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 test