Surrender

April 9th, 1865. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant meet at the home of Wilmer McLean near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, to discuss the surrender of Lee's battered Army of Northern Virginia, which had by then dwindled to about 28,000 men. While Lee's surrender effectively ended the American Civil War, this was not the last nor even the largest Confederate surrender of the conflict. The latter distinction belongs, in fact, to the capitulation later that month of Joseph E. Johnston to William T. Sherman at Bennett Place just outside Durham, North Carolina. Johnston, in addition to surrendering his ~39,000-man army, saw to it that an additional 50,000 Confederate soldiers operating in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida laid down their arms.

While Appomattox Courthouse is seared into our collective American psyche, Bennett Place--the largest troop surrender of the Civil War--is often overlooked or even forgotten. But why? (Full disclosure: I actually knew nothing about Bennett House myself until a few years ago when my sister and I visited the park. Bennett House belongs to North Carolina's wonderful collection of State Historic Sites. That same day, we visited Alamance Battleground, which is another interesting historical episode of which I was completely unaware.) On November 16th, Durham Technical Community College (DTCC), as part of its Social Sciences/Humanities Speaker Series, invited Dr. Stephen Cushman to offer an answer to this question.

Cushman, a poet and historian in the Department of English at the University of Virginia, is interested in how literary expression (letters, poems, books, etc.) shapes memories of the Civil War. In other words, how did those who lived through the conflict actually write about it, and how did their writings influence the way they, and others, remember and commemorate the war?

There are several commonly cited reasons why Bennett House plays second fiddle to Appomattox. The first is what Cushman referred to as "Virginia-centrism." There were, of course, several battles fought outside of Virginia, but many of the largest and most well-publicized were fought within that state. That the Appomattox surrender occurred in the Virginia theater, then, and the fact that it involved the war's two most celebrated generals (Grant and Lee) helped ensure its central place in memories of the war. Bennett House also lacked the pomp and circumstance and pathos of the Appomattox performance. Appomattox thus contributed to and exemplified the powerful and appealing idea of a valiant, but defeated, Confederacy. (This so-called "Lost Cause" myth still permeates contemporary remembrances of the Civil War.) What is more, the events at Bennett House were drawn out over several days (as opposed to the relatively short and sweet event at Appomattox) and were ultimately overshadowed by the assassination of President Lincoln. Cushman acknowledged that all these elements contributed to the primacy of Appomattox. However, his reading of Civil War-era literature suggested a different, and much less-well known, factor: the nature of the personal relationship between Johnston and Sherman.

To grasp Cushman's thesis, we first need to understand the dual meanings of the word "surrender." It can mean "to cease resistance to an enemy" or "give up the fight," which are, of course, what we typically think about in a military context. However, it can also refer to the act of giving up something, either an object (usually weapons in a military context) or even one's self.

The second key component of Cushman's argument is the way Johnston and Sherman wrote about their relationship with each other. Unlike Grant and Lee, who faced each other on the battlefield only during the last year and a half of the war, Johnston and Sherman squared off several times going back to 1861. In his memoirs, Sherman often refers to Johnston as a friend (Johnston, however, never uses such language when speaking of Sherman) and repeatedly praises Johnston's generalship. While Sherman no doubt respected Johnston, the assessments of Johnston's skill as a commander also served to elevate the impact of his (Sherman's) triumph at Bennett House.

The last issue revolves around how later authors wrote about the relationship between the two men. Johnston served as a pallbearer at Sherman's funeral in 1891 and died himself of pneumonia only ten days later. It was reported afterwards in Oliver Otis Howard's autobiography that Johnston refused to protect himself from the chilly February weather, stating in response to someone's plea that he put his hat on, "If I were in his place and he [Sherman] standing here in mine he would not put on his hat."

While this is unlikely to be a word-for-word quote, this exchange was repeated in slightly modified form by later authors and probably reflects the gist of Johnston's response. Given the way that people wrote about this episode, Cushman argued that it was only after Johnston's death--and the symbolic surrender of his body to his "close friend" Sherman--that the surrender at Bennett House finally reached its conclusion. In doing so, writers essentially created the myth of reconciliation that the country yearned for some twenty-five years after the end of the Civil War.

Cushman's analysis testifies to the power of the written word and its ability to shape memory. 

Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture

The Harriet Elliott Lecture Series is one of UNCG's marquee events. The College of Arts and Sciences has a large endowment to bring dynamic speakers to campus to address important and timely issues within the social sciences. The event cycles among the departments within the College here at UNCG, and this year's host department was History, who organized everything around the theme "The Power of History: Memory and Representation."

The keynote speaker was Dr. Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As the Chair of the Harriet Elliott Steering Committee, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person before the keynote address on the evening of March 27th. An extremely pleasant person, Dr. Bunch was at ease discussing everything from history to baseball. (He did relate a disturbing story about White supremacists who would periodically visit the museum to laugh at the slavery exhibits.)

The keynote address, which was attended by about 190 people, was entitled "Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture." Dr. Bunch is a wonderful storyteller. He was so engaging, in fact, that I was hardly aware of the passage of time: I couldn't believe that an entire hour had elapsed. Some of the highlights:

• I was surprised to learn that serious schemes to create a museum dedicated to African American history and culture first appeared before World War I, and President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation in 1929 that created a commission to design and construct such a museum. Unfortunately, pressure from Southern politicians ensured that no funding was attached to the resolution, and the onset of the Great Depression sidetracked the enterprise. It was not until 2003, when President George W. Bush signed another authorization, that momentum for a museum again gained traction.
• The story about the museum's collection was particularly fascinating. With what was essentially the Smithsonian's version of Antique Roadshow, Dr. Bunch and his staff scoured the country for items. Ultimately, of the ~40,000 pieces in the museum's collection, about 70%, including a bible owned by Nat Turner, were pulled from peoples' attics, basements, and garages.    
• The final price tag for the museum came to $540,000,000, and the average visit lasts about 4-6 hours. (The average visit for the other Smithsonian museums is about 1.5 hours.)
• While assembling the collection was a gargantuan challenge, the most difficult task was deciding what sort of museum to build. The ultimate goal, Dr. Bunch said, was to confront what it means to be an American. So, the museum needed to create not only a Black experience, but an American experience. Dr. Bunch also wanted the museum to humanize history and, in so doing, help people embrace ambiguity and nuance. What, then, should the museum be about? Pain? Slavery? Famous firsts? Should the exhibits and the museum be for African-Americans alone? The answer was to find the right tension between all of them. My sense is that the purpose of the museum is to invite people to take ownership of our past, to confront memory, and to invite reconciliation. 

History organized a follow-up panel discussion, attended by ~85 people, entitled "History Matters: Searching for LGBT History" featuring John D'Emilio and Mandy Carter. Hats off to the Organizing Committee from History, especially Anne Parsons and Asa Egar, who put together an absolutely fantastic event.

I think the impact that the museum could have on Americans was expressed best by Princey Jenkins, a 93-year-old African-American who, when interviewed by Dr. Bunch during the planning phase of the museum project, said "People used to remember. Now they forget."

New perspectives on the Harper's Ferry raid of 1859

On February 21st I attended a presentation by Dr. Peter Wood, an Emeritus Professor of History at Duke University (as someone who grew up in Colorado, I was interested to hear that he now lives in Longmont, Colorado). The presentation, entitled "The Harper's Ferry Five," was sponsored by the Durham Library Foundation's Humanities Society in celebration of Black History Month. This presentation is part of a broader movement within the historical community to reevaluate much of Civil War (and, indeed, American) history through the lens of the Black Experience. This change is particularly evident in explorations of the Civil War's beginning. The "White Version" is, naturally, the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12th, 1861. However, one can easily trace the conflict's origins to Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831, the Christiana Revolt of 1851, the Wellington Rescue of 1958 and, of course, the Harper's Ferry Raid of 1859.

Dr. Wood began by running through the relatively well known history of the raid and its major characters: John Brown, Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, and John Wilkes Booth. His main focus, though, was on two less well-appreciated aspects of the raid that, to Dr. Wood's mind, help dispel common misconceptions about this important historical event.

Misconception 1: John Brown attempted to stir up a full-scale slave insurrection, a plan that was at best quixotic and, at worst, utterly preposterous. Many thus see Brown as a mentally unstable fanatic willing to risk his life and the lives of his co-conspirators (including some of his own sons) on a mission that was certain to fail.

There is no doubt that Brown couched his hatred for slavery in fire-and-brimstone religious terms that fueled his strong abolitionism. He is also well-known for his participation in violent attacks against, and the murder of, pro-slavery individuals in Kansas in the 1850s. However, Dr. Wood argued that his intentions for the raid were much more nuanced and could be traced, at least in part, to a trip he made in 1840 to Tyler County, Virginia (now part of West Virginia) to survey land plots. Brown made two very important observations about this part of the Upper South on his travels. First, it was extremely rugged and thus difficult for large groups of people to access and, second, that slaves, and slave-holding, were rare. Voter rolls and enlistment records from 1861-1865 show that northwestern Virginia was pro-Union, something that Brown may also have picked up on in 1840.

When Brown later outlined his plans to Frederick Douglass, he thought that the mountains of northwestern Virginia (the region within which the arsenal at Harper's Ferry was located) would be the key to freeing slaves, since the rugged topography could serve as a protective barrier against pursuit by militia, the military, and slave-catchers. Dr. Wood thus argued, compellingly in my opinion, that Brown's true goal was to acquire guns from the arsenal and retreat with as many slaves as possible to the protective confines of the mountains--all with little or no bloodshed. Once a safe refuge for escaped slaves had been established, Brown hoped that an exodus of slaves would lead inexorably to the collapse of the Southern economy and, ultimately, slavery itself. Of course, Brown's plans misfired badly, and he recognized that his failure left no alternative than for slavery to be swept away through the spilling of much blood.

Misconception 2. While the Harper's Ferry raid attempted to free black slaves, it was a white man's affair.

It is clear that Brown was the driving force behind the raid, and it is also well known that five of Brown's companions were black men. However, these men, both free and formerly enslaved, are often viewed as passive hangers on, rather than active agents, in the events leading up to the Harper's Ferry raid. In fact, as Dr. Wood emphasized, each of these men had very strong convictions about their participation and many were politically astute. To take just one example: Lewis Leary was born free in North Carolina and, after moving to Ohio in 1856, became a member of the Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society and participated in the rescue of the fugitive slave John Price in 1858 (this is the Wellington Rescue referenced above). Dr. Wood's final slide emphasized that these men should not be forgotten. 

Back from DC

As I said earlier, I was in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday and Thursday. I drove in a few hours before my talk was scheduled on Wednesday and decided, after checking in to my hotel (the 100-year-old Hotel Harrington, highly recommended for its location), to visit the National Archives. I was excited for two reasons. First, I really enjoy history, and second, I am a huge fan of the movie National Treasure, parts of which are shot (or at least are supposed to take place) in the archives. It was amazing. I was able to see the original Declaration of Independence (which is much, much more faded than the movie makes it out to be), Constitution, and Bill of Rights. They also have a copy of Magna Carta that dates to 1297 (the reign of King Edward I, who confirmed the rights laid out in the original 1215 version). No photos inside, unfortunately, but I did get this one from the outside:

National Archives from Pennsylvania Avenue. The temporary exhibit was

"Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History." 

Wednesday afternoon I spoke to the Anthropology Department for the Smithsonian's Paleoanthropology Seminar on our recent work at Olduvai Gorge. I gave the talk a cutsey title, "New Perspectives on Old Bones and Stones at Olduvai Gorge." That night I was treated to an excellent meal and great conversation by my hosts.

Thursday morning I was up early so I could visit the Woodrow Wilson House, which is a Georgian Revival on S Street SW where the Wilsons lived together from 1921, when the president completed his second term, until the president's death in 1924. His second wife, Edith, continued to inhabit the home until her own death in 1961. She graciously left the house and all its furnishings to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is beautiful, and the folks who run the house provided a wonderful tour (thanks Fay!) with a lot of interesting tidbits (they have Woodrow Wilson's famous fur coat, for example, which is made of kangaroo and wombat, and the huge tapestry given to Woodrow by the government of France apparently had a few too many exposed breasts and butts for Edith's liking). I was able to get some nice photos of the home:

A painting of an Armenian girl, done by her uncle, that hangs in the Wilson
sitting room. It was given to Woodrow Wilson in recognition of his service 
to the Armenian people.

The Wilson library. If you look just above the top row of books on the left, you
will see a rolled up screen, which the Wilsons would drop in order to watch 
movies.

Later that day, I met Briana at the museum to participate in an informal chat with Smithsonian volunteers about Neandertals. It turns out that I was on site for a little get together celebrating the five-year anniversary of the opening of the Smithsonian's David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. Rick Potts, who was the driving force behind the exhibit, talked a bit about the trials and tribulations associated with getting everything up and running (as you can imagine, it was a ton of work). Check out the awesome cake (those familiar with the hominin fossil record will notice the dental abscess, which was fashioned to resemble the Broken Hill, or Kabwe, specimen from Zambia):

Cake commemorating the five year anniversary of the Hall of Human Origins
at the Smithsonian.

After we had nibbled on cake, I sat down with several of the Hall's volunteers to talk about some of our work in Denmark and Armenia on Neandertals. They were all extremely well informed on the latest information, particularly the paleogenetics, and it was a lot of fun discussing things with them.

The ironies (and absurdities) of slavery in the early American republic

I just finished with Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. The "internal enemy" is a term that whites often used to refer to the slaves in their midst since, as Taylor demonstrates, slave insurrections were a nearly constant fear among Virginia's slaveholders. I would highly recommend the book for those of you who are interested; here I just wanted to mention a few tidbits from the book that stuck out for me and, at the same time, highlight the sometimes highly paradoxical viewpoints that Virginia's slaveholders were forced, either intentionally or not, to maintain in order to preserve an economic system that was a large part of their cultural identity:

• The elimination of primogeniture and entail. These refer to the practices of, respectively, the inheritance by the firstborn child of the entirety of a family's estate and the restriction of inheritance to the family heirs only. When practiced, as they were in colonial America, these laws served to concentrate wealth among a small number of families and, within those families, a small number of powerful individuals. After the American Revolution, these laws were struck down in many of the former colonies, including Virginia. While American lawmakers (including most prominently Thomas Jefferson) felt that the elimination of such laws was more consistent with a republican form of government, it was actually devastating for slave families. In essence, primogeniture and entail prevented wealthy plantation owners from scattering their estates after their deaths. For slaves, this significantly reduced the likelihood that family members would be sold off. With the suppression of these laws after the revolution, wealth was more evenly distributed among whites but, at the same time, the breakup of slave families became easier and much more common.
• Blacks' lack of rights. In 1816, George Boxley hatched a plot to lead about 30 or so slaves (some of which were his own) to freedom in the North as revenge for being passed over for a militia promotion and a seat in the state legislature, both of which he blamed on the state's wealthy, slave holding elite. The plan never materialized, however, and Boxley was eventually arrested. Here's the catch, though: all the witnesses to the treasonous plot were black and therefore barred, by Virginia law, from testifying against a white man! I'll let Taylor (2013: 399) finish the story: "[u]ncertain what to do with Boxley, the authorities kept him in jail until...he escaped after breaking his irons and cutting a passage through the ceiling of his cell...[s]uspicions arose that some powerful local people wanted Boxley gone rather than risk an embarrassing trial that would acquit for lack of evidence." How's that for irony?

References:

Taylor, A (2013). The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. W.W. Norton, New York.

The end of slavery and the Old South

I just finished Bruce Levine's book, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South. Most of what I've read on the Civil War, while not ignoring the southern perspective, is typically written through northern eyes. I therefore found two things particularly interesting in Levine's book:

• Southern opinion was actually quite diverse on the question of succession and the war. The inevitability of succession was by no means shared by all southern whites, and there were several southern-based groups that actively fought against the Confederacy throughout the war. In fact, Robert E. Lee and other Confederate officers were forced to dispatch regiments from the regular army to help with home defense. 
• While most southern (and northern, for that matter) whites shared a common belief in white supremacy, only a select few at the top of the social hierarchy owned most of the slaves. This means that many of the soldiers fighting for the Confederacy were non-slave holders, and as the war dragged on many of these poorer folks developed a deep resentment for the planter elite. They began to wonder why they should fight such a destructive war to preserve an institution that they never had, nor likely ever would, benefit from.

Levine, in his BookTV lecture (you can also check out an NPR interview here), cites a recent national survey in which 50% of Americans polled "deny that slavery was the main cause of the U.S. Civil War." This view is even more prevalent among those below 30 years of age (nearly 3 out of 5). One of the key points of the book, and most of the contemporary sources appear quite clear on this, is that slavery was in fact a major, if not the major, impetus for the war. Other motivating factors, like the defense of state's rights or the maintenance of southern honor, while certainly important to some individuals, were largely concocted by elite slave owners to inspire the non-slave holding majority to participate, or drudged up years later to justify the war in a postbellum society hostile to slavery.

Although I didn't plan it this way, the North Carolina Museum of History is currently exhibiting an original copy of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln issued in September of 1862 and warned the Confederacy of the Union's intention to grant freedom to slaves within areas still in active rebellion. My wife and I stopped by the exhibit yesterday, and two pages of the proclamation (they never have all seven on display at once), written in the hand of one of  Lincoln's secretaries (I would guess either John Hay or John Nicolay, although I have not been able to confirm this), are on display. The museum will also be showing North Carolina's original copy of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States:

References:

Levine, B (2013). The fall of the house of Dixie: The Civil War and the social revolution the transformed the South. Random House, New York.

Cultural misunderstandings: a case study from the British settlement of North America

I'm in the middle of reading Bernard Bailyn's latest book, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations 1600-1675, and I came across a very interesting example of two cultures talking past one another. A little background: the colony at Jamestown was founded in 1607, and over the next few years, colonists, including the now famous John Smith, undertook expeditions to map the area and to collect (or steal) provisions from the Indians (the colonists were in bad shape almost constantly during the first decades). As might be expected, both cultures were feeling each other out in order to maximize their respective advantages. On the one hand, while the Indians were interested in European trade goods, they wanted to constrain the colonists within small, coastal settlements focused on trade (rather than permanent homesteads). The Europeans were also looking to trade but, for myriad reasons, many where also looking to stay and settle permanently on land occupied by various tribes. Ok, I'll have Bailyn (2012: 57-58) pick it up at the point where he describes a cultural misunderstanding relating to power relationships (note the olde English spelling in the quotes):

In three days of elaborate ceremony and elusive conversation, fending off Powhatan's [a local chief] question of the colonists' purpose in settling, [John] Smith was urged, on behalf of his people, to acknowledge Powhatan 'as their lord' and to accept for himself the role of a subordinate chief. This, of course, to the extent that he understood the proposal, he ignored, but in the end, symbolically at least, he had no choice. After being feasted 'in their best barbarous manner' and treated like a defeated enemy about to be slain, he was brought to what appeared to be an execution block, surrounded by warriors 'ready with clubs to beate out his braines.' Then at the final moment he was suddenly released, adopted as a subordinate werowance, and by extension his people were symbolically enclosed within the constraints of Powhatan's regime. Never, of course, experiencing these events as acts of subordination, and declining the benefits offered, Smith recorded the story of his captivity at first briefly and with little drama (he 'procured his owne liberty'), then elaborated it in retelling, finally embellished it as an elaborate ceremony on the tale of how Pocahontas 'the King's dearest daughter' (who was eleven at the time) 'got his head in her armes, and laid her own upon his to save him from death.'

The parallel effort to subordinate and control barbarous and threatening people, at least symbolically, was played out reciprocally by the English the next year. Smith and Newport [describe him], on order from London, led a troop of musketeers to present Powhatan with a plethora of gifts, inlcuding copper objects, a bedstead and bedclothes  a red coat, and a copper crown, the last a gift heavily freighted with symbolism from the great King James. When with difficulty they managed to place the crown on Powhatan's forcibly bowed head, the ceremonial reduction of the chief of chiefs to the status of a vassal or local lord of King James was complete, symbolically confined within England's sovereign power.

In other words, both cultures carried out elaborate ceremonies that, while meant to subordinate each other, were perceived as meaningless rites because neither culture recognized them for what they were intended to be. The same thing happens all the time with modern cultures; sometimes these interactions can be humorous, but many times they can have serious, even tragic, consequences. For those who say that understanding other cultures is a waste of time, proceed at your own peril...

UPDATE 4.28.13

I've just finished the book, and it was a fascinating read. What struck me most was how heterogeneous the colonizing populations from Europe really were. Recent histories of colonial America have stressed, and correctly so, that Native Americans were not a single, monolithic unit but rather a diverse collection of rich cultures. So too for the incoming Europeans, whose various nationalities, religious views, and socio-economic circumstances determined to a great extent how they interacted with both native cultures and each other.

My Human Biological Variation class was recently engaged in a discussion about the biological reality of race among modern humans and, and it often does, the point that the concept's definition differs from place to place was raised. One student, originally from England, was surprised at how obsessed Americans seemed to be with their origins: people identify as African-American, German, Irish, Native American, and so on, while it is very rare for an English citizen to identify as, say, German-English or African-English. I bring this up because I came across a passage in the book that was particularly salient within this context. In his description of the complex socio-ethnic conditions of a Manhattan recently conquered by the English, Bailyn (2012: 516) outlines the response of the newly incorporated citizenry:

In the late 1660s and 1670s the new English province of New York was far different from its neighboring New England  It was a world in flux, its people caught up in complex ethnic tensions, its economy growing but shifting in organization  it government newly established and weakly related to the society it ruled. The great majority of New Yorkers in Manhattan (an estimated 76 percent of a significant sample) were Dutch, as were the settlers sin what were now called Albany and Schenectady, and they expected to remain Dutch under the English regime. In fact, their "Dutchness" was becoming more prominent  as a process of what Joyce Goodfriend has called the "crystallization" of ethnic groups set in. The various groups, she explains, now in a more open society became more self-aware and felt the need to define themselves in institutional form and to preserve their distinctive characteristics  So the Dutch, despite the differences among them, began to "coalesce"-to consciously value their distinct common ground  in the language, religion, customs  and values. So too other groups sought their own places in this province of tolerated diversity.

I'm not sure how "tolerated" all that diversity really was, but this "crystallization" really does seem to be a common response among peoples within multi-ethnic communities, and it may may go some way in explaining the desire of Americans to be so self-aware of their ancestry.

References:

Bailyn, B (2012). The barbarous years: The peopling of British North America: the conflict of civilizations 1600-1675. Alfred E. Knopf, New York.

Goodfriend, JD (1992). Before the melting pot: society and culture in colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

In the Garden of Beasts

The other night my wife, Noell, and I attended a book discussion hosted by the UNCG libraries of Erik Larsen's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. The book was an excellent read, and follows the exploits of William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to a Germany ruled by Adolf Hitler, and his family. From Amazon.com:

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the "New Germany," she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance-and ultimately, horror when a climatic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition

We were lucky enough to have Dr. Karl Schleunes, a professor emeritus of history at UNCG and an expert on early 20th century Germany, lead the discussion. As Dr. Schleunes summarized it, Dodd (who was FDR's third or fourth choice) was sent to do two things: (1) to negotiate the payment of U.S. loans to Germany (American banks had made huge loans to help bail out the German economy in the aftermath of World War I), and (2) to steer Hitler along a more moderate path. He then summarized the historical context that preceded Dodd's appointment.

Perhaps the two most important events were the German experience in World War I and the onset of depression in 1929. Germany ended the war having defeated one enemy in the East (Tsarist Russia) and, in the west, with her armies situated on foreign soil. The German people had to reconcile this with the fact that their government signed an armistice and then negotiated a treaty in 1919 that laid much of the blame for the war on Germany (a not unrealistic interpretation of events) and forced it to concede complete defeat. Germany was thus on the lookout for scapegoats. Dr. Schleunes also pointed out that in 1928, when the German economy was relatively strong, the Nazi party received a paltry 2.7% of the vote. However, in the years after 1929 (the onset of the depression in the U.S. and elsewhere), the Nazis secured ever larger percentages, eventually capturing 40% by the 1930s. Germans appeared, in other words, to be looking for a political party that could restore Germany to her rightful (as many saw it) place among the world powers while, at the same time, providing an explanation for the humiliating defeat in World War I.

This is the situation that Dodd, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, stepped into when he arrived as ambassador in 1933. The consensus among the discussion group was that, despite his best intentions and efforts, Dodd was mostly a failure as ambassador. Hitler obviously did not steer a moderate course, and Dodd resigned his post in 1934. There was quite a bit of discussion on why exactly he was unsuccessful. I think Noell has it mostly right when she argued that Dodd simply was not interested playing political games: in order for an ambassador to succeed, they need people to like them, they need to compromise, and they need to tell people what they want to hear. Dodd really didn't have any of these qualities (depending on how you feel, this could be to his credit or discredit). During his BookTV talk, Larsen was asked his thoughts on Dodd's performance. He gave Dodd a B+ grade, stating further that no one was likely to have succeeded in such a position (a point that the discussion group touched on as well).

One of the more eye-opening things about the book (at least for me) was the level of anti-Semitism within the U.S. State Department. Everyone talked about the so-called "Jewish Problem." One of the audience members, when referring to a particular individual in the book that committed suicide because of her Jewish ancestry, asked how one could tell whether or not someone was actually Jewish. This question became particularly important after the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which encroached on, or even eliminated in many cases, the rights of Jews in Germany. Apparently, one had to track down, and keep, the baptismal certificates of your grandparents (there is no equivalent in Judaism) to demonstrate that they were not Jewish. If one had two, three, or four Jewish grandparents, was part of a religious community (i.e., they went to Synagogue), or married to someone of Jewish ancestry, then they were considered Jewish. If one only had a single Jewish grandparent (and in possession of baptismal certificates for the other three), then they were not considered Jewish. (All of this, of course, rested on false assumption that there was some fixed, identifiable thing called the "Jewish race.") 

A couple of interesting tidbits that I learned during the discussion, thanks largely to Dr. Schleunes :

• Hitler did not actually become a German citizen until 1932, the year before he was named chancellor (he was Austrian)
• The Nazi government defended laws that outlawed marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans by citing American miscegenation legislation, which prohibited breeding between whites and blacks

Anyway, I highly recommend the book...

Social darwinism in the gilded and progressive ages

I just finished reading (or, more correctly, listening to, as my commute provides ample time for audio books) an interesting book by Evan Thomas, "The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898". There is a lot of intriguing stuff in here, and the gilded and progressive ages in America were fascinating times for a number of reasons, but what struck me, as an anthropologist, was the  pervasive role that social Darwinism played in American foreign and domestic policy (as exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt, senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst). The idea that superior groups (however that is defined) were meant to out-compete inferior groups in the "struggle for existence" served to justify much of America's expansionist and imperialist policies towards Spain and the populations then under their rule (Black Cubans and Filipinos).

CNN has a wonderful service called BookTV, where you can watch authors give talks on their books. I haven't seen Thomas's clip yet, but you can find his talk here, a book discussion here, and a nice review of the book here.

UPDATE 3.23.13

I just watched Thomas's BookTV segment. He summed up the book (as they always do...this is actually a good way to figure out if the book will interest you), and then took some questions from the audience. The most interesting question probably dealt with parallels between the war fever of 1898 and that of 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq. Thomas himself was a Hawk in 2003, and he discussed how attitudes have changed, just as they have for the 1898 conflicts.