April 2011 Archives

By now you are surely aware that President Obama released his birth certificate this week, proving once and for all that he was born in Hawaii. It remains to be seen if this finally will quash one of the more bizarre faux scandals to sully our contemporary politics. Being a history nerd, this unfortunate news story reminded me of similar false claims that Chester A. Arthur, who ascended to the presidency in 1881 on the assassination of James A. Garfield, was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.



Arthur was born in 1829 in Fairfield, Vermont, a town in the extreme northwest corner of the state, near the Canadian border. Like President Obama, Arthur's mother was a U.S. citizen, while his father was not. In Arthur's case, his father was a subject of the British Empire who had been born in Ireland and settled as an adult in Canada and subsequently Vermont. In 1880, Arthur was Garfield's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket and campaigned actively on their behalf. The Democratic Party hired New York attorney Arthur Hinman to investigate (or create) rumors that Arthur had not been born in the United States. Like the birthers who cannot decide among themselves whether President Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, Hinman produced two vastly different origin stories for the vice-presidential candidate. Initially, he claimed that Arthur had been born and raised in Ireland until he was 14 years old. This was an unsustainable claim, in that there was a mountain of evidence, including living witnesses, testifying to the fact that Arthur had grown up in Vermont and New York State during his family's peripatetic existence. Hinman had floated this story, however, because it was the easiest and clearest way to claim that Arthur was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to run for the vice-presidency.

Eventually, as the 1880 presidential campaign was drawing to a close, Hinman simply changed tack and claimed that Arthur had been born in the province of Quebec, while his mother was visiting relatives there (Arthur's mother had no known relatives in Quebec). This rumor was less useful for Democratic purposes, for even if Arthur had been born in Canada while his mother merely was sojourning there, that would not necessarily have disqualified him from executive office. He still would have had a strong legal claim to American citizenship as the child of an American citizen legally residing in the U.S. Similarly, those fanatics who entertained the notion that the President was born in Indonesia did not seem to consider that he still would have been able to claim American citizenship through his mother.

The similarities between these two invented scandals largely end there, however. Whereas, the birther movement has remained a staple of the news, even if it usually was relegated to the fringe, Hinman's charges against Arthur gained little, if any, traction. Why is that? As I argued in a previous blog post, it's not because our media is less serious or more sensationalistic than the nineteenth century press. If anything, the opposite would be true.

There was one notable difference, however. In 1880, the newspaper industry was still essentially dominated by partisanship. That meant that Arthur had the benefit of a Republican press that quickly and vociferously denounced, debunked, and discredited Hinman's untenable allegations. Even Democratic newspapers proved reluctant to push the rumors of Arthur's alleged foreign birth in the face of unreserved, forthright reproofs from the Republicans. In contrast, our contemporary media, zealously protecting its self-made myth of news objectivity, initially did not take such a clear stance on the wild claims of the birthers. Even when expressing mild disapproval or disbelief, its insistence on covering the persistent questions from the fringe about Obama's birth, gave this faux controversy continued, undeserved life. Rational, investigative efforts to expose the fallacy of birther claims, such as this video produced by CNN, came far too late in the process. Major media outlets seemed to treat the issue largely with bemusement and perhaps did not want to dignify it with serious engagement. Their efforts to report "objectively" on the birther movement, however, merely legitimized an utterly illegitimate campaign.

Of course, there is another glaring aspect to the birther movement that, at first blush, makes it quite distinct from the Arthur affair, and that is the issues of "race" and racism. Several academics, writers, and commentators, such as the New Yorker's David Remnick, have raised probing and troubling questions about the role "race" has played in the controversy over President Obama's birth. Were the president not biracial, were his name not Barack Obama, they wonder, would these cranks insist that he is foreign? Remnick concludes that anxious birtherism is a symptom of stubborn racist attitudes that refuse to accept people of color as truly equal and fully American. As he puts it, various fantastic conspiracy theories about the President are still alive and pulsating, hysterically asserting "that Obama is foreign, a fake, incapable of writing a book, incapable of intellectual achievement." In short, he is irretrievably the "other," and the "other" is incapable of the honest striving and genuine achievement that supposedly characterize "true" Americans.

One might assume that this was not a problem that Chester A. Arthur faced, yet that is not quite the case. Certainly, he did not have to confront the ugly, deep-rooted and ossified racism that we continue to face in contemporary society. He did have to overcome a still-powerful strain of ethnic discrimination in his own right, however. Though bigotry toward Irish-Americans perhaps was not as ferocious in 1880 as it had been half a century before, it still was a prevalent part of mainstream American culture. Near the end of the 1884 presidential campaign, while Arthur sat in the White House, one of his fellow Republicans, Dr. Samuel Burchard, notoriously declared that Democrats were the party of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." In this ugly, alliterative comment, Burchard indicted Democrats for causing the late rebellion and Civil War and also charged them with having given over their party to dissolute, superstitious Irish-American Catholics. Four years prior, when Hinman floated his preposterous story of Arthur's alleged upbringing in Ireland, he consciously hoped to appeal to this same prevalent prejudice that Irish-Americans were drunkards, brutes, and untrustworthy and undeserving citizens who blindly and thoughtlessly followed the dictates of the Bishop of Rome.

In Arthur's case, this prejudice proved unavailing. For one thing, his father, though Irish, was first a Presbyterian and then a Baptist preacher. For another, he again had the benefit of a partisan media that savaged the Hinman stories, and resolutely and repeatedly trumpeted not only Arthur's American-ness, but also his qualifications for office through his long service to party, state, and country, not Rome. What the recent birther controversy shows is how ill-equipped the major media outlets still appear to be to conduct the kind of incisive and unapologetic advocacy journalism that such absurd "stories" require. This is the kind of service partisan journals once performed (obviously, only when it was in their interests). We no longer have such a widespread partisan press, of course, but for all of the claims of liberal or conservative bias in the media (as though media bias is somehow a new phenomenon), our major media outlets still hesitate to take strong positions on controversial issues, even when all available logic both justifies and demands it.

           Yesterday, I viewed the newly released movie, The Conspirator. This film, a true story directed by Robert Redford, brings to life the little-known story of the trial of Mary Surratt, played by Robin Wright. Mrs. Surratt was the only woman charged as a co-conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. The movie focuses on her trial, or more accurately military tribunal, and the various adventures of law that she endures. Mrs. Surratt, whose son John was also wanted for his role in the plot, is defended by a reluctant attorney, played by James McAvoy who can't seem to decide if he believes his client's pleas of innocence.
           The film brings to life a story few Americans know about our nation's Civil War. It particularly highlights the great need that was present for healing and the idea that punishing anyone involved in Lincoln's death was part and parcel of that healing. The legal arguments could have been sharper and more dramatic, but the film successfully conveys how justice for one woman was sacrificed for the nation's happiness.
            In my opinion, the best acting in the film was done by Kevin Kline, who plays Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. Stanton is portrayed, and not in a completely flattering way, as a man willing to risk everything for the nation's healing. He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the constant pleas of injustice from Surratt's lawyer, claiming defiantly that, unless the nation heals, there will be no justice for anyone, in effect using Mary Surratt as a sacrificial lamb, knowing that she is not being afforded proper justice. His character fully brings to bear the premise of the movie, a provoking exposé on if and when the system should be sidestepped, ostensibly for the greater good. Anyone who studies the Civil War at least slightly in-depth knows about Lincoln's overstepping, shall we say, of the constitutional rights of some people during the war. The Conspirator illuminates that the fluidity with which the Constitution's mandates were interpreted during and right after the war did not stop with Lincoln's denial of habeas corpus.
           Overall, a great movie for all, including Civil War buffs, to see, but do not expect the kind of legal fireworks present in other law dramas, such as A Time to Kill or A Few Good Men. 

At first blush then, the decision of Virginia's political leaders to sever ties with the Union might appear to have had little to do with slavery and everything to do with resisting federal coercion. The decision to secede was not quite that simple, however. The secession vote had to be ratified by a state-wide, popular referendum, set for May 23. The convention, though, submitted two referenda to Virginia's voters that day. The first asked Virginians to ratify the state's secession from the Union, while the second asked them to approve an amendment to the state constitution to tax all personal property, including slaves, at its full value. Virginia's 1851 constitution explicitly limited the taxation of individual slaves to a value of $300, a restriction that the proposed amendment would do away with entirely. At the May 23 referendum, Virginians voted 125,950 to 20,373 in favor of secession and 111,854 to 16,745 in support of the personal property tax amendment. Both referenda passed by nearly identical margins (86%-87% of the overall vote).

So, what was the significance of pairing a referendum on secession with a referendum overturning the partial exemption of slave property from taxation? The short answer, of course, is that these referenda explicitly acknowledged that the issue of secession was intimately and irretrievably bound up with slavery. But if secession was intended to safeguard slavery, why would Virginians simultaneously strip the institution of some of its constitutional protections? After all, prominent slave owners throughout the state worried that the amendment would spook impecunious planters into selling a torrent of slaves out of the state, which would only accelerate the institution's decline. In light of this, the taxation amendment appears to have been a sop to reluctant unionists, necessary to encourage a requisite number of them to support secession, no matter the amendment's impact on slavery. Though still possessed of a large slave population in 1860, the state long had been an exporter of slaves, and the institution no longer was as robust as it was in the Deep South states that founded the Confederacy. The taxation amendment had been introduced at the secession convention by unionist delegates from the state's western interior, a region of sparse slaveholding. The controversial proposal elicited as much debate as the secession ordinance itself and was not assured of passage until the convention had approved the latter measure (see the site, Virginia Memory, for an excellent, succinct documentary history of the secession convention). To many, the convention's last-minute approval of the amendment was a reward to those unionists who abandoned their old ground and supported secession in the momentous April 17 vote.

We should not look at the twin referenda simply as a quid pro quo between secessionist slaveholders and their unionist opponents, however. Rather, these two measures should remind us that the Confederate states did not resort to secession and war merely to maintain slavery's status quo. Instead, they were trying to define a bold new relationship between their political institutions and the slave system. While the charter members of the Confederacy made slavery the "cornerstone" of their political union, Virginia was more deeply divided on the proper place of the institution in its society. Where the Confederacy (which Virginia had yet to join) afforded special constitutional protections to slave property, Virginians sought to harmonize slave ownership with other forms of property ownership. Where the Confederacy arguably erected a slaveholder's republic, Virginia sought to shrink the economic, if not the social, division between slaveholders and non-slaveholders. I would stop short of calling the taxation amendment a step toward a more egalitarian Virginia, but it certainly did aim to adjust the political and economic relations between slaveholders and non-slaveholders in the state. Virginia's subsequent entry into the Confederacy only underscored the significant divisions that new republic would face over the issue of the political power of slavery.

Yesterday the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board voted against granting a license to a corporation that proposed to build a casino in Cumberland Township, near the Gettysburg National Military Park. Opponents of the casino plan had argued that the proposed casino would irrevocably alter Gettysburg's character and detract from the Park's efforts to provide an authentic and immersive historical experience at the nation's most famous Civil War battlefield. Disappointed proponents of the casino plan lament a missed opportunity, arguing that the project would have brought jobs and additional tourist dollars to Gettysburg and Adams County. Spared from having a casino in their midst, it appears that Gettysburg residents will have to make do with the myriad chotchke shops and Civil War memorabilia hawkers that, unlike a casino, apparently add to the authentic and immersive experience that the Park earnestly strives for.

Tuesday's edition of the PBS NewsHour featured a discussion on the legacy of the Civil War, with guests Drew Gilpin Faust of Harvard, Walter Edgar of the University of South Carolina, and Edna Medford of Howard University. After an overly long snippet on the firing on Fort Sumter from Ken Burns' well-known and well-worn documentary of the Civil War, the segment begins with a discussion of a Pew Research Center poll showing that more Americans identified states' rights than any other cause of the Civil War, including slavery. The three guests lamented this finding and reiterated that historians of the period largely agree that slavery and the ancillary issues attending it were the primary causes of the war.

Explaining why the states' rights hypothesis still retains such currency among the general public when historians have eschewed it for over a generation now, is tricky. Faust alluded to the long-lived effects of whitewashing (pun intended) this period of our history, especially during the Centennial commemoration of the Civil War, as a significant factor in perpetuating the popular belief that states' rights was the primary issue at stake in the war. As an aside, Kevin Levin has posted the presidential proclamations for both the centennial and sesquicentennial observances of the Civil War, illustrating starkly different perspectives on the war.

I believe there are still more factors at work, however, that might explain the staying power of the states' rights hypothesis. First, I think the states' rights hypothesis appears beguilingly sophisticated to the credulous observer, for it suggests that a range of disputes over the fundamental relationship between the federal government and the sovereign states led to the war. In comparison, citing slavery as the primary cause of the war seems overly simplistic to those who have only a facile understanding of both issues. Never mind that the political leaders of the slave states never truly believed in states' rights (after all, they expended most of their energy trying to increase federal, not state, powers to protect and promote the expansion of slavery); this argument still seems to be attractive to many people who see in it a false complexity that must somehow account for secession and war. I've drawn this observation from interactions with students in my American history survey and Civil War classes. While most of my students seem to come into those classes believing that slavery was the primary cause of the war, there are many who enter those classes believing that the answer just "can't be that simple." Detailing the role of slavery in the development of American society and its place at the center of the debates and conflicts that eventually sundered the country is perhaps the most important thing I do in those classes.

Second, the continued widespread belief in the states' rights hypothesis also could very well represent a backlash against what many perceive to be politically correct, "liberal," academic history. Judging by the rancorous comments by Confederate apologists (not that this minuscule group is representative of a broad swath of opinion) on various Civil War blog sites, academic historians have overturned generations of "objective" history with their blatantly politicized, liberal polemics. Leaving aside the fact that there is no such animal as "objective history," I do believe that there are many history buffs who feel hectored by academic historians who chronicle the sordid history of slavery and rightfully recognize its pre-eminent role in causing the Civil War. It can be tempting for many perhaps to retreat from such critical histories to a more heroic national narrative that elides these troubling issues.

Finally, just to add more idle speculation to this post, I do wonder how much our current political climate affects the Pew Research findings, if at all. With increased attention to the size, reach, and indebtedness of the federal government, we've seen a strong resurgence of anachronistic terms, such as "socialism," "fascism," "communism," and even "states' rights" in our popular political discourse (thanks, Glenn Beck!) to describe the activities of the federal government. One might wonder if those who believe our federal government has become too big and too activist are seeking a historical analogue in the (hollow) claim of states' rights from the Civil War era.


@Civil War Memory

Today, as many of you already know, marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the American Civil War. On this date in 1861, P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the Federal battery at Fort Sumter, initiating a conflict that would last four long years and claim over six-hundred-thousand lives.

But why should we care? Why should we commemorate a struggle whose relevance to the modern world is tenuous at best? Haven't the issues of the Civil War finally been laid to rest? After all, slavery is dead, capitalism is king, the nation is one, and for a few brief moments in November 2008, the naïve among us might have even imagined that we'd put the war's racial legacy behind us. What, then, is the purpose of all this commemoration?

Some might say that we owe it to the dead: that their sacrifices on behalf of the nation require our attention. That may be true. But in our present world of competing demands - where much-needed government funds are being diverted away from public services (including state universities) - arguments on behalf of the dead look a lot less convincing than they might in more prosperous times. Even for historians, the living take precedence over the departed.

Still others might argue that I've got it all wrong - that we have not, in fact, put the war, or the issues over which it was fought, to their final rest: that African Americans continue to occupy an unforgivably marginal position in the narrative of the war; that the promise of Reconstruction has yet to be fulfilled; and that a host of unrepentant Lost Causers continues to mar the national landscape. But while all of this is true, none of it alters the fact that, in important respects, a corner has been turned. Historians of African-American life in slavery and freedom remain in high demand at colleges and universities across the country, the post-Civil Rights generation is making its presence felt on the national political scene, and the ranks of unreconstructed neo-Confederates are thinning every year. The many problems that remain, meanwhile, are now so profoundly entangled with the subsequent history of the United States, that to lay them at the doorstep of the Civil War would be like blaming the signers of the Magna Carta for the Dred Scott decision.

The fact of the matter is this: in one sense, at least, the Civil War is dead. It is no longer a living presence in our everyday lives. It is nearly as old as Dickens's doornail, and every bit as deceased. This doesn't mean that the war is hopelessly irrelevant, however. It just means that it possesses no innate relevance - that the mere memory of Fort Sumter's bombardment, for example, imparts no special insight into the state of the modern world. To make the most of this anniversary, therefore, we'll have to take a very different approach to the Civil War than what I've thus far seen proposed - a more subtle and elusive strategy than commemoration, proclamation, and instruction. We'll have to do away with simplistic formulations that make the war the crucible of modern America. We'll have to avoid framing the Civil War as the pivotal event in American history. And most importantly, we'll have to refrain from making the sesquicentennial a moment of patronizing didacticism.

Instead, it should be a conversation: not about a discrete set of events or a particular collection of conclusions, but about the business of history itself - about how, with great effort and difficulty, we can extract and organize the debris of the past into something that speaks to the present and the future. It should be a moment to convince the public that history is not a closed book, but an open toolkit - a place that challenges our assumptions about what is fixed, and begs us to rethink what is possible - where new answers to pressing issues are waiting to be found, and old ones are ready to be unmade.

So here's to what I hope will be a complex, and complicated four years of commemoration: an extended and challenging conversation that leaves us with a fuller appreciation for the difficult choices and vexing compromises that men and women faced in the past. It's a difficult task, to be sure: to introduce an element of contingency into a process of remembrance; to de-center an event at the very heart of the commemorations; and to teach without providing simple answers. But demanding as it may prove, the process of commemoration - and the chance to get it right - presents a matchless opportunity to make a definitive case for history: for ourselves, for the public, and for the future.

On this day, April 11, in 1861, General Beauregard of the newly created Confederate Army sent three aids inside Fort Sumter to demand that General Anderson surrender the fort. Anderson refused, and the Confederates began firing. The Civil War was started, on this day, 150 years ago. It is impossible to understand or appreciate something like what was the bloodiest war, up to then, in human history without a thorough understanding of the beginning. And while this transition may be a stretch, as I consider the beginning of a war from 150 years ago, I also look to the beginning and end of what is now my almost finished college career. Just as General Anderson kept the aides waiting for hours, stalling for time for help to arrive or for a good plan to be established, I find myself going through these days leading up to graduation trying to figure out my own plans. Just as Anderson knew that decisive action was necessary, so too do I know that plans must be made, and most importantly, a job must be found! 

For some college graduates, finding a job is no problem. They go to career fairs, they interview, they receive several job offers, and then they decide on which one they want the most. This is how it is supposed to happen. This is how colleges and universities design the process. It does not work, however, for all graduates. Some people, myself included, are not sure what we want to do, and therefore are not sure what career fairs to go to, or with which companies to interview. I am working hard to find a job, but could it be that there is or needs to be some alternative job finding structure for those of us who cannot or will not use the traditional means, i.e. career fairs?

For me personally, the roadblock is too many options. I mean that I would be so happy doing so many different jobs, that I have a hard time knowing where to start. My only criteria for a job is that I get to help people and that it might help me decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. Minimal requirements, right? I have found a really wonderful website to help my search. It's a job search website, called Idealist, that focuses exclusively in the non-profit community.

This is a good start, and I am coming across some interesting options, but applying for jobs online is only so effective. What we need at Penn State are jobs fairs that are not catered to the business and engineering fields. Now, Penn State does have a few of these. I have been to the "People to People" job fair for three years in a row. It advertises that it is for community work and non-profits, but it is woefully unacceptable. The vast majority of the companies there are summer camps or restaurants. They are looking for part-time, minimal wage, summer jobs, and are catering primarily to undergraduates. There are thousands of non-profit companies in the state of Pennsylvania. What if there was a fair for them, for full-time, post-graduate positions? I think there are a significant number of graduation seniors who would benefit from such an event.

Penn State is known as the number one recruited school in the nation, and I know a lot of engineering and business majors, and I am very happy for them and their successful job searches.  I also know that Penn State takes a lot of pride in those programs. Us Liberal Arts majors, however, deserve some attention also. Just as, I will make an educated guess and presume, General Anderson was looking for support from Washington and was becoming more and more anxious, maybe even stressed out, as the time passed and no helped arrived; I too look around and work for a solution to the job hunt, with increasing stress as each week passes. I hope, and I am confident, however, that my current situation will be resolved a bit more successfully than General Anderson's. 

One of today's lead stories on CNN.com discusses the contentious commemoration of the Civil War and the ongoing debates over the war's causes and meaning. The story prominently features the thoughts and opinions of Stephanie McCurry, Emory Thomas, Brian McGinty, and our own William Blair, Director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center here at Penn State. Unfortunately, in an effort to provide a spectrum of ideas on the Civil War, the article also features Confederate apologist, H.W. Crocker III. Don't get me wrong, I understand that there is value in reporting on the attitudes of unabashed defenders of the Confederacy's disputed right to secession. It's just that the facile historical notions of a mere southern heritage buff like Crocker serve as a poor counterpoint to the insights of serious historians, crafted through years of research and investigation. Surely, the opinions of a thoughtful and insightful historian like Eugene Genovese (just to serve as an example), would have provided a far more fitting and illuminating defense of the citizens of the Confederacy.

Of course, Crocker is the author of three relatively recent books, has been a frequent contributor to The American Spectator (here's an example of one of his blog posts that marries history and contemporary politics during the 2008 elections), and is a relatively well known speaker and commentator on contemporary political issues. So he has some name recognition that CNN perhaps believed would attract readers to this article. Despite all of this, however, I still can't help but think, was this the best CNN could do to provide an "alternative" viewpoint on the war?

So there is a light at the end of this thesis tunnel, after all. This past Monday was the official deadline for our thesis draft.  After I hit submit on the honors college website, I realized that I was closer to the finish line than I had given myself credit for. I thought I would be writing about the Civil War forever, and now I am left with (I really really hope) only grammar changes. When did that happen, I ask myself?

It happened, I am sure; while I was furiously dedicating six hours a day on the days I do not have class (mercifully that was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this semester). It happened when I gave myself a weekly schedule of work to be completed and stuck to it. It happened because of the regular communication I had with my adviser, Dr. Blair. And it happens for almost everyone. They work hard and then there comes a moment when they realize they have a wonderful piece of academic writing in front of them, which, surprisingly, they did not die writing. Who would have thought?  Most of the people that I have talked to about this topic have had similar reactions. As a Schreyer scholar, your thesis is always in the back of your mind from day one of college. It is something that was always there, that was going to have to get done someday in the future, and now the process is almost over. In that way, it is like a mini college experience. For most kids, college is looked at almost like the end of the road, the endgame of most children's thought processes. Now, us seniors get here, and it is this feeling of, "oh my gosh, all I have thought about is college and I thought I would never get there and now it's over." It's not quite panic for most of us, and definitely some students relish its coming, but it is a new kind of feeling. We have to get used to identifying ourselves as a members of a completely different group of people. We are no longer college students; we are adults, like the real kind with full-time jobs and all. I digress (and my next blog post will touch on these topics), so please allow me to return to the topic of writing a thesis.

Nearing the end of this process, I would offer some advice for rising seniors. I will skip the obvious advice that you will get from everyone else about starting early and working hard when it is -20 degrees out here in State College, ect. I would say, enjoy it. Take some time while your head is so deep into a book that you do not know which way is up to actually enjoy what you are reading. Realize that your writing is become wonderfully articulate, and congratulate yourself on that. Trust me, if you have a little fun with this, that thesis tunnel becomes a lot shorter.