

Photo: thesca.org

Today, Putnam's college thesis has evolved into an extremely useful tool for the National Park Service. Over 3,000 students volunteer annually with the SCA and provide over one million hours of service, completing projects that would be neglected due to continued and persistent underfunding of the National Park Service. If the Army had to guard the perimeter of the National Parks, would we have 407 National Park units today?

Photo: exotichikes.com

The Destruction of the Tea

On December 16, 1773, a group of men made their way to Boston Harbor and onto merchant ships. Once aboard, they gathered up chests of tea and threw them into the harbor. Today, this event is called the Boston Tea Party, but when the events occurred, it was called the "Destruction of the Tea in Boston." Calling it a Tea Party at the time would have trivialized their actions, when in reality their actions sent a very strong message to England.

Photo: wnd.com

At the end of the French and Indian War, the British Parliament needed funds and one untapped resource were the colonies in America, where a large portion of the war had taken place. The colonists, however, found Parliament's actions unacceptable. They saw this increase in their taxes as a violation of their rights, which were guaranteed to them in the English Bill of Rights, because at the time the colonists still viewed themselves as British citizens. The British in England did not view the colonists as equals and it was their superior attitude, and increased taxation for a war that was not caused by the colonists, that sparked the beginning of the American Revolution.

Photo: duhaime.org

In particular, the Tea Act rankled the colonists and the Sons of Liberty. The Tea Act did not add to the taxation of the colonies but instead placed the East India Trading Company above all else. The Trading Company was in financial trouble and had 18 million pounds of tea that needed to be sold. The Tea Act required that the tea be sent directly to the colonies where it would be sold for a bargain price. However, the higher taxes on the colonists were still in place and many colonists viewed the Tea Act as a way to buy their favor. In addition, the Tea Act hurt local merchants.

Photo: landofthebrave.info

When the ships arrived with the tea in Boston, the colonists attempted to turn back the ships, but the governor held the ships at port. British law required the ships to be unloaded and a duty paid within 20 days or customs could confiscate the tea. On the night of the 19th day, the Sons of Liberty took action. They disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, boarded the ships and proceeded to dump more than 300 chests of tea into the harbor.

Photo: britannica.com

In response, the British closed the port of Boston and placed the Coercive Acts on the Colony of Massachusetts. These acts took away many rights from the citizens in order to punish them for their actions against the Tea Act. This sparked even more dissent in the colonies and the First Continental Congress was organized. The British plan to make an example of Massachusetts backfired and the American Revolution quickly followed.

Photo: loc.gov

Old Ironsides

At the end of the American Revolution, the fledgling country was strapped for cash and in 1785 the last ship of the U.S. Navy was sold, ending U.S. armed maritime presence. However, that same year, U.S. merchant ships fell prey to the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson pushed for protection for the merchant ships in the form of warships until their efforts came to fruition in the form of the Naval Act of 1794.

Photo: archives.gov

March 27, 1794, the U.S. Congress passed the Naval Act, which established a permanent Navy for the U.S.  Four warships began to be constructed until peace was reached with the pirates and a clause in the Naval Act was put into practice: if peace were achieved, construction would end. After some prompting from President Washington, Congress passed an act that allowed three of the ships to be completed: the United States, the Constellation and the Constitution. 

Photo: nps.gov (The Charlestown Navy Yard where the Constitution was built.)

September 20, 1796, the Constitution was launched in the presence of President John Adams. Unfortunately, the weight of the ship prevented her from being launched into the water and it wasn't until October 21 that the Constitution made it into Boston Harbor. 

Photo: jrusselljinishiangallery.com 

In 1798, all ships were ordered to sea as a part of the Quasi War with France and the Constitution patrolled the U.S. coast and the Caribbean until 1802. Between then and the War of 1812, the Constitution saw action in the Mediterranean. Soon after war was declared in 1812, the Constitution set sail and her captain was under the impression that he was joining a U.S. squadron but he quickly realized he was amongst five British ships. When the British recognized the Constitution as American, they quickly gave chase but the Constitution and her crew escaped. 

Photo: armchairgeneral.com

On August 12, 1812, the Constitution and the Guerriere came within range of each other and a battle ensued. Severe damage was done to the British Guerriere and the two ships ended up entangled but in the end, the Guerriere surrendered. Despite having many shots fired at her, the Constitution suffered very little damage and one soldier reportedly exclaimed "Huzzah! Her sides are like iron." This quote earned the ship the nickname Old Ironsides. 

Photo: archives.hnsa.org

Today, Old Iron Sides sits at port in the Charlestown Harbor in Boston. She is the world's oldest commissioned Navy vessel still afloat and she is used by the Navy to educate the public on the Navy's role in war and peace.

Photo: Hilary Grabowska