BackStory; New Stories for an Old Conflict: Rethinking Civil War Narratives

which event for backstory survive about anonymous donor that ashram down for the humanities and the joseph a robber cornell memorial foundation yes welcome to back story the show that explains the history behind today's headlines i'm joy and freeman if you're new to the podcast hello each week a lot of my colleagues nick uncannily brian balogh and it airs weeks for a different part of american history now over the years tens of thousands of books have been published about the civil war or america's most divisive conflict might be its most written about no other moment in american history has captured public and scholarly attention quite like the battles that reach throughout the united states from eighteen sixty one to at sixty five with stacks and stacks and stacks of books about the civil war it can seem hard to know what else there is to say but

historians are coming up with new ways to look at that historic conflict all the time so on this episode of backstory we want to feature two conversations that scholars offering new takes on how to understand the sea seale hear my conversation with writer and historian making t nelson about how the war changes if you look beyond the north south owner it's conversation with joe cashin the author of several books on the civil war here in her newest book professor passion shift your attention from the people of the civil war to the goods they kept it going the american west has been a region that looms large international conditions has been it's been success but when it comes to the civil war the places that dominate the headlines couldn't

be further away from the west after all wasn't all of the action of the civil war in places like gettysburg and the masses shiloh and vicksburg maybe so but megan kate nelson wants you to think again nelson is an author and historian her latest book is the three cornered war the union the confederacy and native peoples and the fight for the west in it he also tells the tale of the civil war in new mexico and she does it weaving together the stories of a diverse cast of characters to name just a few is john our baylor a texan who establishes the confederate territory of arizona james karl to a union soldier who fought campaigns against navajo apache people's and when he does a navajo woman who fight a union efforts against her people i spoke recently with nelson about her book and have these unique stories set in a unique backup change our very

framework for the civil war i really do luckily back story and thank you so much maybe you call a civil war in the west the three cornered or so tell us a little bit about what you mean by that chore so there are really three meanings for the three cornered we're not the first is that the book contends that the war took place in the north the south and the west between the union the confederacy and native peoples and that that those fights involved anglo this piano and a dead soldier is so in all of those three way is i'm really thinking of the war more expansively as a conflict that involved more than the usual players more than the people we think about i usually when we think about civil war

history and in more un and diverse places and curious as to how you came to this viewpoint into this topic and i know you grew up in colorado so is it partly your western viewpoint that that led you in this direction with this point perry yes i think when i was writing my previous book where a nation and kind of thinking about and researching it i'm teaching civil war history i was doing as we all do a lot of background research and i discovered that there were these battles in new mexico and i hadn't never heard of them growing up in colorado you know we've had a history of alpine years and we had talked about indian wars that they tended to be leader emanating eighties and nineties an angular sort of silver mining but we never talked about the gold rush of eighteen fifty nine fifty eight fifty nine and that i was really shocked actually one of those moments where i thought how is it possible that i grew up not knowing about the conflict in this region and not knowing the colorado soldiers took part in this war and that they

hid actually turned the tide they were really responsible for pushing the confederates back in the first phase of the war now we were talking about that with you talking about colorado but actually the book focuses on new mexico and before the civil war broke out the territory was pretty much brought into the union as a place where residents could decide whether he's going to be a free state or a slave state and they chose for it to be a slave state so give us a sense of what slavery would have looked like in the region is that the us system of enslavement involved in the southwest in a really interesting way for hundreds of years since first contacts since europeans had come into the town of northern reaches of mexico which aren't now new mexico and in this moment was new mexico territory they're of all to kind of re read it intricate system and economic system mostly of reading warfare where it has found us either spanish

mexican or hispanic new mexicans would raid comanche and apache and navajo camps and towns and they would take the women and children mostly captive and there those indigenous communities worried the raids are in retaliation and take his bow as an use that much time as and three laborers it's not the same kind of system of enslavement that we see in the southeast but it was regional and it was the economic basis owns the regional trade so it's important to realize that all of the communities in this region didn't acts indigenous practice and this was one of the reasons actually that confederates thought they had a pretty good chance of taking the southwest they thought that because you know wealthier his manners enslaved native peoples and because native peoples have the system of enslavement

as well and that both of those groups were not particularly e fans of the federal government's site in the eating fifty is that that perhaps they could persuade them to join the confederate cause you can really see even just in our conversation here how taking this western vantage point introduces all kinds of contingency that people don't tend to plug into this conflict exactly they're all sorts of moments where things kind of turn ah where if things had only been different if if the confederate army that had not been the confederate army that had invaded new mexico in the summer of eight and sixty one that if it had not been entirely texan they may have had a better case to make out with this banner new mexicans who died did did not have any i'm terrible feelings towards texans because texans had invaded new mexico before there is any one of his fellow mexicans felt less disposed to lessen the federal government was texans and you know there were sort of these moments of these calculations you were hanging up in

silly was really reading this this invasion of the territory he really miscalculated contingency no action no serious as calculation melo he finds that the your book tells the story that you're telling by looking at nine different people and were talking union people confederate people apache navajo men women and one of those people is john buehler who is a confederate on and i understand he compromises confederate president jefferson davis has plans to form an allegiance with indigenous peoples in the region he penned some kind of an extermination order so can you explain what but that's about what is an extermination ordered what was billy doing sure yeah i mean again no background on baylor first is originally from kentucky but he came to texas in the early eighteenth forties he owned

slaves and he also was a warrior he won election to the state legislature and so he was one and he's like man on the make right he in this period he had a lot of ambition other times the war broke out and he was really primed to join the confederate army and so he led to become a first group of soldiers the second texas mounted rifles into new mexico territory in the summer of eight and sixty one and he successfully occupied the town of a ceo which is in southern new mexico and forced to surrender of the union fort nearby fort fillmore and then he sat down on august first eighteen sixty one and created the confederate territory of arizona and it was basically the southern half owsley mexico territory so he kind of created this thoroughfare for the confederacy from texas to california which is of course california was was really the ball on it all along that pathway was a mail route that had been built on top of an apache trejo so in order to get from texas to california the

confederate army was going to have to go through a patch area which is amassing territory occupied mostly i'm in in this part by richard powell apaches when the war began and even a little bit before the jericho apaches haven't been taking advantage of all of this war mobilization there were a lot of people on the roads there are a lot of animals and wagon trains on the roads and eight rated and john bullard knew that in order for the confederacy and to really launch their campaign for california they were going to have to meet the apaches and that all and to do them and so as all of this other war action with the union was going on and this is why it really is a three cornered wore a wire pendants and looks to the west into apaches and he sends contingents of soldiers going out for tucson and he himself leads a raid against apaches into mexico it almost causes an international incident and then one of his final acts in originated sixty two before he leaves new mexico is to instruct one of his militia

company commanders to try to work your call apaches it into a park and then to kill all the man and enslave all the women and children and this became known as the as baylor is apache extermination order and he kind of left it i was resented to demolish a captain and then he left a copy for her had recently who was commanding this much larger texas army of you know trying to to defeat the union along the rio grande and when i recently saw that order he was outraged ends he sent it along to jefferson davis in richmond the confederacy was really trying to to have a softer touch they really wanted on their shoulders to to sign treaties of allegiance with native peoples you're actually ended up being forced to leave the confederate army for time on because of this extermination order that he had issued that was a great an embarrassment to the

politicians in richmond and the character in your book is juanita on and i wonder if you could tell us a little bit about her and why her story is important to you sure yeah so one meter was a navajo woman and she was just a teenager when she married man alito who is a powerful navajo had men and pretty soon after their wedding the civil war began sue readers of a three cornered work to follow her as she and many retail and their band of navajos and engage with and invade and indeed you a union forces who are in their homelands beginning in in the summer and fall of eighteen sixty one and sixty two and then they're could've forced by eating sixty six by impending starvation to surrender to the us army that came about because once the union forces had forced the confederates back to texas there were thousands of soldiers in new mexico with two years left in

their english in any of the union army i handed so the new commander in charge they're giant crowds then turn them towards of fights with jericho apaches are muscular apaches so readers will survive learn about all of those actions through her eyes and her experiences as the only woman be a woman and a civilian sheehan and alito are constantly moving constantly evading union forces until they're forced to surrender and then their forest on the long march other the long walk from their homeland to a reservation called muscular a condo which is in the middle of new mexico it's about a four hundred mile march but they do mostly on sleds and then once they get a buzz here about whether there for about two years and this reservation was just a disaster and and the story of one meters long walk and her experience of ask you about a really dominates the last part of the book i really think that she that

juanita her story is one of suffering but it's also one of persistence made and survival and of all of the protagonist i really think that one he does is the heart of the book you we've for logical reason that i'm focusing on the west than i want to shift the focus for just a second certainly the book is absolutely persuasive and talking about how important the west is to understanding the civil war but how much of the story that we've been talking about here made its way back east so how how much of this percolate in and have an impact on people on the east coast well they don't really were reports a and stories of critically the larger battles the indian campaigns were last recorded but they were very much recorded it across the last time in all of the big newspapers it had the confederacy won at the west for it's cold and its pacific ports and they really saw it as a central feature of their expanding empire of slavery and so even though they may not have been

talking about the war in the west they were feeling the impact of that in the north's one of the interesting things that happened is that once the confederacy was a pushback and once the union and you're once the commander in santa fe and seven word that they were gone in that he had secured the last and that they'll continue to monitor everything that he was fairly certain that they would be coming back then congress passed a series of attacks so in the spring and summer of eight in sixty two in the wake of the union victory or the confederacy in the far west they passed the homestead act then theres a railway an eye which created that infrastructure to to build the transcontinental railroad the moral land grant act which sold public lands to support colleges and universities that had agricultural and mechanical programs and they treated department of agriculture and all of those pieces of legislation were part of the union's vision for the west was going to be this empire free

labor and that neighbor was going to be waiting for an increasingly they thought also perhaps but we are all three by man isn't necessitate and the removal of native peoples so it necessitated this is an amazing story and i don't think on anyone listening is going any persuasion that you need to include the west and to your understanding of the civil war but i want to ask you historian english question and that is why do you think it is so long for it to weave this story into their understanding of the civil war i think for a couple of reasons and in one i think is a war historians have been the fields until about twenty or thirty years ago was pretty dominated by military historians when you focus on the battlefield of course you're going to focus on the east is after all the major battlefield to come home and you've been

focusing a little bit on the chances that the west by it you're not been a focus on the far west at all because you don't perceive those battles to actually the battles because they were fought with so few soldiers and it and i think also when we think about what we grow up seeing and learning and the impact a public history on our lives if you go to the west there's so many civil wars sites that are still there you know none of them really have been now paved over as parking lots or strip malls many of them have been successfully preserved are being run by either the national park service or state and have your of land management's fault or state parks but they're really poorly site and apache pass which is the site of a very important battle between the jericho apaches and union troops coming from california it's still there you can even see that the rats from the web the original act wagon rode are still there in order to get to make either have to drive on an eighteen mile dirt path that goes through intimate

and a royale you have to take the southern road from billy arizona where they warn you on this on the national park service i have the last four hundred meters of the road is just rocks it sounds like you took that trip is that the case and i chose and i was driving in a sad day when i was there and the kind of several weeks after the monsoon season that i had been more is that if there were what wear patches i was likely going to get stuck or cell service is pretty bad and i called my husband before i left the highway and i said if i don't call you in three hours before we leave people and ask if they would see me because well things could be kind of dire so i'm an amateur to be fine that the dirt road was actually time but in order to get to the site from there you then have to park your car and then hate for a mile and a half you know was a beautiful place to be as completely alone with their in many of these places and then some of these places are actually and hidden in plain sight and sound of a pas as a very good

example of that like if you go to santa fe paso you're probably bear for the current new mexico and green chile in navajo history experience right and you get a lot of that in the palace of the governors is still there were oldest buildings in north america and you can walk around the plaza and you probably won't notice that there's an apple esque sitting in the milk was much less read what's on it and what it is is a monument to civil war soldiers so you know it's there's there's a way in which are you know we think about history to sort of in place and if we don't see it then we don't think there is history write that in many ways what you're saying is that the civil war lee is feasible eat in some ways in the west but that many lists haven't noticed yet exactly exactly where

making kate nelson is the author of several books her latest is the three cornered war the union and the confederacy and native peoples in the fight for the worse you do civilians are always drawn into war you know the war last any period of time civilians always are involved in some way and war is encourage transgressions by their very nature the pope over the years while john tesh and dug into the history of the civil war something surprising caught her attention i would often come across references disorders taking things from civilians passion was well aware of stories about union soldiers taking the positions of people living in the confederacy

but she was surprised to find out that actually went both ways confederate soldiers took things from pro confederate people and union soldiers from pro union people pretty quickly when the war gets underway ideology seems to fade into the background and soldiers and civilians are engaged in this intense struggle over what they need to survive explores the struggle in her new book war stuff it looks at wartime clashes between armies of civilians over things material resources like livestock and lumber and recently talked with passion about what this looks like in practice and the toll it took on civilians living in the south you know thats such a part of folklore and you know that the united states army was a well oiled machine they came to this album was able deliver of all this industrial might everything that his soldiers needed that you're suggesting that's not the case

that's right it found that out pretty early and my research that neither army is very efficient are very well organized and then that was definitely the standard line and you would see the textbooks said the union army was good at this you know the interactions on the ground out there between you know a farmer's wife and a soldier and i found out the soldiers in the ranks complained frequently end bitterly about the fact that they don't have enough to eat and they are determined to overcome that union soldiers are hungry and they are not gonna put up with us so they go out into the field and they they take what they need and the way that this is supposed to be done as you know there are procedures on those officers was to be present with a group of soldiers they go out together in the daylight and they give out paperwork to the civilian whose goods they're taking and

they feel and all the information and that paperwork is supposed to be redeemable leader during the war or after well what i found it and practice is that a lot of soldiers private says take off by themselves they often go out at night no they manage to avoid their pickets and they start running through the countryside and they don't get out paperwork affecting other trying to avoid any contact with human beings if they can to just get the food they need to get back to camp but the other thing that you said there was surprising is that they're the confederate soldiers to give any age without the permission of their southern people among them they live you know the story in the post or south of the yankees came in and stole everything bad boy you show is that the confederate soldiers were also hungry and they also took what they wanted and needed in some ways of the confederates lost more from their own armies needed from the union as i mccracken yes that is an end that is exactly what i found what would surprise me you know

surprise me very much and i thought the confederate soldiers would at least tried to avoid harming pro confederate white people and the beginning of the war some of them do that but as the war unfolds in their physical needs become more and more important they don't think about that anywhere yeah so it's the families on the home front to women and particular who bear the brunt of a lot of this in your story we sometimes forget your pc reenactments it just looks like a bunch of guys running across a park and polling in people's backyards in these very home shia so how do you integrate that story of when his experience in the war with her the story that of a civil war that we think we know whether the gender dynamics are very important because almost all soldiers are man and most of the civilians that they're dealing with are women and they're often these very intense exchanges where i'll women

will say to these soldiers you know my children have to eat and the response comes back from the soldier well if we don't get through we're going to start and when civilians including women of course realize that their survival is its daycare that the survival and wellbeing of beer children their family members are at stake then they think that should take precedence obey day began to realize even people who may have been strongly in favor of secession and or the confederacy they begin to realize that the confederate army also poses a threat to them so what happens is the behaviour converge is so that man from both armies will take what they say they need from civilians and civilians began to fear and distrust soldiers from both parties and they start hiding things that they hide their mood they also will disassemble their fences you know armies use a lot of wood and an

army regiment moving through an area can take our hundreds and hundreds of panels offenses down and civilians need that to keep their crops protected from animals from you know coming in and trampling their corn crops and so on so i found people who would disassemble offense and barry defense where they would take offense down and put it in a closet inside the house to try to protect it from soldiers and end whether the soldier has on a gray uniform or a blue uniform civilians realize that that dispersant can take things that they themselves need to survive if you were to make a museum that's not like the usual so for museums you know this person sorts of things it what would your museum open the internal culture of the south look like oh that's a good question and i would put a lot of household objects anant kale piano for example a piano was a luxury object in the mid nineteenth century only affluent people had pianos know the piano was a symbol of an upper middle class person

an upper middle class family and soldiers will often deliberately destroy the piano bell break it apart with axes and sometimes i'll sit down and play it without the play a few of their favorite songs and then they smash it up with taxes so i would put a piano i would also put a four poster clean bed with a white quilt on edge but saudis often talk about how much they miss sleeping on a comfortable bed a clean bed and a bed with white sheets and an acquittal taunted and so sometimes you know when they take over a house that they could be alive for the bedroom so they can take a nap on top with dads are with their muddy boots on and if we could have psalm plates some cops and silverware that would be useful iphone the disorders in both armies will take those things you know they'll make a kitchen reagan they not only built a few bits in the kitchen they will also take all of the forks and spencer nods and you know civilians will say don't do that that's ours you can do that

then they take that any way you see this as the beginning of a new way of thinking about the civil war maybe american history more broadly so i hope so i'm hoping that that scholars will take material culture more seriously and i mean his stories of course ghazi anthropologist archaeologist been working on this for over a hundred years but i think we need to recognize that the material world matters a lot to the people we are writing about your they care about material objects you know whether it's a piano whether it's a house and these objects are not only important to them because of the physical reality they live in a material world but also because of what they symbolize and that that's how it is you see soldiers breaking out pianos with axes so if it matters a lot to them and i think we as historians need to take this more seriously and for shirley the museum's are filled with these objects there are literally millions of them in museums all over the country and there

are many objects are still in private hands of the state of tennessee did a very interesting project all while back in which they asked the citizens of tennessee to bring and their civil war artifacts to be photographed and described by the state are cops and that web site is just amazing the things that people have kept in trunks in the attic or maybe displayed on the mail piece so they're objects that mattered a lot during the war and many of them have been preserved in the decades since then what would you say to people who happen to find that their family has some artifact of the war and i think it changed their perspective on these things that they may have well first got asked them to please photograph it and write about it to preserve it as as an artifact but i think that the material world is something that matters a great deal to human beings in every generation and that if your family has artifacts from its past whether it pertains to the civil war world war to

korea or you know other events and family history you know if one of your ancestors was involved in the civil rights movement the women's movement whatever i mean there's a material manifestation of that i think you should treasure that ideally should preserve it and make sure that other family members know that it's there at maybe think about sharing the museum's a lot about people conjure yeah absolutely i mean you know for a long time museums collected objects associated with a tiny number of elites but that has changed a good deal on the last thirty years and there are all kinds of objects out there the dog met the experiences of ordinary citizens you know the the average person with a return in peacetime or more time and then that has a value of course it's part of the american experience joe cashin is a history professor at ohio state university her latest book is war

stuff the struggle for human and environmental resources in the american civil war fatima do a first date but you can keep the conversation going on that nobody thought of the episode or answer questions about history you'll find that after reading you weren't sending a lot of fat free at virginia we're also on facebook and twitter at the factory green after his producer a senior human need your support provided by an anonymous donor the national endowment for the humanities joseph another turn a memorial foundation to johns hopkins university and the art refining

additional support provided by cultivating fresh ideas and the arts and humanities professor of history it is a professor of humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond's john freeman is professor of history and american studies at yale university and connolly is the atoms associate professor of history at the johns hopkins university back story was created by andrew and virginia humanities as it is