History is anything but "boring"

This post was published in the Wilson Times Oct. 19, 2019.

I recently received a letter that began, “Dear Fellow Student of History.” With a salutation like that, you know you are getting a fundraising appeal. The letter from Jim Lighthizer of the American Battlefield Trust, was, indeed, a fund-raising appeal. Like other such letters I’ve received over the past three decades, this letter was alarming and effective.

The American Battlefield Trust, formerly the Civil War Trust, is a nonprofit devoted to preserving and restoring American battlefields. Originally, the organization focused solely on Civil War battlefields but has expanded to include Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields. Walking around on the “hallowed ground” of battlefields is one of my favorite things to do on vacation. Just four years ago, I made my third visit to Gettysburg and hiked all around the boulders and fields where more than 51,000 Americans were killed, wounded or missing in a three-day battle in 1863.

Lighthizer’s organization has preserved many acres of battlefield land at Gettysburg, Richmond, Chancellorsville, Harper’s Ferry, Bentonville and dozens of other places. The Battlefield Trust has been very successful in saving “hallowed ground” from commercial and residential developers and other threats.

What worries Lighthizer is the lack of interest, especially among younger generations, in the history he and other supporters are preserving. He calls it “a crisis in history education” and writes, “The numbers are terrifying.” Here’s a brief listing of scary facts:

1.    Over a recent 20-year period, no more than 17 percent of U.S. eighth graders scored “proficient” or better in history in national tests. That leaves 83 percent who are less than proficient in history, and they will be able to vote!

2.    A 2015 survey found that one-third of new college graduates could not place the Civil War (the most significant American event since the founding of the Republic) in its correct 20-year time frame.

3.    A survey of America’s top 75 colleges found that a third of them did not require an American history course to earn a degree in history!

4.    A survey by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation found that only 40 percent of Americans could pass the U.S. Citizenship Test given to immigrants seeking to become citizens.

These statistics reinforce other findings that Americans are ignorant of their nation’s history. Many young students say they find history “boring.” These are probably students taught that history consists of a bunch of dates and obscure people who are all dead anyway. That’s not the way to teach history.

To teach the Civil War, take students to Gettysburg. Have them stand at the stepping off point of Pickett’s Charge, and point out the ridge three-quarters of a mile away, and tell them they must walk briskly uphill toward that ridge while 10,000 well dug-in soldiers supported by cannon delivered a hailstorm of bullets and cannonballs at them. There’s nothing boring about being shot at. Use that incident to open the door to the whole history of the Civil War.

Meanwhile, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which has been “selling” history for 80 years as a 301-acre living history museum (and the colonial capital of Virginia), is alarmed that freedom, liberty and democracy seem to be declining worldwide. Williamsburg CEO Mitchell Reiss used his column in the Foundation’s quarterly magazine to warn that liberty is in decline and authoritarianism is on the rise around the world.

In Williamsburg, visitors can walk the streets and visit the homes and government buildings the founders of American democracy inhabitated. This “living history” also is not boring. It is the closest thing we have to a time machine that transports us to the age of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and others.

Nevertheless, Colonial Williamsburg has struggled with changing tastes of American vacationers. Many parents want their children to have fun on vacation, not learn how their nation began. CWF has changed its programming to include more child-friendly activities and more African-Americans of the 18^th century, both enslaved and free.

Both the Battlefield Trust and Colonial Williamsburg offer on-site seminars for teachers, showing them how to turn “boring” into excitement and equipping young Americans to understand their rich history and to appreciate the courageous acts that give them their liberty.

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Will yesterday's history in photos be preserved?

When my wife and her sister cleaned out their old family home last year, my wife inherited hundreds of photographs dating back to long before the house was constructed in 1968. The photos included professional portraits by a renowned photographer and snapshots taken by my father-in-law and others. Some were loose in file folders and boxes; others were taped or pasted into crumbling photo albums and scrapbooks. She recognized some of the people in the photos, but not others.

She has spent much of her time for the past six months sorting through the photos and deciding what to do with them. She bought a desktop scanner and has scanned several hundred photos. Some photos were badly faded but could be enhanced with the scanning software so that the improved images were worth keeping. The pictures ranged in age from more than 100 years to about 50 years.

The scrapbooks also included pictures from her dad’s World War II Navy service, along with some souvenir menus, programs and orders that he had saved. For the first time, my wife got to see photos of the LST her dad commanded in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. Photos show him as a thin, handsome young man in his early 20s bearing the responsibility of keeping his ship’s crew safe while defeating the America’s enemies.

Because both of her parents grew up in Goldsboro, my wife eventually made a connection with Marty Tschetter, the reference and local history librarian at the Wayne County Public Library. Tschetter had obtained copies of many of the photos by A.O. Clement, a prominent Goldsboro photographer who just happened to be my wife’s mother’s step-grandfather. My wife was able to identify some of the unidentified people in the library’s collection of Clement photos.

 The library’s collection of old photos preserves a visual history of eastern North Carolina for future generations. And my wife has been able to share her scanned family images with her sisters, cousins and nephews.

 Younger generations seldom seem to take an interest in genealogy, family history and old photos. I can recall laughing at the “old cars” in the snapshots in my parents’ photo albums. My father-in-law, who died in 2010, said he wished he had paid attention to his grandmother’s tales about life during the Civil War (her family home was occupied by Union soldiers). With few exceptions, our children show little interest in the photos my wife has so painstakingly sorted and scanned. She is glad the Goldsboro library wanted her old scrapbooks of people she couldn’t identify because she didn’t want to throw them in the trash.

Squirreled away in our home are thousands of print photos, slides and, more recently, digital images of my wife and me, our children and grandchildren. Will these be saved and preserved or will they add to the landfill refuse?

 Inspired by my wife’s discoveries and her hard work at the computer desk, I have made an appointment with two of my first cousins to try to scan and preserve all the Tarleton family photographs that we can find. All of us are into our seventh decade of life, so there is some urgency to do it now or never. We’ve already missed our parents’ generation. I hope I can stir some interest among the folks back in Anson County, where most of the family resided.

           

This post originally appeared in The Wilson Times Feb. 16, 2019.

A weekend for readiing

Every weekend comes with a to-do list. At this time of year, most of my to-do's are related to exterior maintenance of the house or yard. Some weekends there are trips to take, places to go, appointments to keep.

This past one was a weekend of altered plans. I had planned to be at work early Saturday on a new work project, beginning the construction of a house. But raindrops pounding the roof awakened me during the night, and I heard the rain falling as I awoke a second and a third time, when I got up, got dressed and looked at the weather forecast on the computer. The rain would last all day, with the chance of precipitation never dropping below 70%. My outdoor plans — not only the house construction but also the lawn maintenance and more ambitious projects such as sealing the wooden deck — would have to change.

I did some things I could do in the rainy weather, and then I settled down with a thick book and transported my mind back to 1943 and immersed myself in the Allies' invasion of Fascist Italy. I had been reading Rick Atkinson's three-volume history of World War II and was about halfway through the second volume. But my reading time was limited to a few minutes in the evening as I lay in bed and waited for fatigue to blur the words on the page and to loosen my grip on the book. To have an hour to sit and read was both a luxury and a therapy. To absorb the details of the Italian campaign without nodding off or losing my place was a gift that enlivened my mind. To read at length at a time of day when my energy level kept me engrossed in what I was reading was a rejuvenating tonic.

A day-long rain ruined my weekend. And rescued it.

Old books bring back memories

The rows of tables stretched the length of the convention center, row upon row like a parading army of troops, and the straight rows added into the dozens filling the space that could accommodate an ice hockey rink with bleachers. On each table books stood neatly vertical, their titles easily legible to the scores of people walking, reading, pausing and remembering.

I spent only a short time walking the rows of books, never even venturing into the fiction, helpfully alphabetized by author's last names. Instead, I perused the several tables labeled "History" and "Biography." As in a high school reunion, I recognized many old friends and paused at the memory. There were Watergate books, and I marveled at how long ago it had been since the nation was absorbed with Dean, Haldeman, Erlichman, Sirica, and all the rest. There were books chronicling the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And memoirs, like John Dean's "Blind Ambition" and Henry Kissinger's advice on diplomacy or Russell Baker's "Growing Up," and historical biographies on Churchill, Andrew Jackson, and so many others.

When they were new and the reviewers praised them and they made the New York Times bestseller list, these books were conversation starters and opinion shapers. Now they stand on end, going out the door for a dollar or two because the library has declared them surplus, and most of the people who read the reviews, as I had, and wanted to read the books everyone was talking about had done so. So many books; so little time, as the bibliophile's aphorism goes. But others among us had wanted to read these books, had read or listened to quotes from the authors and compared reviewers' comments, but had never added to the bookseller's figures by actually purchasing the books when they were listed in the top 10 lists.

Now they are relegated to the indignity of jutting their binding faces into the eyes of strolling shoppers, their page ends against plastic table tops, with no hint that once these books were the topics of national conversations and the objects of popular praise. Some of the authors are dead. Some of their characters have disappeared from the news and are forgotten.

Even the medium, printed books, words on paper, has slipped behind digital media in popularity. Our books are now no more than binary code, a language that goes unspoken and unheard. Even the weightiest tome has no heft in its digital format, a format that lacks the feel of printed pages between stiff covers and the intoxicating aroma of paper pulp and ink.

After spending far longer than we had intended at the library book sale, my wife and I left with an armful of books on paper, their heft weighing down my arms. We add them to the scores of books lining the living room bookcases, the bookcases upstairs, the pile of books lying beside the bed and the books stashed in the attic because we couldn't bear to send them away. Someday, we think, we will take down these books and re-read them or share them with friends, offer them to grandchildren, or simply hold them happily again.

The books in the long rows at the convention center struck me as one more affirmation that life is short, and moments, even heartfelt moments launching national conversations, are fleeting. One moment's greatness devolves to the hard-luck indignity of a one-dollar sale.

Gettysburg still echoes after 150 years

One hundred fifty years ago tonight, the largest battle ever fought on American soil was marching toward its bloody, tragic and, ultimately, fortunate end. The crossroads of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the unwilling host of this three-day battle and remains the most-visited Civil War site in the nation.

I have visited Gettysburg twice, but I'm ready to go again if the opportunity arises. My first visit was on a rainy Saturday about 40 years ago. My parents and sister had come up to our Alexandria, Virginia, home for a visit, and we drove to Gettysburg from there on a misty, intermittently rainy Saturday. My wife and I went to Gettysburg about 10 years ago, spending the entire day driving and walking over the battlefield and having to leave before we had quenched our thirst for this critical battle of the war that tore America apart. If you can't visit, I suggest a look at the Civil War Trust's Gettysburg website or the many volumes of histories and myriad documentaries of the battle that killed or wounded around 40,000 Americans. The Diane Rhem Show featured a panel discussion of the battle today.

The battle was the so-called "high-water mark" of the Confederacy, but the out-manned Confederate army lost each of the day's fights. Nevertheless, the battle could easily have gone the other way. If Ewell had acted promptly and pushed the Union troops off the high ground on July 1, if Union soldiers had not held the line on Little Round Top on July 2, or if Longstreet had moved more quickly and decisively on July 3, the outcome could have been different. Or if Robert E. Lee had been more specific and less trusting of his lieutenants throughout the battle, the South might have pushed Meade and his troops off the gently rolling Pennsylvania hills and might have frightened the Northern electorate into an armistice, status quo antebellum. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has written with William R. Forstchen a convincing and readable alternative history ("Gettysburg") based on the idea that Lee might have taken Longstreet's advice and dug in the weary Confederates on defensible ground between Gettysburg and Washington, forcing Meade's hand. The United States came close to being divided; the victory at Gettysburg (my great-great grandfather fought there for the losing side) turned the tide of the war, along with the conquest that same week of Vicksburg, Miss., and put an end to the scourge of slavery.

As the Diane Rhem Show segment pointed out, slavery really was at the heart of the Civil War. But it was not the only cause of the war, and it was not the primary motivation for many soldiers North and South. My ancestor, a Mexican War veteran, was a poor farm laborer who owned no slaves and no real estate. He had no coin in the game being played by wealthy planters wanting to preserve their wealth and their way of life. But he, and many others like him, fought bravely and gave their lives (he gave his at Third Winchester in 1864) for a cause that was beyond slavery. State sovereignty might have been too big a term for their uneducated minds, but they could understand that their homes were being threatened and their friends were being killed.

As Civil War history is being constantly rewritten, Tony Horwitz points out that new scholarship suggests that war might have been avoided altogether. With greater wisdom, less bravado and more diplomacy and caution on both sides, the war might have been avoided. The Union's expenditures on the war would have been enough to buy and free all of the South's slaves and provide those freed slaves with land and capital to start new lives — all without the loss of more than half a million lives and the destruction of homes, public buildings and farms.

Cotton mill villages, whence we come

For the past few weeks, I've been reading a book I had given my father many years ago. "Like A Family" from UNC Press is a study of cotton mill villages in the South, particularly North Carolina. I had given the book to Daddy because it sounded like a nostalgic piece about the good ol' days of growing up on a mill village, which my father (and my mother) did. The book is light on nostalgia and a bit heavy on socio-political slant. The authors (six of them) view much of village life in terms of labor relations and economic exploitation of poor workers. Needless to say, my father, his brothers and sisters, his father, father-in-law and brothers- and sisters-in-law (all of my relatives worked in cotton mills) didn't see their lives that way. In their conversations at family gatherings, the talk was nostalgic, sharing stories of tending gardens, playing baseball with a taped-together ball, and courtin' in the parlor of mill houses. Though they never discounted the harshness of the work or the paucity of the wages, they fondly recalled the camaraderie and the community spirit of a place where everyone knew everyone else because all the families worked in the mill, attended the mill school, joined mill churches and lived in close quarters on narrow mill lots.

The story of cotton mills in the South is both a social and an economic history. Although the authors of "Like A Family" are critical of the post-Civil War investors who brought cotton manufacturing to the South, cotton mills were in some sense the salvation of the destitute former Confederacy. This defeated land, its currency worthless, had relied on agriculture operated by a landed aristocracy dependent upon slave labor. Without slavery and without the capital necessary to buy seed and fertilizer and hire labor, southern landowners developed the sharecrop system, which has been compared to slavery, but it entrapped both former slaves and poor whites, including some of my ancestors. Cotton manufacturing took advantage of the nearby raw product produced throughout the South and of the excess of farm labor. Both of my grandfathers were among those who made the transition from farming to "public work" (as their generation called it) in cotton mills. The work was hard, hot and dirty, and it failed to provide the personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment of farming, but it paid a steady wage, regardless of weather or insect infestation. Few of those who tried public work ever went back to farming.

Some elements of the cotton mill economy make us cringe today — child labor, whites-only hiring policies, and blatantly anti-union laws and policies. But there was also an egalitarian element to mill villages. Everyone, at least in the early years, lived in basic, nearly identical houses built by the mill. Workers paid rent or received free rent in lieu of wages. In the mill village where my parents grew up, houses were rented by the room. If a couple needed only one bedroom instead of the three available, the extra rooms would be locked, and they'd pay rent for only the rooms they used. The superintendent's house would likely be larger than the workers' houses, but it was not ostentatious in any way, just another wood frame structure with few, if any embellishments. Although there was some wage differentiation, most workers earned close to the same wages, and most of the work was equally hard.

It has been reported that W.J. Cash, author of the seminal and still readable "Mind of the South," had intended to write "the great American novel" set in a mill village. Instead, he killed himself. Few novels I can think of are set in textile mills or mill villages. Novelists, it seems to me, have ignored one of the great stages of American life — the southern cotton mill village. Doris Betts' "The Scarlet Thread" is one of the few novels I'm aware of that is set in a mill village, and it is out of print.

In literature and in history, cotton mill villages deserve more recognition. For generations of Americans in the South, mill villages constituted the shared experience of life and work.

The tug of history and nostalgia

The Boggan-Hammond House in Wadesboro

I was born and raised in Anson County, about 40 miles east of Charlotte and 10 miles from the South Carolina border. When I finished high school, I was eager to leave there and have been back only for visits, which have grown quite rare since my parents died. None of my siblings stayed in the poverty-stricken area, either.

Nevertheless, the mooring lines of experience, sentiment and nostalgia still tug at my heart, and I pause on my occasional visits just to take in the sights, sounds and smells of the place that once was so familiar. Those sensory stimuli once were my whole world. All four grandparents and nearly all of my aunts, uncles and cousins lived in the area, and none of us wandered far from home in those days. Even now, I can drive down a country road and be suddenly overwashed by a lost memory by a house or a turn in the road.

Since leaving the place more than 40 years ago, I have come to better appreciate its history. Anson was one of the first counties of North Carolina, originally stretching from the Pee Dee River on the east to the Mississippi or (depending on whom you ask) the Pacific on the west. From it was carved all of the westward counties along North Carolina's southern border.

That long history (the county was founded in 1749) has become a source of pride for remaining county residents as the once-dominant cotton mills have all closed and more and more county residents have taken jobs requiring long commutes to Charlotte. I joined the Anson County Historical Society to keep up with what is going in the area that gave me birth and nurturing. For a county with so little wealth and so few residents (around 25,000, about the same number as 50 years ago), the Historical Society is surprisingly vibrant and ambitious. The society owns, if I'm counting right, five historic buildings, including the oldest house in Wadesboro, a medical museum, an office building and a "museum of early America."

The society's latest newsletter (which, by itself, is a big undertaking) issues a plea for $135,000 for the repair of the Historical Society's restored but badly deteriorating properties. The low wealth of residents and the high costs of repairs make this plea a desperate one. The founders and foot-soldiers of the Historical Society are aging and dying. It seems possible that the entire association could expire.

The Anson County Historical Society has a Web site and is a 501(c)3 corporation, making gifts tax deductible. The address, if you're interested, is 206 E. Wade St., Wadesboro, NC 28170.

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In a recent post, I complained about the frustrations of job-hunting using the N.C. Employment Security Commission's job listings. Since that time, I talked to a very helpful Job Service agent who cheerfully and professionally provided the information I needed. This morning, I received an e-mail with the contact information for jobs I was interested in. I had asked the Job Service for an e-mail instead of a less-efficient and more time-consuming telephone call (actually two calls were required). So I'm pleased to report that ESC can be helpful and even responsive to individual clients' requests. I withdraw my complaints.