Two big picture questions you listed about Historical Context and historical method. First we want you to ask the question, how do people in the civil war about era civil war era value things. Those meetings may be of the esx museum in Salem Massachusetts on a thing that is actually two things that came together some our job is to show you how we do our work. His name is Charles William merrill. A of a soldier in company the 19 massachusetts, which was in the third gate a Second Division second core of the we can use this of thet, which is a part compiled service record, these are available in the national archives. Tocan use the federal census learn, about Charles William merrill. Bibles reads, from your affectionate pass and affectionate pastor august 12, 1862. That is three days after he enlisted. From a letter charles wrote to his mother in february of 1863. Foster,when you see mr. Remember me to him. Hardly a day passes by without my thinking of him. That happened. This is a map that many of you might be familiar with. As a soldier in john gibbons division of the second corps was actually attached to john six core. My question is to talk about that military context, but maybe also getting a photograph taken by an army hiscer who was early in work career detached to the u. S. Military Railroad System as a photographer because he was a prewar artist and photographer. Graphs but hefor happened to be with the union forces that did this photo and i loved writing the essay for it. I cannot go into all the details but it is unique. There are 100 photographs taken in the entire civil war that depict battlefields before they were cleaned up. This is our unique than most because it is taken a few hours after the battle and a few hours before the federals evacuated and give it back to the confederates so it is unique. I have been haunted by things. Look at the image of the dead soldier and the left foreground. It is one of the more Haunting Images i have come across, combat. Handtohand if you take this photograph on a computer and blow it up you can see more in it than you can here. One thing i want to point out is battlefield photographers in the civil war had something of a tendency to full the viewer in that they manipulated aspects of the scene. There have been cases of battlefield photography where soldiers have been of that goinn here. Russell did do a little of this. How many muskets seem to be neatly laid across that ditch . Or leaning gratefully against the stonewall . The imagination. Russell is trying to arrange the scene of death for you a bit. He is not doing anything with the dead bodies. There are four to six on them if you take a close look. This is the first time in u. S. History that battlefields battlefield death is photographed. As girl says in his essay, a tin cup that might have been used to give it into a wounded soldier placed on walltonewall stone itself. There are cloth dustbins of cloth and paper to give you a sense of battlefield strewn with things that there may not have been time to for the looters to come in. That does i hope give you a sense of variety with which thingsleather bindings, sturdy s and strong content paper provided ample resistance to longrange fire and bullets nearing the end of their trajectories. That is the material explanation for what you are seeing. Could expoundyou upon your understanding of other. On the right, a casualty st sheet this is wounded severely, and a notation by a clerk in 1885 going through sources that says index shows face severe. A lucky man. Very lucky. He probably wouldnt think of it that way. Wounds on may 12. Papers at the essex museum. That would be the next up for any of us interested in what happens to charlie merri reads d soul. Charlie merrill, a young massachusetts soldier had a ball passed through his head during the battle of fredericksburg. It entered near his right eye and was extracted behind his left ear. Another ball would have entered a vital part of his body had it not been arrested by a testament to which it was lodged. When the safeguard was shown the president come he sent to the hospital a handsome pocket bible, in which as an evidence of his warm regards, he caused to be inscribed, charles w merrill, company letterf the mad here, which was a journalist from newberry port who later wrote a memoir of having lived in hot not for 30 years with the political leaders of the capital. Telegram from a family 12. Nd, jt brown on may the telegram took the news up. Mr. Merrill, they were much startled but felt exceedingly grateful to you for your kindness and attention. They wish you do everything in the case to be done and have the remains brought to newberry port. Please notify when they leave washington. Do you come this week . In memoranda one year from coat, trousers, and one silver watch, one diary received the above named articles and money, signed agent william merrill, father of deceased. Can you talk about the can you talk about the captioning performed by vitac by confederates and hidden away somewhere in virginia to make sure that the union army did not gain custody of his physical remains, if and when they captured mt. Vernon. And that turned out to be false. That was a false rumor. His body was not stolen from mt. Ver vernon. But i thought it was really interesting that that alleged incident got so much press coverage in both the north and the south, and its because washington is not only a founder, he is probably the preeminent founder, seems to have had the greatest symbolic importance in the civil war generation and maybe ever since. So keeping custody of his remains mattered a lot to people, and when the union army captured mt. Vernon later in 1861 there was great rejoicing in the north because of the symbolism. Much dejection and disappointment in the south, again, because of the symbolism, you know, that the enemy had now the custody of George Washingtons body and his house and there were still some objects in the house that had belonged to him and his wife. So the symbolism of these objects is just tremendous. I made the mistake of advancing the slide too soon, but what joan was just talking about is a great segue into understanding still more context when we think about the relationship between people and the things in which they interacted and the way in which things could shape experience and shape peoples ideas. Thinking about the importance of historical things for civil war americans is one way to do that. So i wanted to give each one of the panelists some time to talk about their own work and theyve all identified one image for to help them kind of reveal what they have to say. So, joan, you had recommended this image to us. Okay. Sure. This is pohick church. A virginian told me that is how the name is pronounced, i hope im pronouncing it correctly. This is a church where George Washington worshipped for most of his adult life, he was an episcopalian before the revolution the church was called the anglican church, obviously they changed the name for patriotic reasons and he had a pew in this church and it was apparently the first pew, the pew that was closest to the minister during the service. Everybody knew that was the washington family pew and they sat there and only they sat there. It was a place of honor for washington and his family, and there apparently was some kind of marking on the pew, it might have been a Little Silver plaque or it might have been a wooden carving, but it not only was known to the other Church Members that the washingtons sat here, but that in a stranger came in, he or she could find the washington pew. Well, when the war breaks out, soldiers in both armies want that church pew because of its association with washington, and the church pew disappeared early in the war. By 1865 the entire church had been cleaned out, everything in it was gone, every pew, you know, the pulpit for the minister, the communion rail, all of it, because it was a place where George Washington had worshipped on a regular basis and that association made those objects very valuable to troops in both armies. Earl, do you want to describe this image. Yes, this image comes from the essay i wrote on the material culture of weapons in the civil war. This illustrates one of them. During this Research Really made me stop thinking of anything resembling uniform training for shooting in civil war armies. Material culturalists argue, of course, that tools are used for a purpose, that tools have different shapes and different different purposes and people can acclimate themselves well or badly to any given tool, it depends on your eye hand coordination, your musculature, your senses, a whole lot of stuff goes into your physical makeup to determine whether or not you can use something effectively. That goes for civil war soldiers and firing weapons, too. And this is confirmed in the diaries, letters and memoires. Some civil war soldiers were good shots, they naturally acclimated themselves to the demands of the rifle musket and could fire rapidly at will, others were horrible at it and were widely known by their comrades and everybody in between by the 62 or 63 a lot of soldiers are recognizing that, gosh, this guy can fire really well. So in a hot fire fight, he stands in front, he has two or three of his comrades behind him loading the muskets for him and passing it to him. So he can do all the shooting for everybody. I found this wonderful illustration from a memoire by a guy named gaskill which illustrates the gun inept guy of the civil war. He hated his musket and he drew this illustration of himself in the civil war to kind of illustrate that. There, of course, were gun adept soldiers also and there was everybody in between, too. I think its important that we really kind of understand that the material thing has in essence kind of a life of its own in a sense. That its not just it is a massproduced item, but its not dealt with in a massproduced way by human beings. Everybody has their own individual approach to any given musket in the civil war and you can classify them as good or bad in it, this one its pretty clear what he thought about his muske musket. The two objects depicted here are from the work of both jason and michael, because jason is giving a presentation right after this about john browns pike i dont want him to say too much so maybe michael if you would start about this cane and to understand its significance and how it moved after the event for which its most well known maybe. Sure. Yeah. So the keyword, i think, on the screen that i want to be brutally honest about is attributed to Preston Brooks. So Preston Brooks is the South Carolina congressman, in may of 1856 he attacks a republican senator from massachusetts, charles sumner, on the floor of the u. S. Senate. He beats him for about a minute and a half, leaves him unconscious and shatters the tip off of the cane that he used in this attack in the process. I got curious about what happened to the cane. A lot of people who know the story know that wellwishers sent new canes to brooks, but i was interested in the used cane, the after cane. Lo and behold there is a cane at the Old State House Museum in boston which is attributed to brooks, and they say this is the cane. I can neither confirm nor deny that this is the actual cane. It matches the description, it has been broken and repaired in ways that match, you know, i witness accounts of how the cane broke, and it has a pretty good although not perfect kind of lineage. This is where it kind of gets back to the point that i made early about gift giving, which is that what you see is a series of cases before, during and after the war in which this cane was gifted and regifted in and out of the wise family of virginia, henry wise had been the governor of virginia, and essentially gets passed down. Some owners dont seem to have known what it was, they just knew it was a cane, others did know that it was. And that eventually and its an interesting thing to think about this it gets donated by a descendant of henry wise to a museum in boston, which is, you know, sumner turf. So we go from this idea that this cane is brooks to the idea that it belongs in massachusetts. So it has kind of shifted its regional affiliation in that way as well. So i will not give my lecture now for that other image, i will just give a teaser and let you know that if you study the full history of john browns bikes and not just spoke us on them when they are at Harpers Ferry when nearly 900 of those pikes were brought across the border to arm slaves in an apparent uprising, if you follow the full history of the pikes that object does not begin as a pike, it begins as a buoy knife in kansas and then, of course, it ends its life not at Harpers Ferry, but in the hands of a number of relic hunters and collect rs and politicians and abolitionists and secessionists who carry these things, over 900 of them, all over the country and some of them even into the civil war. So i will be following sort of the long journey of these pikes from beginning to end in our next session. I just want to pick up on something michael said. He used the word actor. Theres been a good deal of debate among scholars of material culture about whether objects themselves have agency. Earl was hinting, i think, at those ideas. That really comes from a french scholar named bruno latoure and he put together something called Actor Network theory and what hes arguing is that objects by their very existence can spire or cause human action. Not everybody agrees. I mean, theres been a vigorous debate over that, but its fun to think about. Its interesting to think about. Peter carmichael, i think, we all know who he is, he has an essay in this book as well and he talks about confederate keepsakes after the war, white male combat vets who keep a variety of confederate mementos and how peter believes that that can itself inspire action in the postwar south to preserve what they believe to be confederate values, to make sure that whites remain in charge in southern society. So this idea, even if you dont agree with t its a very interesting perspective. Its a different way to think about objects. For a long time scholars and i think people in general thought of objects as mute, inert, that they were things created by people and left behind by people, but lotoure and some of his allies dont see it that way. I think thats a good place at which to pause and to ask for your questions. I hope youve found you see the value in studying things and maybe even finding Something Interesting about the way in which we approach that analysis, but if there are any questions, please walk up to these two microphones here. Dan courts, interior of the new york. I noticed on the list of possessions of Charles Merrill the bible wasnt mentioned. What happened to it and why wasnt it on that list . Im not sure i think is the first thing that i would say. That suggests thats a good thing to point out that i hadnt thought about. So that may mean that, in fact, Charles Merrill did send his this bible if not to lincoln, home, before he died. That it was no longer part of his effects at death. I mean, thats one potential answer. But i dont know how it was brought back to massachusetts, how it got into the collection of the of Peabody Essex in salem. What is the single biggest threat to the preservation of these artifacts and what could an individual such as myself do to preserve these artifacts for the future . Can you repeat the first part of the question, please . Whats the greatest threat to the preservation of these artifacts. The greatest threat . Yes. Time, i would imagine. Books dont last forever, even until the library of congress, you know, theres time that will wear away at material objects. As joan pointed out, you know, metal is particularly strong and can withstand the test of time, other things cannot. So as time passes, certain kinds of material artifacts survive longer than others. Thats my take on it. I would agree, but i would i would say, too, that a more fundamental threat is indifference on the part of people. That the human factor is the biggest threat to it. If people dont put value in a historical object, they are not going to invest the time and energy and money to deal with the problems of material deterioration, for example. And theres obviously an awful lot of indifference in society in terms of heritage and preserving it in ways like this, and, of course, there are a lot of success stories, too. Yes, and i also think for a long time museums were not very interested in preserving objects owned by ordinary people. They wanted objects associated with famous, powerful, rich, white men and they werent very interested in the Charles Merrills of the world, but i think that that has really started to change over the last generation or so. There is a much greater interest among Museum Professionals about the experience of the average soldier and thats been the subject of a great deal of scholarship by historians, also civilians. The home front, the connection between the military and the home front. I deal with preserving war and its gotten me in trouble on ebay in trying to collect the trinkets. What are your thoughts on the pow trinkets. There is an emotional value that i found with this and eventually a prisoner of war has to depart with that because they would sell the trinkets to guards who would put money to the settlers for survival. Im curious to know the thoughts on that. Yes. I mean, the first thought that comes to my mind is obviously these men were sort of frozen in prison in terms of not being able to do much to support their war effort, to support themselves. They are put in a very dependent and precarious situation. I imagine for many of them carving trinkets and crafting things was a way to give purpose to their time in prison. So theres an aspect of kind of immaterial value there beyond the material value, which im not discounting, of how it becomes essentially currency, right . Getting back to brians original question, who you did they value things, they clearly valued those trinkets both for their material value and the immaterial value that it gave to their lives while they were in prison. It also gets us into the production of items, which is something we hadnt talked about. Weve talked about the circulation of things and sometimes the theft of things, but, you know, the production and the idea of being a producer in the 19th century is you have value when you can make things. So i think thats a good case of it. Yeah, id like to add something about ohio, where i live. There is an ongoing project at johnsons island, the prison, and this past semester i had one of the archeologists speak in my civil war class, his name is dave bush. Actually, he has a degree in both anthropology and archeology, so hes someone with tremendous expertise. He had the most amazing array of objects that had been made by the p. O. W. S. One of them actually was able to take types of other prisoners while they were in prison. He created his own camera out of odds and ends and he had reproductions of the images, which were pretty good, you know, they may not have been top quality, you know, Matthew Brady quality, but they were surprisingly detailed and very sophisticated. He made the argument in his lecture that people in prison are trying very hard to preserve some elements of their own identity, their own dignity and thats one way to do that. Not just the images, which were fascinating in and of themselves, which, you know, the effort that went into it and a host of other things that they have literally dug up out of the ground. My question was i forget who mentioned it, but that even during the war the local population would go and collect relics. My question would be why would people who had what do you think motivated people who had so little and especially in a time of war to go out and collect things that probably could have been used and then not use them . Sorry, go ahead. Im assuming you mean if they were collecting them they werent actually using them. Thats a good question. I think youre referring to a comment that i made. Right. I think some people are doing it for the money. People who may be struggling financially see this as a way to make money and also there are people who dont seem to feel any deep emotional connection to the Material World in general, whether we are talking about peace or war. So them this is not a precious artifact, this is not a valuable historical item, this is just a way that they can bring in some extra cash. Thank you. Sure. If you are talking about the looting of battlefields right after the battle it doesnt seem to be for relics, it seems to be for things that they can actually use and sell and make use of. Cant hear you. Cant hear you. Yeah, i was gosh, i think it has gone on. If you are talking about looting battlefields right after the battle is over, i dont get the impression these people are doing it for relics, theyre doing it for usable material things. So it fits right into this material scarcity concept. Theyre trying to grab something that they dont own when the getting is good, lets put it that way. And a lot of soldiers who at gettysburg and other places who saw this happening described them as ghouls and really unprincipled people. The irony is soldiers did the same thing, too. Its widely known that the Confederate Army was material resource limited, more so than the union army. They looted battlefields a lot, even union soldiers, however, did it quite often. It might be kind of difficult for a modern audience to understand this because we can go to walmart and buy almost anything we want to pretty cheaply, but people in those days, of course, especially if you are in the military or you are in the field hundreds of miles away from supply lines, scarcity was a way of life in some ways for them. Right, and the southern economy is starting to break down. By the last year of the war things are pretty desperate. So if you can sell something from a battlefield for 3 or 4, you know, that might make the difference between getting enough to eat and, you know, making it through that winter. Any other questions . Okay. Can you help me thank the panelists . [ applause ] so if you can sell somethin this is a special edition of American History tv, a sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on American History tv, like lectures in history, american artifacts, reel america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency, and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan 3. Here is a look at our prime time schedule on the cspan networks. Starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan remarks from House Oversight and Reform Committee chair Elijah Cummings on Prescription Drug prices and his recent conflict with President Trump over tweets about his home district of baltimore. On cspan 2 its book tv with authors who have written about guns and recent mass shootings. And on cspan 3 its American History tv, with programs on the reconstruction era, which followed the civil war. Next on American History tv, Gettysburg College Civil War Institute director Peter Carmichael talks about his book the war for the cn