CWL--- Writing History: Documenting and Interpreting a Slave Revolt

Rebellion: Documenting and Interpreting a Slave Revolt, Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina Press, 134 pp., bibliography, notes, maps, 2005, $14.96.

Assessing the meaning and nature of any social or political revolt is difficult, whether it is a civil war or a war of liberation. South Carolina's Stono River Rebellion of 1739 was a local event that was deeply connected to trans-Atlanic history. The participants were Kongolese Africans influenced by Portuguese Catholicism and both loyal and murderous to their masters. Mark Smith has collected both primary documents and reflective essays that show a "complicated, textured, malevolent world in which the slaves and the white South Carolinians lived in 1739."

Slave resistance conspiracies and slave revolts marked the decade of the 1730. The islands of Bahama, Antiqua, Jamaica, St. John, and Guadalupe quivered with the anticipation of revolts or quaked with their actual occurrence. Decapitation, maiming and arson were used by the whites and the slaves. On September 9, 1739 a campaign of judgment was begun, first by blacks on whites, then by whites on blacks. By noon five homes were burning and probably 21 whites were dead. During the late afternoon, marching by drum beat and under a banner about 60 slaves had covered 10 miles. The Lieutenant Governor with about 100 militia men approached. During the battle about 30 of the renegades escaped. The militia let those captives go whom they felt had been coerced into rebellion. Those slaves who were most involved in the revolt were shot and beheaded. A week later the escaped renegades were discovered and battled.

"A fundamental alteration in the character of Carolina society [occurred]with a less open and less compromising slave system." The 1740 Negro Act was passed and militia men were required to constantly patrol their neighborhoods. Monetary levies increased on slaveholders who purchased imported slaves. Slave masters' rights and privileges to free slaves was withdrawn by the colonial government.

Submitting 15 documents to the reader, Smith places them in a context that "helps students to understand contemporary views of the revolt and gauge its impact on colonial South Carolina society." The essays by historians illustrate how "historians build on others' work in an effort to advance historical understanding, sometimes using the same sources differently, sometimes using newly discovered sources, and almost always engaging with and building on earlier interpretative insights and analyses." Smith intention is not be provide a comprehensive review of the Stono Rebellion "but to provide a useful staring point for anyone beginning research on the topic."

Smith's book illustrates how a historian's hypothesis is developed and how the historian specifically uses evidence to support it. Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt is a fine introduction for undergraduates, graduates and laymen to the historical method. Additionally, Smith's book exposes the roots of what Steven A. Channing in 1970 revealed as a crisis of fear in Charleston, South Carolina in the late fall 1859 through the election of Lincoln. John Brown's Harpers Ferry Raid in October 1859 convinced South Carolina that it would be safer outside the Union than inside the Union. The ghosts of Stono and the ghost of John Brown haunted South Carolina.

CWL---A Short History of Jackson Studies Plus Five Essays

Whatever You Resolve To Be: Essays on Stonewall Jackson, A. Wilson Greene, University of Tennessee Press, 2005, 186pp., b/w illustrations, maps, index, paperback, $19.95.

I have the luxury of ordering inter-library loans and having them delivered to my desk. I frequently request a new book and read a few chapters before I order it for myself. Having encountered A. Wilson Greene's recent history of Civil War era Petersburg, Virginia and appreciating it, I requested an inter-library loan of Whatever You Resolve To Be. I read Robertson's biography of Stonewall Jackson when it came out in 1997 and decided I had covered Jackson thoroughly. I thought I would spend two hours on Greene's 2005 update of his 1991 work and send it back the same week I received it. Upon reading the Preface to the 2005 edition, I ordered a copy from AmazonZshops; it was $10.61 and that included $3.99 for shipping.

What convinced me to own the book was the preface to the 2005 edition; the 36 page review of Jackson studies from 1991 to 2005 is clear, concise and complete. Robertson's 1997 biography took its place at the center of Jackson studies. The understanding of Jackson which the public held from 1991 through 1996 is brief and illustrated by the author's effort to rename the Jackson Shrine, where 'The Arm' is buried to the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. The change was necessary in order to inform Andrew Jackson, Reggie Jackson, and Michael Jackson fans to keep moving on.

Robertson's conclusions regarding Jackson, Ron Maxwell's interpretations of them in Gods and Generals and those writers whose biographies found 'different Jackson's' are presented in an intriguing fashion by Greene. In a nutshell, much of Maxwell's Jackson behavior is plausible, if undocumented according to Robertson. Relying on his own understanding of Jackson, Greene sees Maxwell's Jackson as acting politically correct towards blacks but not necessarily historically accurate in 1862. Although, 'a more accurate Jackson emerged when Maxwell took his story to Moss Neck in the winter of 1863.' The films depiction of the May 1863 death are historically accurate. (xxxvi-xxxviii)

Other Jackson scholars produced efforts since the appearance of the Robertson biography. Byron Farwell's interpretation of Jackson 'judged Jackson more harshly that did his predecessors and his interpretations conflict with Vandiver, Henderson and Chambers pre-1960 and Centennial era biographies. Like Farwell, Paul Casdorph takes the biographies of that era to task for imagining from primary sources instead of letting the sources speak. Of course, some of those primary sources do romanticize Jackson. So, what is an historian to do with a host of mishandled primary sources that have thoroughly entered the popular culture in the course of 140 years?

Hot topics in Jackson studies in the last decade have been the Jackson-Lee relationship. In the past 20 years, Lee has had his detractors and their writings have fed the interpretation of Jackson. Some writers see Jackson as the stronger partner in the relationship. Also, the Lost Cause school of interpretation has handled primary sources in such a way that may have tilted the interpretation of the partnership in favor of Lee. Greene looks to Peter Carmichael's work as addressing the issue of Gettysburg without Jackson and the writings of Henry Kyd Douglas, staff officier of the Army of Norhern Virginia. Ethan Rafuse's work on First Manassas receives high marks for putting the battle within the context of the 1861 mentality of the generals. The major works on the 1862 Valley Campaign are reviewed with the work of Saurer, Tanner, Ecelbarger and Krick being favorably appreciated. Sears and Burton on the Peninsula Campaign, Krick on Cedar Mountain, Hennessey on Second Manassas. The Battle of Chantilly/Ox Hill received two studies, both of which are well researched and written notes Greene. Contested terrain, the Sharpsburg Campaign, is covered by Sears, Harsh and Hearn; each contributes different understandings of Jackson's efforts in the campaign.

Recently, two landmark studies of Fredericksburg have appeared; Rable and O'Reilly has offered thorough and complete works on the battle. Rable has developed Fredericksburg in the context of fall and winter of 1862 and O'Reilly was developed Fredericksburg in the context of boots-on-the-ground. On Chancellorsville, Sears and Furgurson offered two books; Sears finds luck playing a huge part in CSA success and Furgurson sees the Lee-Jackson relationship at its height.

Conflicting studies address Tom Jackson and his health issues; the mid-19th century context of health is reviewed and the stereotype of Jackson the hypochondriac is rejected. Jackson's education, his maxims, and his teaching style are reviewed in separate scholarly articles. All of these works prompted Greene to review with five essays, written in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He sets forth 12 pages of agreements and disagreements with the literature he reviews in his 2005 preface.
It was on the strength of this 2005 preface/essay that I purchased the book. In particular I am looking forward to the Fredericksburg essay in which he addresses the breakthrough of Meade's Division of Jackson's lines on December 13th.

CWL---The Art of Historical Detection and The Alamo

Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett's Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution, James E. Crisp, Oxford University Press, b/w illustrations, 4 color plates, 1 map, bibliography of further readings, 228 pp., $23.00 hardcover, $16.00 paperback.


What makes James E. Crip's Sleuthing The Alamo remarkable is the effectively clear and concise treatment of what could have been a dry-as-parchment tale. Archival detective work is not fast paced; yet Crisp's non-intrusive presence in the book moves the stories along and adds a degree of suspense to what is essentially academic enterprise.

Racism and abusive language is prevalent in the book. Crisp recovers the history of when 'brown became bad' in the story of the Alamo and sharply draws a line in the sand after the Texas Revolution. Dealing with a Sam Huston speech made at the beginning of the war, he pares away the generational layers of translation and editing to reveal Sam Huston as respectful and humane towards blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. Racism, Crisp understands, came in with the new wave of immigration after the Texas Revolution. The steady influx of Southerners with slaves or with the desire to soon buy slaves caused a rise in Texas' disregard for Mexicans.
Also, before and during the revolution, the inhabitants of Texas understood them selves to be Texicans and most closely aligned with the Mexican state of Coahuila, that contained the northern parts of both the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. In the final chapter Crisp presents a story of art history and the depiction of Santa Ana's army. Using four famous turn of the 20th century paintings of the Alamo and Little Big Horn and the patron who commissioned them, Crisp reveals that an amateur historian to be at the center of the popular graphic representation of these battles.

The abusive language comes in the form email and letters to himself and other historians who have taken Davey Crockett's death from the ramparts of the Disney movie and placed it the Alamo's courtyard. By thoroughly re-constituting the original documents written by those in the Mexican army, he finds that it is very likely Crockett was captured alive but immediately executed with saber slashes along with five others. Crisp reviews the historiography of Crockett's death and how it reflects the climate of the times.

Crisp dwells upon the nature of the past, history, anthropology and the unique tasks of the storyteller, the historian and the anthropologist. In the book's chapter, The Silence of the Yellow Rose, Crisp succinctly dwells upon voices held within the documents that that were not captured in documents and in documents that are currently being recovered in estate auctions and unarchived collections of libraries.

Crisp's book is 200 pages, in a small format, and appears to be printed to fit snugly in a briefcase. CWL read this book on a toru bus, on the lawn of the Smithsonian and in the Menger Hotel's bar in San Antonio Texas, the exit of which faces the Alamo. The chapter are short and sharp; getting right to the point, Crisp's narrative style carries the elements of pursuit and suspense well. His book will satisfy upper level and graduate school students as well at the history reader who open to reading about how history is written and rewritten, discovered and rediscovered.