Historians are tasked with recreating days past, setting vivid scenes that bring the past to the present. Mark M. Smith, author of The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, engages all five senses to recall the roar of canon fire at Vicksburg, the stench of rotting corpses in Gettysburg, and many more of the sights and sounds of battle. In doing so, Smith creates a multi-dimensional vision of the Civil War and captures the human experience during wartime. Here, Smith speaks to how our senses work to inform our understanding of history and why the Civil War was a singular sensory event.
Sensory overload in the Civil War
Using sensory history to understand the past
How the Civil War transformed taste
Headline image credit: The Siege of Vicksburg. Litograph by Kurz and Allison, 1888. Public domain via the Library of Congress.
The post The Civil War in five senses appeared first on OUPblog.
By Mark C. Carnes
General Editor, ANB
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War will be commemorated in the usual ways. But a truly unique approach is provided by the online—and thus searchable—version of the American National Biography, a 27-million word collection of biographical essays on some 18,731 deceased Americans who played a significant role in the nation’s past.
Readers can of course acquire an understanding of the major figures, perhaps beginning with James M. McPherson’s long essays on Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and Russell F. Weigley’s on Robert E. Lee. But there are many hundreds of essays on figures associated with all aspects of the war.
Those interested in a particular battle, for instance, can use the ANB online. A full-text search of articles for “Gettysburg” yields 253 separate biographical essays, the great majority on soldiers who fought there.
But this search also unearths many new gems of information, such as the fact that William Corby, a Roman Catholic priest assigned to New York’s Irish Brigade, stood upon a boulder, raised his right hand, and offered a general absolution for the combatants just before the armies converged.
Women, too, surface in this search. Eliza Farnham, the author of Life in Prairie Land (1846) and a crusader for prison reform and women’s causes, tended the wounded at Gettysburg, where she contracted tuberculosis; she died the next year at age 49. Eliza Turner, an early feminist, abolitionist, and poet, also cared for the wounded at Gettysburg. She later wrote an important woman suffrage tract. Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave who became the dressmaker, dresser, and confidante of Mary Lincoln, attended the Gettysburg commemoration with the first lady.
Scholars—and history buffs—can look at the Civil War from another fresh perspective through ANB searches by geographical location. For example a full-text search for “Frankfort, Kentucky,” limited to subjects between 1800 and 1840, generates nearly three dozen responses. Among the many interesting essays are those on the following:
Leonidas Polk, a graduate of West Point who became an Episcopal bishop and the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. At the outset of the Civil War he volunteered to command Confederate forces and Jefferson Davis named him major general for the upper Mississippi region. In September 1862, during an offensive to seize Kentucky, Polk disobeyed an order to attack, forcing Braxton Bragg to abandon Frankfort.
John Marshall Harlan, who raised and commanded the Tenth Kentucky Volunteers. His efforts helped keep Kentucky in the Union, winning for him the support of national Republicans; in 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Harlan to the Supreme Court.
Luke Pryor Blackburn, a physician who became governor of Kentucky. He had served as the public health officer for Natchez, Mississippi, during the yellow fever epidemics of 1848 and 1854. During the Civil War the Confederacy sent Blackburn to Canada to collect arms and hospital supplies to be shipped through the Union blockade. In Canada Blackburn devised a scheme to spread yellow fever through Northern cities. To that end he traveled to Bermuda during the epidemic of 1864, collected the bedding of dying fever victims, and shipped it in trunks to cities in the North. (The plan failed: Blackburn did not understand that mosquitoes were the agent of transmission of yellow fever.) Charged with conspiracy to commit murder, Blackburn was acquitted by a Canadian court. He returned to the United States, settled in Kentucky, won a measure
Well...I'm blogging from the passenger seat of my rig as we're rolling down the interstate. The apartment is packed, everything's in storage, and we are in the RV now! It's amazing how much stuff we fit in here. And here, I only packed twelve pairs of shoes. I think I'm doing pretty well. LOL!
First stop is Gettysburg for the Phenomenology 102 Conference where I'll be selling my GHOST HUNTRESS series of books, THE OTHER SIDE: A TEEN'S GUIDE TOO GHOST HUNTING AND THE PARANORMAL, as well as fun things like pendulums, magnets, and essential oils. I'm also speaking with my co-authors, Dave Schrader and Patrick Burns (also my sweetie.) We'll be getting in some ghost hunting in Gettysurg while we're there, you can bet on that! We've got formal events through the conference where we'll investigate, but we're hoping to slip away on our own, as well.
Gettysburg is amazing place. I'm not psychic in the least, but even the most insensitive person (and I mean that in a psychic way) can't help but feel the buzz in the air and the tremor in the earth when you're walking the battlefields and sites of skirmishes where sooooooooo many people lost their lives. There are many stories of ghosts appearing on the battlefield, or helping answer tourists' questions, only to vanish into thin air. I'm certainly hoping for one of these encounteres.
Have you ever been to Gettysburg? What was your experience?
Hugs,
Marley = )
If you ever get the chance to visit Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, you should do so. It is the town in which the Union army desperately defeated the Confederacy in the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863. The Confederates were on their way to Washington, DC but the Union quickly caught up with them.
A view from Little Round Top
What is so striking about visiting the battlefield is the overwhelming sense of loss (51,000 Americans died there) that simply hangs in the air and permeates your mood. You can feel the sadness all around you.
View of the Battlefield
I was also unprepared for the size of the battlefield and the miles it stretches upon. The battle occurred within the town also and this was a frightening thought upon seeing that the row houses were built right up against the road the soldiers passed and fought on. Many houses from the era remain.
We did not spend enough time in Gettysburg. We tried to do it in one day. I recommend a long weekend. I also recommend avoiding any hotel that sits right on the major thoroughfare, Steinwher Avenue/Baltimore Street if you are a light sleeper as you will hear the trucks on this busy road. We stayed at the Gettysburg Travelodge and wouldn’t stay there again. Not only was there heavy street traffic noise but someone tried to get into our room at 1:30 in the morning, not accepting their key just would not work. The free continental breakfast was just plain bad.
On Little Round Top
We made sure to climb aways up Little Round Top to see where the 20th Maine Infantry soldiers had defended their positions against all odds as immortalized in the Gettysburg movie with Michigander Jeff Daniels playing Colonial Joshua Chamberlain. It is near here that we had our paranormal experiences.
On Little Round Top
If I had known we could leave a little flag in honor of my ancestors who fought for Michigan, I would’ve done so. Here is just one flag left for the 20th Maine.
Below is a photograph of a soldier’s fortification on Little Round Top. I was especially drawn to this area and felt especially sad and I knelt down as if I were a soldier and took some photos. One is above the Maine flag photo. The other below. You can see quite a large orb in the left side of the photo.
- Orb on Little Round Top
After we visited the 20th Maine Infantry Memorial Statue, my daughter and I went ahead of my husband. At the car we began wondering what happened to him as he was slow to show up. When he finally arrived at the car, it was by walking out of the woods nearby rather than the path. He said that he distinctly heard someone “Ssshhh!” him as he walked on the path. He was alone at that point, no other visitors nearby. Since it was so distinct he decided to walk in the woods and find the man who’d shushed him to be quiet. He found no one. My husband was dressed in all blue that day, including a blue cap. Could a Union soldier been concerned for his safety as he walked down the hill?
A view of Big Round Top
We also visited the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. We had to hurry through it as the sun was setting. This is also the place where Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.
More Ghosts of Gettysburg — Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield was written by Mark Nesbitt and published in1992 by Thomas Publications.
I will have to read Nesbitt’s other books about Gettysburg ghosts because he doesn’t just tell the story, he fills you in on the historical background. Never having been interested in battle stories, I knew only when Gettysburg was fought and by whom and the general outcome. In the previous book I read about Gettysburg ghosts, I had to get out the National Park Service’s informational booklet to help me understand the areas and settings of the ghost stories. Not so with Nesbitt’s book and for that, I highly recommend it.
Nesbitt also explores the bigger questions concerning ghosts and where they might come from. “Parallel universes — both invisible to one another and yet existing side by side and simultaneously — may help us understand how, while changing form, energy can continue to exist irrespective of time constraints.” This is a thinking person’s book of paranormal experiences.
I also found out through this book, that Eisenhower bought a farm in Gettysburg and retired there with Maymie. They bought the farm in 1950, but because Eisenhower went on to serve our country in different capacities, including as our President, he really only spent about 7 years on the farm. He died in 1969 and Maymie died ten years later. We will have to add the Eisenhower Farm on our vacation itinerary and see if we can smell Maymie’s perfume wafting about or hear Eisenhower descending the stairs to the kitchen.
It is Nesbitt’s tour of ghosts in Gettysburg that we have booked for our vacation.
Why am I so fascinated with ghosts? Because I lived in a haunted house. Both of my young sons felt the presence and one of them saw faces in the bathroom mirror. They could not sleep well at night and never alone. For me, the shadowy malevolent presence stood by my bed every night at about 3 in the morning, causing my heart to race out of control after I bolted straight up in bed. After months of this terrifying experience, I eventually pretended to not respond to his presence at all. I would pretend to stay asleep — not even opening my eyes. I also walked around the house and read specific prayers to quiet the spirit. This worked very little. I am convinced that the spirit is the father of the people we rented from. He had built the house and died there and he was mad that strangers were living in his family’s home.
What is your ghost story?
(This is me and my baby brother a few years ago before the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot-- 5 miles. I still slog my way around the block. This past fall my brother finished the New York City marathon-- his first!)
This week Sara at Read Write Believe and Liz at Liz in Ink have been doing a great series of posts called The Exercise of Writing. (If you haven't been following along, here and here are the places to start.)
Yesterday Sara asked- How is writing like your favorite sport? Here's my list of answers. Once I got going it was quite hard to stop- kind of how it is with writing and running!
Writing is like running because:
- It helps to warm up.
- Some days it's good to get it done early.
- There are slow runners and fast runners. (Different abilities, creative processes.)
- If you slip and fall it's good to just get up and keep going. (Rejections.)
- Except for the times it would be good to take a break. (Rest, relax and re-inspire.)
- The more you practice, the better you'll get.
- A long shower feels great when you're done. (Sense of satisfaction.)
- It helps to have goals.
- Hills are hard, but good. (Challenges.)
- Some days you'll catch that lovely high and coast along.
- Other days it's okay to just walk. (Perseverance-- you're still moving.)
- Be wary of cars-- they can be dangerous. (Critics. Nay-sayers.)
- Sometimes you'll get an annoying pebble in your shoe. (Doubts about a story. Or your abilities.) You could stop your momentum and shake it out. Or you could bear with it and fix it later.
- Whether you have the fanciest high-tech gear or just a ratty t-shirt and an old pair of sneakers, you still have to put one foot in front of the other.
- And finally, there will always be other runners who are faster, stronger and look better in spandex shorts. Are you going to let that stop you?
SWOOSH!
There goes Liz... blogging about skiing and writing, and running and writing, and just what she and I could possibly mean by the "physicality of writing." My favorite SWOOSH? This one:
"My own big fat prize.
Not the Olympics.
Not a college scholarship.
Just the totally exhilarating sense of working hard at something and makin’ it happen."
Go on and take your writer self for a run down Liz's mountain. She's an excellent guide.
The full schedule for our week of co-blogging is here. I'll be back tomorrow...gotta go catch up with Liz now. Dang, that girl's a blur!
Liz Scanlon (Liz in Ink) and I are co-blogging all this week! I'm so pumped about it, I can hardly sit still, but that's a good thing, because we're going to be talking up....
The Exercise of Writing
Yup. We're just that crazy. Here's the short version of the schedule. But RUN on over to Liz's and read the full version
right here.
Monday: Hit the starting blocks at Liz in Ink
Tuesday: Out of the gate at Read Write Believe
Wednesday: Half-time entertainment
Sara Strong-Arms It – here at Liz in Ink
Liz Lifts and Lunges – at Read Write Believe
Thursday: The Olympics – A round-up of sports posts and analogies (at both blogs)
Friday: The Fifth Quarter – Poetry Friday (at both blogs)
Ready, set....GO to
Liz's place and get the full game plan right now!
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I am excited just to be going on this blogging journey with you, Marley!
And no, I've never been to Gettysburg, but I am thinking it might show up in one of your next books?
Wow! Cool, Marley. I can't wait to read all of our travel posts. I've never been to Gettysburg, but I bet you definitely get a sense of the souls lost there...