Writing

Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving

November 24, 2022 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

We celebrate Thanksgiving Day because of Henry VIII, the Gunpowder Plot, the 1619 landing of 38 English colonists in Virginia (without slaves), the Pilgrims, the end of the American Revolution, the beginning of the American Republic, the Civil War, and the need to stimulate the economy in the late 1930s. And it might have been called Evacuation Day.

Thanksgiving as we know it today in the United States evolved over a period of some 400 years. The idea of thanksgiving observances goes back to the Protestant Reformation in England under Henry VIII, consolidating a rather large number of thanksgiving holidays during the Roman Catholic period. Special days of Thanksgiving would be called for military victories and for deliverance from such events as the Gunpowder Plot of 1606.

The idea of Thanksgiving and feasting, but without a fixed date, had been around by the time of the American colonial period. The first known Thanksgiving celebration in America was not in 1621 with the Pilgrims but in 1619 in Virginia, when 38 English settlers arrived on the ship Margaret on Dec. 4 and immediately celebrated their landing with a day of thanksgiving, as required under the charter of the London Company which sponsored them. The landing day was to be observed in perpetuity.

The Pilgrims (and the Puritans) brought their tradition of thanksgiving days with them from Europe. The Pilgrims celebrated their first day of thanksgiving in 1621, and it is this observance that’s considered the forerunner of what we know today.

Not everyone in the American colonies celebrated a day of thanksgiving. The observance varied by colony (and later by state); in New York, for example, thanksgiving day was known as Evacuation Day, an observance of the departure of British troops in 1783 after the end of the American Revolution. George Washington led his army down Manhattan Island to what is now Battery Park in a grand triumphal march. And it was Washington who, as the nation’s first Preisdent, proclaimed the first National Day of Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, 1789. By the end of the 18th century, the last Thursday in November had become the day went most states observed a Day of Thanksgiving.

It was Abraham Lincoln who made it an official national day of observance. In November of 1863 (the same month as the Gettysburg Address), Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving to be observed by all states on the final Thursday of November. This was in recognition of both the bountiful harvests the Northern states had experienced and the military victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

Thanksgiving Day remained the last Thursday in November until 1939, when President Roosevelt proclaimed it to be the next-to-last Thursday of November. This was done to stimulate retail sales by extending the Christmas shopping season – an early recognition of the commercial importance of Black Friday as the day after Thanksgiving. Finally, in 1941, Congress and Roosevelt officially made the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day. And there it’s remained ever since.

But for all the reasons it was created and observed, what has been at its heart from the beginning is thankfulness to God for his provision and faithfulness. And that is, perhaps, the most important aspect of this holiday we call Thanksgiving.

Top photograph: Union soldiers celebrate the first national Thanksgiving Day in 1863.

Bruce Catton’s Civil War

November 21, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Bruce Catton (1899-1978) grew up in Petoskey, Michigan, listening to the stories of old Civil War veterans. As a boy, he was enraptured by these first-hand accounts, but his own experiences in World War I led him to believe that those Civil War veterans didn’t really understand modern warfare. His memoir of growing up, which included his interactions with Civil War veterans, was published in 1972 and entitled Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood.

At some point, he realized how wrong he was. He became a journalist and worked for such newspapers as the Boston American, Cleveland News, and Cleveland Plain Dealer. He never lost interest in the Civil War, and Catton continued studying and researching the period before, during, and after the war. He read extensively on the subject, and what he noticed was how historians talked about battles and generals, without paying much attention to the experiences of soldiers.

And it wasn’t for lack of sources. Hundreds if not thousands of memoirs had been published by Civil War veterans on both sides of the conflict. Regimental histories had been written. But these accounts weren’t the Civil War most Americans were familiar with.

Catton focused on the federal Army of the Potomac and wrote three books which focused heavily on the experiences of the soldiers. The first volume in what became a trilogy was Mr. Lincoln’s Army, published in 1951. The second volume was Glory Road (1952), and the third was A Stillness at Appomattox (1954). Sales weren’t exactly robust; the nation’s appetite for Civil War history seemed to have waned.

And then A Stillness at Appomattox won the Pulitzer Prize for history, followed by a National Book Award. The resulting publicity encouraged new readers and buyers. Here was a journalist (of all things) doing what historians had paid scant attention to – the experiences of the soldier. This wasn’t reading about Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Jefferson Davis; this was reading about the war fought by the boy next door, or your own son.

No one had written history like this before in America. Reading it gave people the impression they were firsthand witnesses, a result of its journalistic style. The series became popular and passed into publishing (and Civil War history) legend. Not only did it inspire Shelby Foote to write his multi-volume history of the Civil War, it also led to Ken Burns’ epic documentary for PBS. The series began airing in September of 1990 to 40 million television viewers. If you watched it (and I was one of those 40 million), you couldn’t forget David McCullough, the narrator, introducing the letters written by soldiers to their wives, sweethearts, and parents. Like Catton’s books, it made the Civil War profoundly personal.

The Library of America, a national publishing treasure if ever there was one, has recently combined Catton’s three volumes into one, simply entitled Catton: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy. It’s edited by Gary Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor of History of the American Civil War Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Gallagher includes an exceptionally fine introduction to Catton and his writing. The volume also includes maps of the battles fought by the Army of the Potomac, drawn by Rafael Palacios. Its hefty content (more than 1,100 pages of texts, plus another 100 of notes, bibliography, and index) is packaged in a relatively compact yet easily readable volume.

And it’s still a thrilling read, just like it was originally in the 1950s and through numerous editions, and just like the stories Catton heard when he was a boy in Petoskey, fascinated by the tales of Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and so many more, all told by the now-grizzled old men who had fought them.

When You Face Too Many Ways to Open a Novel

November 16, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

How many openings can a novel have? Let me count the ways.

I’d never experienced the problem of too many ways to open a novel. Five novels, and five fairly straightforward beginnings, meant that I never struggled over how to open a story. Somehow, I always knew, and it wasn’t an issue.

Until now.

I began to write the draft like I always had. I had an idea, and image, in my mind, and that’s how I’d start the story. I wrote it. I read it over several times. It seemed to work. I started writing beyond the opening, and I bogged down.

Something seemed slightly off, and I knew it was the opening. So, I reworked it. And reworked it. I revised it to the point where it was almost unrecognizable from the first version. It still didn’t work. I discarded it and started over. I tried something entirely different. At one point, I thought I had it, finally, only to realize I didn’t. I went back to the first and tried it again.

To continue reading, please see my post today at ACFW.

Photograph by Ankhesenamun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War”

November 9, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Beginning in 1990 and continuing for the next two decades, the University of Arkansas Press published a series of photographic histories of the Civil War. The volumes were developed by state, using states where a considerable portion of the war was fought. The university press included volumes on Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Each volume is structured the same: an overall introduction to what happened to the state and its people during the war, followed by chapters on specific battles, armies, or state events. The emphasis is on the photographs, with each making extensive use of individual portraits of generals and other officers as well as enlisted men.

Each chapter begins with a narrative, and the photographs follow. An explanatory text accompanies each portrait, explaining who the person was, where they served, what battle or battles they fought, and whether they lived, survived with injuries, or died.

The volume on Mississippi is entitled Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War. It was the third volume in the series, published in 1993. It’s a hefty volume, not quite as lavish as a coffee table book but leaning in that direction. It was written by two men. Bobby Roberts was then the director of the Central Arkansas Library System and director of the Archives at the University of Arkansas. Carl Moneyhon was a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Moneyhon’s books include Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, A Documentary History of Arkansas (co-author), and The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas.

The book is now almost 30 years old. The text is relatively up to date, which is not a surprise given how it focuses on major events and battles and well-known historical military figures. A considerable amount of information exists from which to choose; the state experienced some 17 battles, nine of which were connected to the Vicksburg campaign. The chapters in the book focus on Civil War photography in the state, Mississippi goes to war, Mississippians in the Amery of Northern Virginia and the western armies, the struggle for northeast Mississippi, Vicksburg, the home front (which often turned out to be closed to the front than home), Meridian and the battles in northern Mississippi, and after the war. Photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers are included.

Private James Madison Moore, Company A, 14th Regiment, Mississippi Consolidated Infantry

The pictures were provided by a number of individuals and national and state agencies and organizations, including the Military History Institute, Mississippi’s State Archives, the Special Collections at Louisiana State University Library, and other sources.

It’s the portraits of the soldiers, Union and confederate, that make the volume. So many of the were young, in the late teens and early 20s. Some look more like boys in uniforms than soldiers. Some have almost haunted looks about them. But these were the soldiers who fought on both sides; the texts include whether they died or experienced amputation of an arm or leg. One notes that the man, recently promoted and on furlough to visit his family in northern Mississippi, was ambushed and murdered by bushwhackers and/or deserters. Civil order had largely collapsed across the state.

It’s a big book with a large topic, but the photographs help bring home the reality of what the war was like for the men who participated in it.

Top photograph: Members of the 9^th Mississippi Infantry at Pensacola, Florida, early in the war. Photograph by J.D. Edwards of New Orleans.

“The Limits of Loyalty” by Jarret Ruminski

October 31, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

We often get images, based on stereotypes, stuck in our heads about history. The antebellum and Civil War periods are no exceptions. We think the South was nothing but large plantations with thousands of slaves. We also might think that every Southerner tightly embraced secession and the war and retained that embrace until surrender in 1865.

These images are two-dimensional cartoons, with more or less an element of truth. The reality was considerably different. Most Southerners were small farmers, not big plantation owners, who did have an outsized presence in issues of the days. Likely most white Southerners did support secession, but that support began to wane as early as 1862. Fewer than half of white Southerners were slaveowners. And the state of Mississippi is a good example.

In The Limits of Loyalty: Ordinary People in Civil War in Mississippi, Jarret Ruminski takes a deep look at what happened in the state over the period 1861-1865. The time in which people’s nationalist sentiments and actions were most closely tied to the Confederacy was, unsurprisingly, early on. By 1862, as parts of the state began to experience invasion and destruction (and Mississippi experienced considerable amounts of both over the course of the war), sentiment shifted. Other loyalties, like to community and family, began to take precedence over feelings about the Confederacy and even the war. For many, and especially for women left at home with children and small farms and businesses, family survival became the overriding issue.

Ruminski draws upon letters, published reports and editorials in newspapers, journals, and official records. He considers early nationalist sentiment; how Union, Confederate, and private citizens defined oaths of allegiance; the contraband trade that occurred across all socio-economic levels; the role that deserters and gangs of thieves and robbers played; the breakdown in loyalty between slaves and masters; and how all of this upheaval not only tore at the fabric of law and society but reverberated for decades after the war.

In short, in the state of Mississippi at least, and likely many other Southern states, the idea of the Confederacy, support for the war, and afterward the “Lost Cause” might have more basis in fiction and myth than in actual fact. It was one thing to support the Jefferson Davis national government. But families had to eat and survive, and if it was a choice between loyalty to the cause and the war and seeing your children starve, it wasn’t much of a contest.

Ruminski received his B.A. degree in English and his M.A. degree in American history at Youngstown State University, and his Ph.D. degree in 19^th century American history from the University of Calgary. His Ph.D. dissertation, which likely furnished a considerable portion of the research for The Limits of Loyalty, was entitled “Southern Pride and Yankee Presence: The Limits of Confederate Loyalty in Civil War Mississippi, 1860-1865.” A freelance writer and researcher, he’s published articles in Civil War History, The Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of Southern History, American Nineteenth Century History, Ohio Valley History, Ohio History, and a variety of other historical and popular publications.

The Limits of Loyalty focuses on the lives and experiences of ordinary people during the Civil War, the people who tilled the farms, harvested the crops, operated the small stores and sawmills, and had to feed their families. It was a society coming apart at the seams in a variety of ways, and as Ruminski demonstrates in his highly readable and extensively researched account, the loyalty people felt was multifaceted, with loyalty to family and community taking increasing priority as society collapsed.

Top Photograph: Women of the Civil War, drawing by Winslow Homer.

“Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi” by William C. Harris

October 24, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

It’s barely mentioned in the standard school history textbooks, but the Southern states experienced two Reconstructions after the Civil War. The second is the best known, lasting from 1867 to 1876, and generally known as Radical Reconstruction (for the Radical Republicans in Congress who controlled it). The first is Presidential Reconstruction, between 1865 and 1867, directed by President Andrew Johnson, who believed he was carrying out the desires and plans of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, who wanted a speedy reunion.

The Radical Republicans wanted punishment, and they wanted civil rights for the former slaves.

Mississippi was the second state to secede after South Carolina and the first to seek reunion. But reunion was anything but simple. The state was devastated economically; much of its large agricultural and small industrial infrastructure has been destroyed, and its social infrastructure was in upheaval. Law and order had broken down, railroads destroyed, and planters and farmers were desperate for a labor force to plant and harvest cotton.

Historian William C. Harris explains what happened during these roughly two years in Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi, originally published by LSU Press in 1967. The state faced what looked to be insurmountable difficulties – a huge debt, a collapsed currency and economy, the disappearance of the slave system that underpinned cotton and agriculture, cities and towns that had been destroyed, the deaths of so many men in the war, and the breakdown of law and order across the state.

Both the provisional government and the restoration government struggled with what to do about the former slaves. Planters wanted to keep them tied to the land; the slaves themselves flocked to the cities and towns, looking for work. There were the questions of civil rights, including land and property ownership, education, and voting. And the state faced the enormous problem of trying to revive agriculture and especially cotton production, which seemed to offer the best way for the state economy to recover.

Harris explains that the state leaders trying to manage the restoration were largely men who had been pro-Union or anti-secessionist and associated with the old Whig Party. They were aware of congressional sentiment, but they were also considering what would have been at one time unthinkable – former slaves having the right to vote. A few understood that Congress was unlikely to accept anything short of the full rights of citizenship.

He pays special attention to efforts aimed at reviving the state’s economy – agriculture, levee reconstruction, the railroads, towns, commerce, and industry. And he explains the Black Codes, tentative steps toward rights for the former slaves but also an attempt to regulate them in Mississippi society. It was these activities which put a national spotlight on presidential reconstruction across the South, outraging newspapers and many in the North who saw the codes as a kind of slavery in disguise.

Harris is a prominent Civil War historian, educator, and author. His published books include The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi, William Woods Holden: Firebrand of North Carolina Politics, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union, Lincoln’s Last Months, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union, and Lincoln and the Union Governors. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Alabama, and he taught at Millsaps College and North Carolina State University, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 2004.

Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi, 55 years after its publication, remains a valuable resource for understanding how the state tried to manage its emergence from the chaos of the Civil War, where it succeeded, and where it fell woefully short.

Top photograph: Oxford, Mississippi, in August, 1864, after its destruction by Union troops.

Writing

Footer

Meet the Man