One of the fun things about the study of history is the use of counterfactuals. That is, positing an alternative history and wondering how things would have ended up differently. What if the US Navy had never won at Midway? What if the Pacific Fleet really was destroyed at Pearl Harbor? Did FDR really know it was coming – and what would have happened if he had responded differently? And so on.

But counterfactuals are deceptively simple. History does not follow a linear path where one alteration could predictably recalibrate all subsequent events. It’s not like a great Excel financial model where by plugging in a different input you get a predictably different output.

I have found that counterfactuals are better for my basic U.S. History class and contingency better suited for my AP U.S. History students. But as Astor notes, it is the combination of the two that really takes the discussion and critical thinking to a new level.

But counterfactuals without respect for contingency look more like Monday morning quarterbacking. Should Bragg, for example, have been able to rout Rosecrans’s forces once and for all at Chickamauga? Well, sure! But could he have really planned for the accidental gap to appear in Union lines that fateful day in the first place? And what of the serendipitous arrival of Longstreet’s forces – just in time to drive through the Union gap and force a near disastrous retreat back into Chattanooga? As with most cases, a closer examination reveals the futility of pushing this line of reasoning. There were just too many forces that converged at a particular time to make it all happen the way it did.

There is a danger, however, that we reduce history to nothing more than randomness, so where does that leave us? Well, as Astor notes, we can throw up our hands and declare history essentially useless to understanding today or we could “spend more time marveling at the past for its own sake.”

Good stuff and good food for thought as we find our way as teachers of history.

Americans “want to look to a common past.” But the idea of a unified-in-purpose nation, she says, “has its origins in 19th-century romantic nationalism.” She encourages her students and others to wrestle with the true meanings of the American Revolution. This questioning of what the tea parties — present and past — are all about “is an important part of our political debate.” And so the arguments rage on.

And as we have discussed before and as other websites do on a daily basis, the battleground of history is the use and abuse of it. And indeed the arguments will “rage on” atleast through the November election season.

American Revolution historian Jack Rakove made what I thought was the best observation:

The Tea Act of 1773 that sparked the Boston Tea Party, Rakove says, was born of the crown’s collusion with corporate Britain — the East India Trading Co. So if Tea Partiers are up in arms over the American government being in cahoots with the corporate world — say, over the Obama administration’s handling of the Troubled Assets Relief Program that bailed out many faltering financial institutions — the present-day dismay would have legitimate roots in the ire of yesteryear. “That wouldn’t be implausible,” Rakove says.

That is where the current movement could make some key important historical comparisons.

Henry Adams was a descendant of the iconic Adams family of presidents and statesmen, and while making his journey into the historical profession was more natural than most, he desperately wanted to be a politician but failed. Adams greatly influenced future noted historian Carl Becker. Though the scientific method was radically changing historical methodology, the idea of progress was still not far away for Becker and others as he “had postulated history as the record of progress” for society. But unlike Jackson and Bancroft, this all changed for Becker as he discovered a new kind of “complexity” in history and the evolution of the historical record. The impact was so decisive that he literally went back and rewrote previous works. Adams was one of the first to train his students in the “meticulous critical methods of German scholarship.” American students were encouraged to study abroad and upon returning to America they in turn instructed future students in the German school of scientific inquiry.

Adam’s generation of historians followed the lead of noted German historian Leopold von Ranke, who is considered to be the “pioneer” of the scientific school of historical scholarship. This time period was the turning point in the American historical profession. It is at this time when the idea of “objectivity” comes to the forefront. As noted, Adams was one of the first to train his students in the scientific method, but he still believed in “American Exceptionalism” and that “the average American” was wiser and better off than his European counterpart. Adams saw the study of American history as a “laboratory in which one could study undisturbed the social evolution of democracy.” Though his methods were more objective than any previous generation of American historians could have hoped for, Adams still saw American greatness and progress and that American history was the most worthy of study as it “represented the greatest democratic evolution the world could know.”

Though the idea of American progress was still present in the writings of these new “scientific” historians, there was something very different about their philosophy. The economic interpretation of history as seen in the writing of Karl Marx was making an impact. As Adams himself admitted in his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, “he [Adams] should have also been a Marxist,” if it were not for his New England sensibilities and aversions to socialism. But there was something about the notion of history as a constant struggle between classes that appealed to him at one time in his career. Adams was not immune to seeing “phases” in history that centered on economic and social struggles, and he was not alone. Why was this becoming prominent in many academic circles? The advent of the Industrial Age, the growth of enormous cities and along with it the distribution of wealth and the growing gap between rich and poor. A new movement was taking hold in the American historical profession and one that had its roots in the social conditions of the era.

As Robert H. Wiebe noted in his “The Search for Order: 1877-1920″ the late 19th Century was one of great change that left many Americans searching for a sense of normalcy that had been lost in the transformation to a modern industrial society. This led many to a movement that would become known as Progressivism and the Progressive Era – the most important and influential political and social movement of the time and perhaps in all of American history.

It wasn’t just a social and political movement, it was a cultural shift. Just as Bancroft was a child of Victorian American, so too were the scholars of early1900s who were born from the progressive womb. These early Progressives were vital in moving the American historical profession to a truly scientific and professional level. They challenged the status quo and dared to present thesis’s that were controversial.

In 1919 Harry Elmer Barnes published History, its rise and development: a survey of the progress of historical writing from its origins to the present day, and in it he outlined the progress of the American historical profession: “The application of the more critical methods to the field of American history has resulted in works worthy to rank with the best European products and has quite reconstructed the earlier notions of American national development.” Barnes evaluated the evolution of the profession starting with Bancroft and his post-Civil War work to the current Progressives and saw that “the new scholarship had permeated the whole American university world” and was creating students who applied their methods to historical investigation. And just as importantly, the interpretation of American history had “finally been secularized.” The progress that these new historians believed in was not that of Bancroft’s theological and patriotic (American Exceptionalism) discourse, but of a progress in institutions and not men alone.

As the United States became an industrial power and the social injustices of poverty, distribution of wealth, worker’s rights, and women suffrage became important battle cries of Progressives, the historian was at work attempting to explain and interpret the present state of affairs and of historical progress. American scholars once again joined with their European counterparts and determined (echoing Marx) that an economic determination of events seemed to be at play. And they were correct; there had not been any serious inquiry into the economic aspects of historical events. There was a void and it was going to be filled.

The scholars from 1900-1920, especially, noted one historian, were looking for “economic determents” in their quest for an economic “synthesis of society.” They wanted, as did Bancroft, a usable past that for them could help address current social ills. There were studies that looked critically, for the first time in American history, at capitalism and the motivations of corporations and the evils of monopolies. Progress was not just wealth, but poverty. One of the first to look critically at economics was Edwin R.A. Seligman who wrote The Economic Interpretation of History in 1902. Not far behind was Gustavus Myers’ The History of the Great American Fortunes (1907). Algie M. Simmons, a committed socialist, wrote openly about the Social Forces in American History (1911) that first circulated as a pamphlet and addressed social ills as symptoms of economic injustices. There were histories about the “Robber Barons” and “Captains of Industry,” and each time economic synthesis was the goal.

There are two solid candidates for our “best” representation of the era: James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard. Robinson was openly critical of the previous schools of historical investigation and rightly so. To Robinson the work of Bancroft was a “crime” against history. But though Robinson was eloquent and forceful (he was a champion of “value-free” objectivity), the best representative of the time period is Beard.

Beard’s first book, The Industrial Revolution (1901), was essentially an economic interpretation of history and in it he proclaimed that the Industrial Revolution was the “universal driving force” of history, not some vague “exceptionalism” or cultural advancement. But Beard’s most important book is perhaps the most controversial American historical study ever written: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. This work best represents the Progressive sensibility of progress in the American historical profession of the time. The book shocked contemporaries and as historian Ernst Breisach noted, it should not have. All of Beard’s work was an examination of phases and processes in American history and at the core of it were always economic determinants.

An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution caused an uproar, but not within Progressive academia. Newspaper editorials howled and the Right was up in arms over the abomination of Beard’s analysis, which, to put it simply, was not about American Exceptionalism and progress, but greed and power. The Founders were simply looking out for their own economic interests first, Beard concluded. He openly challenged Bancroft and his “mystic” reverence for the Founders and the Constitution. He also challenged the “so-called” scientific and objective scholars who had failed to come to his same conclusion.

Beard was, frankly, blazing a trail few dared to burn. As for his idea of “progress,” he was explicit:
The whole theory of the economic interpretation of history rests upon the concept that social progress in general is the result of contending interests in society – some favorable, others opposed to change.

Beard wanted to rescue American History from mythology at best and mysticism at worst. He used strong language such as “economic determinism” and would be accused of being a socialist. Was Beard influenced by Marxist ideology, of course, but as historian Peter Novick attests, Beard outright “rejected” Marxism. Beard bemoaned the interpretation of the Constitutional Convention as a “popular product” and created by impartial and disinterested men. Beard years after publication claimed that he did not go in search for what he found and that when he found the economic motivations behind the Founders it was, “the shock of my life.” Others have since argued that Beard was a Marxist and his goal was to destroy the image of the Constitution as a sacred document and put in its place the concepts of class struggle and Marxist ideology. The Constitutional Convention enhanced the few at the expense of the many and established the ultimate Bourgeois state, according to a Marxist interpretation.

Beard wrote that “the devotion to deductions from principles exemplified in particular cases, which is such a sign of American legal thinking, has the same effect upon correct analysis which the adherence to abstract terms had upon the advancement of learning.” For Beard it was about taking the Founders and the Constitution off the mantle and to consider them as men and not demigods. As modern scholar and American Revolution historian Gordon S. Wood has noted, that though Beard has “been proved wrong on almost every count,” he was “right” in his desire to remove the “mythical” nature and reverence of historical scholarship concerning the Founding that had taken place up to that time.

By 1914 historians were amazed at how far the American historical profession had come in its quest for objectivity and professionalism. The “New Historians” were filled with optimism and compared their craft with that of the great German historians. Jameson had declared at one time the work of American historians as “second class,” but was now sure that “an age of generalization, of synthesis, of history more largely governed and informed by general ideas” was now possible. Though an exaggeration to be sure, Jameson had reason for optimism for as we have seen the development of the American historical profession had been transformed by the early 1900s into something resembling modern historical scholarship.

There is little doubt that Bancroft would have been appalled of Beard’s economic interpretation of the American Constitution. Beard was equally critical of former generations of historians who failed, in his mind, to ask the tough questions. Both men had clear ideas of progress and the historical profession and how best to analyze and present historical data. For Bancroft the founding of the nation and the successful conclusion of the Civil War was proof that God’s will had been achieved and that America had faced its last great test. The country had finally fulfilled its promise of freedom and had become an empire of liberty. The values of the Founders had been justified and validated. There was in his eyes no need for a continuation of progress and as already noted, he even hinted at the end of history (progress) for America.

By 1920 the Progressives had experienced what they felt was the singular great challenge for America in the form of economic injustice and political corruption. Industrialization had created a “search for order” and an economic interpretation of history fit the needs of the Progressives just as Bancroft’s theological patriotism did Victorian America. The focus on progress of American institutions and government aided the Progressive causes as they sought to improve working conditions, poverty, immigration and suffrage rights. The economic interpretation of Beard made more sense to this generation than did the writing of proceeding generations. As we have seen, each new generation from 1870 to 1920 was flawed and some more deeply than others, but all sought what they believed was a usable past that conformed to the needs of their generation to strengthen their values and assumptions. By 1920 the scientific revolution ensured that the American historical profession would use methodological approaches to eventually ensure as much historical accuracy and objectivity as possible.

Peter Novick wrote in the Introduction of his book, The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, that he hoped to look effectively into what historians “thought” they were doing and what they thought they “ought” to be doing as they created history. He wished to encourage historians to a “greater self-consciousness about the nature” of their work. Novick succeed brilliantly and in this short presentation, I think, we have examined how the role of “progress” in historical interpretation and understanding, at the very least, informed if not encouraged the advancement of the historical profession.

I could not care less that Howard Zinn was a communist. However, there are interesting questions and his ties do inform us of the political and ideological views of the social justice movement which Zinn is a founding father of.

From the report:

According to the FBI, this informant gave the agency a photo of Zinn teaching his 1951 “basic Marxism” class to fellow CPUSA members in Brooklyn. That photo wasn’t included in the documents released last week, but details of the 1957 report are certainly intriguing. In the late 1940s, Zinn lived at 926 LaFayette Avenue (not “street”) in Brooklyn. George Kirschner (not “Kirshner”) was a union official at a Brooklyn brewery who, decades later, became a teacher and collaborated with Zinn on a 1995 wall-chart version of A People’s History of the United States. The informant’s account indicates that the association between Zinn and Kirschner (who died in 2008) began in the Communist Party in the late 1940s. Like Zinn, Kirschner was a World War II veteran, and they could have met through the Communist-infiltrated American Veterans Committee, in which Zinn was a ranking local official.

Given this further corroboration of Zinn’s CPUSA activities from a former comrade, the FBI evidently concluded that Zinn’s denials of party membership were lies. By 1964 — at which time Zinn was publicly denouncing Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for allegedly being reluctant to protect civil-rights protesters — J. Edgar Hoover described Zinn as having “a background of known membership in the Communist Party.” While Zinn’s CPUSA membership seems to have lapsed in the early 1950s, Hoover noted that the professor “has continued to demonstrate procommunist and anti-United States sympathies,” including outspoken support for Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Zinn was still a relatively obscure academic in 1964, but he gained national prominence for his subsequent anti-Vietnam War activism, leading “teach-ins” at Harvard, MIT, and other campuses, and traveling to Hanoi in 1968 with radical priest Daniel Berrigan. It was not until 1980 that Zinn published A People’s History of the United States, which gained pop-culture fame after Ben Affleck and Matt Damon featured it in their 1997 film Good Will Hunting. Zinn later became a prominent critic of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and, not long before his death in January, was lionized in a documentary called The People Speak, co-produced by Damon and starring Danny Glover, Sean Penn, and other luminaries of the Hollywood Left.

Zinn’s 21st-century influence takes on a new aspect in light of the FBI’s revelation of his Communist Party activities. Anyone might have innocently joined a Communist “front” group — indeed, during his New Deal years as a self-described “hemophiliac liberal,” Ronald Reagan had naively joined two such groups. But Zinn was implicated as a member of multiple Communist fronts and, tellingly, was a local officer of the American Veterans Committee at the very time when that group was identified as having been taken over by Communists. Given the preponderance of evidence, it is difficult to dispute J. Edgar Hoover’s conclusion that Zinn was no mere sympathizer or “fellow traveler,” but was indeed an active CPUSA member in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

The timing of Zinn’s Communist involvement is also important. Many well-meaning liberals had been drawn into the CPUSA during the “Popular Front” era of the 1930s, when America was menaced by the Great Depression at home and the rising specter of fascism abroad. Misleading press accounts of the Soviet Union’s “progress” during those years helped convinced many idealists that the Bolshevik Revolution represented a hopeful future.

By the late 1940s, however, those illusions had been shattered by the reality of Josef Stalin’s brutal totalitarianism. Stalin’s cynical 1939 treaty with Hitler — the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — had sacrificed Poland to the Nazis, and the Red Army’s post-war occupation of Eastern Europe had crushed all democratic resistance. Even as Zinn’s wife was collecting signatures on Communist petitions in New York, Winston Churchill was decrying the “Iron Curtain” that had descended across Europe. The Communist Party that Zinn joined was already widely recognized as the agent of an aggressive tyranny, in thrall to the paranoid dictator Stalin. Zinn evidently pursued his CPUSA activism even after the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon in 1949 and after the Cold War turned hot with the June 1950 outbreak of the Korean War.

Fiske believed in a theory of evolution that could be applied to American civilization (and the world for that matter) but his views and ideas were deemed “unconventional” and never reached the level of popularity that Bancroft had enjoyed. Since his days at Harvard (1860) Fiske was also a follower of Herbert Spence and Social Darwinism. In his book The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of his Origin, Fiske devoted a whole chapter to “Mr. Darwin.” His views on evolution dominated his writing at times and probably helped to produce his most original history, The Discovery of America (1892) where in it he discussed the “evolution of primitive society” in relation to Native Americans and not just Europeans. Fiske was one of the first historians to stress the important role that archaeology can play in the study of early American history.

Fiske never reached the level of scientific methodology that would place him in the professional level of historian as he too often relied on secondary sources and was never a great editor. Fiske also didn’t fit into Bancroft’s school of thought, though he held strong religious beliefs; however, he was never comfortable with Bancroft’s historical theology. As one modern historian noted, “To the end of his days Fiske was still trying to harmonize his religious beliefs and ideals with the latest doctrines of science.”

America’s first Historical Association (AHA) was founded in 1884 and its first important professional publication, the “American Historical Review,” appeared in1895. The writing of American history was changing hands from pseudo-professionals to what we would call modern scholars. The Bancroft’s and Fiske’s, though stylists and scholars in their own right, never reached the level of inquiry that the scientific and professional class did.

David Hackett Fischer in his “Historical Fallacies” wrote that each generation would have to assimilate nearly twice as many books as the proceeding generation. By the turn of the century something was happening within the American historical profession. First, it was becoming a true “profession” where scholars went to the University to study history; second, its membership was increasing exponentially and; third, the amount of scholarship produced alone demanded a change in methodology.

Prior to the 1880s the evolution of archives and collections was uneven and dispersed, and the writing of American History rested in the hands of the few. However, by the early 1900s everything had changed. In 1903, the first “Writings on American History” appeared with its bibliographical listing of published works organized into categories. The editors wrote a short introduction and in it they stated:

The writings on American history are now so numerous, so many valuable articles appear in unexpected places, so many papers are published in the proceedings of historical societies under such circumstances that they may not normally attract the attention of even the watchful specialist, so many in fact are the difficulties in the way of keeping abreast of American historical bibliography, that a list of this kind would seem to have its evident usefulness. Only by some such means as this can we avoid, as the years go by, the most baffling confusion or prevent the practical disappearance of even some important contributions.

The eventual founder and editor of the American Historical Review John Franklin Jameson noted in 1891 the growing differences between old and new scholarship in the historical profession. Before the 1890s historians worked in “isolation” and often with limited materials. He summarized his findings noting two important changes:

In the domain of American history, the change has taken effect in two directions or modes. In the first place, we have become more critical and discriminating, have learned more nearly to look upon the course of American history with an impartial eye, from the standpoint of an outsider. In the second place, there has ensued a broadening of the field of investigation and work, that its scope may correspond to the scheme of things in America, to the configuration of actual affairs.

The dawn of professionalism had been reached. This “first generation” of professional scholars evolved from 1870 to 1910, according to one historian. The idea of “progress” is still present in the works of historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and his “Frontier Hypothesis,” but the idea of progress and American civilization is less important to these new “objective” scholars who wanted scientific analysis of historical data. Jackson was closer in philosophy to Bancroft than to the new movement though he would cross over from time to time as exemplified in his 1891 essay “The Significance of History.” Therefore, probably the best representative of the “scientific” school of history was Henry Adams.

Part III coming tomorrow

[Footnotes removed so as not to allow someone to use this paper.]

In 1854 historian George Bancroft spoke before the New York Historical Society and delivered an address titled, “The necessity, the reality, and promise of progress in the human race.” During the speech Bancroft outlined his philosophical belief in not just human progress, but historical progress towards a more virtuous existence as Americans. But there was a deeper meaning and one that hinged on progress towards an empire of liberty as established by the founding the nation, and with it the goal of a more perfect union. Bancroft’s view of progress was not secular, but spiritual and endowed by deep Christian values as established by the Founders:

The necessity of the progress of the race follows, therefore, from the fact, that the great Author of all life has left truth in its immutability to be observed, and has endowed man with the power of observation and generalization. Precisely the same conclusions will appear, if we contemplate society from the point of view of the unity of the universe. The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveler over endless morasses ; the builder on quick-sands ; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow. The universe is the reflex and image of its Creator.

Bancroft believed in a “visible God” in history and the historian as the “poet” of history and of virtue. The historian was a moralizer who put history within a Christian context and explained important historical events as the “will of God.” Bancroft also saw the United States, though still a fledgling republic, as a world leader and an empire of liberty. For Bancroft the axis of history hinged on the struggle of good versus evil and America was a beacon for others to follow.

Bancroft was among the first generation of American Historians to study in Germany and adopt the German romantic and literate style of historical scholarship. While at the University of Gottingen, Bancroft studied under not just historians but theologians and philosophers as well. From his experiences in Germany Bancroft developed his Calvinistic and anti-Enlightenment approach to history that emphasized predetermination and God’s Will. Though never an abolitionist, when the Civil War was won Bancroft determined that the victory was preordained by God and that the American Republic had survived its greatest challenge and reached its “millennium.” He had boldly proclaimed the end of history for Americans.

The bestselling books at this time dealt with larger than life figures: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and they dealt with reverence the glorious American Revolution. Bancroft wrote a gigantic ten volume History of the United States from Discovery of the American Continent (1492-1660). The study started with colonization and was to proceed all the way to modern times, but he was never able to finish it. Bancroft was a prolific writer; the total number of words exceeded 1.7 million in his history of the United States alone.

Bancroft was guilty of aligning his facts within his theological approach to history and as a result his accuracy and interpretation was often deeply flawed. But his books were widely read and were themselves much anticipated historical events. Bancroft reflected the Victorian sensibility of Americans that the 19th Century demanded. However, by the time of his death in 1891 his patrician style of historical scholarship had been widely replaced with a more pragmatic and scientific approach.

By the late 19th Century the romantic and theological approach to history of Bancroft and his generation (Bancroft was selected as the “best” representative of his time) was insufficient for an industrializing nation such as the United States. Bancroft’s historical focus was not just too religious, idealistic, and rigid, but it also failed to address economic circumstances and rang hollow and empty to a modern sophisticated profession. As the Gilded Age progressed and the impact of wealth and power on the daily lives of average people increased, the need for a far different approach to the idea of progress emerged in the field of American historiography. That America had not faced its last great crisis in the Civil War was clear in the minds of the Progressives who wanted to addresses the social ills produced by industrialization.
During the transition from Bancroft’s romantic theological concept of historical progress to the Progressive secularized view are a group of historians who brought professionalism to the craft and sought to bring the American historical profession to equal that of the great German historians. As done so with Bancroft, we will select a “best” representative of the group.

Part II coming tomorrow

[Footnotes removed so as not to allow someone to use this paper.]

After another paragraph or two of evaluation Franklin noted that it was during the Vietnam War when he was in this teachers classroom: “This all occurred during the height of the Vietnam War and despite the teach-ins, sit-ins and anti-war rallies just outside his room, he never acknowledged them.” Apparently, this teacher was not one of the “cool” teachers who openly discussed the events going on around them and the political viewpoints.

Years later Cory Franklin, then a newspaper writer as he is now, was contact by this teacher after a column he had written. They had a good conversation and stayed in touch from that time.

Franklin then gets to the real heart of what makes a good teacher:

I asked about the Vietnam War, why he studiously avoided mentioning it in class. I told him many students were disappointed he didn’t express his opinions, or more accurately, the opinions we wanted him to have. He was, in fact, quite erudite about Vietnam. But he felt it wasn’t his job to insert his political views into a class teaching a coherent story of American history, not contemporary events. It would inflame passions unnecessarily and could only get in the way of what students should be learning. Anyway, who could say at that point how history would judge those contemporary events? Better to let the whole thing gain perspective. Those interested would learn the facts and lessons in due time.

Well said as I have had to debate this before.

I’ll let the list speak for itself:

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. James Madison
7. James Monroe
8. Woodrow Wilson
9. Harry Truman
10. Dwight D. Eisenhower
11. John F. Kennedy
12. James K. Polk
13. William Clinton
14. Andrew Jackson
15. Barack Obama
16. Lyndon B. Johnson
17. John Adams
18. Ronald Reagan
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Grover Cleveland
21. William McKinley
22. George H. W. Bush
23. Martin Van Buren
24. William Howard Taft
25. Chester Arthur
26. Ulysses S. Grant
27. James Garfield
28. Gerald Ford
29. Calvin Coolidge
30. Richard Nixon
31. Rutherford B. Hayes
32. James Carter
33. Zachary Taylor
34. Benjamin Harrison
35. William Henry Harrison
36. Herbert Hoover
37. John Tyler
38. Millard Fillmore
39. George W. Bush
40. Franklin Pierce
41. Warren G. Harding
42. James Buchanan
43. Andrew Johnson

[Source]

[Note Civil War soldiers referred to what we know as land mines as either "land torpedoes" or "sub-terra" shells or mines.]

Fellow reader Drew Armstrong notified me of an “unknown object” that was found near Palatka, Florida, and the St. John’s River. The object appears to from the Civil War era and at first guess I was thinking a sub-terra torpedo such as the ones I investigated during my research of the Battle of Fort Blakely. However, after some research I am fairly positive it is a sea Torpedo. First, after careful study it seems to fit the description I found in the Official Records. Also, this area of the St. John’s River did see some naval action. For example:

In March 1864 Palatka, Florida, was described by a US Naval Commander as nothing more than “a village on the west bank of the St. Johns fifty miles south of Jacksonville—is occupied by four Federal regiments supported by several gunboats. No opposition is encountered. The Federal troops fortify their position.”

Here’s a description of an event that took place about the same time as the above log entry:

In March, 1864, the gun-boats in Florida, under the command of Commander George B. Balch, were participating in the expedition up the St. John’s River. When the Federal troops landed, they threw up such heavy intrenchments that it was not likely the Confederates could make much impression on them. The Confederates of that region, however, did not propose to allow their native State to be invaded without making a stubborn resistance, and left no means untried to annoy the military positions whenever there was an opportunity of doing so. But the gun-boats were generally at hand with their heavy guns and bursting shells, and the Southerners were usually discomfited.

General Gordon landed at Jacksonville on the 9th of May, and assumed command of the district of Florida; and, in view of the long line of river to be kept open, objected to any reduction of the naval force in the St. John’s River, in which Commander Balch concurred with him.

The activity of the Confederates in this quarter, as elsewhere, was very marked ; for, though they yielded up all the forts along the coast, they seemed determined to resist any further entrance of Federal troops into the interior of the State, and they tried to confine the Navy as much as possible to the lower part of the St. John’s River.

Notwithstanding the vigilance of the naval commanders, the Confederates succeeded in planting torpedoes in the river in the channel. On May 10th, the steamer “Harriet A. Weed” ran into two of these torpedoes, which exploded at the same moment and completely destroyed the vessel, sinking her in less than one “minute’s time, with five men killed and ten badly wounded.

The naval force employed in the St. John’s River, under Commander Balch, was composed of the “Pawnee,” “Mahaska” and “Norwich.” off Jacksonville, and the “Ottawa ” at Palatka. With such a small force it would have been impossible to prevent the enemy from practicing their system of torpedo warfare, which they had found to be so effective wherever the Federal gunboats were employed.

On about the last of March, the transport “Maple-leaf” offered another success for the Confederates, and was blown up by a torpedo, fifteen miles above Jacksonville— this being the highway to Palatka and above, where Federal troops were being constantly transported. The duty on the river became very hazardous, for a severe torpedo warfare was carried on in small boats during dark nights by the Confederate torpedo corps, which first made its appearance on the Mississippi in 1862.

The above operations in Florida of the Army and Navy lasted from March 6th to April 16th. when orders were received from the War Department for the troops to be sent North, in consequence of which the gun-boats were withdrawn ; but while employed with the Army, Commander Balch, Lieutenant – Commander S. Livingston Breese, of the ” Ottawa,” and the commanders of the “Mahaska” and “Norwich ” performed good and gallant service.

Drew had the photos analyzed by historians at James Madison University and their shockingly incorrect analysis can be viewed here . According to them, it can’t be a sub-terra shell as the Confederates stopped using them in 1862!! Wow. Anyway…

Here are the images of the potential Civil War Torpedo (click to enlarge):

As those of you who have been visiting here for the last, what, 4 years note that the emphasis has changed from the “American Civil War” to United States history in general. As you also may know for several years now I have been placing my Civil War focus over at SoldierStudies.org which is a database of Civil War letters and now a news blog. I encourage you to check it out and bookmark it!

Civil War Voices Blog

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Battle of Fredericksburg Letter
Henry Frank Babcock, Company I, of the 122nd New York Infantry, to his parents, written during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Letter reads, On the Field of Battle, Sunday, Dec 14/62 Dear Parents, I take this chance to answer your kind favors of which I received yesterday. Our mail was brought to us on the field as we lay flat [...]

Confederate 3rd Virginia Cavalry Soldier’s Letter!
Cockletown July 13th, 1861 My Little Darling, I have just finished reading your dear sweet letter the second time. I received it last night about dusk. You cannot imagine how happy it made me. It came just at the right time. I had just returned to our camp after being absent on another scout ever since the evening before [...]

New 20th Maine Letters Found
From Ebay: A small and interesting group of 20th Maine Civil War letters from Private Henry C Simonds of 20th ME Regt Company C to his wife Lizzie Simonds of North Turner & Wilton, Maine Today it’s highly unusual to uncover anything of substance related to the 20th Maine Volunteers . The 20th Maine is of course [...]

Surgeon General of the State of Massachusetts
With the idea of improving our collection of Civil War Surgeons comes John G. Perry of Boston, Mass. John G. Perry of Boston, Mass., entered Harvard College in 1858, bearing with him a very youthful attachment; and in the undoubting judgment of youth, he and I, but boy and girl, in light-hearted gayety strolled one evening [...]

New Soldier: Chauncey Holcomb
Sergeant Chauncey Holcomb wrote letters while in Company F, 27th Massachusetts. November 23rd, 1861 at camp he wrote: We went to the African Church too. Meeting was very much entertainment to hear the old negro talk and sing. When we got home the boys had supper all ready. They had invited in Uncle Frank and some [...]

New Soldier: Henry H. Hitchcock
Of the New York 12th Infantry. June 1, 1861, he writes: Things look very warlike here. Down town you see nothing but soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. I see that the Volunteer force now amounts to 300,000. This is beside the regular army and the impression seems to be that the president will call for [...]