Jason Phillips

What america Lost, Buried, and Became

�� ��� drew Gilpin Faust. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. xviii + 346 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index.

The Patriot Act: Loyalty and Treason during the Civil War Era

27.95. In 1916, the year of Verdun and the Somme, Carl Sandburg wrote, “The shovel is brother to the gun.” Together they made trench warfare: one built protection, the other spewed fire. But Sandburg, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, had a different relationship in mind. Guns and shovels collaborate in war’s basic business, death. One kills, the other buries. When the guns stopped in 1918, Sandburg added a third partner to the work of death, grass. “Pile the bodies high,” ordered Sandburg in “Grass.” Shovel them under and let me work—/ I am the grass; I cover all.” After the killing and burying, grass heals scarred earth and conceals lost men, so that normal life resumes, so that “Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? Where are we now?” 1 Once nature erases ugliness and fades memories, the work of death, the cycle of war, are primed to begin anew. Gun, shovel, grass. Gun, shovel, grass. Like Sandburg, Drew Gilpin Faust sees death as war’s fundamental work, but while Sandburg responded to World War I, a bloodbath known for spawning modern doubt and disillusion, Faust focuses on the American Civil War, a conflict that retains its romantic luster. The result, This Republic of Suffering, is staggering, profound, and transformative. Few of the countless books published on this most scrutinized war match Faust’s for originality and significance. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of historians have argued that the war matters because it abolished slavery, saved the nation, expanded citizenship, empowered government, generated big business, and launched a world power. “But for those Americans who lived in and through the Civil War,” Faust reminds us, “the texture of the experience, its warp and woof, was the presence of death” (p. xiii). The work of death—killing, dying, burying, justifying, mourning, consoling, and surviving—consumed the war generation and shaped all the historical changes attributed to them. The dead made new demands on American culture, government, religion, philosophy, and even the economy. To handle these burdens, Americans redefined their sense

Harpers Ferry looming: a history of the future

When the Civil War began, Private Edward Pierce of the Third Massachusetts Volunteers predicted that emancipation would begin the next stage in human progress. Stationed at Fortress Monroe, Pierce prophesied that American slavery would end where it began, on Virginia’s oldest shore. In 1619, a Dutch slave ship traveled up the James River and landed twenty Africans for sale on the peninsula where runaways now escaped to the Union army. Pierce believed the slaves would “become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution,” by proving their loyalty to the Union. He expected “military logic” and “international law” would set them free. Anticipating arguments for black male suffrage during Reconstruction, Pierce envisioned black men proving their patriotism by shouldering a musket, stamping out Southern treason, and dying for the Union. Those who opposed his vision should beware: “events travel faster than laws or proclamations.”1 Twenty miles up the peninsula, William Clegg of the Second Louisiana Volunteers imagined a different future. In May 1861, Clegg’s unit occupied the trenches of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. He watched slaves fortifying river batteries, and he walked through town hunting for Revolutionary relics. While Pierce linked the origins of slavery to its imminent demise in Virginia, Clegg drew a straight line between the last battle of the old Revolution and the first fight of a new one. On July 4, Clegg observed the holiday by pronouncing

A Review of “The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant”: Freehling, William H., New York: Oxford University Press 605 pp.,

This article urges historians to study rumors and prophecies as temporal counterparts of historical memories. To conduct such research, it proposes an analytical framework inspired by Kosellecks (2004) ‘horizons of expectations’ and superior mirages called looming, and applies it to rumors and prophecies surrounding John Browns attack on Harpers Ferry. When people responded to uncertain knowledge about the event, they spread rumors that darkened and bloodied American visions of the future. As apocalyptic prophecies crystallized and spread through national media channels, the act of forecasting empowered unlikely prophets and the stories they told.

24.95, ISBN 978-0-19-505815-4 Publication Date: April 2007

the nation. The succeeding two chapters firmly locate the Dream speech within two schools of thought: the abolitionist tradition of Lincoln and integrationism, which ultimately espouses the inclusion of African Americans in the nation. Sundquist shows how “Lincoln’s promise has been revived by everyone who has stood and spoken in his shadow” (145). King’s reference to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” situates him within the company of those who embraced Samuel F. Smith’s “America” as their own. The book ends with a fairly balanced account of what has become the speech’s most laudable yet controversial phrase: “they will not be judged by the content of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Sundquist astutely captures the complexities of how this phrase has been appropriated by different groups. King’s allusion to colorblind justice has become the benchmark for anti–affirmative action policies, but Sundquist concludes that King was a moral pragmatist who “did not let devotion to the ideal of colorblindness prevent him from advocating race-based strategies to address historical inequalities” (203). He also juxtaposes King’s demand for “something special” to assist all disadvantaged groups with his emphasis on the importance of moral character. In light of King’s extensive works, reducing the core of his philosophy to one speech is quite a lofty endeavor. Nonetheless, this book is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the multilayered roots of the Dream speech.