Where he had the good fortune to stay under gary gallagher. He is the author or editor of five books, including the last generation. Young virginians in peace, war, and reunion. Published by unc press in 2005. He is also one of the series editors for you and see presses for civil war series and i know him best in this capacity. He was my editor for midnight in america and i can tell you his thoughtfulness, his careful attention to detail and generosity with sources made my book a better book. Today, he will tell us about his most recent book, the war for the common soldier which was released in 2018 as part of the prestigious little field series with unc press. A review in the Civil War History recently concluded quote, it is appointment book, full of pathos, which vividly bears out carmichael steams and brilliantly eliminates the mental struggle and coping mechanisms of civil war combatants. It will prove a valuable work for anyone concerned with the live experience of the civil war soldier. Please join me and welcoming peter carmichael. applause good morning. Good morning. Every time his thoughts drifted to past battles, new yorks charles hand started to tremble he had passed through the ordeal of the Overland Campaign during the 64 with his comrades of the one 47th new york, and even though he could not shake the dark memories of what he had seen and done, he looked back on the battles in the wilderness of spots elena with a sense of surprise. That was a place where he had earned his badge of manhood. Something that had eluded him before the war. He had believed people didnt have a high regard for him, including his family. He once wrote to his wife, he thought of himself as the black sheep. It appears that was largely because he had struggles with alcohol. In the summer of 1863, he was drafted into the army of the potomac, his first day in the army, he arrived in new york popped off the train was given a blanket, ordered to sleep on the ground and woke up the next morning, wrote his wife a letter, explained to her that he needed to get out of this fix. Arriving with the rest of the army his situation did not improve. In fact his frustrations boiled over in december when he wrote to his wife let the force be with me technology is not my friend. All right. He wrote, curse it be the day that i saw my name john drawn as a conscript. And then be the hour that i made my mind to come as a drafty. I think sometimes if it were not for you and my children i would blow out my brains. The south, the war and everything that had to do with getting it up. He was incredibly blunt. He told his wife most any fool could be an officer but it takes a smart man to fill the place of the province. As harsh as this criticism was it was reserved for abraham lincoln. I am certain he considered himself to be not partisan. He told his wife that he was no freedom shriek or which of course no abolition and no union savior. The title of the book. Edited by katie all dredge. She purchased a house in moral county new york. She was going through the attic of this house and discovered a box. It was a box stuffed with a bunch of letters it was an incredible find. Katie hodge rich her profession, its being in a marathon. She came without any professional experience and did a remarkable job. Esther, she knew that any letter from her husband was not going to be a boring read. He would not talk about the weather or his problems. His letters spared no one. As i said before, lincoln was his favorite target. August 1st 1864, for the army are getting sick of such work i think abraham has cashed his political throat till there is no used to trying to save his life. The army will vote against him. Four to one. By the time he forces 500,000 more in the army his political death and damnation will be accomplished beyond the hope of salvation. Reelection came a little more than two months he became a political chameleon. There is no mental policy left for us he wrote, we have but went chance to choose first, of lincoln and the universal rights of man, let it cost of blood and treasure when it made to maintain them, or mcclelland and another compromise with the devil by which man is degraded and brought a little near to the devil and in everything. If lincoln is elected today, the war with the johnny rub is but childs play. For they will see that there is a spirit in the free man of the north that will not be defeated. A spirit that is bound to win. Now his words would suggest that he had become a die hard republic republican and supporter of old abe lincoln. It is reasonable to assume that in casting his ballot for abe, he came to support the hard work policies of the republican party, including emancipation. In fact many historians would point to him and suggest that he became a republican even after the war i know a little about his life after the war except that he continued to struggle with alcoholism. I can note this. After his vote for lincoln, he still believed that emancipation and the employment of black trump is not the best course of action. The person who reminds us to look at the soldier vote in 1864 with caution is none other than jonathan white. He makes the point that a democratic soldier who voted for lincoln should not be interpreted as a conversion to the republican party. Even if jonathan was not within my line of sight and the organizer of this advent who invited me here, even if all those things were true, i would still be up here to tell you that jonathan is right that a vote for lincoln from a democratic soldier cannot be interpreted as a switching of party affiliation. I will not summarize jonathans book free. I believe on monday there is a panel devoted to the election of 1860 and 1864 i will let them talk about those details. I will say simply this. I use jonathans own words to summarize his arguments. I argue. Im not arguing, its jonathan. I argue that Union Soldiers were more likely to vote for republican candidates during the war because of their hatred for than their support for republican policies. Jonathan im sure all of you have read his book, if im not im sure there are some. Jonathan youre doing a good job here. You will find that there is ample evidence. Letters, diaries from democratic soldiers who support jonathans argument. But, i feel im starting to break up with you. Here is the but. Its not you, its me kind of thing. laughs but there is also ample evidence from the Union Soldiers who were also democratic that they infected make the conversion to republican policies and believed earnest sleet and that to break the scholarly logjam. When both sides of the argument draw from the same evidentiary base. I am not trying to suggest to you that soldier letters were homogenous. They certainly are not but the problem resides in the fact that we have an oceanic amount of source materials to deal with. That is really where the challenge resides because any historian, if they are diligent enough, they can sift through this heavy volume of source material and if they are patient enough they will find that nugget of information is going to fit their argument. What to do . 2011 the historian joseph, he hit the methodological problem right in the bulls eye and i should add, on soldiers studies tremendously influential, in fact his book to the sea and beyond published in 1985, it is the first book to take seriously the ideas of the common soldier. James makes pierson its a great book. Heres joe here is joe solution to the methodology chuckle issue. I believe to a great extent some more scholarships that focuses on soldiers a stuck. Reflect on the soldiers memoirs and make claims that his opinions represent most or even a substantial portion of those soldiers if a scholar searches long enough, he or she will find evidence to justify equally any contemporary attitude any argument the scholar may pose, regardless of its representatives. For that reason a valid statistic may break that scholarly long gem i have that quote for you all to read there it is and it is gone we are back on track. Whats this lincoln thing up here . What is this about . Nothing. Okay. Theres a Little Lincoln here on the podium. Inspirational. I dont believe that the Statistical Analysis i dont think that is broken the large. And i think it is impossible to find a representative sample. In fact none other than james mick fierce and he makes a point in 1997 when he asks the question how does one analyze the thoughts and feelings of some 3 million men who served in union and confederate armies how does one do it . That is what mick fierce and asked the answer. Modern posters do so by selecting a representative sample that stance as the exact epitome of the whole. I cannot construct such a sample of civil war soldiers, mick fierce and rights, the best i can do is select a quasirepresentative group of soldiers whose letters or diaries have survived and read those documents with a discerning eye. Historians, all of us have been deeply influenced by mick fierce ands work, and that is a good, thing but and following in his wake, i am afraid that we in fact have overlooked his caveat about representatives and instead we continue to do what . We continue to go down that endless road with the hope that we will find that common soldier im not suggesting to that the search for the common soldier has been fruitless one. We know a lot about the common soldier. I suspect we can all agree upon that they were deeply ideological and political we can agree. That slavery mattered a great deal to both. Sides we can agree that they had issues of honor and manhood it was elemental to have these men understanding themselves. This body of literature, it matters but obviously i have some issues with this because i think the focus on motivation, why men fought, that it has not uncovered the life of the rank and file as it was lived. In many cases the scholarship that focuses on soldier motivation, it disconnects soldier thoughts from the lived reality of those men. So what we get instead as we get snapshots. These snapshots create a static view of the common soldier and those snapshots reinforced the great myths of the civil war, and that is the dutiful common soldier who pressed forward out of a great sense of obligation, and he is clear minded and what he did. Im going to suggest to you there is a different way of approaching, this and that different way of approaching this is to make sure that we situate the words of the common soldier within that mans lived conditions or material conditions that we are more sensitive to that and more importantly we are more sensitive to the long history of these individuals soldiers i am suggesting that the way out of this is case studies. Historians called the micro history. These cases get us out of these methodological conundrums. Out of the methodological conundrums because when you move that letter over an extended period of time, you can see how ideas and actions were constantly changing and reworked within the flow of events. This case study approach minimizes the cherrypicking that has plagued historiography. My second recommendation, and i will be honest with, you it is the purpose of my top. It is quite simply. This i believe that when we approach the study of the common soldier, that we should seek the totality of that mans experience. What i mean by the totality of that mans experience is that we have to situate the writings within the physical environment. As i have mentioned, but also their emotional as well as spiritual worlds when. We do that we will be able to dig deeper into the inner life of the rank and file. It is sunday morning, it is early, maybe too early for academic jargon. Bear with me please. Some are frustrated with the anti intellectual exam when an idea or concept is put forward and dismissed. The academic jargon im about to put forward, it does not roll off the tongue. It is called contradictory consciousness, and i can see some restlessness already in the audience. Hang in there with me. The idea of contradict thierry and consciousness was devised by tea jay leaders. It is a complex mental and emotional state with historical actors self described actions are not always in alignment with their stated beliefs and values. Let me give you an example. Members of the rank and file, they might extolling the bravery and suffering of comrades in the field, but in the very same letter, they might also express their apathy and frustration for the very purpose and direction of the war itself. What contradictory consciousness reminds us of is that abstract ideas were not enough to guide man through the daily challenges of soldiering. And what contradictory consciousness reveals to us is a spontaneous philosophy that we can find on both sides, and a spontaneous philosophy that can be best described as pragmatism minnesota soldier first minnesota soldier phillip hamilton, survived the attack at gettysburg only to be killed july 3rd he wrote shortly after first mass, we want a man of greater flexibility of character, a man of rough and ready energy who knows how to adapt himself to circumstances. Adapt himself to circumstances. That is the core of pragmatism. The worth of and idea dependent on its functionality, its rationality, whether its served the cause. It advanced toward victory let me give you another example of the flexibility of thought revealed in pragmatism. 1861, both sides enter the war with a fairly rigid understanding of courage and cowardice. There would be no gray area a man who was courageous was a man always facing the front. A man who was calm under fire, a man im who does his duty. That notion of courage and cowardice during the course of the war was amended. It became more flexible, more attuned to circumstances. To give you an example, i will quote from a georgia officer in 1864 who is writing about a comrade who got wounded. This was a joke and they all laughed at this. A joke that i suspect not many would have laughed at in 1861. This georgia soldier recounted that one of his men got shot in the arm. He then he turned to his comrades and yelled, here is my 30 days furlough, and just at that moment another ball hit him in the leg, causing him to drop on the ground. He then cried out, furlough extended 60 days, but that will do. I dont want any more. We know, and this is something we could possibly talk about in the end of my presentation, that the word trauma was not part of the vocabulary of the soldiers. That our tendency to attribute ptsd to these men comes from a good place but i think the diagnosis is almost always a historical. What we need to understand is that these mended a just in time, that they understood there is only so much that a man had to give in a time of combat and those adjustments and that flexibility dictate dedicated by dictated by circumstances is at the heart of pragmatism. I want to give you an example of pragmatism and how its shaped the wartime politics as well as political loyalties. Im going to focus on a couple William Stanford and james stand. For jane and william standard were from lewis town illinois it is an area filled with anti war democrats it was the smattering of republicans as well. The standard family was somewhat divided williams standard was that he was a strong democrat. His wife jane came from a republican family, and during the war she managed to shed those beliefs and became a stalwart democrat as well, their correspondents is quite remarkable it. Was recently published under the title infernal war brilliantly it did as well. Why is it so unusual this because it is hard to find twoway correspondence because many soldiers destroyed the letters of their loved ones because they never wanted to be captured and that the enemy could find them. It was rare to find a twoway correspondence letter from into chain are remarkable. I will just quickly make this point and writing this book that took a fair amount of time to do. Many things that i thought i knew about the soldier experience of course were challenged. And i think the thing that really struck me is you cannot understand these men unless you understand there are households, their wives and their families. That connection is elemental to fully appreciating how the rake and file made sense of the war experience. Here is a classic example of where the source material, or i should say with source material is available to us, has distorted our view of the civil war passed. The fact that we do not have a lot of access to these letters, we have a fair amount out there. Im not trying to diminish that, but the fact that not a lot of that is available and published has led us to do what . Too often push women and the household to the margins. I would say these letters between the standards reminds us of how vital that leakage between women were during the war. Jane and william, they are hotheaded people. They are prone to using colorful language, i will probably say this twice we will encounter some words we do not use and i am reluctant to use and public settings, but i do because to take away their languages to dilute the power of the racism that was animating their political beliefs. For i want to make it clear, it was not a love of union that propelled william to join the 130 illinois ends in august of 1862 he. Was plagued by financial deaths he had been a sheriff before the war and had a number of lawsuits that had been leveled against him. I suspect he joined, really out of the financial necessity. He joined at the age of 40, about 15 years 15 years older than the average and lusty, and i think it was to escape creditors he. Did not transform into a patriotic soldier he was not die hard democrat. He despised lincoln and wrote this not long after his enlistment. A i am truly sorry that i did not that i was that i did not take your kind advice and stay at home and read my chances at the draft i see. That the abolition congress was going to pass a conscript law and that will not believe in an able bodied men at home in the north. Their policy seems to be to take all the white men and kill them off for the sake of freeing a few nigers. I dont feel Like Fighting to free nicolas at the expense of my. Life here is a classic example of cherrypicking. This is an important point. This is a hardcore principle he believed, and but in that very same letter he wrote at length about the in humanity of war, and that as christians should not be killing each other. Again, i want to be sensitive to all of this. We try to make sense of these letters, and we have to make choices in terms of what we bolivia are the salient points of principles that drove these individuals, that shaped their understanding of the world, and it is hard to do. You cannot do it all. Heres a great example. Certainly this is an important point. But even in this one letter, there are other aspects and standards, other perspectives, i should say, that i might not have given due attention to. I want again to make a point that i think it is also a mistake to reduce the motivation of democratic soldiers to racism alone. His words have to be situated within the physical and sensory world of the army and the sounds of soldiering were extraordinarily important to standard and reminded him of his own confinement. The endless drumming frayed his nerves he. Could not stand the monotonous tones because it drove into him that