Meet Me in St. Louis (at the Old Courthouse!)

I had the great pleasure of visiting St. Louis last week to speak to the Civil War Round Table of St. Louis about my book, Notre Dame in the Civil War Marching Onward to Victory (The History Press, 2010).

My host - and lifelong friend - Curtis Fears treated me to visits to several historic sites, including the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, a Civil War medicine exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center, and the "Old Courthouse," a site closely associated with the Dred Scott case.

You can learn more about the history of the Old Courthouse, the Dred Scott case, and other interesting court cases at the excellent National Park Service website here.

In addition the Courthouse itself, there are excellent displays on the history of St. Louis, slavery in St. Louis, the Dred Scott case, and much more!

Enjoy the photos I took (below) and make sure you make the Old Courthouse a part of your next visit to St. Louis!

New Thriller With Civil War Connection - "Cold Glory" - Book Giveaway!

When the first page of a shocking Civil War-era document is unearthed in Oklahoma, history professor Nick Journey is called in to evaluate the find--and is promptly attacked by two men armed with Special Forces weapons.

Federal agent Meg Tolman's investigation into Journey's attack uncovers more troubling questions than answers. She soon finds herself joining Journey's cross-country quest to recover and protect the missing pages.

A shadowy group, the Glory Warriors, have been desperately searching for this explosive document to legitimize what is nothing less than a military coup. After their first attempt to steal it from Journey fails, they follow him, knowing that he holds the key to uncovering the long-lost papers.

They also set their plan into motion and begin assassinating key political figures. As the country plunges into chaos, Journey and Tolman search frantically for the remaining pages. And the Glory Warrior operatives are hot on their trail….

That is the publisher's description for what appears to be a thrilling modern story with significant Civil War connections!

What's more, the author - B. Kent Anderson - is a graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma, just like...ME!

You can learn more about Anderson and the book at his website, here, and an interactive map with photos, links, and more information about many of the book’s settings, here.

Thanks to the kind folks like Alexis Saarela, Anderson's publicity manager at Tor/Forge, I have a free handsome hard cover of Cold Glory to give away on this blog. Just e-mail me at schmidtjamesm at gmail dot com if you are interested and I will get back to you...you will have to agree to write a short review of the book as a guest blog post.

"Total Gettysburg" Interview with "Civil War Medicine"

Scott Sarich of TotalGettysburg.com has an interview up with the host of "Civil War Medicine" (aka, "yours truly"). Check it out here, and while you’re there cruise around Scott’s site – some really cool stuff there.

He asked some great questions...including asking who is the one person I's like to meet from the Civil War if I could go back in time.

You can also see some of his other interviews with some of my favorite bloggers. including Scott Mingus (here), Harry Smeltzer (here), and Brian Dirck (here), and more interviews on the way!

Thanks, Scott!

Medical Department #43 - "BONUS" - More of My Interview with Lauren LaFauci!

See here for "Medical Department #43" - my November 2011 interview with Lauren LaFauci, Ph.D., in the Civil War News, concerning her interesting research on "environmental history" (broadly defined) and the Civil War, and - specifically - her recent article:

“Taking the (Southern) Waters: Science, Slavery, and Nationalism at the Virginia Springs” (Anthropology & Medicine, April 2011, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 7-22).

I asked Lauren several more questions than appeared in the column, and she answered them so thoughtfully, I felt compelled to share those answers in this "Bonus" blog post!

See below for more...and enjoy!

1) I asked Lauren LaFauci, Ph.D., about her research interests...she replied with interesting thoughts on the 19th century concepts of "nature" and how they relate to race, slavery, disease, and more:

Lauren: I am currently working on a book project that looks at how ideas about “nature” or “environment” evolved alongside ideas about “race,” disease, and the body in the United States, with a particular focus on the southern states. This project evolved out of a question I began formulating about mid-way through graduate school: as I saw it, the dominant issue in nineteenth-century culture and in much of its literature was slavery. At the same time, there was an almost equally strong emphasis on American nature, especially in the movement, based in New England, that we call American Romanticism or Transcendentalism—for example, in seminal works like Emerson’s Nature, in iconographic images of American landscapes generated by the Hudson River School artists, and in the popularity of botany as a field of study for ordinary citizens, especially for women and girls. So I wondered, did these two concerns—nature and slavery—ever overlap? Where and how? Did the South have the equivalent of a “Romantic” movement in literature? What does “American” literature of the nineteenth century look like when we shift our vantage point from North to South? These questions became the seed of my dissertation, and, eventually, my current book project.

2) I asked Lauren about the ancient concept of "Doctrine of Signatures" - which was generally thought of as applying to medicinal plants and herbs - and whether 19th-century Virginians might have also seen this Doctrine as applying to the Springs and whether that might account for why Northerners didn't frequent the southern springs as much.

Lauren: The Doctrine of Signatures—that certain plants resemble parts of the body and that those plants are particularly designed to treat ailments that affect those body parts—is related somewhat to what I’m getting at in the essay. Both the Doctrine of Signatures and the white southern theory of disease and curative specificity that I’m articulating rely upon matching specific places with specific cures.

Excepting promotional materials designed to encourage colonization in North America, which favorably portrayed southern climates, much of the natural history and other documentary evidence from the 1700s and beyond positions the southern environment as potentially dangerous to “unseasoned” (or unacclimated) (white) bodies. There is a rich body of historical research on this topic from scholars like Karen Kupperman, Joyce Chaplin, and Susan Scott Parrish (my fantastic dissertation advisor!). So white southerners often imagined their environment as harmful to their bodies.

However, as political rhetoric increased sectional tensions between northern and southern states, many writers began to connect the climate and the environment of the South with the “poison” of slavery. White southerners defending their region’s presumed “sickliness” argued not only against its negative portrayal but, by extension, against the infusion of outsiders not “acclimated” to their social institutions. The construction of their region as “sickly” or “poisonous” by those outsiders encouraged white southerners to develop a defensive stance that in turn evolved into a curious pride of place: white southerners recognized the distinctiveness of their regional illnesses and celebrated the acquired resistance of long-standing inhabitants.

This place-based theory of disease relates to the springs region in a crucial way: many allopathic and hydropathic physicians accordingly believed that if disease was rooted in place, you could remove disease by altering a place-based (or environmental) element, such as water or air. As southern hydropaths observed the varying conditions at the springs—such as elevation, air, micro-climate, and so on—they also claimed for individual springs unique advantages (and sometimes disadvantages) for the treatment of diseases that were associated with particular environmental qualities. White southerners suffering from (southern) disease could thus travel from (southern) spring to spring as they found a combination suited to their peculiar(ly) (southern) complaints. So, for example, certain springs garnered a reputation for their benefits to curing liver complaints, while others alleviated respiratory ailments. In these ways, southern medical experts and laypeople alike began to conceive of the Virginia springs region as a bountiful, diverse pharmacopeic resource for the healing of southern bodies in particular.

3) Hydrotherapy consisted of (at least) two branches - drinking or bathing in healing waters; Lauren's article on "Taking the Waters" generally referred to bathing in the springs...I also wanted to know if any of the springs mentioned in her article, especially at White Sulphur or Red Sulphur - also sold their spring water as bottled medicine.

Lauren: This query opens up additional questions about how nineteenth-century scientists thought about the water’s actions upon the body. William Burke and John Moorman, both native Virginians and self-styled experts on southern hydropathic methods, agreed that the waters were “alterative,” that they caused a physical alteration in the body’s fluids, organs, or systems. But the two men parted ways from there, with Moorman insisting that the waters worked by absorption of the minerals and Burke arguing that they worked by pervasion of the gases. These perspectives had very real consequences in the nascent movement for exportation of the springs water for the mass market: if the waters “worked” because of their gas content, then bottling and shipping the waters would be a useless, or even a charlatan exercise, since most of the valuable gases would evaporate, rendering the water a mere placebo. If the waters instead operated by virtue of their mineral content, in Moorman’s formulation, then bottled water would retain its efficacy even when shipped across long distances, since the minerals would remain in solution.

While Burke’s argument seems on the surface to be the least motivated by profit, he actually had a strong incentive to entice patients to the resorts, since he owned and operated the Red Sulphur Springs at the time of his feud with Moorman. Bottling of the water would have thus taken away from his business. And Moorman did use Burke’s status as a proprietor to undercut his credibility as a scientist. As the two men engaged in this genteel literary feud whereby they criticized one another in print both overtly and underhandedly for at least ten years, the bottled water industry floundered. A few springs did market and sell their waters, but for the most part, the southern water cure remained a resort-based enterprise. The Civil War eventually silenced Burke and Moorman’s debate, but the fierceness with which it had proceeded reveals that their science may have been influenced by the possibility of economic advancement.

4) In her article on the antebellum Virginia springs, Lauren described the concept of ideology expressed in architecture, etc., which was very interesting. The article also included accounts of the place of African-Americans, free and enslaved, in the spring culture. Some of these springs continued as resorts, gold clubs, etc., into the late 19th- and 20th centuries...I wondered if they remained segregated.

Lauren: After the Civil War, the railroad expanded in the southern states, and many of the springs resorts and towns simply faded away. Many of the Virginia and West Virginia resorts, for example, exist as place names on maps but remain difficult to locate on the ground. The Greenbrier (formerly the White Sulphur Springs) and the Homestead (formerly the Hot Springs) both survive today, and I would imagine both locations have extensive histories relating to 19th- and 20th-century segregation, particularly since segregation was the law of the land in the South until the Civil Rights Movement. Unfortunately, my own area of expertise on this issue closes with the Civil War, and I regret that I do not know specific information about the surviving resorts in the post-bellum period and beyond.

5) Finally, I asked Lauren what other areas of 19th century environmental history remain to be explored.

Lauren: There are countless avenues for research in 19th-century environmental history! To circumscribe the question a bit, I would say that I am particularly interested in the intersections of environmental history and cultural studies. For example, I would like to see more work that explores the nodes of race, class, and gender with that of the environment. The goal of much of my own work is to show how some of the problems we think of as very contemporary—such as the ravaging of the black communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast during the (un-)natural disaster of Katrina—have their roots in historical structures and material realities. Why did white folks force black folks to lower-lying areas in New Orleans and elsewhere? There are many answers, but one that I posit in the book manuscript explains how a constellation of early U.S. ideas—and, often, specifically white southern ideas—about climate, topography, disease, and racial bodies worked together to make low-lying landscapes “black” landscapes. I am energized by the amazing work done by scholars such as Megan Kate Nelson, Mart A. Stewart, Judith Carney, Sharla Fett, and many many others—and I hope that we continue to see cultural and environmental historians working together to historicize some of the environmental justice issues that we face in the United States today.

Medical Department #43 - "Taking the Waters" in Antebellum Virginia

Below is my "Medical Department" column that appeared in the November 2011 issue of Civil War News.

Stay tuned for more of my interview with Lauren LaFauci in another post later this week.

Enjoy!

TAKING THE WATERS
By James M. Schmidt
Civil War News – “Medical Department” – November 2011

Can our country be seen as a body with its own “ill humors” that require uniquely American cures? Dr. William Burke thought so, and in his 1851 book, The Mineral Springs of Virginia, he wrote that the remedy for increasing sectional tensions between the North and the South could be found in the healing waters of Virginia:

And to the people of the North, and to those of the South, the capillaries of the Union, I would say, flow on through your respective conduits, to the social heart of the "mother of states—Old Virginia. If your streams have been rendered turbid by prejudice; if too much carbonic acid, or unwholesome bile has mingled in their currents; she will urge you on to the healthy lungs in her parental bosom; she will oxygenise your ill-blood in the pure atmosphere of her mountains; she will render it ruddy and healthy, and send it back bounding with impulse, inspiring fraternal affections and sympathies, and connecting the frame of our social and political Union by tissues that shall not decay, and ligaments that can never be loosened.

[Note: you can read the 1851 book through Google Books here]

In her recent journal article, “Taking the (Southern) Waters: Science, Slavery, and Nationalism at the Virginia Springs” (Anthropology & Medicine, April 2011, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 7-22), Lauren E. LaFauci, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, uses Burke’s quote as a starting point to examine the mineral water resorts of Virginia across several areas of inquiry: medicine, environmental science, African-American studies (free and enslaved), politics, literature, history, and more.

The paper exhibits exceptional scholarship, including the use of period medical literature, manuscripts (including letters and diaries written by visitors to the springs), modern studies of hydropathy in the North and the South, and what she aptly calls “medical-social” analysis to argue that 1) that southerners saw the springs as a medicinal resource specifically designed for the white southern body and 2) that the springs served as more than just a gathering place for people seeking a cure; they also became centers of political discourse supporting secession and slavery.

Dr. LaFauci was kind enough to answer my questions about the article, but also (and especially) about her varied interests; how they are applied in her classroom, research, and writing; and how the interdisciplinary study of “environmental history” can help us learn more about the Civil War generally, and Civil War medicine in particular.

“Broadly speaking, I am interested in the intersections of U.S. literature, history, environment, and culture, primarily from the period 1770 to 1870,” she told me. “More specifically, I am interested in the history of science, especially the histories of climate, disease, and racial formation; in environmental justice scholarship, especially examining the roots of our current environmental justice problems; and in theories of region and nation.”

Dr. LaFauci acknowledged with good humor that as an English professor writing about environmental history in an anthropology journal, “I am all over the map here!” But she explained to me further how her studies and training across a number of seemingly disparate subject areas actually help in her work and in her lectures:

“My degree is in English, but I am trained in American Studies and cultural studies more broadly. Thus, my courses tend to adopt American Studies approaches, utilizing primary source documents from history, such as advertisements for enslaved people who escaped bondage; images of objects associated with the topic under review, such as a nineteenth-century whaling harpoon; and maps, music, paintings, and other ‘texts’ not generally considered ‘literary.’”

Now, that sounds like my kind of classroom!

The main focus of the article mentioned above is the use of “mineral springs” (naturally occurring springs that produce water containing minerals, dissolved gases, or radiation, that give them supposed medicinal value) for therapeutic value. The practice – generally known as “hydrotherapy” - can be traced back to ancient Rome and Greece and Native Americans. The practice became popular in the 1800s, and the resorts that have developed around mineral springs – such as those discussed in Dr. LaFauci’s article – attracted elite patrons who would visit to “take the waters” (inspiring the title of her article), meaning that they would drink or bathe in the mineral water.

Dr. LaFauci confined her research to the Virginia springs region (which encompasses parts of present-day West Virginia as well), but there were also resorts in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and other states. She explained to me the concept of uniquely southern bodies requiring uniquely southern cures for uniquely southern diseases:

“Many allopathic and hydropathic physicians accordingly believed that if disease was rooted in place, you could remove disease by altering a place-based element, such as water or air. As southern hydropaths observed the varying conditions at the springs they claimed individual springs had unique advantages for the treatment of diseases that were associated with particular environmental qualities.

“White southerners suffering from (southern) disease could thus travel from (southern) spring to spring as they found a combination suited to their peculiar(ly) (southern) complaints. So, for example, certain springs garnered a reputation for their benefits to curing liver complaints, while others alleviated respiratory ailments. In these ways, southern medical experts and laypeople alike began to conceive of the Virginia springs region as a bountiful, diverse pharmacopeic resource for the healing of southern bodies in particular.”

Although the article specifically discusses the Virginia spring resorts, Dr. LaFauci notes that resorts and the “water cure” were also popular in the North, but for different reasons. She attributes the popularity of the southern “waters” to “crisis intervention” of various diseases in the region’s “sickly season.” The popularity of hydrotherapy in the North can be attributed to a broader concept of “right living” and as one of several hygienic and social reforms.

Indeed, one of my other interests is in 19th –century phrenology (more on that in future columns!) and when I read period phrenological journals in my collection, I’ve observed that there is discussion of a variety of seemingly diverse movements in the pages: phrenology itself, of course, but also abolitionism, spiritualism, and more (including the “water cure”). I asked Dr. LaFauci if perhaps - as far as period journals were concerned - these weren't diverse topics at all. She replied:

“Yes, I think you are exactly right. Social reform movements flourished—especially in the northern states—in the years before the Civil War. The antislavery and women’s rights movements are perhaps the most well known, but there were also movements against tobacco, gambling, and alcohol, and movements supporting dress reform, communal living, and vegetarianism, among many others. Many of the leaders, supporters, and sympathizers with these individual reform movements often found themselves interested in and engaged in various other reform movements as well. So yes, it seems there was a great deal of overlap.”

I encourage everyone to read “Taking the (Southern) Waters” and to keep an eye out for more fascinating and exceptional research from Dr. Lauren LaFauci, whose interests – fortunately for us – are hard to pin down to one area! Presently, Dr. LaFauci is working on another project – the Confederacy’s use of botanical resources - that will be of special interest to readers of this column.

[Later this week I will post my full interview with Dr. LaFauci, in which she also discusses her book project that looks at how ideas about “nature” or “environment” evolved alongside ideas about “race,” disease, and the body in the United States, with a particular focus on the southern states; the concept of the “Doctrine of Signatures” and how it applied to the Virginia mineral waters; why the springs did (or didn’t) bottle their waters for consumption; and other aspects of environmental history.]

My First "Front Line" Post for "The Civil War Monitor"

Readers of this blog will recall that about a month ago I posted news (here) about a new Civil War magazine, The Civil War Monitor.

As part of their online presence, the Monitor has a community blog they've named "The Front Line" (here). Terry Johnston, Editor-in-Chief of the Monitor, kindly invited me to join that community so I'll be posting there on subjects near and dear to me and (hopefully!) interesting to you!

My first post (here) is up on the Monitor website today:

"Coal for the Furnaces is as important as Gunpowder for the Guns"




Hopefully the post will get you thinking about the important uses of gunpowder - and supply problems - apart from the obvious uses on the battlefield! Check out the full post (here) and let me know what you think of it!

And while you are there, check out some great posts from the rest of the "Front Line" bloggers: Craig Swain, Andy Hall, Eric Wittenberg, Robert Moore, Harry Smeltzer, Kevin Levin, and Keith Harris.

The Monitor's "Blog and Social Media Editor," Laura June Davis, is doing an amazing job at keeping the site updated and dynamic...You will want to visit the Monitor website (here) every day as there is always new content!

You can also keep up with them on Facebook (here) or Twitter (here).

Enjoy!

Galveston Research Summary #9 - Meet Benjamin Bartlett - Part II

In this second installment of this week's series "Meet Benjamin Bartlett," I provide some addition information on this officer in the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry.

One of my first steps to learn more myself was to order his Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR), held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), through Jay Odom at CivilWarDocs.com (you can read more about Jay and his service in a previous post, here). He came through quickly, as always.

You can never be sure how full or how slim a CMSR is going to be until you look at it. In the case of Benjamin Bartlett, it is rather slim (but I've seen less!), containing just a summary card, a company muster-in roll card, a handful of muster roll cards, a "Casualty Sheet," and a "Memorandum for Prisoner of War Records."

Still, the seeming dearth of records is pretty easy to explain, owing 1) to his rather short enlistment; he was mustered in September 1862 and died in August 1863; and 2) fully eight of those eleven months were spent as a prisoner of war (but I don't want to give too much of the story away just yet!).

Fortunately, we can still flesh out the life and service of Bartlett and the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry from some other sources, including a published regimental history (1886) and an excellent widow's pension file, also held by NARA, but available for online viewing via my Fold3 subscription (I will feature more documents from the pension file this week).

Bartlett - who, according to his wife, was "commonly called by his middle name, Frank" - then 24, was married to Hannah S. Bartlett (nee Goss), then 30, on May 20, 1855, in Roxbury, Massachusetts; their only child, Lizzie H. Bartlett, was born in 1861 and was only two years old when her father died.

The genesis and early history of the regiment is detailed in History of the Forty-Second Regiment Infantry Massachusetts Volunteers (1886) by Charles P. Bosson, once Sergeant-Major. You can read the regimental history at Google Books:



"Frank" Bartlett mustered in to the 42nd Regiment, Massachusetts State Militia, Company I, in September 1862. The regiment was then mustered into Federal service as the42nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in November 1862.

The regiment left Massachusetts for New York on November 11; sailed December 2 for New Orleans, La. (Cos. "D," "G" and "I") on the steamer "Saxon"; arrived at Ship Island December 14, and at New Orleans December 16. Companies "D," "G" and "I" again moved on the Steamer "Saxon" to Galveston, Texas, December 19-24, 1862. and occupied the city of Galveston on December 24.

The three companies were then involved in the Battle of Galveston, January 1, 1863, which is where I will pick up the story again...

Galveston Research Summary #9 - Meet Benjamin Bartlett - Part I

Links to the previous "Galveston Research Summaries" can be found at the most recent update here.

This installment will be in several parts...first some background:

When I'm in the midst of a writing project I like to have something on my desk related to the subject at hand - a photograph, an artifact, etc. - to give me some inspiration.

As I work on my Galveston/Civil War research and writing project for my forthcoming book for The History Press, I have on my desk a copy of a photograph of 2nd Lt. Benjamin F. Bartlett of the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry.

The original photograph is in the excellent Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photograph Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.

I've gained an affinity for Bartlett: he was born and raised more than 1800 miles from my house ...he was captured at the Battle of Galveston on January 1, 1863...seven months later he was buried less than an hour from my house.

This week we'll "meet" Benjamin F. Bartlett, as much as we can anyway, through archival documents, including his Compiled Military Service Record, his widow's pension records, a book about a local Confederate POW camp, and a trip to his resting place.