Jonathan white and im vice chair of the Lincoln Forum and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this session. We are on Hallowed Ground and it is altogether fitting and proper that we come to gettysburg every november to commemorate the life and legacy of abraham lincoln. Our first speaker this morning is peter carmichael. Peter is the robert c. Flour professor of civil war studies at Gettysburg College and cwi hats around this morning its wonderful to see those here. He holds his, ph. D. From Penn State University where he had the fortune to study 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 one of the series editors for unc presss civil war america series and i know him best through this capacity. He was my editor for midnight in america and i can tell you his thoughtfulness, careful attention to detail and his generosity resources made my book a better book. Today he will tell us about the most recent book the war for the common soldier which was released in 2018 as part of the prestigious littlefield series with unc press. A review in the journal Civil War History concluded, quote, it is a poignant book full of pay those which bears out carmichaels themes and illuminates the mental struggle and coping mechanisms of civil war combatants. It will prove a valuable work for anyone concerned with the lived experience of the civil war soldier. Please join me in welcoming peter carmichael. Good morning. Good morning. Every time his thoughts drifted to past battles, new yorks charles bittercons hands started to tremble. He had passed through the campaign during the spring of 1864 with his comrades of the 147th new york and even though he could not shake the dark memories of what he had seen and what he had done, he looked back on the battles in pennsylvania with a sense of pride. That was a place where he had earned his badge of manhood. Something that had eluded him before the war, before the war he believed that people didnt have a very high regard for him. Including his family. He once wrote to his wife and he said that he thought of himself as the black sheep. It appears it was largely because he had struggles with alcohol. In the late summer of 1863, he was drafted into the army of the potomac. His first day in the army he arrived in new york, hopped off the train, was given a blanket, ordered to go sleep on the ground. He 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 outside cull pepper that fall his situation did not improve and his frustrations boiled over in december when he wrote to his wife, the force be with me, technology is not my friend, all right. He wrote, curse be the day that i saw my name drawn as a conscript and the hour that i made up my mind to come as a drafty. I think sometimes if it was not for you and my children i would blow out my brains. Dam the south, dam the war and all that had anything to do in getting it up. He loathed his officers and he was incredibly [ inaudible ] you get a sense of that already. He told his wife, most any dam fool can be an officer but it takes a smart man to fill the place of a private. Now, his harshest criticism was reserved for abraham lincoln. Im certain that he considered himself to be nonpartisan. He told his wife that he was no freedom shrieker, no abolitionist, and no union savior. In fact, the title of the book edited by katie aldridge, purchased a house i believe in monroe county, new york, she was going through the attic of this house and then discovered a box and it was a box stuffed with a bunch of letters and it was charlie bittercons letters. Katie aldridge, her profession is an ultra marathoner, in fact. She cams to this without any professional experience and did a remarkable job. This is a fantastic set of letters. Now, of course, easter, charles wife, she knew any letter from her husband wasnt going to be a boring read. Hes not going to write about rations or about the weather. Hes not going to discuss his bowel movements to her. His letters spared no one. As i said before, lincoln was a favorite target. Old abe will have to make peace, he wrote, on august 1st, 1864, for the army are getting sick of such work. I think abraham has gashed his political throat, so there is no use in 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. When the election came, a little more than two months after bittercon wrote this letter he became a political chameleon. There is no middle policy left for us, he wrote. We have but one chance to choose. First of lincoln and the universal rights of man, let it cost of blood and treasure that it may be to maintain them. Or another compromise with the devil by which man is degraded and brought a little near to the devil in everything. If lincoln is elected today, the war with johnny is but childs play. For they will see that there is a spirit in the free men of the north that will not be defeated, a spirit that is bound to win. Now, the words would suggest that he had become a diehard republican and supporter of all abe lincoln and its i think reasonable to assume casting his ballot for abe that he also came to support the hard war policies of the republican party, including emancipation. Many would point to him and suggest that he became a republican even after the war. I know very little about his life after the war except that he continued to struggle with alcoholism and i can note this that after his vote for lincoln, he still believed, still believed, that emancipation and the employment of black troops was 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 wyche. Now, he makes the point that a democratic soldier who voted for lincoln should not, should not be interpreted as a conversion to the republican party. Now, even if jonathan was to the within my line of sight is and the organizer of this event who invited me here and has a lovely wife that i met yesterday, 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. Now im not going to summarize jonathans book for you. I believe on monday theres a panel devoted to the election of 1860 and 1864 and let them talk about those details. I will say just simply this and use jonathans own words to summarize his argument. I argue, actually im not arguing, this is jonathan again, i argue that Union Soldiers were more likely to vote for republican candidates during the war because of their hatred for copperheads than their support for republican policies. Now, jonathan, im sure all of you have read his book, if not im sure theres some out for sale, how is that, jonathan . Doing a good job here. All right. Youll find that there is ample evidence, letter and diaries from democratic soldiers who, of course, support jonathans argument. But i feel like im starting to like break up with you right now, right. Heres the but. Its to the you, its me kind of thing. All right. But theres also ample evidence from the letters and diaries from Union Soldiers that were democratic that they did make the conversion to republican policies and believed earnestly in them. What can be done . To break this scholarly logjam, right, when both sides of the argument draw from the same evidentiary base. Im 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 material to deal with and thats really where the challenge resides because any historian, if theyre diligent enough, right, they can sift through this heavy volume of source material and if theyre patient enough, theyre going to find that nugget of information thats going to fit their argument. What to do . 2011 the historian, he hit the methodical problem right in the bulls eye and i should add, joes work on soldier studies is tremendously influential. In fact his book to the sea and beyond published in 1985, its the first book to take seriously the ideas of the common soldier. Its not James Mcphersons, its joe glatar. Heres his solution to this methodical issue. I believe to a great extent civil war scholarship that focuses on soldiers is stuck. We pluck something from a soldiers letter or diary or memoir and then make claims that his opinion represents 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 and buttress virtually any the group the scholar may pose. Regardless of its representativeness. For that reason, a valid statistic may break that scholarly logjam. I had that quote for yall to read. There it is. And its gone. Were back on track. All right. What is this lincoln thing up here . Whats this about . Nothing. Kamts. There is a Little Lincoln on the podium here. All right. Inspiration. All right. Okay. Well, i dont believe that this Statistical Analysis that joe puts forward, i dont think thats broken the logjam. I think its impossible to find a representative sample and, in fact, none other than James Mcpherson made such a point in 1997 when he asked the question, how does one 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 . Thats what mcpherson asked. The answer is this, modern pollsters do so by selecting a representative sample that stands as the exact epitome of the whole. I cannot construct such a sample of civil war soldiers, mcpherson writes. The best i can do is to select a quasi Representative Group of soldiers whose letters or diaries have survived and read those documents with a discerning eye. Historians and all of us have been so deeply influenced by mcphersons work and thats a good thing, but in following in mcphersons wake, im afraid that we, in fact, have overlooked his caveat about representativeness and instead we continue to do what . We continue to go down that endless road with the hope that well find that co5n;ln soldier. Now look im not suggesting to you that this search for the common soldier has been a fruitless one. We know a lot about the common soldier. We i suspect 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 issues of honor and manhood also were absolutely elemental to how these men understood themselves. This body of literature matters, but obviously i have some issues with it because i think the focus on motivation, why men fought, that it has not uncovered life of the rank and file as it was lived. In many cases the scholarship that focuses on soldier motivation, it disconnect soldier thoughts from the lived reality of those men and so what we get instead is we get snapshots. These snapshots create a static view of the common soldier and those snapshots reinforce the great myth of the civil war and thats the dutiful common soldier, right, who pressed forward out of this great sense of obligation and that he is clear minded in what he did. Im going to suggest to you that 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 were more sensitive to that and more importantly were more sensitive to the long history of these individual soldiers. I am suggesting that the way out of this is case studies. Historians call them micro history. These case studies get us out of this methodical conundrum, because when you look at letters over an extended period of time, we can then 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 the history. My second recommendation, i will be honest with you, its the purpose of my talk, and its 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 ive already mentioned, but also the emotional as well as their spiritual worlds. When we do that, when we do that, we are going to be able to dig deeper into the inner life of the rank and file. Now, its sunday morning, its early, and maybe too early for some academic jargon. Bear with me please. Im somewhat frustrated the antiintellectualism when i see an idea or concept is put forward and is dismissed. The jargon im about to put forward doesnt roll off the tongue and called contradictory consciousness. I see restlessness already in the audience. Hang in there with me. The idea was advanced by the scholar t. J. Lears. Its simply this. Its a complex mental and emotional state when historical actors selfdescribed 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 extol the bravery and suffering of their 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 men through the daily challenges of soldiering. What contradictory consciousness reveals to us is a spontaneous philosophy, a spontaneous philosophy that we can find on both sides and a spontaneous philosophy that can best be described as pragmatism. Minnesota soldier, first minnesota, philip hamlin, survived the attack of july the 2nd here at gettysburg, only to be killed on july the 3rd. He wrote shortly after first manassas, we want a man of greater flexibility of character, a man of rough and radiant energy who knows how to adapt himself to circumstances. Adapt himself to circumstances. Thats the core of pragmatism. The worth of an idea, depended upon its functionality, its rationality, whether it served the cause and advanced toward advanced each side toward victory. Let me fgive you another exampl of the flexibility that is 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, a man always facing the front. A man who is calm under fire, a man who does his duty. That notion of courage and cowardice during the course of the war was amended, became more flexible, became more attune to circumstances. To give you an example of that, i will quote from a georgia officer in 1864 whos writing about a comrade who got wounded. This was joke, 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, shot in the arm. When he got shot in the arm he then turned to his comrades and yelled, here is my 30 days furlough. Just at that moment, another hit him in the leg which caused him to drop on the ground. He then cried out, furlough extended 60 days. But that will do. I dont want anymore. We know and this is something we could possibly talk about at the end of my presentation the word trauma was not part of the vocabulary of these soldiers, our tendency to want to attribute ptsd to these men comes from a good place but the diagnosis is almost always historical. What we need to understand these men did adjust in time, that they understood that there was only so much that a man had to give at a time of combat, and so those adjustments and that flexibility dictated by circumstances again is at the heart of pragmatism. But i want to give you an example of pragmatism and how it shaped wartime politics as well as political loyalties and im going to focus on a couple. William standard and jane standard. I apologize if im speaking quickly but were good on time here. James and william were from lewistown, illinois, western part of the state, an area filled with a fair amount of antiwar democrats and copperheads. A smattering of republicans as well. The standard family was somewhat divided. Williams standard was he was a strong democrat. His wife jane came from a republican family. During the war she managed to shed those beliefs and she became a stalwart democrat as well. Their correspondence is really quite remark pbl. It was published under the title inferno war. Why its unusual and many of you are well aware of this, its hard to find twoway correspondence. Many soldiers destroyed the letters of their loved ones in part because they never wanted to capture loss and the enemy could find it. Its rare to find twoway correspondence. The letters from jane are truly remark be and i remarkable and make this point, in writing this book that took a fair amount of time to do, many things i thought i knew about the soldier experience, of course were challenged. The thing that really, really struck me was that you cant understand these men unless you understand their households, wives and their families. That connection is elemental to fully appreciating how the rank and file made sense of this war experience. Heres a classic example of where the source material, i should say what source material is available to us, has distorted our view of the civil war past. The fact that we dont have a lot of access to womens 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 again to do what, to often push women and the household to the margins. I would say this these letters between the standards reminds us of how viethat linkage between women and men were during the war. Now, jane and william, ther hy hotheaded people, prone to using colorful language. You are going to encounter some words we dont use and i am reluctant to use in a public setting but i do because to take away their language, of course, is to dilute the power of the racism that was animated their political beliefs. I want to make it clear it was not a love of union that propelled william to join the 103rd illinois in august of 1862. He was plagued by financial debts. He had been a sheriff before the war and he had a number of lawsuits that had been leveled against him and so i suspect, i suspect that he joined really out of financial necessity. He joined at the age of 40. Thats about 15 years older than the average enlistee. When he put on the union blue that did not transform him into a patriotic soldier. He, again, a diehard democrat, he despised lincoln and he wrote this not long after his enlistment. Im truly sorry that i was so foolheartedly to not