Blog Post #5 - An Article, Useful?

     This week I decided to analyze another one of my secondary sources, although I chose an article. The article Miranda El-Rayess wrote discussed the connection between women in art and the violent painting slashing that members of the WSPU perpetrated. The beginning of this article showed a lot of promise discussing how the women managed such a feat as to enter a museum and proceed to desecrate a painting. El-Rayess includes direct quotes from the women who destroyed the paintings, and includes background information on the painting chosen and the reaction to the attack. This source could be particularly helpful in the description of painting desecration since none of my other sources directly relate to it. Instead, the sources mention it in passing, if they refer to it at all.

     Sadly, after the first four pages of detailed information concerning one specific instance of destruction by Mary Aldham, the article delves into the rather useless discussion of art. Yet it does have a strong quote from Aldham, “I have tried to destroy a valuable picture because I wish to show the public that they have no security,” (El-Rayess 30). This would have been useful if it centered on women in art, or even art during the period of my study, the early twentieth century. Instead, the article relates how Henry James sought to connect the idea of violence with portraiture in his own stories. While his extensive usage of paintings and analysis in his work, this does not relate to my topic at all, especially when one considers that James’ writings are all works of fiction.

Source:

El-Rayess, Miranda. “The Violence of Representation: James, Sargent and the Suffragette.” Critical Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2011): 30-45. Academic Search Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed September 18, 2013).

Literature Review

My focus this week has been on my literature review. I had read three books about taverns in colonial America.

Taverns and Drinking in Early America, written by Sharon Salinger, focuses on taverns during colonial America. She does not include taverns during the American Revolution. While this book does not have the America Revolution, as I would like, it does fantastic background for taverns in colonial America. She pays particular attention to laws pertaining to alcohol vs. the observance of the law. She notes that while, most, colonies had strict laws against drunkenness and strict laws about taverns in general, the law itself was mostly disregarded by the masses. Magistrates in charge of persecuting people breaking the law were often found in taverns themselves. There were a low number of people prosecuted, compared to the amount of people breaking the law, during the colonial years. Salinger notes the difference between sectarian (religiously ruled) colonies and non-sectarian colonies. She argued that sectarian colonies were more strict in their approach on upholding the law, while non-sectarian colonies paid less attention to the laws.

Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia, written by Peter Thompson, also focuses on taverns during the colonial era, but he expands his timeline to include the American Revolution. Thompson focuses more heavily on the social aspect of taverns and how that influenced the culture of Philadelphia. Since Philadelphia was a center of rebellion, it is interesting to read on how taverns helped influence the Revolution. His approach is centered on the changes in culture from the colonial era through the Revolution. Thompson favors using first person accounts to expand his idea of the ‘big picture’ of culture during this time.

In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts, written by David Conroy is a staple in the realm of taverns in colonial America. Taverns were also known as public houses, dram houses, ordinaries or tippling house. This book expresses the culture and social aspects of taverns, in Massachusetts, during the colonial era, as well as during the Revolution. His chapters focus on certain people, public houses and cities. This approach gives a very detailed approach to taverns. It also adds a depth to the story of the role taverns played during the Revolution.

These books have been a central part to my paper because of the amount of information they provide. They are also very solid and well written, which provides me with a strong secondary basis that will give my paper a sturdy base on which to stand (minus my primary sources).

In all honesty, these books, while very thick and timely to read, have been really interesting!

Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest to Lutinent Colonel Thomas M. Jack, Major-General Commanding. April 15, 1864

"The victory was complete, and the loss of the enemy will never be known from the fact that large numbers ran into the river and were shot and drowned. ... The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards... It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners." 

Since I cannot post the link to this primary as I have with others, I have provided part of the letter from Forrest to Jack that spoke of the tremendous victory by the Rebels at Fort Pillow that I will reference in this post.

The tone taken by Forrest in this particular communication to his superior, Lient. Col. Jack was very grandiose. In parts of the letter he speaks of clearing all Tennessee of Greenbacks and Tories and says with time he could do the same with Kentucky. The final sentence provided above is another example of grandiose speech by Forrest. I say this because previous to Fort Pillow, a very select few battles featured black soldiers. Black soldiers were not even allowed to serve in the U.S. Army until the beginning of 1863.  Forrest was applying one battle in which Rebels heavily out numbered the Union forces to the entire viability of the black soldier. Forrest, aside from having the common Southern views of the time, also hoped to demonstrate the inequality and inability of blacks to the Northern people because less than a week before the Battle of Fort Pillow, the 13th Amendment was passed in the Senate. One could argue that Fort Pillow was not meant to be a regular battle in Forrest's mind, it was meant to be a statement by the South that blacks were not worthy of the freedoms they would be granted in the United States.

The tone taken by Forrest in his letters to superiors has been noted by other secondary authors who claimed the massacre to be a blood-lust for blacks by the South. In reviewing this particular letter, I am not surprised they arrived at such a conclusion. There is a compelling argument to be made that Forrest's views towards blacks were extremely unfavorable and that the massacre was carried out in pure racism. However, since I am evaluating the Northern news reports, speeches and congressional findings with scrutiny that they were meant to be political, I should also take the same approach to Forrest.

First, Forrest is writing to a superior, he cannot claim (as secondary authors have) that the massacre occurred because he had no control over his forces once the Fort was taken. If he were to say that he had no control and thats why so many blacks were murdered, his position could be in jeopardy.  The South was more concerned about winning back land than about Reconstruction in 1864 so any win would be beneficial. Forrest may have seen Fort Pillow as a possible statement win that might scare black soldiers from fighting in the future if his forces destroyed them in large numbers. If that were to happen, the South would be in better shape since the Confederate Army struggled to find soldiers. In the letter, Forrest mentions to Jack that he has not been conscripting, or forcing men to join the Army, because he has been too busy fighting. If Jack was pressing upon Forrest and other colonels to actively recruit while they went base to base fighting, that could be an indication that at this time in the war the South knew it had to do something drastic to even the difference in the size of the armies.

Although I am making some claims based off of speculation, I think it is entirely possible that Forrest embraced the blood shed at Fort Pillow as a moment to make a statement to the North right after the passing of the 13th Amendment and the use of black soldiers.

Forrest, Nathan Bedford. letter to Thomas M. Jack "Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest to Lutinent Colonel Thomas M. Jack, Major-General Commanding." (April 15, 1865) in United States War Department. “Operations in Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and North Georgia. January 1-April 30, 1864.” In The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1-703. Washington: Govt. Print Office 1891. http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/text/waro0057.txt

Image Evaluation

I answered the questions in the Rampola book for the class presentation so I am pasting that document in first before going more in depth.

1.     There is no mention of the Author’s name in the paper the work comes from or in on the photo. Therefore I cannot evaluate his/her other works. However, based on the publication it was posted in and the known illustrators who published in the publication, the author is probably a Union supporter looking to expose the inhumane nature of the Rebel soldiers. 

2.     The work was made in 1864 at the end of April, approximately two weeks after the end of the Battle of Fort Pillow. It was commissioned by Harper’s Weekly, a New York based political cartoon magazine. During the Civil War the magazine published work with a Union slant.

3.     Harper’s Weekly was characterized as having being moderate leading up to the Civil War, and a pro-Union during the war. The illustration may not be part of a specific intellectual movement in art, however, it was part of their Civil War coverage.

4.     The illustrations available online seem to all be similar in nature to this illustration, where white southern soldiers are slaughtering black northern soldiers. 

The illustration above comes from Harper's Weekly, a northern political cartoon magazine. The illustration was published April 30, 1864, 18 days after the Battle of Fort Pillow. Two days after the Battle of Fort Pillow press was already being circulated around the Union that described the events of the battle. This illustration was presumably not made by someone who was at the Battle. Instead, it is likely the illustration was made by someone who based his work off of testimony and intended to illustrate a recreation of the massacre. 

One reason to infer this is because there is no background to the illustration other than gun smoke. Had the artist been recreating what they had seen, the background would likely have included the gunboat that was off shore and shown an unorganized chaos of Rebels chasing black soldiers who fled towards the river and tried to swim to the gun boat. However, this illustration seems to me to be portraying the black soldiers being entrapped by a line of Rebel cavalry outside of the Fort (not pictured, so I assume outside) and those men killing the black soldiers while having them surrounded. 

pOne part of the illustration that is very interesting to me is the higher ranking Union soldier at the right of the image who is left untouched in the carnage as the two Rebel soldiers slit the throat of a black soldier who looks like he had already been wounded during the battle. I find this interesting because Northern media and testimony did not focus only on the barbarism used in killing black soldiers but also of the Rebels trying to murder the white soldiers of the Union Army. Also, it seems odd that in trying to portray the barbarism, the high ranking soldier is left untouched by Southern soldiers. In fact, part of the reason that there was so much confusion on the Union side was because a Rebel sniper had killed General Booth, the head of the Union forces stationed at Fort Pillow, early on in the battle. Mismanagement by Commander Bradford, the man who took over for Booth after his death, in the secondary literature is a main reason why the Union failed to keep the Fort. However, in this illustration the higher ranked white Northern soldier is left untouched amongst the slaughter. Another aspect I find interesting about this man is that he seems to be observing all that is happening by facing the battle. If the illustration were to more accurately depict testimony given on the Battle, this man would have been fleeing to the river for dear life as well as giving some indication of surrendering.

“The Massacre at Fort Pillow” an illustration. Harper’s Weekly (April 30, 1864): 284. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1864/april/battle-fort-pillow.htm

Minstrel performers: Were they completely against the North and the Freedom of Slaves?

Working on my literature review, I have dived in my book titled Blacking it up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America by Robert Toll. The purpose of this book, as the author explains, is to look at the questions that most scholars have about this time period, such as where did this type of minstrelsy come from, why was blackface minstrelsy so popular for so long, and of course why did entertainers see the need to perform blackface in the first place. While blackface minstrelsy began twenty years before the civil war, it hit it's height during the war itself, where it was able to feed off the efforts of the abolitionist in the North, and the slaves and their owners in the South.

One of the areas I am looking at looks at whether or not the minstrel performers were for the South, as one might imagine, or whether they could have been for the North. Some of the music expresses that there might be have been a mixture, some performers portraying and aiding the South against the emancipation, some supporting the efforts of the Northerners for emancipation. Toll believes that there might have been a shift in belief, and that many of them were simply supporting the one who was winning at the time.

For the most part, he believes that a shift occurred, stating that “Although they were completely opposed to emancipation at first...had to admit that blacks were earning their freedom by fighting and dying for the Union and the American Creed. Furthermore, as the frustrating war dragged on...they became increasingly vindictive of the South, gloating over each victory and delighting in the news of Sherman burning his way across the confederacy” (117). The rest continues, using the example of the famous piece “Babylon is fallen” to portray that not only did the minstrelsy performers support the emancipation of slaves, they also had allies with several of them, even though they didn't fully support every idea that the Northerners had.  

Titanic Historian Stephanie Barczewski

     For this week's blog entry I am going to discuss Titanic: A Night Remembered by Stephanie Barczewski, published in 2004. Barczewski is professor at Clemson University in South Carolina and received her PhD from Yale. The title of her book is a play on words from the book I wrote about last week, the golden standard of Titanic histories, Walter Lord's A Night to Remember. Barczewski included the full story of the sinking of the Titanic based upon her interpretations of primary accounts, as well as six biographies of people who died.  She also includes in the appendix a list of all of the people who survived, their class, and which lifeboat they were in. Although the focus of my research has been concerned with who survived and why, Barczewski focused more on who died and why which is also useful to my research. I have learned a lot from Barczewski about the Titanic and I would like to highlight some interesting things she discussed concerning social class in addition to both survivors and victims of the Titanic's sinking.
    
     From this book, I have concluded three definite answers as to why some people stayed aboard the ship after they knew it was sinking and that they would probably die. 1) Many passengers did not take warnings seriously, it was midnight and many were in bed and just didn't believe the ship was sinking. 2) Many women were reluctant to leave their husbands because the lifeboats were loaded with only women and children at first. 3) Much of the crew were dedicated to performing their tasks including the lifeboat loaders, the officers, the captain, the engineers below trying to keep the power going for the wireless operators, and the band who played their instruments until the ship sank.

     Here are some interesting facts highlighted in Barczewski's book:

• First Class: These passengers were worth collectively over five hundred million dollars. They stayed in suites aboard the Titanic with fifty foot long promenade decks and paid around twenty thousand dollars in today's currency. The Titanic was legendary, the most luxurious boat ever built, which is why it attracted so many wealthy people. Alexander Carlisle, the managing director of the company who built the Titanic, once stated "we spent two hours discussing the carpets for the first class cabins and fifteen minutes discussing lifeboats" (3).
• Second Class: According to Barczewski, "the second class was the equivalent of the first on most ships with its own electric elevator, its own impressive staircase and its own smoking room and library" (8). Many of the second class passengers were professionals in the upper or upper middle classes going on vacation.
• Third class: Fifty-four percent of all passengers on the Titanic were in the Third class. According to Barczewski, "almost all of them had purchased one way tickets as they headed towards a new- and, they hoped, better- life in the United States" (9). The first passengers to know that the ship was sinking were single men in the forward lower decks who saw water flowing into their rooms (18).
• The only place where the second and third classes could mingle with first class was on Sunday during religious services.
• Stewards were ordered to knock on every passenger's door to tell them to put on life vests and get to the life boats. Not until 1 am, over an hour after hitting the iceberg does Barczewski argue there was a panic and rush to the boats when the crew started to shoot off distress rockets.
• There were several intriguing incidents the author included about people who wanted to stay on the boat and some who wanted to leave. One woman named Ida Straus had gotten into a lifeboat but climbed out telling her husband "We have been living together for many years, where you go, I go" (23). In another incident, a man dressed up with a woman's shawl in order to sneak on a boat. Another man tried to follow after him and also look like a woman but according to Barczewski "he landed among a group of second class men, who beat him senseless" (23).

Trauma: A Cultural Look on Bloody Sunday

Something that is not often mentioned, but often occurs in traumatic events is the emotional repercussions of a violent affair. Graham Dawson in “Trauma Place and the Politics of Memory: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972-2004.” Here, Dawson’s intent is laid out in three parts: the investigation of the cultural and historical context of the landscape, the analysis of the political repercussions Bloody Sunday had on the nationalist community, and the exploration of psychological trauma Bloody Sunday caused individuals. His argument, which is never specifically stated, reveals itself to be the assertion that cultural community, political pressure, and especially the upsurge of violence later experienced in the Troubles created a severe form of trauma for the surviving victims of Bloody Sunday which has yet to heal.

The town the Bloody Sunday occurred in was, in itself, a place that had long been in political contestation.  The Protestant unionists referred to it as Londonderry, effectively showing its willing affiliation with Great Britain, while the Catholic nationalists saw it as simply Derry (Dawson 157). The Catholics in the area, though a majority in Derry, experienced massive discrimination from the Protestant community, who controlled the economic, political, and social affairs. The  Bogside, the area of which Bloody Sunday took place, was a ghetto of sorts delegated to the Catholic community. This segregation and repression was only intensified by the British military troops, who had been present in the Bogside since 1970 (Dawson 160).

The political aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Dawson describes as one that led to an increased participation in political commemoration. Involvement in the IRA was certainly a primary outcome of Bloody Sunday; “It stimulated recruitment to the IRA, escalating and prolonging the war” (Dawson 163). The investigation conducted by British figures also caused a political uproar, with many nationalists claiming that the Widgery Tribunal was a ‘whitewash’ which exonerated British soldiers from any wrongdoing (163). But aside from the violent aspect of politics, Bloody Sunday also gave way to peaceful methods of commemoration. The Bloody Sunday Initiative, a group formed by the relatives of Bloody Sunday victims, is such a group. According to Dawson, their “focus is the future; helping to work for British withdrawal on to build an independent, pluralistic and democratic Ireland, based on principles of ‘non-violent action’ and the rejection of bigotry and sectarianism” (166).

This leaves Dawson’s main argument, the assertion that the trauma received by victims and their relatives had severe psychological repercussions. He associates it with PTSD, and stresses that location and politics play their part in this emotional trauma. In concerns to location, “personal life stories reveal the often deeply-troubled and unresolved relation to the specific places where their relatives were shot and died.” Aside from the fact that the Bogside area still holds haunting symptoms for the still-living victims, the Widgery report also held a significant role in their trauma. “Survivors and relatives of the dad have had to live the lie in their everyday lives, it compounded the original trauma of violence and loss, prolonging its effects and blocking psychic recovery” (163). Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein (IRA) president proclaimed that “’Widgery was a lie and Bloody Sunday remains pertinent today because it is an open wound’” (Dawson 171).

This article was written in 2004, when the Saville Inquiry was still in process. However, Dawson makes critical remarks pertaining to the (then) ongoing report: “Even were Saville to provide a vindication of the dead, there is no guarantee of beneficial psychic effects for the living survivors” (174). He ends with leaving the argument open to whether these victims can ever recover from the trauma they have experienced for decades; can “the places of atrocity and trauma” and the people who carry that inside them “ever really be exorcized of their ghosts" (Dawson 178). I want to explore this further and see if any answer can be gleaned since the Saville Inquiry has now been released for three years now. 

Dawson, Graham. “Trauma, Place and the Politics of Memory: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972-2004.” History Workshop Journal, no. 3 (2005): 151 – 178.