NATIONALHumanities ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • VOLUME 11 • NUMBER 2 • MARCH/APRIL 1990 The Civil War: 125 Years After Appomattox Editor's Note The Civil War To understand the American character in the twentieth century, says histo­ rian Shelby Foote, one must understand the Civil War. "Before the war, people had a theoretical notion of having a country, but when the war was over, on both sides they knew they had a country. They'd been there. They had walked its hills and tramped its roads. And they knew the effort that they had expended and their dead friends had expended to preserve it. It did that. The war made their country an actuality." Civil War pickets around a fire. The photo­ This April marks the 125th anniversary of the Confederate surrender at graph has been attributed to Mathew Brady. Appomattox. And this fall, filmmaker Ken Burns will present an eleven- In volume 9 of The Photographic History hour television series that retraces the course of the war, using original pho­ of the Civil War (1911), the photograph is tographs and archival material. In this issue, Endowment Chairman Lynne used to illustrate a poem titled "Christmas V. Cheney talks with the Mississippi-born Foote, who spent twenty years Night of '62” by William Gordon McCabe, a Confederate soldier. (National Archives) writing a definitive three-volume history of the conflict and who served as an adviser on the NEH-supported Burns documentary. As we look back, the bloodiness of the Civil War still astonishes. Of Humanities 100,000 men at the battle of Shiloh in April of 1862, more than 20,000 were A bimonthly review published by the killed, wounded, captured, or missing. "Shiloh had the same number of ca­ National Endowment for the Humanities sualties as Waterloo," Foote reminds us. "And yet, when it was fought, there were another twenty Waterloos to follow." Chairman: Lynne V. Cheney Director, Communications Policy: For those in the North who had thought victory was near, Shiloh made Marguerite Hoxie Sullivan clear the struggle would be cataclysmic. By 1864, a central issue of the elec­ Editor: Mary Lou Beatty tion was whether the tenacity of the Southern troops would make voters Assistant Editors: James S. Turner war-weary enough to reject Abraham Lincoln for a second term. Pulitzer Ellen Marsh prize-winning historian James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, ex­ Production Editor: Scott Sanborn amines the entwined political and military strategies of that year. And a new Production Assistant: Susan Querry NEH-supported exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society portrays what Editorial Assistant: Kristen Hall America as a whole was like in the age of Lincoln. Marketing Director: Joy Evans In other articles on the Civil War, the magazine looks at photographers Editorial Board: Marjorie Berlincourt, less well known than Mathew Brady who have provided significant parts of Harold Cannon, Richard Ekman, the pictorial history of the war. The Papers of Jefferson Davis discloses a Con­ George Farr, Donald Gibson, federate president dealing diplomatically with his generals; and a Freedmen Guinevere Griest, James Herbert, and Southern Society project unearths the letters of a black Union soldier Thomas Kingston, Jerry Martin who writes home to his daughters still in slavery, promising to free them. Design: Hausmann Graphic Design, Inc. Last, we look at a reclusive figure of that period, poet Emily Dickinson. The war touched even the isolation of Amherst, where Emily Dickinson was The opinions and conclusions expressed in Humanities are those of the authors and do not quietly writing her poetry. When essayist Thomas Wentworth Higginson re­ necessarily reflect Endowment policy. Material signed his Unitarian ministry to lead a black regiment in the Union Army, appearing in this publication, except for that already copyrighted, may be freely repro­ Emily Dickinson wrote to him: "I trust you may pass the limit of War, and duced. Please notify the editor in advance so though not reared to prayer— when service is had in Church, for Our Arms, that appropriate credit can be given. The I include yourself. ..." The correspondence was to continue until the end Chairman of the Endowment has determined of her life; after her death Higginson and Mabel Todd Loomis became joint that the publication of this periodical is neces­ sary in the transaction of the public business editors of her Poems, published posthumously one hundred years ago. required by law of this agency. Use of funds for printing this periodical has been approved —Mary Lou Beatty by the director of the Office of Management and Budget through September 1992. Send requests for subscriptions and other commu­ nications to the editor, Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1100 Penn­ sylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506. Telephone 202/786-0435. Annual sub­ scription rate: $9. (USPS 521-090) ISSN 0018-7526. MARCH/APRIL 1990 Contents The Civil War A Conversation with . Civil War expert Shelby Foote and 4 NEH Chairman Lynne V. Cheney talk about writing history. War and Politics: The Election of 1864 by James M. McPher­ 10 son. How the contest between Lincoln and McClellan was seen as a referendum on fighting for unconditional victory. Troubles and Thorns Innumerable: The Presidency of 15 Jefferson Davis by Mary Seaton Dix and Lynda L. Crist. His letters of 1861 show diplomatic skill under duress. A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln by Kathi 19 Ann Brown. An exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society examines the complexities of the period from 1820 to 1877. Picture Essay: Images of War by William C. Davis. A look at 22 the photographs of the period, the technology that recorded them, and the cameramen who produced them. Excerpts: Letters of a Slave Turned Union Soldier. A story 27 of pathos and pride, revenge and recrimination. Other Features Tampering with Poetic Genius: The Early Editing of Emily 30 Dickinson by Judith Farr. How well-meaning friends distorted the poet's work. The Definitive Brooklyn by Maggie Riechers. From the 36 Dodgers to Coney Island, a Brooklyn Historical Society exhibition uses icons to explain the borough's past. In Focus: Carolynn Reid-Wallace by Carole Ann Parish. The 39 new vice chairman of the National Council of the Humanities. 29 Calendar 40 Noteworthy The Humanities Guide For Museums and Historical Associations by Marsha Semmel, 41. Recent NEH Grants by Discipline, 43. Deadlines, 46. HUMANITIES 3 A Conversation with... Civil War Historian Shelby Foote in simply the facts— it's in the way writing of the history as much as I the facts are presented. There's a enjoyed writing novels. Asked to quote from a Keats letter that I think choose his favorite book, a writer sums it up better than anything I've usually decides in accordance with ever heard. Keats said, "A fact is not how he felt while he was writing a a truth until you love it." Isn't that a particular work. He looks back on wonderful thing to say? something as a happy time or a bad Cheney: That is marvelous. You once time. That's what he usually means. suggested that, in fact, it was your Cheney: You, I think, are one of the good fortune not to have become masters of prose style in our cen­ part of the academy. tury. You seem to create an effortless Foote: Right. I must not be under­ prose, maybe the hardest kind to stood to be running down profes­ create. How many words do you sional historians. Without their me­ typically write a day? ticulous and extensive research, I Foote: I'm a slow writer. Five or six couldn't have done anything. So I'm hundred words is a good day for not saying what they do is not of me. What I do— if it does have the enormous value, because it is. I'm effect you're kind enough to say it he writing of history was the top­ talking about the treatment of the does— is, I write for possible reading ic when Endowment Chairman material after you've got the facts aloud. I read it over to myself, and if Lynne V. Cheney talked recently assembled. it hasn't got the right flow to it, I do Twith Shelby Foote, author of the three- Cheney: You say in an explanatory something about it. volume classic, The Civil War. Foote note in one of your Civil War vol­ Cheney: When young writers come has also written six novels, among them umes that the novelist and the histo­ to you and ask for advice, what do Follow Me Down and Shiloh. rian, in a sense, have the same goal. you tell them? Foote: Right— the truth. Both are Foote: I tell them to work hard and Lynne V. Cheney: One recent re­ looking for the truth, but one is read a lot. Charles Dickens can teach viewer observed that your Civil War looking for one kind of truth, some you more about writing than any history was out of academic fashion. say, and another for another kind of teacher of creative writing I ever It was a very favorable review, but it truth. I claim that's false. There is a knew. Reading good writers with the made the point that you write old- bedrock truth that both of them are kind of understanding that makes fashioned narrative history. trying to discover. you absorb some of their craft, some Shelby Foote: I'm very proud of my Cheney: Do you have any preference of their methods, some of their amateur standing, and I don't like to for writing fiction over nonfiction or ways, is the best of all possible be called Dr.