Military History and Women's History

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Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 05:22:11
From: Richard Lowe
Subject: Military history and women's history (from H-Local)
FORWARDED MESSAGES FROM H-CIVWAR

From: Genevieve G McBride
Subject: Re: Is "Heritage" a dirty word?
>Having been removed from the atmosphere of academia for many years, I may
>have lost touch with what goes on in the real world. Back in the 1950's at
>Berkeley, over a beer, we would discuss with men like Ken Stampp, Carl
>Bridenbaugh, H. Hunter Dupree and others the worth of a work of history
>written for popular consumption versus "pure" history. . . . Why is there so
>little appreciation for the excitement of Manifest Destiny, Fifty-four Forty
>or Fight, or Remember the Maine? . . . . It is not so much that those who
>would "exploit" heritage for the sake of tourist dollars have "won" but that
>professional historians (Bancroft's term) have failed to help translate the
>results of their research so it can be applied in the education of children.

Interesting examples, which got me thinking. I was a child in the '50s, and all the militaristic history we were taught then -- which is about all we were taught then -- did nothing to inspire me. It apparently still doesn't have the hoped-for impact on at least some women. I talk to hundreds a year as well as schoolchildren -- about my research (in local women's history), and audiences get quite excited about history. But an increasingly common question is, "Why does the History Channel have so much about war?" I tell them, of course, that that's most of what Hollywood has made about history although, of course, there are a lot of terrific films from PBS and the like in recent years about women's history and other areas of social history which I don't see the History Channel and similar outlets putting on the air.

Interestingly, I also hear increasing numbers of people -- women, children spotting that even the most "popular" of historians today, Ken Burns, is simply telling stories from the same militaristic perspective, despite different technology. Inclusion of men from more social classes doesn't compensate, for these audiences, for but a few minutes on women's role in in the Civil War, the West -- and even baseball, which apparently was made with little or no reference to the book or movie, "A League of Their Own."

Think about it, as I ask audiences to do: Who decided that American history should be framed in militaristic terms? I.e., we still divide twosemester coursework into pre- and post-1865? For more than half of the population, it might make more sense to set the dividing line at 1868, when for the first time, the word "male" was written into the U.S. Constitution. That amendment had far-reaching repercussions on reform movements, which I think offer a more inspiring way to study our past, our present and our future than war! -- and I hope characterize our country more, as well.

I could go on, but -- in talking with schoolchildren, in studying with my own children, I see excitement about social history, "popular" or "pure," if it (to paraphrase our President) looks like America . . . and like them. To get back to the point of the discussion of whether "heritage is a dirty word," I wonder whether some of the "purist" history which has been featured in so many museums for years simply no longer appeals as much to a public which actually has been better educated to history -- perhaps even by some of those "tourist traps"? I hope not! But I also know how hard it has been for some curators I know to get any kind of funding for doing something different, which leaves them with many a musty-in-many-ways exhibits.

One last anecdote: In Wisconsin, where state history still is mandated for fourth-graders, it still is part of the ritual of citizenship to trek fieldtrip buses full of schoolchildren to Madison, where a high point still seems to be -- so they're told -- seeing what my son called "that old dead bird." That's Old Abe, the now-stuffed eagle who was a mascot for one of the Civil War regiments from here. Yet schoolchildren from Milwaukee still are not told that, on the way to Madison when they see from the freeway the vast acres of white gravemarkers below the beautiful white steeple of the Old Domiciliary at the nation's oldest veterans hospital, they are seeing a living monument to women here who raised thousands of dollars (millions today) through bake sales and craft fairs to build it and to care for more than thirty thousand wounded Civil War veterans until the federal government finally stepped in, two years after the war ended. They are not even told of the heroism of our governor's war widow who became a war nurse and, after what she saw of the lack of care for the soldiers, went to the White House and waited out the President until Lincoln at last let her in -- and finally got her to leave by setting aside the land for that and other facilities.

Now, that would be a lesson about ever-broadening federal regulations and powers. About what everyday people can do to effect change, even if it means baking cupcakes. And, of course, about war and its costs. . . .

Genevieve G. McBride
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

It's funny how different our experiences can be. I, too, grew up in the 1950s and sat entralled at the "militaristic" history I was taught. The first history sessions given to us in the fourth grade included Daniel Boone, Clara Barton, and Abraham Lincoln, all of which interested me greatly. Now at the same time I had no interest at all in Jim Thorpe or any of the sports heroes that were simultaneously presented to us, nor had I any interest in contemporary sports. That continues to this day, for some strange reason. I just can't get excited about the Super Bowl or the World Series no matter how much the people around me talk about them. Most of the kids I went to school with, however, are the same ones today boosting the television ratings of athletic spectacles and donating chunks of money to college sports programs even if those same colleges are cutting humanities budgets to the bone.

If contemporary Americans are uninterested in Civil War history, or history in general, I don't believe that we can entirely lay the blame on the old emphasis on military events or kids being dragged to see a stuffed dead bird. Perhaps modern Americans simply do not see the relevance in a study of the past. Our culture celebrates youth and innovation. The current presidential contest is being framed in a division between generations. We try to teach history, to help people understand their past, and watch helplessly as they look forward without so much as a glance over their shoulders.

Kim Allen Scott
MSU-Bozeman Libraries
Montana State University
aliks@gemini.oscs.montana.edu

I'm writing to second McBride's remarks in certain ways. In southern Indiana, where I grew up, the War between the States was still a hot local issue (at least my grandmother made it so to me), but I was quite disappointed at the way our texts and teachers taught us about war. We sludged from battle to battle and commander to commander quite like (I think now) the foot soldier must have done during the war itself. Personally, the approach effectively closed an intellectual door that was opened when I took my first women's history class.

A related note might be my annoyance at bookstores that organize their wares by war. Military history may develop more of a general following when more women have been involved in history. But right now, much of the reading is as exclusive of women as the Citadel boys were of Shannon Faulkner. Alas.

Ann Colbert, Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne colbert@cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu

Please accept my apologies for leaving out a word that changed the sense of my last message.

"Military history may develop more of a general following when more women have been involved in ITS history," I meant to say. And I do not mean that women have had no role in wars and their promulgation.

I'm just saying that most women have a very sketchy notion of the battle-by-battle, play-by-play stuff that we were fed when I was a child. I would guess that young boys found it overwhelming, too, but out of a sense of self-protection, perhaps, they did attend to it in a way that I and my young girl friends did not.

Ann Colbert, colbert@cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu

[ G. McBride (i think) posted: ]
Think about it, as I ask audiences to do: Who decided that American history should be framed in militaristic terms? I.e., we still divide twosemester coursework into pre- and post-1865?

[response to above from SalvatoB@oeus.psb.bls.gov]

i think that it's really pre-deciding the answer to frame the question in that way. in my opinion the reason that 1865 is chosen is that the most vexing of all possible Constitutional questions was decided at that time: States' Rights versus the power of the Federal government.

yes, it was decided by "force majeure" -- but it's the decision, not the use of force, that is the dividing line between the 1786-1865 period and the period since 1865.

W.L.Salvatore -- SalvatoB@oeus.psb.bls.gov
"The aim must still be to win territory in the East for
the German people." (Adolf Hitler, 29 April 1945)
from his last directive to his military staff, quoted in "The
Last Days of Hitler" (H. R. Trevor-Roper, 1947), p. 195

(gloss of allusion: "eyes on the prize" so that we can continually be looking ahead for the best route; let's not be walking forward with our gaze petrified over our shoulder upon the route we have already travelled, lest we lose our way.)

> Interestingly, I also hear increasing numbers of people -- women, children
> -- spotting that even the most "popular" of historians today, Ken Burns,
> is simply telling stories from the same militaristic perspective, despite
> different technology.

Interesting, because I've been watching "The West" and reflecting that it is definitely presented in terms of warfare, rather than social history. (As a matter of fact, I quit watching after a while, explaining to friends that I found it too depressing, and I could listen to reports from Bosnia if I wanted that sort of material...)

There was a discussion of rarity of women in the Gold Rush mining camps. What they omitted was a discussion of *why.* The author of "The World Rushed In" (whose name escapes me for the moment, sorry) said that the Gold Rush was essentially a *war.* It was a male activity, with male interest, for the most part, and people came, either got gold or not, and *went home.* Just like a war. Women's participation was likewise about what it would have been in a war. That lecture made a real impression on me, because he was *right.*

I find it interesting that the Burns series "The West" definitely takes a warfare perspective. Hence, we have massacres of Indians, massacres of soldiers, massacres of settlers by the Mormons, massacres of Union sympathizers by renegade Confederates... I have seen nothing about, say, Mandan agriculture and tribal culture, nor their extinction in epidemics. For that matter, I have seen little mention of fires, or epidemics, which were large influences on the West. (For example, California was ravaged by flu and smallpox in the 1850's and 60's, and one of the leading causes of death on the Oregon trail was "summer cholera" caused by sanitation problems. 1850's San Francisco was almost leveled several times by fires. Where is the mention of this?

I think it's because death is emotional and flashy---war is good press, as Hearst would probably say. Understanding a culture is interesting, but it doesn't have the viceral impact of these emotional sound-bites. Yes, wars shift populations and change geographical boundaries---but populations are shifted by other forces as well, and geographical boundaries tend to be artificial and are merely units of political administration. For instance, everyone acknowledges there is a *cultural* boundary that cuts across the mountain ranges dividing Northern and Southern California, but we are still a single theoretical state. New Orleans has been under more flags than just about any other entity in the United States, but it still remains New Orleans.

> Think about it, as I ask audiences to do: Who decided that American
> history should be framed in militaristic terms? I.e., we still divide two-
> semester coursework into pre- and post-1865?

In this case, there actually is a philosophical dividing line. The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of the *Federalization* of political power, with more powers flowing ot the federal government. (Remember, the real issue, of which slavery was only a symptom, was State's Rights.) As Federalization increased, rights of the individual decreased.

>For more than half of the
> population, it might make more sense to set the dividing line at 1868, when
> for the first time, the word "male" was written into the U.S. Constitution.

That was actually an issue that had roots in the Civil War and issues of slavery. I suspect it was actually a slap at the women who had worked for the rights of the slaves, in hopes they could ride the coattails. The necessities of war, in the form of the emmancipation proclaimation, had let one imp out of its box by abolishing slavery, and there was no putting it back. This was an attempt to keep the other imp (women's rights) from getting free as well. The Civil War, perhaps more than any other war in history, actually had far-reaching *social* consequences. It changed an economic structure, and numerous social structures, and raised awarenesses. The women who saw their men go off to war and found themselves helpless and without rights in their absence had their conciousness raised in ways that the Seneca Falls convention never could have done. That, perhaps, is the difference. Again, the enfranchisement/disenfranchisment amendment was a symptom of a vast social convulsion that took place in the background of the Civil War. Its effect was not manifest in the war, but rather a reflection of what was going on on the home front because of it.

Jane Beckman [jane@swdc.stratus.com]
"We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. We vote?
What does that mean? We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."
--Helen Keller

As a piggyback to the series, The West, observations made by Jane Beckman--not only was in presented in military terms, but in very familiar, comfortable if you will, frontier themes--hence the presence of women--often overlooked in the initial stages of permeating the frontier--could be overlooked. The presence of women were often viewed as the arrival of civilization and culture. This was also true of British Indian outposts. Military frontier

A little of the beaten track,
Phyllis Soybel Butler
UIC/Columbia College Chicago

I realize that this has NOTHING to do with women in the military and war, but it DEMANDS comment.
Jane Beckman wrote:
>>>The necessities of war, in the form of the emmancipation proclaimation, had let one imp out of its box by abolishing slavery, and there was no putting it back. <<<<

The Emmancipation Proclimation may have done a great deal of good for the Union cause, but not on the continent of North America. It did NOTHING for the abolition of slavery in the United States or any of the other forty or so countries (at least) that practiced it in 1863. The EP freed the slaves in areas controlled by the Confederate States of America. It did not free slaves in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Alexandria, VA or any other non secessionist state or occupied portion of the Confederacy. But the slaves in areas controlled by the Confederate States of America couldn't be freed until Unionist forces occupied those areas.
Does the word "propaganda" mean anything??

"If the attack is going according to plan, you are walking into an ambush."

Gene Moser

Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 05:10:54 (CDT)
From: DIRCK BRIAN RICHARD

There are several different issues here, but let me just address a couple of them for starters.

I have taught U.S. history survey courses for two and a half years now, and it has been my experience that most students will become interested in a given subject based not so much on the issue of inclusivity -- "does Subject X involve people who are like me from a gender, ethnic, etc., perspective -- but rather on the quality of the story being presented to them. I have had female students who developed a keen interest in "militaristic" topics such as Gettysburg or whatever because they get caught up in the swirling drama of it all. At the same time, I have been able to get some of my male students involved in women's history topics when I can introduce them to a good story -- Carol Karlsen's book on the Salem witchcraft trials is very popular regardless of gender, as is Harriet Jacob's _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_.

I have also taught KU's upper division course on the Civil War, and it was the most involved, motivated bunch of students I have ever had (when I finally do get my Ph.D., I hope this class is representative of what teaching as a full professor will be like). The class was pretty evenly divided between men and women, and while I remember three or four female students who wanted to look into what women were doing during the war, for the most part there was little correlation between gender and the topics that were chosen for their term papers. Female students were engrossed by Chamberlain's stand at Little Round Top as much as male students were.

The sad truth is this: professional historians have become so maniacally obsessed with inclusivity that we have in the process become, as a group, horrible storytellers. One does not necessarily lead to the other, of course; inclusive stories can be and often are crackling good yarns, as well. And there are a lot of Civil War histories that are unspeakably bad narratives. My point is that, where present-day students are concerned, the key variable determining interest or boredom is not as much the subject matter as it is the storytelling ability of the scholar or instructor.

Brian Dirck
University of Kansas

Just a note in response to the remarks of Kim Allen Scott:

I was delighted to hear somebody else unabashedly admit that they honestly enjoyed and learned from "dead stuffed birds" and other "old" ways of teaching and learning history. I grew up all over the country, and from when I was very small, nothing fascinated me more than learning anything I could about the Civil War. Clara Barton, the Gettysburg, Address, Sherman's March, and the stories of the neighbor's grandmother who lost everything and kept the family going anyway were all equally enthralling to me, and it never occurred to me that interest in one aspect of Civil War history (like how families survived the dreadful ordeal) necessitated the renunciation of interest in any other aspect (like Southern troops needing shoes and instead fighting the Battle of Gettysburg). It IS important to recognize that learning history, and especially encouraging children to take an interest in history, means more than battles and generals, and to acknowledge that standard accounts of history that have left people out need amending. At the same time, the reflex reaction of presuming that because an aspect of history does not interest oneself, it is of little value and should not interest anyone else, is NOT just compensation for the exclusive versions of history we would all like to see improved. I would like to think that there are other, better (and more inclusive) ways of enlarging historical narratives.

Just a thought.
Chandra Miller
Harvard University

My humble opinion is that people study what they are interested in studying. I think the reason we are becoming more culturally diverse and becoming more interested in women's issues in history is that more women and other ethnic groups are becoming more active in history. This activity produces more books, which require more research in these areas than has ever been done before.

I myself had a stereotype of women in the 19th century blown when I read Tom Lowery's _The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell_. In it I learned that the Victorian perception (i.e., in books I read such as _A Doll's House_) of what a woman's role was supposed to be, and how the soldiers actually treated women were two different things. I learned a man's wife or sweetheart was written to as his closest confidant, although there were some things that they felt they couldn't write about, but would instead say to the woman waiting at home, "Of course you know what I am talking about." Although some of his book is speculation, I was amazed at what I perceived the 19th- century woman to be and how she might have been were so different.

I do feel, however, that history is also viewed in the context of what is "politically correct" at the time the author is writing. Right now we are having a great time focusing on ethnic issues and women's issues. But the historians who wrote on those items before seem to be overshadowed by those who wrote on the military, courageous leaders, and politics.

I sincerely hope that the trend of cultural diversity and women's roles continue. I do hope though that we still look into the military, politics, and courageous leaders of the times. As our viewpoints change, so does the way we look at history in the past, and more items that historians seem to have been reluctant to reveal in the past or felt illrelevant may become more important to historians in the future.

Pamela Troxell
Humanities Department
College of Mount Saint Joseph
Cincinnati, Ohio

As I recall, this discussion began when someone questioned the way that the Civil War has been presented on PBS by the likes of Ken Burns and on the History Channel by "Civil War Journal."

I was a consultant and talking head on one of the original episodes of "Civil War Journal" (54th Massachusetts), and I learned something about the way subjects are chosen. After a film crew finished shooting my interview, I tried to give the producer materials that might form the basis for additional episodes on black involvement in the Civil War (such as the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, the Union Army's first black combat regiment). She told me to save my breath. "Civil War Journal's" choice of subjects was based on market surveys, which revealed that most black subjects would not draw a sufficient audience. Greystone Productions was doing a show on the 54th Massachusetts because the regiment had been glamorized by the film GLORY and one on Frederick Douglass because he had name recognition. But that was about as far as the series was willing to go.

In other words, TV producers (even those on PBS and cable channels) are interested in what sells. Like book and magazine publishers, they will give the public what it wants (even though the public may appreciate these neglected subjects if they are presented skillfully).

If professional historians want to change this situation, we will have to steal the opposition's tactics. Employ vivid narratives about popular subjects to engage an audience's attention, and then hit them with something new, bold, and compelling when they are primed to listen. As Brian Dirck indicated, that is a technique commonly employed by good teachers. It will allow us to make some progress in broadening the boundaries of Civil War studies. As Wendell Phillips told African Americans angry at being denied officer's commissions in the Union Army: "If you cannot have a loaf, will you not take a slice?" At the same time, there is nothing wrong with making the study of history enjoyable. After all, isn't that what made so many of us historians?

Greg Urwin
gregu@cc1.uca.edu

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