Op-Ed
This weekend thousands of Valley residents will descend upon Kearney Park for Fresno’s annual Civil War Revisited reenactment. They will be treated to “the sights and sounds of the 1860s,” as self-styled “living historians” ”” most clad in Union blue or Confederate gray ”” set up camp, march in formation and demonstrate antebellum crafts. The centerpiece will be a reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run, pitting Yanks and Rebs against one another as if it were 1861.
This year’s event takes on a special significance. It comes on the 150th anniversary of the start of a war that nearly tore the nation in two. It is high time that we take stock of how we remember this pivotal moment, both at our annual Kearney Park event and beyond.
I confess that as a Civil War historian I find events like Civil War Revisited frustrating. On the one hand, I am thrilled to see people engage history ”” especially my period of expertise ”” with enthusiasm. Many of the students who turn up each year in my classes say that trips to the reenactment stoked an early interest in the past.
On the other hand, I am discouraged by what tends to be remembered and forgotten at such events.
Fresno’s Civil War Revisited, like countless reenactments across the U.S. and the popular histories of the war that dominate big-box bookstores, focuses on military minutia to the exclusion of more significant issues. Meticulous attention is paid to how soldiers marched, what they wore and where they slept. Yet little time is devoted to the unprecedented horror of a war that claimed more American lives than World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. And next to nothing is said of the larger meaning of the conflict, especially for the four million slaves it helped to emancipate.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of this narrow approach to the Civil War is that the general public is misinformed about the conflict. Take its causes. Despite consensus among professional historians that slavery was the most important factor in precipitating the war, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that almost half of Americans believe states’ rights was the main cause. Among the under-thirty set, that figure climbs to a galling 60%. The unwitting victims of a propaganda campaign ”” which sought to resurrect the reputation of the Confederacy by downplaying the issue of slavery ”” much of the country misunderstands the origins of our most destructive war.
Other Americans make the mistake of turning the Civil War into a simple morality play, as if the North held the keys to what Robert Penn Warren once called the “Treasury of Virtue.” Yet we must also be wary of glorifying the victors. Fresno State’s own Victor Davis Hanson has fallen prey to precisely this sort of thinking, portraying Union General William Tecumseh Sherman as a moral crusader.
Although Sherman famously set aside land for slaves he helped to free during his march through Georgia, the general’s primary aim was to be rid of the thousands of impoverished freedpeople who trailed his army. Sherman had little sympathy for African Americans, whom he deemed “not fit to marry, to associate, or to vote with me or mine.” A moral warrior he was not.
Events like Civil War Revisited are not the prime culprits in the spread of such misconceptions about the war. But they are a lost opportunity to redress them. As such, reenactments do a disservice not only to the past but also to the present.
After all, we still live in the shadow of the Civil War. The racial inequalities that continue to plague America ”” from alarming incarceration rates for black men to income and educational gaps for African-Americans more generally ”” testify to the racial legacy of the war. Meanwhile, our polarized political culture hearkens back to sectional crisis. When conservatives today appeal to states’ rights, talk of nullifying federal laws, even threaten disunion, they sound a lot like antebellum secessionists. Sadly, these connections to the Civil War are lost on many Americans.
As we commemorate the Civil War sesquicentennial over the next four years, both at Kearney Park and elsewhere, we would do well to keep in mind the full scope and enduring legacy of our most important conflict. How soldiers marched matters. But bigger issues ”” why the war was fought; what it changed and left standing; and how it continues to shape American culture ”” matter more.
Ethan Kytle is a history professor specializing in 19th century American history and the Civil War at Fresno State.
Caldwell • Oct 8, 2012 at 9:11 am
Because academicians and professional historians have obvious and decided predjudices of their own, they are no more reliable than the general public is in explaining the origins of the war. Whatever additional insight they may have(and often they have precious little) is commonly sacrificed to those prejudices. So what’s truly galling, is that slavery is still considered relevant on any level. The only reason, in fact, that slavery is topic of discussion in connection with the war, is because the professional historians continue their own propaganda campaigns. In truth, the one and only cause of the war was the dispute over the right of secession.
Darin • Jun 23, 2012 at 9:33 pm
I too am another one of those stupid silly re-enactors telling people what it is like to march, eat hard crackers and salt pork, and sleep on the ground. If you want to get into deep discussions about the causes and effects of the war at a reenactment, then sit down with one of the participants and talk with them about it. You might be surprised with some of the answers you will get.
And if you have a serious issue with the way we conduct our events, the answer is simple: just don’t come. Stick to your books and articles if that pleases you.
We reenactors share the same love of history as you do; we just take a different approach to it. You shouldn’t condemn us for it.
Joe Lovell • Oct 24, 2011 at 9:12 am
Dr. Kytle, sectionalism was alive and well in our Republic even before it was a Republic. Hancock, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, at the very least, expressed concern about sectionalism pulling it apart almost as soon as it was formed. This is nothing new.
The same for the States Right issue. That is why the powers ceded by the people and the states to the federal government were so carefully laid out and circumscribed in the Constitution. And why “THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.” Those “declaratory and restrictive clauses” were to place checks on the federal government, not the states. The founders knew all too well the dangers of a too powerful central government. Too often today people forget that the federal government is the child of the several states and that all its power comes from them and the people.
Also, it seems that every other Christian, western European-based nation and empire managed to get rid of chattel slavery without a major war, why would you suggest that it was necessary to have a war to end it here? The Corwin Amendment, which passed in Congress without a single vote from the deep south guaranteed perpetual slavery in the United States. The seven states which had left the Union, as was their right as taught in the course in Constitutional law at the US Military Academy (in a nutshell, constitutional but a really stupid thing to do), only had to rescind their bills of secession, rejoin the Union, and join with the northern states in the ratification of it.
Lincoln, in his inaugural address, said that he would only move against those former stats to collect revenue from the US customs houses. The Georgia Declaration of Secession spells out, no only slavery, but the use of federal funds for projects and protection of northern business, industry, and financial interests with revenues generated mainly in southern ports through duties and tariffs on goods.
Also, you mention the state of race relations in our Republic. Compare the relations here with those in other countries where slavery was allowed to die from natural economic causes rather than at bayonet point. Another 40 years and slavery would have died in the United States, and 2,000,000 lives (that includes the estimated 1.25 million “excess deaths” among the civilian population between 1861 and 1865) would not have been spent doing it.
For laughs and grins, peruse “Born in Slavery, Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project.” You will find the usual horror stories. You will also find that contradict the usual textbook version of all slave owners being sadistic despots intent on brutalizing everyone with whom they come in contact.
But, then, what do I know? I’m just one of those stupid re-enactors telling people what it is like to march, eat hard crackers and salt pork, and sleep on the ground.
Respectfully,
Joseph Lovell
Francine Oputa • Oct 20, 2011 at 5:20 am
Dr. Kytle: I always cringe when I hear of the Civil War reenactment. I have not been able to articulate the root cause of the emotion. Thank you for “penning” what was on my heart and in my mind. Additionally, your commentary allowed me to have a greater appreciation for the reenactment aand to give some thought to how I can respond to frequent requests (as an actressand storyteller) to be involved.