Tag Archives: sesquicentennial

Seinfeld and Louis C.K. discuss The Address

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For the sesquicentennial, Ken Burns is urging Americans to learn, recite and share the Gettysburg Address.  I particularly liked this little video of Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld – two men who speak for a living – discussing the speech.

Given Lincoln’s love of contemporary humorists (and dirty jokes), he would probably have appreciated them as much as they appreciate him.

As this behind-the-scenes footage demonstrates, C.K. was going for something more subtle—with help from his director, Jerry Seinfeld, who, at the top of the video, explains to C.K. that the Gettysburg Address “refocused the American ideal from the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence … That’s why the speech changed America.”

via Seinfeld and Louis C.K. discuss Gettysburg Address: watch. (VIDEO).

Quantrill rides again to Lawrence: This time on Twitter

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One of the many sesquicentennial events I’ve missed during this year of working too much was the Lawrence raid by Quantrill’s bushwhackers.  The infamous guerrilla chief and his band slaughtered hundreds of men and boys in the border town.  This summer, a group of “reenactors” recreated the raid in real time on Twitter. I wish I’d found out about it at the time, but then reliving massacres would hardly have lessened my stress.

Call it a “tweet-enactment” — to recreate an historical event minute by minute as if it were happening now — and it may be a first for social media.

William Quantrill’s 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kan., was an act of terrorism, 1800s style. It’s being brought to life on Twitter Wednesday to mark the 150th anniversary of the Aug. 21 attack that left nearly 200 men and boys dead and much of the town burned.

More than 30 people are “live-tweeting” with the hashtag QR1863 in a sort of “virtual theatre” reenactment of the events from the perspectives of the famous — such as Quantrill himself — and ordinary citizens like Elizabeth Fisher.

via Quantrill rides again to Lawrence: This time on Twitter #QR1863.

The Humiston History

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Whose Father Was He? (Part Four) - NYTimes.comOn October 19th, I mentioned the anniversary of Whose Father Was He?, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s story about Amos Humiston, whose body was found on the Gettysburg body clutching a photo of his children.  Today is the anniversary of Mrs. Humiston’s response to the Inquirer, and for those interested in reading more about the tragedy of Amos Humiston and his children, I present the five-part history written by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris for the New York Times:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Whose Father Was He?

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Today is the sesquicentennial of a Civil War event that always fascinated me: It was on this day in 1863 that the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story titled “Whose Father Was He?”, describing in detail the ambrotype found clutched in a dead soldier’s hand on the Gettysburg battlefield.

After the battle an unidentified dead soldier was found near the present Gettysburg firehouse. He was found clutching a picture of his three small children. Through the efforts of Dr. J. Francis Bournes, the soldier’s wife was able to identify the children in the image. He was Sgt. Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Volunteers.

Tragically, one aftermath of the Civil War was soldiers’ orphans. People throughout the east became interested in raising money to establish an orphanage in Gettysburg for all children of the men killed in the Civil War. Through the efforts of Dr. Bournes, a two-acre property on Baltimore Street near the Soldiers’ National Cemetery was purchased for the home. The inauguration took place on November 20, 1866. Thirty-five orphan boys and girls were “inmates” at that time.

“Inmates” turned out to be an apt description.  The school was run by a cruel headmistress and Dr. Bournes embezzled funds from the school.  The poor Humiston kids’ suffering really began with the publication of that famous photo.

via Caring for Orphaned Children.

Winslow Homer in Maine

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It’s too far for me to visit, but if you’re in the vicinity of Portland, ME in the next months, stop by the Portland Museum of Art.  This exhibit of Winslow Homer Civil War works promises to be spectacular.  Homer was on the front lines as a Harper’s war artist, and produced some memorable images.

In conjunction with the Maine Civil War Trail, a state-wide series of special displays at more than 20 institutions commemorating the sesquicentennial of the conflict, the Portland Museum of Art will present a focused exhibition on the war-related imagery of the American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910). On view at the PMA from September 7 through December 8, Winslow Homer’s Civil War will feature 29 wood engravings and other prints drawn from the PMA’s permanent collection. The exhibition will examine the artist’s unique vision of this event and its profound impact on American society.

via Portland Museum of Art opens Winslow Homer Civil War focused exhibition.

The Civil War and American Art

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Wow. I’ll need to add New York to my to-do list for this year, as this fabulous exhibition will have left DC before I’m due to visit.  The Smithsonian has linked to a PDF catalogue of the works on display and they are almost all pieces I recognize.  A greatest hits of Civil War artwork.  If you’re in NY or DC this year, run don’t walk.

The Civil War and American Art includes 75 works—57 paintings and 18 vintage photographs. The artworks were chosen for their aesthetic power in conveying the intense emotions of the period. Homer and Johnson grappled directly with issues such as emancipation and reconciliation. Church and Gifford contended with the destruction of the idea that America was a “New Eden.” Most of the artworks in the exhibition were made during the war, when it was unclear how long it might last and which side would win.

The exhibition also includes battlefield photography, which carried the gruesome burden of documenting the carnage and destruction. The visceral and immediate impact of these images by Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and George Barnard freed the fine arts to explore the deeper significance of the Civil War, rather than chronicle each battle.

via Exhibitions: The Civil War and American Art / American Art.

A Living Link

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In my podcast, Paying for the War, I made mention of two living Americans who, as the children of Civil War vets, are still getting their fathers’ pensions.  I had no idea there were other living children of vets beyond the pensioners.  Incredible to think they’re bridging a 150 year gap.

Hugh Tudor, born in 1847, served in the US Army from 1864 through the end of the war. In his seventies, he married and had two daughters. The younger of them, Juanita Tudor Lowrey, was born in 1926. Shes still alive…

via This Womans Father Fought in the American Civil War – Neatorama.

Podcast #4 – “The Country is in Peril; We Must Have Money”

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So said Thaddeus Stevens. In this edition of the Civil War Podcast, on the sesquicentennial of the Confederate Act of Congress that issued the “cotton bonds”, I try to explain how that money was had.  To learn more about how the war was financed, click here and download the latest episode of the Civil War Podcast.

Then, Thenceforth and Forever Acid Free

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I’m proclaiming this week Emancipation Proclamation week here at the CWP.  It’s just too big an anniversary for all the mainstream news outlets to ignore, and they’re proffering some fantastic articles I want to share.

The video here lets you see what the Proclamation actually looks like. As the article says, it’s wonderfully, revealingly banal.  I love the ribbons and the affixed seal.  As a history fanatic with ridiculously sweaty hands, though, I was sent to new depths of stress-sweats watching the curator touching the paper with her bare hands.  All the while talking about methods to keep the acid out of the paper.

But what’s pretty amazing about the juxtaposition here — the document that bears the phrase “forever free,” folded and be-ribboned — is how eloquently it expresses technological frailty as a symptom of human frailty. The Proclamation wasn’t written double-sided because people couldn’t afford paper back then, or because they thought paper was more enduring than parchment, or because, indeed, they made any strategic decision at all to write the Proclamation the way they did; it was written that way because that’s just how things were done at that particular moment in our history. I asked Archives representatives about the double-sided nature of the Proclamation; they replied that “writing on both sides of the document was the convention of the time. It was written on a folded folio so that they could have four writing surfaces.” That’s it: Folio was the convention, so that’s what they did. (The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation — the document that announced the Emancipation would take effect on January 1, 1863 — is written in the same format.) Technology isn’t just about tools; it’s about the assumptions and conventions that inform our use of those tools. And in the America of 1863, matters of national business were conducted with folded paper and punches and ribbons. Not for reasons that were transcendent, but for reasons that were wonderfully, revealingly banal. 

via The Emancipation Proclamation Was Written Double-Sided – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.