Historically Thinking

On April 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln addressed a crowd gathered outside the White House. He spoke not of recent  victories, or those to come, but to the shape of the peace that would follow. Now that the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, he urged that it be ratified. Moreover, it seemed to him, Lincoln said, that it was necessary for “the colored man” to have the right to vote. “I myself,” Lincoln told the crowd, “would prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” That might now seem like a timid suggestion, but not to one man then standing  in the listening crowd. When John Wilkes Booth heard Lincoln’s words, he turned to a companion and vowed “That’s the last speech he will ever make!” It was not the fall of Richmond, the flight of the Confederate government, or the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s army that finally made Booth decide to act, but the threat of black suffrage. With me to discuss the cause of black suffrage in the weeks, months, and years following Lincoln’s death is Paul D. Escott, Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University. He is the author of numerous books, including Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives; The Worst Passions of Human Nature: White Supremacy in the Civil War North; and most recently Black Suffrage: Lincoln’s Last Goal. For Further Investigation Many previous conversations on this podcast are related to this one. For an overview of Reconstruction, see my conversation with Douglas Egerton in Episode 67; how Black Americans created American citizenship was the focus of a conversation with Christopher Bonner in Episode 167; and most recently my conversation with Clayton Butler discussed Unionism as an ideology, and in part how it explains part of the mentality of Andrew Johnson. For a different take on Lincoln than that held by Paul Escott, see my conversation with Michael Burlingame in Episode 242; Burlingame would argue that Lincoln was never interested in colonization prior to the war, and never serious about colonization during the war.

At the end of the 19th century, Amsterdam was home to nearly seventy diamond factories, in which were 7,500 steam-powered polishing mills. The workers who cut and polished the diamonds, brought there from the mines of South Africa, were not all Jewish–but many of them were. Indeed, in the late 1890s Jews were about 10% of the population of Amsterdam, and half of them were economically reliant on what the Dutch called simply “the profession”.  The Jewish community in Amsterdam were not the only Jews who worked with diamonds.  In her new book A Brilliant Commodity: Diamonds and Jews in a Modern Setting, Saskia Snyder traces the involvement of Jews not only in Amsterdam factories, but in the fields of South Africa, in London, and in the growing consumer market of the United States during the late 19th century. She also examines how the involvement of Jews with diamonds became a feature of anti-semitism.  Saskia Coenen Snyder is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where she is also a core faculty member of the Jewish Studies Program.  For Further Investigation Numerous conversations on this podcast tie in with something mentioned in the course of this conversation. Way, way back in the beginning, when this podcast was newly hatched, is Episode 5: Diamonds are a Problem, which focused on the mining of diamonds in South Africa, and elsewhere in Southern Africa. In Episode 19, I talked with historian Vicki Howard about small local department stores in the United States, which were often founded and managed by immigrants like Jews and Italians. Some of the themes of the "democratization of luxury" were touched on along with many other things in Episode 91: Wanamaker's Temple, which was about the very, very large department store created by John Wanamaker. And most recently we talked about postcards and the importance of mail delivery with Lydia Pyne in Episode 249: Postcards from the Past.

It is perhaps the greatest scandal and sea-story of the first half of 19th Century America that nearly everyone has forgotten. It led to a court martial, endless headlines, a fistfight in a meeting of the President’s cabinet, and quite possibly to the foundation of the United States Naval Academy. And given that nearly everyone who went to see in the early American republic seemed to know one another, there was one degree of separation between this story and James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, and future Confederate naval captain Raphael Semmes. It was nothing less than an attempted mutiny aboard the USS Somers in November 1842, led by–of all the people in the United States of America—the son of the United States Secretary of War who supposedly wanted to become a pirate. With me to discuss this incredible story is James Delgado, historian and underwater archaeologist, whose new book is The Curse of the Somers: The Secret History Behind the US Navy’s Most Infamous Mutiny   For Further Investigation James Fenimore Cooper: proud of his four years a merchant sailor and then a midshipman in the United States Navy, Cooper's fourth novel was The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, probably the first American nautical novel. Richard Henry Dana, Jr.: now curiously forgotten, Dana was a Harvard dropout who enrolled as a merchant seaman, sailed to California and back, wrote about it in a bestseller titled Two Years Before the Mast, and then went on to become a prominent lawyer. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry: young brother of naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry, "Old Bruin" became one of the most prominent officers of the US Navy between 1814 and 1861, most famously leading the expedition that forced Japan open to trade and international interaction Raphael Semmes: once commander of the USS Somers, he became an officer in the Confederate Navy, and most famously commanded the CSS Alabama Herman Melville: elements of the Somers mutiny can be found in both White Jacket and Billy Budd

In late November, 1864, David R. Snelling visited his uncle, who then lived in Baldwin County near Milledgeville, Georgia. As a boy, he had worked in his uncle’s fields alongside those his uncle enslaved. Now Snelling returned home as a Lieutenant in the Army of the United States, commanding Company I of the First Alabama Cavalry–though detached on temporary duty as commander of the headquarters escort for General William Tecumseh Sherman. The homecoming was not a happy one, at least for Snelling’s uncle. The troopers who accompanied Snelling took what provisions they could find, and then at Snelling’s direction burned down the family’s cotton gin. Snelling and the First Alabama were some of the very small percentage of Unionists who persisted in the Deep South following secession. Yet Clayton Butler argues that their importance in the minds of both the Union and the Confederacy “helps to shed light on some of the most crucial issues of the entire era.”  He examines these Unionists, and those illuminated issues, in his new book True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction.  For Further Investigation The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, in Greeneville, Tennessee An informative website constructed by historical reenactors who interpret the First Alabama Cavalry (USV) The image is of a Union scout in Louisiana, during the Red River campaign of 1864. For more,  ""Union Scouts in Louisiana," artist's impression, Harper's Weekly, May 1864, detail," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College For an introduction to Reconstruction, see the conversation in Episode 67 with Douglas Egerton. For a view of the Civil War that dovetails nicely with this conversation, see Episode 132, a conversation with historian Elizabeth Varon.

My guest today is Dr. Ben Jones, Director of the South Dakota State Historical Society and the South Dakota State Historian.  Ben Jones served for 23 years in the United States Air Force, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. During his service he taught  at the Air Force Academy. Subsequently he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at South Dakota State University from 2013 to 2019, and  Secretary of Education of South Dakota from January 2019 to December 2020. He is now the 9th director in the 120-year history of the South Dakota State Historical Society.  In 2016, he published Eisenhower's Guerrillas: The Jedburghs, the Maquis, and the Liberation of France. Currently he  is working on a history of South Dakota and hosts a bi-monthly podcast, History 605. For Further Investigation Take a look at the Cultural Heritage Center of the South Dakota State Historical Society Jon Lauck was mentioned; we talked way, way, way back in Episode 13 about the history of the Midwest. It's not South Dakota related, but for an interesting insight into Native American history, see Episode 58: What Black Hawk Wore "All Guns Fired At One Time": Native Voices of Wounded Knee, one of the excellent productions of the publishing arm of the South Dakota State Historical Society

For over a generation the history of the American West has been described by scholars as one of violence, including genocide, ethnic-cleansing, and settler colonialism. While it replaced an older history which spoke of “winning the West” and the triumph of civilization, curiously enough both the old and the now aging histories of the west focused on violence. After all, in the popular imagination, every Western town hosted a gunfight in its one street on a nearly daily basis. But what if amidst the violence there were also moments of concord and overcoming difference? What if these moments of concord played out in more or less the same place and time as moments of violence? This is the argument of Stephen Aron in his new book Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West, which investigates moments where unexpectedly peaceful relationships were built in the American West. Stephen Aron is Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA, and President of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. (The painting by Thomas Cole, done in 1826, is titled "Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake") For Further Investigation It was mentioned in the conversation, so here is Episode 149: Edges are Interesting, or, A History of Eastern Europe Two other podcasts very much connected to our brief discussion of Dodge City is Episode 101: Yippie-Ki-Yi-Yay and Episode 131: Red Meat Republic, or, the American Beef Economy of the Late 19th Century The book that began the new history of the American west was Patricia Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West Also mentioned in the podcast was John Mack Farragher, who has written several books on these themes including a biography of Daniel Boone;  Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Lost Angeles; and most recently California: An American History

In 1780, captured American naval officer Joshua Barney escaped from prison in Plymouth, made his way to London, and with the help of some English sympathizers to the American Revolution was able to take the ferry to Ostend, the principal port of the Austrian Netherlands. During his journey he struck up an acquaintance with an Italian noblewoman after curing her seasickness. Grateful, she insisted that he accompany her by carriage to Brussels, where in a “certain hotel” a porter ushered the two of them into the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria. As Barney remembered it decades later using the third person, he was surrounded by “big whiskered Germans and spruce Italians who eyed him with a stare of surprise equal to his own.” Barney’s was far from the only interaction between American rebels, and the Austro-Hungarian empire, its rulers, or its inhabitants. Take, for example, the proud parents who in 1778 at the baptismal font of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the heart of Vienna had their infant son christened Benjamin Silas Arthur Schuster, his first three names those of the three American commissioners then in Paris–Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee.  This is one of numerous anecdotes and instances that Jonathan Singerton deploys in his new book The American Revolution and the Hapsburg Monarchy, to support the somewhat surprising argument that “the American Revolution had a deep-rooted impact in the Habsburg lands which ultimately lasted through to the nineteenth century.” Jonathan Singerton is currently a lecturer and research associate at the University of Innsbruck; this is his first book. For Further Investigation For previous conversations related to this topic, you might consider Episode 149: Edges are Interesting, or, a History of Eastern Europe (in which I propose the radical and unprovable hypothesis that the Habsburg Empire was doomed because Joseph II hated his Latin tutor); and my conversation with Glenda Sluga in Episode 257 on the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Jonathan Singerton recommends the website Die Welt der Hapsburger (in English, if necessary) when you want "to get into the Habsburg's more" Jonathan says that, for more reading, Pieter M. Judson's The Habsburg Empire: A New History "is essential, as is" Martyn Rady's The Habsburgs: To Rule the World (as it's titled by in the States)

In 1776 a massive British fleet of more than 400 ships carrying tens of thousands of soldiers arrived outside New York Harbor. Many of these soldiers were German, hired from their princes by the British government. Americans then and now have called them Hessians. For the next seven years, these German soldiers marched, fought, and suffered seemingly everywhere in eastern North America, from the walls of Quebec City to the sandy beaches of Pensacola Bay. When the British army left, many Germans were left behind–both the living, deserters who had found new lives or others who settled with Loyalists in Canada, and the dead. Just this summer, on the battlefield of Fort Mercer, across from Philadelphia, an archaeological dig discovered a grave with the remains of thirteen German soldiers–and that just a fraction of the Germans who died in that place on October 22nd, 1777.  With me to describe the Hessians and their American odyssey is Friederike Baer, Associate Professor of History  at Pennsylvania State University, Abington College, and author of the new book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War.      For Further Investigation Friederike writes, "for those interested in researching their Hessian ancestors, try this database of records at Hessian State Archives, Marburg, Germany and the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association (which also publishes an annual journal) A digitized collection of maps related to the Revolutionary war in the Hessian State Archives Marburg, Germany (collections 28 and 29)  "A classic to read is" Edward J. Lowell, The Hessians and the other Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. Port Washington, 1965; orig. publ. 1884. "A study with focus on troops from Hessen-Kassel is" Rodney Atwood, The Hessians: Mercenaries from Hessen-Kassel in the American Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. "On German prisoners of war see" Daniel Krebs, A Generous and Merciful Enemy: Life for German Prisoners of War during the American Revolution. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013 and Kenneth Miller, Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. "Stephen Conway has published extensively about Britain’s use of foreign troops more broadly." Read Stephen Conway. Britannia’s Auxiliaries: Continental Europeans and the British Empire, 1740-1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. See also Mark Wishon, German Forces in the British Army: Interactions and Perceptions, 1742-1815. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. And here's a list of particularly informative published primary records:  Marvin L. Brown and Marta Huth. Baroness von Riedesel and the American Revolution: Journal and Correspondence of a Tour of Duty, 1776-1783. University of North Carolina Press, 1965. Helga Doblin, ed. An Eyewitness Account of the American Revolution and New England Life: The Journal of J.F. Wasmus, German Company Surgeon, 1776-1783. New York: Greenwood, 1990.  Helga Doblin and Mary C. Lynn, eds. The American Revolution, Garrison Life in French Canada and New York: Journal of an Officer in the Prinz Friedrich Regiment, 1776-1783. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993. Helga Doblin and Mary C. Lynn, eds. The Specht Journal: A Military Journal of the Burgoyne Campaign. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. Charlotte S. J. Epping, ed. Journal of Du Roi the Elder, Lieutenant and Adjutant, in the Service of the Duke of Brunswick, 1776-1778. Americana Germanica 15. [Philadelphia]: University of Pennsylvania, 1911. Bernhard A. Uhlendorf, ed. Revolution in America: Confidential Letters and Journals 1776 -1784 of Adjutant General Major Baurmeister of the Hessian Forces. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957.

The history of the ancient Near East can seem like staring down a deep, deep well of time, so deep that it gives one vertigo. It stretches back to 3,500 BC: that is, I’ll do the math for you, 5,522 years ago. In thinking about its 3,000 years of history, one begins to think not in terms of years, but in decades and centuries. Yet there were continuities amidst change, not simply within those three-plus millennia, but between then and now. For surely it would be impossible to imagine what 2022 would be like without writing, families, getting right with higher powers, kings and rulers, laws and litigation, cities and watering the garden. And all of those things can be found in the Ancient Near East With me to give a I hour overview of 3,500 years is Amanda H. Podany. She is Professor Emeritus of History at California State Polytechnic University, and author most recently of Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. By the way, if you were listening to the conversation, you'll recognize our featured image: it's Amanda's drawing of the clay impressions of the feet one of the children sold into slavery, found in the Museum of Aleppo–which has by now experienced its own much more contemporary tragedies. For Further Investigation Amanda writes: "since we talked about brick-makers, an interesting image is of a clay brick with a cuneiform inscription. And this impression of a cylinder seal shows weaving women working at a loom..." "There are just so many books and articles and websites that might be interesting for listeners. Here's a list I wrote recently for Shepherd.com" "Another option is this website created by the British Museum about ancient Mesopotamia, though apparently it will only be available until December, after which it will be retired." Three previous podcasts have gone back to about 1000 BC, which now seems a trivial, juvenile sort of date. They were with Dimitri Nakassis, who discussed Mycenaean Greece and his excavations of the site at Pylos in Episode 33; Eric Cline on the First Dark Ages in Episode 62 (though admittedly he argued that the term "dark ages" was a base slander); and Joe Manning laid out his arguments about the ancient Mediterranean economies prior to the rise of Rome in Episode 164.

At her 80th birthday party Agatha Christie described a conversation she had once overheard about herself. She had been on a train, and there listened to two ladies talking about her, copies of her latest mystery  perched on both their knees. “I hear,” said one, “that she drinks like a fish.” Christie’s latest biographer Lucy Worsley begins her new book with that anecdote because for her it so nicely captures at least three things about the author. First, that she told the story on her 80th birthday shows her longevity. Second, that both of the ladies had a copy of her latest book—Christie was a bestselling author of truly titanic  sales records. Third, that Christie was a close observer of life around her, always ready to transmute it into art. And fourth, that in the story Agatha Christie was part of the background, so ordinary as to not excite any interest from anyone—yet, all the while, being quite extraordinary.  As she describes it, by day, Lucy Worsley is Joint Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces—and by night she enters peoples homes by means of documentary films, and best-selling books–the latest of which is titled, in the United States at least, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Women.   For Further Investigation Lucy Worsley has previously written about another great English author, Jane Austen, in her Jane Austen at Home: A Biography. She has also previously written The Art of English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock Agatha Christie was a surfer, maybe one of the first Britons to learn to stand upright on a board. No, really, it's true. Lord Flashheart; and Archie Christie. I rest my case, m'lud. Thought Archie does need a bigger mustache, to be quite honest.