|
|||
|
The Civil War Monitor recently interviewed William A. Link, author of Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. In his conversation with David Thomson, Link discusses events in Civil War Atlanta and important figures in the rebuilding of the city. He also talks about his approach to teaching the Civil War. (running time: 16:36)
[This article is crossposted at UNCPressBlog.com.] Today we welcome a guest post from William A. Link, author of Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. After conquering Atlanta in the summer of 1864 and occupying it for two months, Union forces laid waste to the city in November. William T. Sherman’s invasion was a pivotal moment in the history of the South and Atlanta’s rebuilding over the following fifty years came to represent the contested meaning of the Civil War itself. The war’s aftermath brought contentious transition from Old South to New for whites and African Americans alike. In Atlanta, Cradle of the New South, Link argues that this struggle defined the broader meaning of the Civil War in the modern South, with no place embodying the region’s past and future more clearly than Atlanta. In the following post, Link briefly depicts the great destruction Atlanta faced at the end of the Civil War and how it embraced a new narrative as the flagship of the “New South.” ### A little more than a year from now, we will be commemorating the 150th anniversary of William T. Sherman’s conquest of Atlanta in September 1864. This was a crucial moment in the Civil War which helped to defeat the Confederacy and assure Union victory. To be sure, the Atlanta Campaign had much to do with the shaping of the South’s vision of itself. Sherman’s invasion also defined the character, shape, and purpose of Atlanta for the next century and more. Atlanta hadn’t been much of a city prior to secession, with about 10,000 in inhabitants in 1860. The town didn’t exist prior to 1847, when the village of Marthasville began to call itself Atlanta. For much of its antebellum history, the town struggled to define itself against a reputation for lawlessness and social disorder. The Civil War remade Atlanta, which became the most important wartime center for the western Confederate armies. Its position as a central railroad depot, manufacturing, supply, military, and hospital center set it apart. Fortunes were made; housing and commodities were at a premium. In addition, the war provided new opportunities for African Americans to acquire property, assert greater economic autonomy, and begin to build the foundation of a new, free community. keep reading →
While fighting his way toward Atlanta, William T. Sherman encountered his biggest roadblock at Kennesaw Mountain, where Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee held a heavily fortified position. The opposing armies confronted each other from June 19 to July 3, 1864, and Sherman initially tried to outflank the Confederates. His men endured heavy rains, artillery duels, sniping, and a fierce battle at Kolb’s Farm before Sherman decided to directly attack Johnston’s position on June 27. Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign, by Earl J. Hess, tells the story of an important phase of the Atlanta campaign. The following excerpt comes from the book’s Preface (pp. xii-xvi). Here, Hess explains how the nearly three weeks of battle at Kennesaw Mountain in the face of unyielding natural elements stand historically as a pivotal representation of military strategy and adaptation for both the Union and Confederate generals. ### Six weeks after setting out from Chattanooga in early May, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman hit a massive roadblock while fighting his way toward Atlanta. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee was heavily fortified along a line that stretched across the Georgia countryside, anchored on the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain near Marietta. It was the ninth fortified position Johnston had created thus far in the campaign, and it proved to be the most difficult to bypass. For two weeks, from June 19 to July 3, Sherman tried to find a way to turn Johnston’s left flank. Both armies were stretched to the breaking point in their extended positions as artillery duels, constant sniping, and a fierce battle or two erupted. As the two sides tested each other, heavy rains descended, and the dirt roads of Georgia became quagmires. Frustrated at the delay, Sherman decided to try a major frontal assault against three points of Johnston’s line on June 27. The Federals who survived that day would remember the attack for the rest of their lives. The assault of June 27 was a significant departure from Sherman’s mode of operations during the Atlanta campaign. He had more often maneuvered parts of his massive force, an army group consisting of available troops from the departments of his Military Division of the Mississippi, in order to turn enemy flanks and force the Confederates out of their trenches. Sherman did mix attacks with his turning strategy at Dalton, Resaca, New Hope Church, and Pickett’s Mill, but most of those assaults had been exploratory efforts to find and develop enemy lines and take advantage of opportunities that occurred. On June 27, the Federals knew what to expect and were hitting a heavily fortified, well-manned position. It was, in a way, an experiment, and Sherman arrived at the decision after many days of deliberation. Sherman threw eight brigades of veteran troops, some fifteen thousand men, at three locations along the heavily fortified Confederate line on June 27. keep reading →
[This article is crossposted at UNCPressBlog.com.] We welcome a guest post today from Michael T. Bernath, author of Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South, which is now available in a new paperback edition. During the Civil War, some Confederates sought to prove the distinctiveness of the southern people and to legitimate their desire for a separate national existence through the creation of a uniquely southern literature and culture. Bernath follows the activities of a group of southern writers, thinkers, editors, publishers, educators, and ministers—whom he labels Confederate cultural nationalists—in order to trace the rise and fall of a cultural movement dedicated to liberating the South from its longtime dependence on northern books, periodicals, and teachers. Bernath makes provocative arguments about the nature of Confederate nationalism, life within the Confederacy, and the perception of southern cultural distinctiveness. In the following guest post, Bernath highlights April 28 as the sesquicentennial anniversary of delegates from the Confederate states forming the South’s first and only national teachers’ organization. ### 2013 will mark many of the Civil War’s most famous sesquicentennial anniversaries—January 1 (Emancipation Proclamation), May 10 (Stonewall Jackson’s death), July 3 (Pickett’s Charge), July 4 (the fall of Vicksburg), November 19 (Gettysburg Address), just to name a few. By contrast, April 28 will pass with little notice (except perhaps among the most dedicated Civil War buffs interested in the fight at Choctaw Bayou, Louisiana). It was on that day, however, one hundred and fifty years ago, in Columbia, South Carolina, that nearly seventy delegates from six Confederate states met to form the South’s first and only national teachers’ organization, The Educational Association of the Confederate States of America. Over the course of three days, the men (membership was restricted to male Confederate citizens) of the newly founded Association drew up a constitution, elected officers, and passed a series of resolutions that were then distributed and reprinted throughout the Confederacy. Their stated purpose was to aid the South in casting off its longtime dependence on northern textbooks and northern teachers and to ensure that a victorious Confederacy emerged from the war with both its political and its intellectual independence intact. keep reading →
We welcome a guest post today from Rod Andrew Jr., author of Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer, which is now available in a new paperback edition. One of the South’s most illustrious military leaders, Wade Hampton III was for a time the commander of all Lee’s cavalry and at the end of the Civil War was the highest-ranking Confederate cavalry officer. Andrew’s critical biography sheds light on Hampton’s central role during Reconstruction as a conservative white leader, governor, U.S. senator, and Redeemer; his heroic image in the minds of white southerners; and his positions and apparent contradictions on race and the role of African Americans in the New South. In the following guest post, Andrew discusses South Carolina’s 1876 gubernatorial election and the six months that Democrat Wade Hampton and Republican Daniel Chamberlain simultaneously claimed victory. ### On November 28, 1876, Wade Hampton, self-proclaimed governor of South Carolina, prevented a bloody riot at the South Carolina state house. Five thousand of his armed supporters were preparing to overwhelm the thin line of federal troops surrounding the edifice and violently depose the other claimant to the office, the incumbent Republican “carpetbagger” Daniel Chamberlain. Confidently and calmly, Hampton asked his followers to disperse, promising that his cause would triumph by peaceful means. In a sense, Hampton’s speech protected the physical safety of his rival. But it also bolstered Hampton’s claim of his right to govern—not just among white Democrats, but also in the minds of Republicans inside and outside the state. By proving that he had the power to unleash violence but also to restrain it, Hampton fulfilled society’s expectations of the southern patriarch, and of his generation’s longings for order in a chaotic time in the nation’s history. The contrast between the two candidates was clear. Hampton had been a wealthy slaveowner, the scion of one of the state’s most prominent antebellum families, and its most prominent and beloved military leader in the Civil War. His claims to leadership rested on his social status, his soldierly reputation, and the old paternalism that looked to men like him as natural leaders and protectors, and as competent wielders of force. Chamberlain was an outsider from Massachusetts. Because of the recent enfranchisement of black men, his Republican Party had been able to dominate the state’s politics for nearly a decade. Both men, interestingly, tried to position themselves as champions of order and “good government.” Hampton sought to overthrow the corrupt Republican regime in Columbia and promised to protect black civil rights; Chamberlain had tried to bring reform and publicly dismissed Hampton’s promises to black voters. It was one of the most corrupt and violent campaigns in American electoral history. Both sides cheated and sought to intimidate their rivals—Hampton’s Democrats, though outnumbered, were far better at it. In nearly every town where Hampton spoke, he was accompanied by “Red Shirts”—armed men marching on foot or on horseback. Hampton spoke of a return to honor and principle in government; he promised peace, and the Red Shirts committed no violence in his presence. Elsewhere they could be murderous, threatening individual Republicans and provoking deadly riots. keep reading → |
|||
|
Copyright © 2013 UNC Press Civil War 150 - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
|||
