He is an author of many articles and essays, as well as civil war works. The last generations published by unc press. His most recent book was published by unc last year in 2018 and is the recent recipient of the 2018 nymas civil war book award. Please welcome peter carmichael. [ applause ] thank you. Im not dehydrated. I just have a little scratchy throat. I think it will be fine. Can everyone hear me okay . Yes . Okay. Fantastic. Ashley, thank you so much for that introduction. David beam stood on cemetery hill. He surveyed the woods and the fields surrounding gettysburg. He was at that time 26 years old, been a lawyer before the war and a veteran. He was a veteran of fredericksburg. After his battles he wrote his wife. In this letter on july 5th, the first sentence he wrote, declared gettysburg as a great victory that the army had achieved. He then proceeded to describe what his regimen had done that night on july 2nd. Indiana was part of a counter attack that retook cemetery hill, recaptured of the other battles that he had experienced in which the casualties were extraordinarily light. He only lost two men in his company, one of those men was the color bearer, both killed instantly. He informed his wife, and i have always found this to be an interesting point in the relationship, that the regimental flag of the 14th indiana riddled with bullet holes, he decided that he was going to send it to her for safekeeping. And it should come as no surprise that this flag was made by the women of his home county, that county is owen county, indiana. Its west of indianapolis, a little bit to the south, not far from bloomington Indiana University. So hes sending the flag back to her and then at the end of this letter he wrote this, i cannot say too much in praise of the two brave men who fell, nor have i the time to say what i would like. None ever fell more nobodily, none ever were mourned more by their surviving comrades, and they were buried by their friends. That sentence that he underlined, its not me, they were buried by their friends, it always struck me that it spoke to david beams growing estrangement with those at home, and his also belief that he could only find true understanding, true communion, with his comrades. You know, in writing this book the thing that really stood out is how soldiers on both sides were so surprised and shocked by these strong connections they made with their comrades. This is not an exaggeration, they had to cling to these men, emotionally as well as physically if they hoped to survive. And so beams sense of attachment to his men, his sense of isolation, growing isolation from the home front, i thought was perfectly encapsulated in that phrase. But david beam, he knew like every other soldier that it was not enough to have that communion with your comrades, it was not enough to be able to have a deep bond with your fellow soldier. That david beam realized like so many other men that they needed the people back home and especially women to affirm their sense of being a soldier. It struck me and this is a very and some of you will say a very bad and awkward comparisons. I will take my comparisons. This excellent talk we just heard from mr. Breen about nat turner, he talked about the master slave relationship, im always struck by how dependent while southerners, men and women who owned slaves, how dependent they were on their slaves playing a part and playing a role to affirm their sense of selfworth. And here again civil war soldiers, they needed their women in this war. Needed them badly. And that point, again, i cannot be overstated. What were women supposed to do . Women were supposed to write, of course, supportive letters, full of optimism and cheerfulness. We call it today support the troops. Im not going political for you all, i dont do that in my class and i dont do it here, but i do believe that there are parallels. And of course we hear today support the troops, support the troops. Its your call. But what i want you to at least consider is that the idea of supporting the troops is an apolitical statement has always been puzzling to me. And i say to you that the idea of civilians supporting either the union or confederate war effort, just supporting the men, thats it, that thats also apolitical, i think highly problematic, because david beam never received from mahala, again, or hala, he never received from her one of those cheerful letters. He never received one of those letters in which she wrote about him in glowing terms, that she affirmed his sense of being a brave dutiful Union Soldier. She never did it, and he needed that from her desperately. So what can the marriage of an obscure hoosier couple, i suspect everybody not everybody, we have some folks from indiana out there where did the origins of hoosier come from . How many of you are dying to know . Do you know what, its a teaser. Well get to that maybe in the question and answer period. So this hoosier couple, its an obscure hoosier couple, what can they tell us about the civil war . Well, the story of the beams tells us about the interpretive power of micro history. I dont think my wife beth is here so i can say this. Last night were talking a little bit about the talk, i run everything by her. If you have any problems with my book the war for the common soldier you can straight to her, she was my editor, i ran everything by her, she is my partner in crime. Last night i said micro history. She said, god, thats just ugly. I said, well, it is. She said it sounds too academic. I said, well, it is, but come up with Something Else and of course we could not. I will tell you what micro history is, im a big believer in it. The beam story is, again, the interpretive power of micro history. Micro history is not simply the recovery of the lives of ordinary people who have been forgotten, nor is the goal of micro history to make some grand claim that results in a another academic term here, im on a roll a paradigm shift. How do you like that in historical thinking. Thats a horrible word. Paradigm. Its terrible. But micro history can make broader historical connections for us and the private correspondence of the beams it gives us pinholes, pinholes through which we can see and understand the broader northern culture at war. Now, the question of whether this couple is representative, if you want me to go off on my own little sort of rant, i am utterly mystified why historians continue to try to find what was representative in the civil war. It is plagued, i think the study of civil war soldiers and of course i suspect as you look at my book here and you say, my god, he titled the book the war for the common soldier. My first sentence that i wanted and, again, i have to go i have my wife credit i just saw her in the hallway. Come on in here, honey, you can hear this. She said the first sentence should be there was no common soldier in the civil war. Dr. Gallagher didnt care for that so much to that sentence is not there. So i dont believe there is a common soldier in the civil war. There were many, many common soldiers. We will talk about that a little bit later. I do want to say this, though, this is what the beams can do for us this morning, they can tell us about how national and local politics figured into a wartime marriage, how did ideas of gender shape the ways the men and women corresponded, what decisions did soldiers make as writers, and how did men depict combat in their correspondence and finally how did men cope with battle. So the beam story has that potential, to make those broader connections, but i also want to say this, that the beam story also has the potential to disrupt something accepted thinking in civil war history, namely this, we have this idea that civil war soldiers were emotionally hemmed in, hemmed in from their comrades, hemmed in from their loved ones. It was striking to me and not just in the beams, but in many other examples how these men opened up emotionally to everyone around them. The idea of the hardened soldier, right, who could not bring himself to write or to talk about what he had endured, certainly there are examples of that, but there are plenty that, in fact, show just the opposite. Jim brumall who is speaking i believe tomorrow has published an important book called private confederacies. He has done more than anyone else to get into the emotional life of these men, obviously on the confederate side. His work has deeply influenced me and i give him a lot of credit for bringing this dimension of the soldier experience to my attention. So a little side note here as i take a drink. Im afraid this is going to be scalding hot, so here we go. It is. Very hot. Very hot. So how did i come into contact with the beam papers . In the 1980s im going to speak to the high school students, ready . Because i see, i think, some sympathetic faces here. Im talking right to you. On the weekends when i was in high school and my voice is changing just at the perfect time, its like im going through puberty all over again. I could join my daughters, theyre adolescents as well, we can just act out all the time. This is good news. I dont know if my wife is hearing any of this. There she is. Good luck, honey, its going to be fun. Its going to be quite a ride. So in indiana on the weekends, you know, some kids they went to the mall. I went to the Indiana Historical society. Thats what all the cool kids did in indianapolis, you would go at least thats where my mom told me, thats what she said. And at the Indiana Historical society which was my home court growing up there is not a finer institution, archival institution, and it does Greater Public history than Indiana Historical society. There i encountered the beam papers. Again, in high school. I have a student now ben roy who might be in the audience, there he is, ben, keep that hand up there, ben, you might get some cspan time right now. Ben roy just came back from the heartland, his first visit to indiana, it changed his world, did it not, ben . Man, you are hes listening to john cougar mellencamp all the time. When he got to indiana he went to the Indiana University and he looked into the student life at iu and then he came up to the Historical Society as well. He and i have been looking at david beams student writings. Student writings. Beam was a student at iu from 1856 to 1860. Those papers are fascinating, im going to be very excited to see what ben comes up with. Some of the some of the things that david beam wrote, his papers, he wrote a paper on the evils of materialism, he wrote another paper on politics, brace yourself, ready . As a noble profession. David beam was slightly idealistic. He also wrote a paper entitled indiana has many charms to the eye. It was only one page. One page. Mr. Beam, come on, man, thats a book. That is an absolute book. We have had some interesting talks here already about the politics of the 1850s, we have talked about the territorial crisis and the expansion of slavery and now i want to Say Something about free labor ideology and im going to tell you right now thats a euphemism, its a euphemism that we continue to parrot today, its a euphemism that allows us to look at this war as a war between saints and sinners, the saints of course being the northerners. Is there such a thing as free labor . No. Is there such a thing as free land . No. But david beam believed in that message and the message of free labor ideology is quite simple, it is the belief that if a man has access to land oh, wait a minute, a white man has access to that land, that through hard work, through frugality and good moral living he can move himself up the social ladder. He who embodied that . Antibiot abe lincoln. To a certain degree that was the story of the beam family. Came from kentucky, left kentucky, cant blame them for doing that, can you . If youre from kentucky im from indiana we all get these jokes, right . We all do it. David beam comes up and he is, yeah, in many ways a selfmade man. He wrote he wrote about that great promise because he believed that the United States was an exceptional experiment in republicanism. That word exceptionalism is a dirty word amongst historians these days, i guess i get it, what i dont get is this what i dont get it when people at the time believed that the United States was exceptional, seems to me that we should try to understand why they thought that. Beam did. He absolutely did, but he was concerned. He was worried. Worried that the slave power, weve talked about this yesterday, but for our cspan audiences i will quickly just say that the notion of a slave power, very conspiratorial, that the great planner class where its wealth, with its power would go into the west and that that land that should be open and available to free white men to build sturdy farms. No, the slave Holding Class that they would create a plantation society, they would push them off to the margins. And in one of david beams papers he wrote this i knew i was forgetting something. There we go. Look at that first line, the noble free white man back in the day thats redundant, is it not . Thats what they believe all white men were. Noble free white man only asks for a little land to build a humble home, but the slave power of the south scornfully denies his requests and spits in his face. There is some northern honor for you. Spits in his face, calling him a mudsill and a greasy mechanic. That word mudsill, that was in essence introduced by james hammon of south carolina. James hammon in a speech he said that every society has a laboring class and in the south that laboring class of course was enslaved people and to do the dirty work of capitalism they were called free labor. How about calling it wage labor. To do the dirty work of wage labor in the north, they had poor white folks doing that. Thats what hammon said. This word, mudsill, it stuck. It stuck. It stuck. And i dont know if Michael Woods is with us, but if some of you are taking notes, Michael Woods did a fantastic blog post, those words almost never come out of my mouth, fantastic blog post but its very good and its on the site here, society of civil war historians, it is the organization that mainly attracts academics, but certainly if you want to be brave and bold join up. Whoops, i dont know what happened to my lets go back. There we go. And Michael Woods did a fantastic job in talking about how mudsill became this powerful rhetorical tool that, again, stuck with average northerners and if you of course remember in our most recent election what word stuck in the clinton campaign, deplorables, right. It back hired. Im not making any political judgment thats just the hard fact of it. Again, read Michael Woods peace, think about the society of civil war historians, i think it would be worth your time. Now, very quickly, david beam hes antislavery to the core, i dont really know any sense of his racial views, im sure they were not enlightened, but you cannot be surprised that david beam in 1861 as a supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party that as soon as ft. Sumpter was fired upon he joined and, in fact, organized the First Company from owen county to get into the 14th indiana. They saw some action in West Virginia and it is unfortunate in those 1861 campaigns we have no letters from mahala. Nothing. We dont hear from her at all. But we can because of the advantages of micro history we can reconstruct their cultural world, and i have this political cartoon that should come up right now. There we go. Political cartoon, of course, pressuring men to join the ranks and have a Woman Holding her husband on her lap, she is consoling him with the words he shouldnt go to this horrid war wifey tifey. I didnt think i would ever Say Something like that in a talk before. From his wifey tifey and spoil his pretty mustache. So he shouldnt. Sweet little boy, he shall have a petitcoat. Stay at home. Look, i find this fascinating because they are trying to portray the woman as politically not even naive, just empty. Vapid. But, in fact, what . She clearly women had tremendous political power, tremendous political influence and obviously mahala beam tried to sway her husbands decisions. But its clear that mahala did what . She rejected this. She rejected it. Again, the power of micro history. These dominant themes that totalize our historical narratives, what can good micro history do . It can rip right through it. It can rip right through it and it then gives us multiple narratives. Thats what we seek. We dont want a dominant narrative out there, we want multiple narratives and mahala gives us just that. I have to be honest, im not sure why she defied these gender conventions. Im not sure why she never wrote these supportive letters. We only have two letters from her, thats it. Its clear that she just wanted beam to be home. I suspect she thought that a married mans place was not at the front, that that was the job of a single man. Maybe thats part of it. I also saw recently a letter from beam. So some of beams materials are still coming into the Indiana Historical society in dribs and drabs. Its a letter, i believe its in 63 in which beam hes not clear about a controversy in mahalas family. It appears that maybe one of her brothers tried to avoid the draft and had to leave owen county and the town spencer in disgrace. Thats suggested. So that may be out there, so maybe mahala came from a family that was more democratic in its leanings, thats possible. Also we should note that mahala had a brother that joined the 14th indiana, he came to the regiment in december of 1862. He wasnt in the army, i think, not even two months before he contracted a fatal illness and died. Im sure that certainly figured into her thinking. Im going to stress it again, i dont hear mahalas voice enough. This is, though, a letter, one of the surviving ones, that she wrote to david. This is in spring of 1863. It makes me nearly right sick it makes me right sick to think about you not coming home. I just cannot get over it. Even if i knew that you would get home safe in the spring, i would not want you to stay in the service until then. My dearest, this is all just because i desire so much to be with you. Now, i want to make a very quick point. Obviously this is not what david wanted to hear, but i found time and time again this tension that existed between soldiers and their wives, that tension often was because the men wrote letters, letters that too often described soldering as this great heroic act. A war that you might say is sanitized. And then the responses that they received from their loved ones often did not capture or i should say adequately express appreciation and understanding for the physical and emotional suffering that was going on in the army. Do you see how the soldiers in not transmitting, in not depicting the war as realistically as they could, had set up that situation where this gulf of understanding was absolutely inevitable and thats in part what was happening i believe with the beams. This is davids response to mahalas letter. My dear, you are not quite patriotic enough. You say in one of your letters that you wish all your friends were out of the service. I would say mahala is deeply political, would you not . Well, i will say that i wish all of mine were in it who are able to stand it, and if they were, i would wish them good luck and give them all the praise their deeds might merit. If they were brave, i would be proud of them. If they were cowards, i would deny them. But i am glad to know that nearly all my friends in the war who ought to be and am proud to know that they have always borne themselves well. But i will quit the subject for i know you would say please dont talk so. All right. Again, power of micro history. We need more context and need the context of indiana at war. Were speaking about the midwest. All of you know it was a badly divided area between democrats and republicans. Some of the more outspoken critics of the war called copperheads, the state of indiana had lets just say a governor who had firm control of the reigns of power. And that of course is oliver p. Morton. Though witnessed in fall of 1862 a political landslide against his party, the democrats came in, they got virtually every important post in state government, got control of the state legislature, in congress sent more democrats than republicans. What did governor morton do . He pretty much pushed them out of the political game. He did not recognize them, consult them. And you can only imagine the outrage this violation of democracy in which democrats in indiana said theres the tyranny in indianapolis, we have the tyranny in washington, d. C. , lincoln, morton, all they care about, the draft and draft to fight a war that was supposed to be for union and now it is for emancipation. I think that historians are coming to terms with the fact that the Copperhead Movement was a serious threat against the union war effort. Ill give you one example. My favorite county in indiana, brown county, indiana, my dad was born, still have family down there. Beautiful place. Brown county, indiana, 1863. There was a war rally, lots of republicans and some soldiers home on leave were all there who showed up, some democrats, protesters, broke up the rally and shot and killed a Union Soldier who was on leave at the rally. But yall know, folks, weve never been more divided as a people until today, right . We have never been more divided, proving again that americans sense of history goes back how far . Maybe two weeks, right . Possibly two weeks. What we know a lot about, im getting antsy, i need to get on twitter and see how Kevin Durants achilles injury is coming along. I have been shocked. Leave the poor guy alone. Thats all you hear about. The achilles injury, who is responsible for it. I blew up my achilles injury. I can tell you why it happens. Because your body sometimes just what, gives out. But it is filled in the news. My point again being that the sense, again, what we mean by being a divided people. I cant recommend enough, nicole etch in son was on the panel, a generation at war. I am biased. It is clear i love my hoosier state. This is about putnam county, indiana. It is a fantastic book. It digs deep into putnam county, allows you to get altitude to understand the north at war. I cant say enough good things about this book and the level of research and the excellent writing. It is a fantastic piece of scholarship. So being refused to give mahala credit for formulating her own political views. Think about that a moment. Why . Smart guy. He loved her. He respected her. He could not imagine she could articulate her own opinions on her own because he, in fact, gave her credit for that. Well, that would just suggest that her lack of patriotism was a defect in her womanly makeup. Struggle. Even more troubling, to acknowledge her opinions as her own is to also acknowledge that his male authority, his power, his control over that household was under question. So youve got to find another reason. Beam did. He believed that she was surrounded by traitors, by copperheads. They had gotten to her ear. She couldnt help herself because in owen county when you breathed in that air, you breathed in the air of what . The air of sedition. After the battle of frederik where david beams regimen, would give you now the fun hoosier fact for the day, are you ready . Fun hoosier fact, commanded by Nathan Kimball from indiana, again first brigade to attack maries heights and the famous stonewall. Nathan kimball was from fredericksburg, indiana. There you go. The audience didnt seem moved by that at all. Im disappointed. Beams regiment charged that open plain. You all know the result, the disaster at fredericksburg, and this is what he wrote to his wife after the battle. Now dear, there are great many around you who are enemies to the government and secretly rejoice at every failure to our arms. The consequence is they constantly exaggerate every reverse, and say but little about our victories. Im sure mahala is saying what victories. It is december of 1862. They find fault with everything connected with the war and do all they can to discourage those who have friends in the army. All that disheartens me is to know there are so many cowardly and dishonest people at home. The other thing that frustrated beam was mahalas circumstances, her financial welfare, it was not challenged by his departure into the army. Theres nothing that struck me harder writing this book than what a mans entry into military service did for the women left at home, north and south. Particularly poor women. Mahala never faced any kind of financial crisis. In fact lived with her parents until i believe until 1863. Time and time again i come to the conclusion often when we think about in history and civil war and you know how academics are so interested in power and thats almost always a good thing, that too often we have looked at these relationships of power and weve emptied them of emotions and love and of strong connections. And the beams had that. And all these other men did as well. So when they wrote to their wives and they instructed their wives do this on the farm, take care of this. Yes you could say its just a reassertion of patriarchy. I guess, but lets not overlook the fact of the great physical distance that separated men and women for most of these people the first time in their lives. Imagine again the emotional demands placed on both parties. But he was really frustrated with her. I think i havent got a letter from you without you saying that you couldnt stand to be separated from me so long and that its so hard for women to be so far from their husbands and so forth. Besides your situation is favorable compared to that of many other women and you think your case is hard. Many others have reason to despair. How is it the wives of over 100 large families to take care of, they can stand it as they have to. Most certainly you can do the same. I want to make a final point about this because this portrait emerging is coming across as spoiled, selfcentered, unpatriotic. Can go so far as saying it makes her unpolitical. We dont hear enough from her. We dont know the anguish she felt when she learned about her brother dying. We dont know what happened within her own household with her parents and with her brothers. We know none of that. And so i would encourage us to sort of pull back from any harsh judgments and to remind ourselves of what i said earlier, the great chasm, physical chasm that separated men and women, that made it so difficult for women to be able to grasp, to be able to understand what was happening to their men. They were beholden to rumor, rumor. And you can only imagine the great uncertainty that pervaded her life. And nothing and i mean nothing i think better exemplifies the gap in communication than when it came to david beam trying to depict, explain what he had endured in battle. Told you before what micro history can do. It blows up, blows up the standard explanations. Theres a good example of it is beans letters that follow antietam because he admitted he was scared, he was confused and even suggested he wasnt certain there was a higher power reaching down and controlling affairs on earth. He expressed all that, all that to mahala, and now well get even more micro. Were going to get a little more micro here and just focus on antietam. James hope, Union Veteran who did these paintings long after the war. This is the painting that depicts the charge against the sunken lane. Many of you have been there. You know there were these grand frontal attacks that struck North Carolina and alabama soldiers and maybe some georgians as well, but mostly alabama and North Carolina in the sunken lane. Beams regiment participated in that. Beams regiment suffered greatly in that combat. At the end of the day fighting there was probably two to three hours, the 14th indiana started antietam. His first letter was simply a statement of survival. 181 men. Beam did his first of seven letters composed in the following month after ante tam. My dear wife, yesterday we fought a terrible battle. I came out safe after being engaged from sunrise till dark. 19 are wounded, several mortally. Last night we laid on the battlefield. It was a horrible battle and providence, providence strangely strangely protected me. Strangely protected me. Note his lack of certainty. Theres the original one, again. The Indiana Historical society, thats where the original is. September 19th he wrote this did i say the 19th . Thats correct, the 19th. Yesterday i wrote you a very brief note to let you know i was safe though you may not get it. Im very anxious that the friends should hear from the boys in my company knowing that they are all full of anxiety at their fate. Now, he apparently put down the letter and then he added a post script. I want you to put yourself in the place of mahala and i want you to imagine how chilling these words must have been when she read them. Oh, the rush and roar of battle. I wonder if the dreadful sounds will ever get out of my ears. On the 20th david beam was a little more subtle. That letter handwriting is not so jittery and more legible obviously as well and even described what he did. He walked the battlefield but first, first he visited the hospital. He saw many of his soldiers, his comrades. He said in a straightforward manner to his wife that they were suffering terribly and he expected many of them would die. He then walked the field and he was appalled by what he had seen. The union dead had already been buried. But there were many confederates and theres one of those photographs. The famous one, youve all seen it, its identified as areas directly across from the brigade. I am a Firm Believer these men did not feel in these spots. Theyd been moved to this location for burial. But still ghastly and overwhelming, still shocking even to the eye today. Seeing the dead, it forced beam to again think about why he survived. Hes absolutely mystified by this and he wrote, when i reflect what a terrible ordeal we have passed through and how many have fallen around me i feel very thankful that i have been so remarkably preserved. I presume that at least a halfdozen men were killed within six yards of me and some of them fell at my feet. One of those fallen was lieutenant porter lundy. It was his best friend in the army. He referred to him as his better half. He loved porter lundy, he was open about that. Porter lundy was hit in the head by a shell fragment. He died instantly. He then wrote to his wife. Today i have to perform a sad duty in writing to the wife of lieutenant lundy. Poor woman i scarcely know in what terms to convey the dreadful news to her and her two little children. Survive, her widow, and again our cspan audiences probably arent aware of the fact we just dont sit here and listen to lectures and have discussions, we go to the battlefield on monday. A bunch of you will be coming with me and well go on the battlefield and stand where the 14th fought and im going to pull out the letter that david beam wrote to lieutenant lundys widow. Theres nothing like it, right . Power of place when you connect it to a document. So the ups and downs continued for being even after his regiment left the battlefield. On september 28th he confided he could barely write because his head was too full of bumblebees. In the days that followed he contracted a fever, he felt very anxious. We would call it trauma. He didnt have the language, medical knowledge to be able to diagnose himself. It is all connected to antietam. He didnt know why. Things got so bad he had to leave the regiment, check himself into a home in harpers ferry, his weight declined to 120 pounds. Im still quite weak, my nerves are all unstrung and it requires an effort to make my pen go right. He received a letter from hala, but it appears she was unmoved by all the letters of antietam. This is beam writing back to hala. He has received a letter from her, we dont know the contents, but hes clearly unhappy. You wont hardly believe when i tell you one third of your letter october 4th is taken up by complaining that some of fathers folks received a letter one day when you didnt happen to get one. Now im willing for you to complain when you feel like it, but if you believe i tell the truth when i say i write two letters a week dont you think often enough and dont you think it would save you some labor in writing to leave your complaints out and make your letters that much shorter . Im going to fast forward a little bit and simply say if you can imagine the defeats that followed that the situation between them grew more and more tense. His letter from fredericksburg is beautifully composed and he is trying to convey what his men endured and hoping of course that would appeal to her sympathies. She wins out. David beam did not reenlist in 1864. Its largely because he contracted malaria in the fall of 1863. He never really got back into the field for much time. In the spring of 64 they were doing picket duty. For whatever reason they had to wade the river, that coldwater didnt do his system any good. He went home a little bit for recruiting but he never gets into the field. There was a rumor he was going to reenlist the summer of 1864. As you can imagine mahala got wind of that rumor and she scolded him for it, and this is so important, and its key to what i found in this book that a sense of duty is not some great abstraction that made civil war soldiers fight in predictable ways. In fact pragmatism, which gave men a flexibility to define duty as they saw it, and david beam said that he had done his part, and so he came home. Of course mahala im sure secretly said im responsible for this and came home and theres a reunion that late summer of 1864. Now, as all of you can imagine its a perilous task to judge anyones marriage, but to get behind those closed doors, who in the world could possibly know whats going on. Theres intimate dynamics. We dont know that. Evidence is too fractured. Just cant make any hard conclusions about it. But but it appears to me that they were able to makeup. There was enough peace for them after the war to have three children and then after that a small herd of grandchildren followed. And here it is. The home of the beams. Id say he did all right for himself. Its not there, how about that . A blank. He did really well. There it is. Theres beams home, spencer, indiana, a spectacular place. Spencer is one of those rural towns its of course struggling economically but still a lovely area. And of course fate would have it, on the other side of the house is a modern development. And the street that borders this property is named, ready, lee street. Lee street, yeah. The final insult. And now here is the beam union and there it is 1894. If i try to use this little light on this okay, so theres david beam right there in the center. And then right above him theres mahala and theres the whole family. Theres a picture which we all know especially if youre on facebook or instagram, we all know behind that picture looks a very different reality. And that reality for david in particular was one of a trying time and we know that because of a system in which he had to make an application, he had to describe his condition. His very first application in 1886 when he was 48 years old, he wrote that there was still so much swimming in his head. And that his eyes were wandering. Beam also wrote when he reapplied for a pension ten years later, 1896, he was often confined to his room for eight weeks at a time. The attending physician said that beam was poorly nourished and prematurely had aged. 1906 reported that beam was a blearyeyed feeble old man with joints stiffened by rheumatism. We see no evidence of vicious living in this case. Its difficult for us to imagine those final years for david beam and his wife, those long stretches, though, mahala was likely by his side offering conversation, offering comfort. Loved to know what they talked about, love today know if they ever made peace with the war, but we can only hope for this. We can only hope that beam, he was able to hold his wifes hand, have his children and grandchildren by his side as he looked out that window. To his beloved spencer, indiana. And that the words he wrote after fredericksburg, that it reentered his consciousness. I think i would never be a soldier if i had no dear ones to fight for. Were there none at home for whom i had affection or regard, i would remain where i could, enjoy myself best. But feeling as i do that i have so many whom i love and who love me in return, i take more pleasure in contributing all i can to maintain for them good laws, free institutions and a Firm Government that i can find anywhere else. In other words, if i love no one, i would stay at home. But loving not only one but others, too, i am now in the field fighting for one of the best governments in the world. Thank you. [ applause ] my question is not so much specifically related to this talk but in general. Yeah, the importance for you and all historians of primary documents, letters, et cetera. What happens in the future now when we dont write letters really any longer . Everythings on the internet, its deleted with the push of a button. Where does your research go . Ill cut to the chase here and first to say im not obviously an expert on that. Im going to keep flagging my wife whos a professional archivist that can speak to this more than i could. Yes, there is a concern about this personal and private correspondence but theres a lot of emails out there and there are a lot of archivists thinking about how you can digitally save and record that material. How to wade through it is going to be to me one of the great challenges, but i will not despair. Ill have lots of material to work with. It might not be as intimate and beautifully written as this that you just encountered but therell be stuff out there. Yes . Im calling you on your teaser. How did hoosiers get their name . What i learned in fourth grade indiana history, she said supposedly when people were passing through indiana and they knocked on a strangers door that the person would say whos there, and they ran it together and thats how you get hoosier. Im sorry, i wish i could make up a better story for you. There you have it. Would you say beams experience was particularly northern or such things had happened on both sides of the war . So i think thats an excellent question because certainly we can find parallels between union and confederate couples at war. Those parallels sometimes, though, can prevent us from seeing the profound differences and ill just name a few very quickly. First, the obvious. For the most part the war is fought in the south, and so those couples have to contend in the south with the presence of an invading army. And two, the system of slavery, and again lets not get too excited here. I understand most southerners didnt own slaves but they still lived within a society with which slavery was the dominant Economic Institution and we learned from amys talk and others that we know that slave property, quotes around that, we know that slave property had a mind of its own. We know with the presence of union armies that that social system started to break down. Southern couples had to contend with that. Though well see although parallels, ill give you one quick one, the parallels are local communities providing relief and supports for the wives of their soldiers on both sides. Its always amusing to me to people who want to hold out the confederacy as this great beacon of states rights and local autonomy. They have a welfare system to try to help sustain these women and their children while these husbands are away. I want to say that point again. If you want to think about what these men were experiencing, if you want to try to understand their interior world not for a moment, not for a moment should you forget about the household. Not for a moment because im telling you this, soldiers never forgot about it. They never forgot about it. The household, it permeated their lives and understandably so and also a tugofwar, right . Tug on peoples emotions, but we could see that david beam, it was possible for him to continue to think about this war on grand idealistic terms because you didnt have an invading army and you didnt have to worry about your wife starving. Did he carry on consistent correspondence with anybody else during the war . And if he did, did the tone and content how he told the story of the war differ from the way he told it to his wife . Thats a great question. The big part of what i have come to a conclusion about, you cannot understand soldier letters without thinking about whos receiving it. And they are often scripted in very different ways. He certainly did. None of them survived, but i do know that he wrote accounts to indiana papers. Again, i want to stress these accounts, were going to go out on a second lane and were going to read some of these things and youre going to think, oh, my god, this a war without blood i should say a battle without blood and the last spasms of life. This is a battle without sounds. That script that beam wrote, this is why so many northerners then thought, oh, my god, our men are fighting this great war of heroism and then the soldiers get frustrated. You dont understand and appreciate our suffering and its in part because beam and these other men in the confederacy they desperately needed that affirmation from their women folk, and that affirmation is deeply political. I dont have anyone to call me off here. Ill keep going. Ill keep talking. Im the director. I can do what i want, right . Not really. Weve got time for about two more quick questions. He talked about the gulf between david and mahala. I just finished reading a nice book. These are our children. You may have heard of it. Where he writes to his sister and we had a great gulf between willy and his family at home. Ill give you the quick letter, one of the odd things and were going to discuss this letter at our dine in. Its the letter describing the battle of the crater where africanamerican soldiers called usct, United States colored troops, they fought at the crater. Many were not allowed to surrender, murdered in cold blood. Thats his word. He writes it seems cruel to murder them in cold blood, but the men have every reason to do so. At the end of the letter he says god has given us a spectacular victory. Hes writing that letter to his youngest sister, jenny peagram. Back in richmond. That letter, it is not a true war story. I beg all of you. Stop asking the question. Stop worrying whether its true, whether it captures the real war, thats a nonsense question. What that letter is important about is that he wants jenny, his sister to see him and see lees army not as a bunch of murderers but as veteran disciplined soldiers. Did he believe lees army was an army of professionals . Absolutely. Absolutely. We just heard this great talk on nat turner. They saw the use, the confederates did of soldiers. The killing of those men, thats an atrocity. Thats an absolute atrocity. But in peagrams mind and how he wanted people back home to understand it, thats a very different question. And seriously, i plead with all of you, when you look at letters now there is a purpose, there is an intent. And dont just say ive got to get my truth meter out and find what really happened. Good luck. Good luck because the job is take all these accounts and then put them together. Yes, something did happen. Im not denying that. But the perception, thats where i think focus should be. All right, one last question here. Okay, in all of the soldier letters that youve read you said theres no common soldier, but is that a Common Thread that you found in all the soldier letters you read . The only reason i say that is because i dont think it serves us well. We are looking for typicality. What we miss is just the variety of experiences, so if we just push that aside, there are ordinary guys out there and they shared a lot, and im not denying that. But for the fullest understanding we possibly could have is to cast that aside and embrace the fact there are so different ways these men experienced and wrote about the war. Amys in the back row over there. Shed say the same thing about enslaved people who ran off to refugee camps, a common runaway slave. Theres too many differences. Thats why i when you go on the battlefield, were going to do that with the script today, were going to give you two different experiences on the same place and youre going to say, man, i cant believe these people occupied the same historical ground at the same moment, but they wrote about it in very different ways. All right. Last question. Very quickly. Everyones eager, im standing in their way for lunch here. Ill make it quick. Micro history. Do you believe first of all micro history might be a new part of historiography and the second question, as a teacher, it seems like my professor mentor used to tell me theres not been an original idea in history in the last hundred years. Micro history seems to be something on the cusp because when you take, its like history from the bottom up or every man the historian. Its kind of like, you believe its a mixing of historiography at the High School Level . So, very quickly, i love everything you had to say. Micro history is really not new to the scene. The first micro history, many of you know the book, its stewarts history of pickets charge. How many of you read that book . Pickets charge. He calls it a micro history. The historians who got the attention and deservedly so are professors whove written on european history. They got most of the attention, but there are plenty of us who are working in micro history and i just want to stress that, yes, it can bring fresh interpretations. Yes, it can bring some original ideas. I dont think they often can how we think about the past in a radical way, but it certainly can give us new, as i mentioned before, peepholes. Ill say this. Why did you get interested in the past . You love the narratives and love the stories. And we all complain, even academics complain, why dont people read what we do . Because we dont write enough narratives. And i firmly believe you can do a micro biography, an event, a micro event, and from that you got a great story but a great story with ideas. Ideas that got a bite to them. Thank you, all, so much. Enjoy your lunch. 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 cspan3. Heres a look at our primetime schedule on the cspan networks. Starting at 9 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 cspan2, its booktv with authors who have written about guns and recent mass shootings. And on cspan3, its American History tv with program on the reconstruction era which followed the civil war. A