Scholars you see. Joan crashinn is the author of first lady of the confederacy published by harvard, and pwar stuff, the struggle for american and Human Resources in the civil war published last year by Cambridge University press. Well talk a lot about things during the civil war era today, and well be using a primary source analysis thats taken from her edited volume of essays with unc press also 2018 titled war matters material culture in the civil war era. For sale now, or after this panel, rather. Next to joan is earl hess. He is the author of more than 20 books on civil war topics including pickets charge the last attack at gettysburg. The most recent is fighting for atlanta, tactics terrain in the civil war. Next is jason phillips, the professor of civil war studies at West Virginia university. He is the author of looming civil war how 19th century americans imagine the future published last year by Oxford University press, and die hard rebels. The confederate culture of invinceability. On the other side of jason is michael woods, associate professor of history at marshal university. Youve met him before. Yesterday on a panel here hes the author of two books as well. Bleeding kansas, slavery sectionalism and civil war on the missouri, kansas border published in 2016, emotional and sectional conflict in the antebellum United States published in 2014. Oh, good. That worked. Our focus today is on convincing you, persuading you, i think that things mattered to our understanding of the civil war era. And i think were asking two big picture questions that you see listed here about Historical Context and about historical method. All right . First, we want to encourage you to ask the question how did people in the civil war era value things . How did they make meaning of things . Those meanings might be different than the ones that we would give to things. And as youll see i think through our presentation, the meanings of things changed over time, and in different sort of contexts in which people interacted with them. The methodology question were asking is how do you go beyond studying a thing to kind of integrate it with a study of texts and then to understand the era as a whole . Were going to be using both this object which is in the collection of the pbd essex museum in salem, massachusetts. A thing that as you see here, actually two things that came together some way, some how. And our job here is to show you, i think, how we do our work. So this question about method is going to be kind of played out in the conversation that we have together today. At the end of our time before q and a period where you get a chance to have your say, were going to give each one of the panelists time to talk about a material object, an artifact than been central in their work, but first were going to look at this at this bible and new testament of a soldier in the army of the potomac, his name is Charles William meryl. Hes a soldier in company a of the 19th massachusetts which was in the third brigade, second division, second corner of the army potomac. We can use this document that you see here which is a part of meryls compiled Service Record. These are available in the National Archives around foldthree. Com. We can also use the federal census to learn something. The question whose bible is this can be partially answered in these ways. We learned Charles Meryl was a farm laborer in the household of mr. Cordon west of his birthplace where his father still was a substantial landholder, a farm worth 4500. The next slides are going to open up a discussion, and the question that id like our panelists to answer is what does this bible tell us about start to tell us about some of the Historical Context in which meryl lived, and to get us started, i want to read just two short texts that we have associated with this bible. They are cited in an essay in joans edited work, war matters they wrote about books as shields, the books that soldiers carried. The enscription to this bible reads charles w. Meryl from your affectionate pastor david foster, august 12th, 1862. Thats two days after he enlisted. The second quote, this is from a letter that charles wrote to his mother, katherine in february of 1863. He says when you see mr. Foster, remember me to him. Hardly a day passes by without my thinking of him. Could you guys take it away from here . Sure. So one thing that comes to mind is obviously this inscription tells us the bible was a gift. Right . Gifts forge friendships, family relationships, and i think its safe to say that in the 19th century people owned fewer things. Right . I mean, in our world things are disposable. We consume so many things and own so many things and throw out so many things that the current trend is minimalism. Right . They lived in that minimalist world. And so the gift of a bible would have meant more to him, i suspect, than any gifts that we receive exempt for extremely special gifts. Right . So they owned fewer things, and i think its safe to assume probably valued them more for that reason. I would just add to that, too, that i think were going to talk a lot about studying material culture, material artifacts. Were still studying people. This is one way to trace connections between people, and i think the people that were studying knew that. If you think about some of the really iconic stuff from the mid 19th serchl ri, the thing that people notice in museums or often notice is the hair jewelry. The hair, the jewelry made from the hair of deceased loved ones. It has a kind of a gruesome sound to it now. Its the same idea. This is connecting you, that this thing is connecting you to a person, and we can clearly see that in this case. Well, one thing that pops into my mind is meryl didnt make this bible, of course. Its not a hand craft. It was something printed by the thousands probably in civil war era. And one of the more basic fundamental levels is to document mass reproduced stuff. Who made it . For what purpose . Who was it used . All that is basic, but its also kind of impersonal. If Something Like this happens, it makes an impersonal thing into a very personal object that has deep meaning for the individual and the individuals families. I found an interesting article working on this project. It was written by an english historian whose grandfather had won a major medal from the government for being in the re after world war ii. She was a material culturist. She found it fascinating the medal was kept by the family generation after generation, but it meant Different Things to different generations. Some people thought it was important that grandpa won it. Other people wouldnt care less. It was kind of like a Family History of a medal that was issued to thousands of people, but in that family, it had a very special and changing meaning over time. Sure. And maybe i should make a few general remarks about material culture itself before we keep diving into the particulars. The phrase was coined in the early 1900s apparently by an anthropologist, although theres been debate about who coined the phrase. Its been defined in different ways by different people. One of my favorite definitions is by a folklore scholar named henry glassy who described it as the tangible yield of human conduct. Which obviously covers a lot of human conduct. A lot of material objects, and the field is very large. Its been dominated for a long time by anthropologists and arc kolgss. Historians just started to really get into this about 30 years ago. And civil war historians have sort of held back on the serious study of material objects. I think its because theres so much documentation. The manuscripts for historians to consultant is just an enormous body of paper, but over the last 15 or 20 years scholars have started to turn to the material record that has been left behind, and to echo what everybody else said, its clear that material objects mean Different Things to different people, but they often write about them. It turns up in the written record, and, of course, they preserve the objects themselves. Like the meryl book that we have here. I also want to get in a plug for ron and mary who wrote this essay. They are excellent scholars, very nice people, and they live and work right here in pennsylvania at the university of pittsburgh. So we get from i think these early texts, an understanding of how a book could connect communities together, pastor to parishioner, and also Families Together across the divide of war from in some ways this book represents the home front, i think, for Charles Meryl on the in a very kind of tangible way. And so we see that from these texts. But that local context isnt the only one. The question that may seem the answer may seem obvious, but i think we need to explain is how did that grape shot get lodged in meryls bible . And one thing i think we need to talk about, then, is the military campaign in which that happened. The chancellorsville campaign. This is a map that many of you might be familiar with. Meryl as a soldier in john gibens division of the second core was actually attached to the sixth core remaining at fredericksburg when hooker began his flank march. So my question for the panel here is to talk about that military context but maybe also getting into and aeearl youve written at length about this in a book called the lens of war. This image taken in the aftermath of the second battle of fredericksburg by andrew jay russell to talk about the experience of combat and how it clearly shaped this thing, this bible, but then also something about the material artifacts in this image itself. Oh, yes. As you said, brian, this is a photograph taken by an army officer, captain andrew jay russell who was early in his war career tasked as a largely of transportation facilities, but he happened to be with the union forces that did this attack on may 3, 1863. He took his 11 by 14 inch camera and he went out early in the morning. This was less than 24 hours after this battle took place. Gosh, ive always been fascinated by this photograph. I loved writing the essay for it. I cant go into all the details of it. Its a unique photograph. There are maybe about 100 photographs taken in the civil war on the battlefield before they were cleaned up. This is more unique than most of them. Its taken a few hours after the battle and a few hours before the federals evacuated this position. Its a unique moment of time. Ive always been haunted by two or three things. One is look at the image of the dead soldier on the left. Its one of the more haunting photographs ive ever come across denoting hand to hand combat and maybe a horrid death. If you take this photograph on a computer and blow it up, you see a lot more in it. One thing i wanted to point out, battlefield photographers in the civil war had a tendency to in a way fool the viewer in that they manipulated some aspects of the scene. There have been documented cases of battlefield photography where some soldiers were talked into pretending to be dead. You can detect that because the body is not bloated. It looks alive. We dont have any of that going on here. Look at all the muskets on that image. How many muskets seem to be leaning gracefully against the stone wall. It stretches the imagination that you would assume they happened to fall there. I think russell is trying to do a little bit of arranging the scene of death for you a little bit. Hes not doing anything with the dead bodies. There are at least four to six of them on there if you take a close look at them. Even in doing by the way, this is the first time in u. S. History that battlefield death is photographed eventually for public distribution. What can we say about this photograph in terms of material culture . Well, russell was very much aware of material items. Very much aware that props like rifle muskets can be used to compose an interesting scene. To me its fascinating that youre taking one of the most vivid and unmediated approach to showing death on the battlefield, yet at the same time in a kind of way trying to pretty it up a little bit. Make it like si symmetrical. Any other comments . The battlefield has always yielded a lot of material objects. This is true for many wars, especially the modern era. The metal parts are very durable. There are accounts of people after the civil war who were looking for battlefield artifacts and were digging around. They would not only find weapons from the civil war, they would find weapons from the revolutionary war. If they were in the parts of the country that were part of the original 13 colonies. Military artifacts are a rich source of material that we can examine as historians. In terms of material limitations, as jason mentioned, its not a material rich culture in the 1860s. Every battlefield became the target of looters, civilian in the area would descend on it to try to grab what they could, discarded equipment and clothing, anything they could fie find that they could make use of. Of course maybe gettysburg is the best illustration of that. Theres a lot more material looting after july 3, 1863 than any other battle in the civil war. Yeah, and styles local authorities would put up guards around different battlefields. I dont know if that happened here. They would put up guards to try to stop the looting, to keep people off the battlefield because many times the priority is to locate the wounded and take care of the dead. Theres also during the war itself a market that develops in civil war artifacts before 1865. Those artifacts show up for sale in the newspapers in the north and the south. Many of them seem to be authentic, perhaps some were not. There are documented instances of people digging around in battlefields right after the shooting stops and they want to take those artifacts away to sell them for profit. This photograph also calls to my mind some of the accounts that you read from soldiers trying to describe what the aftermath of a battle looks like. They will enumerate everything they see, the discarded canteens and nap sacks and trying to kind of conjure up this kind of image of just the variety of things that are out there. I wonder if it is in part because theyre coming from a background where theyre not seeing that much stuff strewn about in that way. Theyre trying to depict the horrors of battle, but also the immensity of whats there. Theres also a consumer culture thats just starting to take off really in the 1830s or 40s historians debate the start date for the market culture where goods are marketed to people with disposable income. It seems to have spread very quickly from the major cities to the smaller towns all over the United States. Objects that make life more comfortable, more enjoyable, but are not necessary for human existence. For example, pianos, the piano is a luxury object. It cost several hundred dollars. By 1860 its definitely a status symbol for lots of people in the north and south. Its a sign that the household has some extra income. It adds enjoyment to life, but its not necessary for human survival obviously. You see markets spring up quickly in womens fashion. A lot of them copied from styles that are being pioneered in europe. Household furnishings, the br brussell carpet. Its marketed in the United States. Its expensive. It was found in the homes of affluent people. You wouldnt see it in a working class home. Its a status symbol. That consumer culture is just taking off really right before 1860. Its nothing like the world that we live in today. Jason has said, you know, most households have hundreds and hundreds of objects not necessary for human survival. They give comfort, enjoyment and make life easier and more pleasant. This discussion of the image and the image reveal the content of things. Whats being opened up here is the mustering of soldiers and how that forces soldiers to interact with a variety of other things, including guns. We see the International Context of a consumer economy opening up, of the circulation of things across national borders. This image shows not only the staged guns, but the war of men having their as earl says theres a tin cup that might have been used to give a drink to a wounded soldier placed on the stone wall itself. There are bits of cloth and paper all over the ground to give you some sense of a battlefield strewn with things that might there might not have been time for the looters to come in. That does, i hope, give you a sense of the variety of context in which things moved. Local, nation and international. The point is made in the essay which is about focuses on a sample of over 100 stories about union and confederate soldiers who were carrying books and had been shot. Theyre historians of the book. At one point they focus on something that i think needs to be explained. They do so very well. A piece a pie a piece of grape shot, leather bindings, sturdy boards and contact paper provided resistance to longrange fire and bullets. Thats the material explanation for what actually youre seeing here. I wondered if you all could expound upon your understanding of many some other cultural and ideological and religious context for helping us understand what civil war americans made of things like a bible that has a piece of grape shot in it. Sure. First of all, i think it is important to focus on the thing and the material of it as that quotation provides for us. I also think we have to remember that, when men were saved by bibles in their breast pockets, they didnt thank the quality of the paper or the binding. They thanked god. They thanked god. They understood the relationship between god, the bible and themselves differently perhaps than is expressed in this quotation and probably differently than most of us would today. So god was primarily responsible for that projectile landing in the bible rather than their skull. The bible stopped the bullet. Third, in terms of importance is the person that put the bible in their pocket. Thats their understanding. We might look at that situation, if we were saved by a bullet like that, the first thought my first thought would be im so fortunate to have put that bible in my breast pocket. Im primarily responsible for that, not god and not the book. The book was just an inert object that happened to stop the projectile. Thats a different understanding in the hierarchy of things than is evident in the quotation. Youre absolutely right, jason. Its ill stray tv of the force of the belief in god. I find in fascinating. There are many cases of a bullet going through the bible and killing the guy. Does that leave them the guys family members to condemn god as heartless . I dont think so. No. Thats another testament of the force of religion i guess and the minds of most civil war era americans. They also point out that both of the armies are largely protestant in their religious orientation. Theres been a big influx of catholic immigrants, mostly from ireland and germany, what is now germany. For the most part they point out the average soldier in the union army or Confederate Army is from a protestant family. There are protestant bibles, protestant holy books that turn up most often. They found a few cases of catholic texts that soldiers were taking with them. I asked them if they had found any evidence of jewish soldiers in both armies. There are jews in both armies. They said, as i recall, they didnt. That doesnt mean it didnt happen. It just didnt turn up in their research. These objects do reflect a lot about the cultural context of the time, the religious make up of the population. There was also an interesting historical angle in this essay which i think is a real model. Its looking at what did people expect when they put these books in their pockets. What we know is that there had been stories circulating going back to the english civil war of exactly this kind of thing. As unlikely as it might seem that your bible would stop a bullet thats directed to your heart, it wasnt entirely unexpected that it could happen. They come into this with some vague idea that this can happen. Its the circulation of the stories that helps to explain, you know, i put the book there in the first place. Maybe it will happen. The bible because like a talisman in order to protect you on the battlefield. I did an essay on the material culture of weapons in the civil war. A lot of soldiers believed in some magic thing they could hold in their pocket during battle and not be killed. There was like 5,000 native americans who served in the Confederate Army, another 5,000 who served in the union army. Win confederate talked about just before a battle he saw some of his men scraping themselves with powder. It was a native american belief that this would make them invincible in battle. They talk about soldiers in the civil war deliberately putting that bible over their breast and their heart as a similymbol of protecting them. Look on the internet today. People are on amazon selling soldiers talisman to soldiers that are going to be shipped overseas. Its easy to see how a soldier believed his life had been saved by a bible in his pocket, that object might become his most precious possession, not just for the war, but the rest of his life. Its easy to imagine how he handed that to his wife or children and said this is valuable. This means a lot to me. This is part of our Family History and it has to be preserv preserved. The other thing to keep in mind, when the bullets didnt go straight through the bible, they stopped on a verse. They stopped at a particular spot in the bible. The men who were holding those bibles close to their hearts expected this was a message from god, right . If god was directing that bullet into that scripture, i need to take this really seriously. Hes telling me something. So weve learned about how this thing, these two things, joined together. Help us understand local context, the relationships of family and community and the relationship between a soldier and a military campaign and the awful effects of battle itself. Weve widened our perspective from local to national to international and just recently from human to diety. We can learn a lot of things through things. The question though what some of these other contextual sources show, if we get too fixated on that thing, were not going to understand enough about him and the Material World in which he lived. So in other sources in his very rich compiled Service Record theyre not all this rich, but this one is. You find accounts at the end, one for clothing and theres a pencilled notation at the top that says grape shot battle, may 3rd. On the right a casualty sheet that says wounded severely may 3, 1863 and a notation by a clerk in 1885, going through the sources, that says index shows face severe. Lucky man, very lucky. Of course he wouldnt put it quite that way. On may 7th hes admitted to judiciary scare hospital in d. C. And dies of his wounds on may 12th. Thats to suggest that theres maybe another piece of grape shot we need to account for. In snooping around on the internet this is in part an embarrassed admission, ive not read the Charles Meryl papers at the museum. That would be the next step for any of us interested in what happened to Charlie Meryl in his last days. He became something of an instructional story. This is where his world moves on to a higher plain, a more national scope, one that might be instructional for readers after the war. The story on the left is from 1866 it reads safeguard for body and soul. Charlie meryl announced a ball passed through his head, entered near his right eye and was extracted through his ear. Another ball would have entered his body had it not been stopped by a safeguard. The president sent a handsome bible which he inscribed Charles Meryl from a. Lincoln. There are interesting things about that story. What do you find interesting there given that we see meryls testament, i think meryls photograph and the bible that lincoln gave to him on display at the museum . I will say that the finding aid for that letter collection suggests that Charlie Meryl in the hospital wrote to the president to tell him about his testament. What do you guys make of this . Well, if he did write to lincoln, that wouldnt surprise me at all. Thousands of soldiers did that. Union soldiers saw him as their friend, in some respects their father. They would want to communicate something so profound to lincoln himself. That would make perfect sense. Its an incredibly rich and unique little case study of a lot of Different Things in civil war history. Compared to tens of thousands of obscure case histories where somebody experienced something similar or just as poignant, but we have the wonderful opportunity here of this central piece of evidence being that valuable with that gigantic grape shot stuck in it. Without that central artifact, the rest of the story would be a little less extraordinary i think. It really is the center piece of this interesting case study. Yeah, and it makes me wonder why, given the details that brian has just shared with us, we focus on the grape shot that lands in the bible instead of the one that goes through his head and eventually kills him. Is it because the bible with the grape shot is an oddity or appears to be a miracle . Is it more unusual and extraordinary and thats why we focus on that rather than the mortal wound which was so commonplace in those hospitals and for these men . I dont know the answer to the question. Its just a something that stris me. Its an interesting tidbit in thinking about lincoln. You know, he had been kind of plagued early in his political career in illinois by accusations of atheism in the 1830s. Theres some evidence that his views changed over the course of the war, that he turned toward a more providence view of events. This may be a milestone on that. It may also be he sees this as a chance to respond to a soldier, score political points by being seen interacting with him. Its making the newspaper. Do something decent for a man who had made a great sacrifice. Its probably all of those things. Its an interesting moment in scholars have written a lot about what exactly lincolns faith entailed or didnt. This is one little slice of that. He seems to be someone who read the bible frequently, reread it, but didnt go to church very often. Right, but he knew it. He knew the bible very well. Yeah. To kind of finish the circle, complete the circle here, thinking about context we need to understand the connections between between the Nations Capital where meryl dies and then his home and family once again returning him back home. We can talk again about in these next two slides we see the ways in which material objects seem to loom large from the telegraph machines which carried news to the various things that were sent back with Charles Meryl to his family through the awe spiss of this man pictured here who was a journalist from n newberry port who wrote a memoir of having lived with the political leaders of the capital. This is a telegram from i think a family friend, j. T. Brown, on may 12th. The telegram reads i took the news up to mr. Meryl. They were much startled but felt exceedingly grateful to you for your kindness and attention. They wish you do everything in the case to be done and have the remains brought to newberry port. Please notify when they leave washington. Do you come this week . The final memoranda in meryls compiled Service Record, there is a list of things, memoranda. One uniform coat, one trouser, one wallet and one silver watch, one diary. I received the articles and money signed ben poorly poor. Any of you talk about the connections between material connections that kind of luminate the end of Charles Meryls life . Sure. First the telegram strikes me. Its clear that by the time of the civil war with the invention of the telegram, the news of the death of a loved one could be transmitted much faster than in any previous american war. It was almost as instantaneous as the death that happened. Yet, when we think about the telegram and photography of the era, while it is a vast step forward te forward technologically, there are also limitations. A telegram can only provide snippets of information. You cant write long paragraphs in a telegram. Theres limitations and am ambigui ambiguities. Im reminded of a message that Oliver Wendell holmes received when his sound was wounded. It said Something Like captain holmes shot through the neck. Thought not mortal. That was it. So for days his father who was, of course, a medical doctor had only those 12 words to figure out if his son was going to be alive or not by the time he got to maryland. If we pick about this technology and figure out whats possible and still not possible based on photography or the telegram, then we can pars out what kind of information they could collect and what was still beyond their grasp and how the uncertainties could fester under the surface when you receive bad news like this. Sure, i mean, i agree absolutely with what jason just said. Also, it strikes me that its very important for the family back home to try to get the physical remains back home. They much prefer that the body should be brought home and given a proper burial in a church yard where families and longtime friends and neighbors will be to witness the funeral and so on. Thats one thing that goes on during the war. The Quarter Masters were in charge of burying the dead. They frequently get letters from the survivors at home saying where exactly is my son . I know theres a big graveyard near shiloh, but i want to know exactly where he is if you can tell me because i want to bring him home. Then when the war ends civilian sometimes show up in different places in the south trying to find the bodies so they can take them home. The Quarter Master is still involved in this process, but civilians get involved themselves because they dont want to wait. Its very important that the remains are returned to the loved ones at home. And the army is a bureaucracy. You have to account for everything with paperwork. Not only the remains, but his belongin belongings. Its a document that was called inventory of effects. It had to be filled out even if you couldnt find the effects as sometimes happened when the soldiers body wasnt identified. At least the paperwork needed filled out. We read a lot of letters by officers who privates were killed in the battlefield and when they get time they write a letter to the family sending them condolences. Then the second part of the letter is pra ma tipragmatic de. Ill try to get you whats left as soon as i can. Imagine getting the shock of a letter informing you that your letter has died and the condolences from his commander followed by this kind of information that you had to deal with somehow in terms of taking care of the material remnants of your loved one. If he dies in the hospital, its easier to deal with that. If he dies in the field, its much more complicated. Sometimes the box of the effects would arrive before the letter. Sometimes thats how they would find out that someone had died because a box came with a pair of boots, maybe a hanker chief, that sort of thing. If this is of interest to you, i would put in a good word for the republic of suffering. It shows the deep meaning to the remains and the effects. Were seeing the behind the scenes thing here and it comes to life in that book. Since were on the topic of dead bodies, one thing i discovered i wrote about it in my essay and the book war matters, is that physical objects connected to the founders, the founding generation of the 18th century also mattered a lot to people during the war, both to soldiers and civilians. There was a newspaper are yrumot swept the country that George Washingtons body had been taken from mt. Vernon and hidden away to make sure the union army didnt gain custody of his physical remains. That turned out to be false. His body was not stolen from mt. Vernon. I thought it was interesting that that alleged incident got so much press coverage from both the north and south. Its because washington was the pre eminent founder and had the most importance pre the civil war generation. Keeping custody of his remains meant a lot to people. When the union army captured the mt. Vernon area in 1861, there was most rejoicing in the north because of the symbolism and must dejection of the south. The symbolism of these objects is trust tremendous. I made the mistake of advancing the slide too soon. What joan was talking about is a great segway into understanding more context when we think about the relationship between people and the things in which they interacted. The ways things could shape experience and shape peoples ideas, thinking about the importance of historical things for civil war americans is one way to do that. I wanted to give each one of the panelists some time to talk about their own work. Theyve all identified one image for da to help them reveal wh they have to say. Joan you recommended this image to us. Okay. Sure. This is a church. This is a church where George Washington worshipped for most of his adult life. He was an episcopal january. The church was called the anglican church. He had a pew in this church. Everybody knew that was the washington family pew. They sat there and only they sat there. It was a place of honor for washington and his family. There was some kind of marking on the pew. It might have been a Little Silver plague or a wooden carving, but it not only was known to the other Church Members that the washingtons sat here, but if a stranger came in he or she could find the washington pew. When the war breaks out, soldiers in both armies want that church pew because of its association with washington. The church pew disappeared early in the war. By 1865 the entire church had been cleaned out. Everything in it was gone, every pew, the pulpit, the rail, all of it because it was a place where George Washington worshipped on a daily basis. That association made those objects very valuable to troops in both armies. Earl, do you want to describe this image . Yeah. This major comes on the essay i wrote. This illustrates one of them. This Research Made me stop thinking of anything regarding uniform training for shooting. Tools were used for a purpose and they have different shapes and different purposes. People can acclimate themselves well or badly to any given tool. It depends on your eye hand coordination, your senses, a whole lot of stuff goes into your physical make up to determine whether or not you can use something effectively. That goes for civil war soldiers and firing weapons too. This is confirmed in diaries. Some civil war soldiers were good shots. They acclimated themselves to the demands of the musket and could fire rapidly at will. Others were horrible at it and it was widely known. By 62 or 63 a lot of guys were recognizing this guy can fire well. He stands in front and has people loading the muskets and passes them to him. I found a wonderful illustration from a guy from a ohio regimen which illustrates the inept guy. He hated his musket and he drew this illustration to illustrate that. There were gun adept soldiers and everybody in between. Its important we understand that the material thing has in essence a life of its own in a sense. Its a mass produced item, but its not dealt with in a mass produced way by human beings. Everybody has their own individual approach to a musket in the civil war. You can classify them as good or bad. This one is pretty clear what he thought about his musket. The two objects depicted here are from the work of both jason and michael. Because jason is giving a presentation right after this about john browns pipe, i dont want him to say too much. Maybe michael if you would start about this cane and to understand its significance and how it moved after the event for which its most wellknown. Sure. So the key word on the screen that i want to be brutally honest about is attributed to preston brook. Preston brook is the South Carolina congressman. In may he attacks a republican senator from massachusetts on the floor of the u. S. Senate. Beats him for about a minute and a half. Leaves him unconscious and shatters the tip off of the cane that he used in this attack in the process. I got curious about what happened to the cane. A lot of people who know the story know that well wishers sent new canes to brooks, but i was interested in the used cane, the after cane. Lo and behold theres a cane at the Old State House Museum in boston which is attributed to brooks. They say this is the cane. I can neither confirm, nor deny, that this is the actually cane. It matches the description. It has been broken and repaired in ways that match eye witness accounts of how the cane broke. It has a pretty good, although not perfect, kind of lineage. This gets back to the point about gift giving which is that what you see is a series of cases before, during and after the war in which this cane was gifted and regifted in and out of the wise family of virginia. Essentially it gets passed down. Some owners dont seem to know what it was. They knew it was a cane. Others knew it was. Eventually its interesting to think about this. It gets donated by a descendant of henry wise to a museum in massachusetts which is sumner turf. We go from the idea that this cane is brooks to the idea that it belongs in massachusetts. Its shifted its regional affiliation in that way as well. I will not give my lecture now for that other image. Ill give a teaser and let you know if you study the whole history of john brown pikes and not just focus on them on Harpers Ferry when nearly 900 of them were brought across the border to help slaves, that object does not begin as a pike. It begins as a buoy knife in kansas. Then of course it ends its life not at Harpers Ferry but in the hands of a number of relic hunters and politicians who carry these things all over the country and some of them into the civil war. Ill be following sort of the long journey of these pikes from beginning to end in our next session. I just want to pick up on something michael said. He used the word actor. Theres been a good deal of debate among scholars of material culture about whether objects themselves have agency. Earl was hinting, i think, at those ideas. It really comes from a french scholar and he put together something called Actor Network theory. What hes arguing is objects by their very existence can inspire human action. Not everybody agrees. Theres been a vigorous debate over that. Its fun to think about. Its interesting to think about. Peter carmichael, we all know who he is. He has an essay in this book as well. He talks about confederate keep sakes after the war, white male combat vets who kept mementos. Peter believes that can inspire action in the post war south to preserve what they believe to be confederate values, to make sure that whites remain in charge in southern society. This idea even if you dont agree with it, its a very interesting perspective. Its a different way to think about objects. For a long time scholars and people in general thought of objects as mute, inert, they were things created by people and left behind by people. Latorre and some of his allies dont see it that way. Thats a good place to pause and ask for your questions. I hope you see the value in studying things and maybe even finding Something Interesting about the way in which we approach that analysis. If there are any questions, please walk up to these two microphones here. Dan quart, interior of new york. I notice on the list of possessions of Charles Meryl, the bible wasnt mentioned. What happened to it and why wasnt it on that list . Im not sure is the first think that i would say. That suggests its a good thing to point out that i hadnt thought about. That may mean that in fact Charles Meryl did send his this bible, if not to lincoln, home before he died, that it was no longer part of his effects at death. I mean, thats one potential answer. But i dont know how it was brought back massachusetts, how it got into the collection of the essex in salem. What is the single greatest threat to the preservation of these artifacts and what could someone like myself do to preserve them for the future . Could you repeat the first part . Whats the greatest threat to the preservation of the artifacts . Time i would imagine. Books dont last forever, even in the library of congress. Theres time that will wear away at material objects. As joan pointed out, metal is particularly strong and can withstand the test of time. Other things cannot. So as time passes, certain kinds of material artifacts survive longer than others. Thats my take on it. I would agree, but i would say too that a more fundamental threat is indifference on the part of people. The human factor is the biggest threat to it. If people dont put value into a historical artifact, they wont spend the money to deal with the problems of deterioration. Theres a lot of difference in society in terms of heritage and preserving it. There are a lot of Success Stories too. I also think for a long time museums were not very interested in preserving objects owned by ordinary people. They wanted objects associated with famous, powerful rich white men. They werent very interested in the Charles Meryls of the world. I think that has started to change over the last generation or so. Theres a much greater interest among Museum Professionals about the experience of the average soldier. Thats been the subject of a great deal of scholarship and also civilians, the home front, the connection between the military and the home front. I deal with prisoners of war. Its got me in trouble on ebay trying to collect trinkets. What are your thoughts on the p. O. W. Trinket . Theres an emotional value i found with this and the prisoner of war had to part with that because they would sell them to the guards for survival. Im curious on your thoughts. Yes. The first thought that comes to my mind is obviously these men were sort of frozen in prison in terms of not being able to do much to support their war effort, to support themselves. Theyre put in a very dependent and precarious situation. I imagine for many of them carving trinkets and crafting things was a way to give purpose to their time in prison. So theres an aspect of immaterial value there beyond the material value which im not discounting of how it becomes eventually currency. Getting back to brians question how did they value things . They valued those trinkets for their material value and the immaterial value that it gave to their lives while they were in prison. It also gets us into the production of items which is something we didnt really talk about. We talked about the circulation of things and sometimes the theft of things. The production and the idea of being a producer in the 19th century, that you have value when you can make things. So, i think, thats a good case of it. Yeah, i would like to add something about ohio where i live. Theres an ongoing project at johnsons island, the prison. This past semester i had one of the arc ole gists speak in my civil war class. His name is dave bush. He has a degree in an tlo policy ji and archaeology. He had the most amazing array of objects. He was able to take pictures of other prisoners while in prison. He created his own camera. He had images which were pretty good. They may not have been top quality, but they were very detailed and sophisticated. He made the argument that people in prison are trying very hard to preserve some elements of their own identity, their own dignity. Thats one way to do that, not just the images which were fascinating in and of themselves, but the effort that went into it and a host of other things that they literally dug up out of the ground. My question was i forget who mentioned it enduring the war local population would go and collect relics. My question would be why would people who had what do you think motivated people who had so little and especially in a time of war to go out and collect things that probably could have been used and then not used them . Im assuming if you said they were collecting them, they werent using them. Thats a good question. I think youre referring to a comment that i made. Some people were doing it for money. People saw it as a way to make money. Also, there are people who dont seem to feel any deep emotional connection to the Material World in general. Whether were talking about peace or war. To them this is not a precious artifact, its not a valuable historical item. Its a way they can bring in some extra cash. Thank you. Sure. In talking about the looting of battlefields after the battle, it doesnt seem to be for relics. It seemed to be for things they could use and make use of. We cant hear you. If youre talk about looting battlefields after the battle was over, i dont get the impression people were doing it for relics. They were doing it for usable things. It fit into the material scarcity context. Theyre trying to grab something they dont own when the getting was good. Lets put it that way. A lot of solders at gettysburg and other places described them as ghouls and unprincipled people. Soldiers did this too. The Confederate Army was Resource Limited more so than the union army. They looted a lot, but even Union Solders did it often. It might be difficult to understand this now because we can go to walmart and buy anything cheaply. People in those days, especially if youre in the military in the field hundreds of miles away from the supply line, scarcity was a way of life for them. And the southern economy was breaking down. By the last year of the war things were desperate. If you could sell something from a battlefield for 3 or 4 that might make a difference in getting something to eat and making it through the winter. Any other questions . Can you help me thank the panelists . [ applause ] pete is telling me the next session begins here at 3 15. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight we look at the reconstruction and jim crow laws. He examines the laws and other measures that were passed in southern states. Watch American History tv tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan3. Next on American History tv Gettysburg College director talks about his book the war for the common soldier. This is an hour. It is my honor and pleasure to introduce somebody who at this point probably needs very little introduction. Peter carmichael is the director of the civil war insutitute. He is an author of many articles and essays, as well as civil war works. The last generations published by unc press. His most recent book was published by unc last year in 2018 and is the recent recipient of the 2018 nymas civil war book award. Please welcome peter carmichael. [ applause ] thank you. Im not dehydrat