Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange, New Jersey

Imagine life without recorded music, movies, instantaneous communication. Even more basically, imagine life without electricity. The origins of our digital era with its amenities began during a great age of invention in the last quarter of the 19^th century, epitomized by Thomas Alva Edison. He and his team created products that continue to impact the lives of billions of people worldwide. In this posting, we will visit his red brick laboratory complex at West Orange, New Jersey. It is an incredible window into Edison and his empire of inventions, some of which started in this laboratory. From lighting the night to providing recorded music and theater for consumption by a mass audience, Edison revolutionized our world.

In the Chemistry lab building at Edison NHP (Photo by Hunner)

Born in 1847, Edison was the youngest of seven children and did not speak until he turned four. As a teenager, he worked on the Grand Trunk Railroad selling candies and newspapers, and perhaps his deafness began then, when a station master boxed his ears in punishment for a fire he started during a chemical experiment in a baggage car. Later, Edison commented: “Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises that the listeners do not perceive.”  

While a teenager, he learned to decode telegraph messages. In the 1860s, telegraphs connected the country as messages sped across distances that previously took weeks and even months to travel. Telegraphy, like digital technology today, transformed the country. Here’s another similarity: the dots and dashes in Morse Code share the binary cypher of the digital’s 0s and 1s.

Telegraph key with Leyden jar batteries (Photo by Hunner)

In 1863, Edison became an itinerant telegraph operator, filling in for the operators who left to serve in the Signal Corps during the Civil War. He wrote down news reports, sent business orders, and coordinated the safe passage of the trains. While there, Edison invented a machine which recorded rapidly incoming messages and then replayed them more slowly. As the energy that transported the telegrams, electricity attracted Edison’s inventive mind.

Electricity has been around a long time. The Greeks noticed a weird attractive charge when they rubbed amber. William Gilbert, a 17^th century English physician named static electricity “elektron,” the Greek name for amber. Electrical innovators started storing this electricity in glass containers filled with water. In 1746, Pieter van Musschenbrock of the University of Leyden touched such a jar and was jolted to the floor. These early batteries were subsequently called Leyden jars. In 1831, the Englishman Michael Faraday rotated wire between magnetic poles and produced an electrical charge. Using this knowledge, he created “dynamos,” which generated powerful electrical currents.

Back in the telegraph office at Western Union, Edison discovered how to send messages over a single line in both directions, boosting the traffic that existing lines could carry.  At the time, the major users of telegraphs included railroad companies, news organizations, and stock market firms. Stock prices came out as dots and dashes on a paper ticker tape which Edison then transformed into spoken words. From this, he recorded “Mary had a little lamb” onto a tin foil cylinder, and the recording industry began.

Edison claimed to make a small invention every ten days and a big one every six months. All told, he held a world record 1,093 patents which included among ones for phonographs, incandescent light bulbs, generation and distribution systems to light homes and businesses, nickel-iron-alkaline storage batteries, multiplex transmitting telegraph systems, early motion picture viewers, electrographic vote recorders, and cement. He was also working on making synthetic rubber.

Here’s his greatest invention— bringing light to night. True, gas lights illuminated buildings and streets, but they caused fires. Edison’s challenge was two-fold. First, make a low wattage incandescent light bulb. Second, build a network that safely transmitted hazardous electrical currents across city blocks and into buildings. In 1878, he carbonized a thin thread of cotton, attached it to platinum posts and then vacuum sealed it in a glass bulb. Passing a current through it lit the bulb which burned for hours with very little use of electricity. Edison prepared to show the public his latest invention.

On New Year’s Eve in 1879, people thronged to Edison’s lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey to witness the forty lamps that lit up its buildings and grounds. Biographer Mark Essig described the scene: “those assembled were among the first people in the world to see the marvelous glow of incandescent light. No flame, no flicker, no soot, no fumes—just pure steady light.”[1] With a workable light bulb, Edison then announced that he would build a commercial station in New York. He set out to “subdivide the light” for homes and businesses.

To safely electrify the tip of Manhattan, Edison had to build a reliable generator and a distribution system of wires, conductors, and insulators. Using his campus at Menlo Park, the electrical team tested different generators. They also coated copper wire with various types of insulation, strung the wire on poles, and sent electricity through the system. After months of trial and error, Edison successfully activated the Menlo Park system on November 2, 1880. Now he was ready to electrify New York City.   

With the confidence and the drive needed to make electricity a commercial success, Edison chose a fifty-one square block segment of lower Manhattan, centered around Wall Street. He installed a dynamo at the station on Pearl Street and then proceeded to bury his conducting lines underground, resulting in frequent delays and mounting costs. Nonetheless, on September 4^th, 1882, the generators at the Pearl Street station spun up, and lights flickered on at the office of one of Edison’s main financial backers, Drexel, Morgan and Company. Only fifty-nine customers that day could switch on their lights, but incandescent lighting spread quickly through New York City.

Edison moved the invention factory from Menlo Park to West Orange in 1887. The lighting business’s success helped finance the expansion. This complex (which is the Edison National Historical Park) holds buildings for experiments in chemistry, metallurgy, a powerhouse, a main laboratory, and the Black Maria, Edison’s movie studio.  The main three story lab building has a library, heavy and precision machine shops, a supply room, and a recording studio.

Edison's headquarters at West Orange. The  five story building behind where his inventions were commercially manufactured. (Photo by Hunner)

Edison's library at West Orange (Photo by Hunner)

Today, visitors can see many of the machines and materials that Edison and his team used.

You can look into the storeroom which held everything from human hair and exotic plants to metal tools and platinum. As Edison noted, the supply room held “everything from elephant hide to a Senator’s eyeball.” The rest of the first floor is overwhelmed with all types of heavy machinery and tools. The generator at one end of the large room ran large overhead belts that powered the lathes, drills, saws, and grinders to build anything from a lady’s watch to a locomotive.

The historic photo on left shows how  the heavy equipment workshop has not changed. (Photo by Hunner) 

The top floor was devoted to sound. A Steinway piano sits in one room surrounded by phonographs and wax cylinders that recorded music while another has a wide range of megaphones to broadcast sound. The largest megaphone in this room stands eight feet nigh.

A megaphone and the cylinders for recorded sound projection sound  (Photo by Hunner) 

As I walked past the cabinets that held light bulbs, a variety of phonographs, movie projectors, a miner’s safety cap with light, and numerous other products of Edison’s imagination, I realized that these were the first jukeboxes, the first electric violins and guitars, the first movie projectors, and the first I-Pods. Most of the electrical devices so essential to our lives today have some DNA from Thomas Edison.

Amplified violins (Photo by Hunner)

Tucked into a corner of the Edison Park is Black Maria, the first movie studio in the world. This weirdly shaped building showcases Edison’s pioneering efforts in creating motion pictures. In 1888, Edison and his team created the Kinetoscope which used a revolving shutter to expose still images of a moving object onto celluloid film.

Edison's movie studio, the Black Maria (Photo by Hunner)

By 1894, the West Orange team turned to the commercial application of moving pictures. They built a wooden cabinet that allowed individuals to view things like horses galloping or trains. Edison balked at making a movie projector, thinking that the market was in these penny arcade shows.[2]

A kinetoscope-- notice the viewer at top for one person (from wikimedia)

In addition to what he invented, Edison also changed the way inventors worked. As biographer Paul Israel notes: “As he invented a system of electric lighting, Edison was simultaneously reinventing the system of invention.”[3] While he turned his good ideas into ground breaking inventions, he also created the corporate invention factory that protected those new ideas and turned them into profitable consumer products.

He also looked to the future and foresaw the need for alternative energy: “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind and tide! ….  I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” From practical products to visions for tomorrow, Edison revolutionized the world we live in. He helped create our electronic and now digital world, and his diverse inventions continue to define and inform our era.

Edison died in 1931, but this lab continued until 1935. Then it closed, and everything in it mothballed. The family eventually turned the campus over to the NPS in the early 1960s. Upon inventorying the site, the NPS found over 400,000 objects on the grounds, from a rhinoceros horn in the stock room to the massive machinery in the main building to phonographs and movie projectors. Many historic sites have buildings and artifacts that are replicas of the original. Not here. These are the actual buildings, labs, and equipment that Edison and his team of inventors and engineers worked with as they changed our world.

Edison's elevator from the heavy equipment shop floor (Photo by Hunner)

In 1963, Congress established the Edison National Historic Site which included the lab complex and Edison’s nearby private resident, Glenmount. In 2009, Congress redesignated the site as the Thomas Edison National Historic Park.

Next week, we return to the Civil War and visit some of the early battlefield parks.

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[1] Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair, 39.

[2] Josephson, Edison, A Biography, 284-90.

[3] Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention,167.

Notes from the road, October 17, 2016

This week, I drove to history from Indian Removal in the 1830s through several Civil War sites, a whiskey distillery, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and ended with the Space Race in Huntsville. It’s been a busy week.

I started out going over the Smokies with a stop at the Museum of the Cherokee Indians in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Depictions of the three Cherokee leaders, Ortenaco, Cunse Slote, and Wogi, who went to England in 1762 to meet the English King. (From exhibit at the Museum of the Cherokee Indians)

Since I passed through Oklahoma at the end of July, I have crossed the Trail of Tears and wanted to see what the Cherokee Museum said about it. Here’s an interesting irony. A Cherokee ally saved Andrew Jackson’s life at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend but then as president in the 1830s, he forced some 16,000 Cherokees from their homelands to walk to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. They walked across nine states and over 2,000 miles, marshaled by local and state militias. Estimates vary, but between 2,000 to 6,000 perished along the way. Later in the week, I stopped by the Cherokee Removal Memorial Park in Tennessee where 90% of the deportees crossed the Tennessee River.

The crossing of the Tennessee River at Blythe's Ferry, Tennessee (Photo by Hunner)

I got a taste of the Smokies at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. You might remember Kilmer from the poem he wrote called “Trees.” It begins “I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.” He later volunteered for World War I where he was killed by a sniper in the Second Battle of Marne. I walked through old growth trees and breathed in the rich poetry of the forest.

Old growth trees at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. Note the person to the right of the trunk.
(Photo by Hunner)

I also dove into World War II and the role that Oak Ridge in Tennessee played in creating an atomic bomb. I went on a public bus tour and saw the second nuclear reactor ever built. I am an atomic historian with a specialty on Los Alamos, so I was glad to learn more about the role that Oak Ridge played in enriching the uranium that went into the atom bomb. Thanks Stephen for the informative tour.

The second atomic reactor preserved at Oak Ridge. (Photo by Hunner)

In Chattanooga, I visited the Chickamauga National Military Park where Confederates routed Union forces in September 1863. Chattanooga sat as a key gateway to the South. The Confederates won Chickamauga and forced the Union army to retreat to Chattanooga until reinforcements could arrive. Come they did up the Tennessee River on steamboats, and at the end of November, General Grant and his soldiers counterattacked. They dislodged the Confederates from the top of Lookout Mountain in the Battle Above the Clouds. The next day, Union troops made a mad dash up Missionary Ridge which sealed a stunning victory and opened up the Deep South to Sherman’s invasion the next year.

The battlefield at Chickamauga (Photo by Hunner)

Viewing Chattanooga from Lookout Mountain. In the distance, Missionary Ridge is the low dark line  just beyond the city.
(Photo by Hunner)

Atop Missionary Ridge with Lookout Mountain looming in the background.
(Photo by Hunner)

I ran into several parkgonauts in Chattanooga. High above the city at the Point Park Visitors’ Center on Lookout Mountain, I ran into Kaylin and Justin, sister and brother Junior Rangers. They both liked the nature parks, especially Yellowstone. They have visited about twice as many parks as me. It is great to see such young parkgonauts.

Kaylin and Jason proudly show off their Junior Ranger outfits and badges.
(Photo by Hunner)

Also at Point Park, I talked with Brad Atkins from Indianapolis. His family specializes in Civil War parks and again, they have hit about twice as many of those parks as I have.

Having lunch at the Pickle Barrel back in Chattanooga, I struck up a conversation with a young man in an NPS ball cap. Patrick worked on trails at the Grand Canyon last summer and now is doing the same along the Natchez Trace. His crew goes out for nine days, camping and making trails, and then they get five days off. This just goes to show that there’s something for all of us in the parks. I am driven by U.S. history, others by a youthful embrace of our natural beauties, others by the Civil War,  and some to preserve nature by building trails. Good on all of you who enjoy our parks and historic sites.

For all those who ever wanted a free shot of Jack Daniels, here it is. (Photo by Hunner) 

I then stopped at the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Hey, whiskey is history too. As our guide Ron said: “Whiskey greases the wheels of politics.” Many frontier families supplemented their income by turning corn into whiskey as did Jack Daniels, who had his own distillery by the age of 16. In 1866, Daniels was first in line to register his distillery, making it the oldest such one in the country.   I had an informative, entertaining, and a slightly intoxicating tour of how whiskey is made.

Tour guide Ron gives us a short lesson on the finer aspects of sipping Tennessee whiskey
(Photo by Hunner)

West of Lynchburg, I jumped onto the Natchez Trace Parkway to visit the grave of someone I have followed across the country—Meriwether Lewis. The co-leader of the Corps of Discovery was traveling on the Trace with the maps and journals from his trip to the Pacific and back when he stopped for the night at a log cabin. He was found dead the next morning, whether of foul play or by suicide is unknown.

The memorial over Meriwether Lewis's grave on the Natchez Trace Parkway.
(Photo by Hunner)

I next went to the place where Grant won a reputation for being a fighting general and won a welcome Union victory in the early part of the war. In April 1862, the Confederate Army under General Albert Sidney Johnston and the Union forces under General Ulysses Grant stumbled into each other at Shiloh Church. Grant wanted to capture the railroad hub of Corinth to the south. The resulting two-day battle claimed a staggering 3,500 men killed with another 20,000 wounded or missing. The victory at Shiloh opened up the Tennessee River for the Union and allowed steamboats coming down the Ohio River to land its soldiers deeper into the South. It also brought Grant to Lincoln’s attention who eventually appointed him in charge of the entire U.S. army.

Confederate cannons aimed at the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. (Photo by Hunner)

John Wesley Powell, who later had such an influence on the American West, lost an arm at Shiloh. His biographer, Wallace Stegner, described it like this: “Losing one’s right arm is a misfortune; to some it would be a disaster, to others an excuse. It affected Wes Powell’s like about as much as a stone fallen into a swift stream affects the course of the river. With a velocity as his, he simply foamed over it.”[1]

Powell led the first expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, rowing with his one arm.

South of Shiloh about thirty miles is Corinth, where the Confederate army retreated to after Shiloh.

The crossroads of the Charleston-Memphis Railroad and the Mobile-Ohio Railroad at Corinth, Mississippi.
(Photo by Hunner)

Corinth was like Chattanooga, a hub for railroad transportation into the south. The Confederacy’s longest east-west railroad line as well as the longest north-south route crossed here. In May 1862, Union forces attacked and forced the Confederates to abandon the town. The South tried to recapture it in October 1862 but failed.

Union forces occupied and fortified Corinth until the beginning of 1864, severing the east and west sections of the South and also cutting the Deep South from its northern states. Occupied Corinth also attracted "Contrabands,” slaves who had freed themselves and sought refuge with the Union Army. Eventually, 1,000 ex-slaves from Corinth’s Contraband Camp volunteered to fight in the Civil War as the 1^st Alabama Infantry Regiment of African Descent.

No photos from the Corinth Contraband camp exist but here is what it might have looked like. (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

Two of the 200,000 African American Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
(From the exhibit at the Civil war Interpretive Center)

After Corinth, I hooked back east since I wanted to stop by a couple of possible historic sites in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I first tried to find a Tennessee Valley Authority museum near the Wilson Dam. Muscle Shoals was the first headquarters of the TVA which electrified this region with hydroelectric power in the 1930s. I had no luck. Then I sought FAME, the music studio where Aretha Franklin recorded RESPECT and other songs. I did find it, but being Sunday, it was closed. “C. L. O. S. E. D. —Find out what it means to me.”

FAME Recording Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (Photo by Hunner)

On Monday, I spent the afternoon at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. They built rockets, humongous rockets. I talked with docent Bill Vaughn who worked on the environmental systems which helped humans live in space and reach the moon. With the stages of a massive Saturn V rocket hanging overhead, he broke down how a rocket that weighed 6,000,000 pounds escaped the earth. The first stage lit the candle with 600,000 gallons of fuel which burned in 2 1/2 minutes to produce 7,500,000 pounds of thrust. Having attained escape velocity from the earth, this part of the assembly disconnected and fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The fuel in the second stage burned enough to establish an earth orbit and then that fuel tank was jettisoned over the Indian Ocean. The third stage powered the module towards the moon and then peeled off into the cosmos about halfway there. I had forgotten the simplicity and the complexity of the Moon Shot. Thanks Bill for reminding me about that inspiring time. The Space and Rocket Center also holds Space Camps for students who are driven by science and adventure. I look forward to hearing about some of you getting us back on the moon in ten years.

Docent Bill Vaughn talked with me underneath the lunar module at the top of a Saturn V rocket. The third stage starts at the dark band above his head and runs back to the yellow circle, which begins the second stage. The first stage extends from where the banner hangs on the left to the doors seen at the end of the hall. (Photo by Hunner)

This coming week, Driven by History will continue to roll through the South. I will visit civil rights sites, a battlefield that dates to a war in the 1830s, and a  World War II air base. I am lucky to listen to so many good FM radio stations  playing blues, jazz, and local music in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Thanks NPR.

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[1] Wallace Stegner, Beyond the 100^th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, 17.

Fort Sumter National Monument, Charleston, South Carolina

From afar, Ft. Sumter looks like the stump of a tree cut off at its base. It was. From 1861 to 1865, tens of thousands artillery shells fell on or near it. I admit I was a bit disappointed. I had trouble imaging the drama and recreating the fort prior to April 1861. What helped was Paul, a guide on the ferry, who said that Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was a sister fort. Below is Fort Point last summer. Once I recalled that, I realized that I was looking at a stump of a fort, its fifty-five foot high walls demolished by Confederate and then Union bombardments.

Fort Sumter from the ferry (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Point, a sister to Fort Sumter (Photo by Hunner)

Charleston has perhaps the best harbor for a port along the Atlantic South coast. Founded in 1670, it helped shape the South and the country. Patriot soldiers fought off nine British warships who tried to capture the port in 1776. Native son Charles Pinckney helped draft the Constitution in 1787. As the port closer to Africa than most other colonies, it was the biggest slave market in the country.  A center for business and culture of the South, by 1790 Charleston was the 4^th biggest city in the new nation.

In downtown Charleston, the Old Slave Market tells the history of slavery, from Africans captured and crammed onto ships and suffering through the Middle Passage to slave markets to forced labor in harsh conditions. Many of the European colonies in North, South, and Central America imported more than 9,000,000 slaves to the New World.[1]

Northern states began to abolish slavery in the 1780s, and the U.S. Constitution banned the importation of slaves by 1808. But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 invigorated the South. With this machine, fifty times as much cotton could be cleaned than by hand. Since plantation owners needed more labor to grow and process cotton, a slave society grew.

Cotton harvesting (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

From 1789 to 1865, one million American born men, women, and children of African descent were bought and sold. The Old Slave Market notes that “splitting families was a business decision.”[2] By 1860, 4,000,000 slaves worked in the South. For more about slavery and the causes of the civil war, please go to these postings at Driven by History: African Burial Grounds and the causes of the Civil War.

In 1856, Charleston outlawed the outdoor auction of slaves, so the markets went indoors. In the four block area around the Old Slave Market, forty indoor marts sprang up. The building that houses the museum was one—Ryan’s Mart. The last auction at Ryan’s occurred on November 1863. In this building, a healthy man sold for around $36,000 in 2007 dollars, a woman, $ 32,000, and a girl between $21,000 to $26,000. In 1860, Charleston had a population of 44,000 including 14,000 slaves, and 3,000 free blacks.[3]

To protect Charleston's harbor, the U.S. built Fort Sumter in 1829 by dumping New England granite onto a sand shoal at the mouth of the harbor to create an island. To construct the fort, slaves made bricks and used them to make the massive walls. No one entered Charleston without sailing past the guns on the island.

Fort Sumter before the war (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Charleston was no stranger to protesting the federal government. During the Nullification Crisis in 1828 and again in 1832, South Carolina called for secession. It refused to pay taxes on imported manufactured goods. Such tariffs protected the northern states’ growing industries like textile factories, but penalized the southern states who produced the cotton. It also harmed the South’s trade relations with England. Vice President John Calhoun resigned, and federal troops arrived in Charleston to collect the back duties. Even though a compromise tariff calmed the waters in 1833, taxation continued to raise hackles in the new Republic.

Technology changed in the first half of the 19th century, not only in weaponry but perhaps just as important for armies this big, in transportation. Initially canals, then railroads and river traffic knitted the Republic together. Steamboats toted heavy loads of cargo and people up shallow rivers, and railroads did the same through the heart of the continent. These steam powered conveyances connected farms to markets, towns to cities, and during the war, battlefields to battlefields and soldier to soldier.

As the movement to abolish slavery in the North grew, a new national party emerged. The presidential election of 1860 saw a four-person race, including the first time the Republican Party offered a candidate- Abraham Lincoln. The Republican platform did not call for the abolition of all slavery, but did want to close off the western territories to it. Lincoln won as the vote splintered among the four men, and the South rose up to challenge the power of the federal government to limit their rights to own slaves.

The presidential and vice presidential candidates for the Republican Party in 1860
(From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

The Secession winter tore the country in two. Southerners argued about whether to stay in the Union or not. Addressing the South Carolina’s Democratic convention in 1860, J.S. Preston said: “Slavery is our King. Slavery is our Truth. Slavery is our Divine Right.”[4] That state seceded first on December 12, 1861, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in January, Texas in February (when the government of the Confederate States of America formed), Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina in April, and Tennessee in June.   

The North and the South organized their armed forces on massive scales, but to win with such large armies took time to figure out. New armies don’t win overnight. Organizing the training, the movement of troops, the supplying of food, ammunition, clothing, and medical support takes coordination. An army at dawn learns by the mistakes it makes.[5] Those mistakes cost men their lives, both in the early battles as well as in the missed opportunities that could have ended the war sooner, for either side. Few anticipated the wrath and sorrow that was descending on the people of the crumbling Republic.

And so, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, a civil war erupted. Confederate shells fell on the Union fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After South Carolina seceded, eighty-five Union soldiers under Major Robert Anderson bolted from Fort Moultrie and rowed over to Fort Sumter. There they holed up in a fort meant to be defended by 650 and waited for reinforcements.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861 (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Having been warned by Lincoln that a Union supply ship was due, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Fort Sumter fired on. On April 13, General P.G.T. Beauregard (one of Anderson’s students at West Point) opened up with his batteries from Fort Moultrie against Fort Sumter. The bombardment lasted for thirty-four hours, and then Anderson, low on men and supplies, surrendered.

Once the Confederacy had Fort Sumter, much of the blockade running that supplied the South with goods from Europe sought the safe harbor of Charleston. Davis stated: “Fort Sumter, where was first given to the breeze the flag of the Confederacy.” Lincoln had his own thoughts: “The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault on Fort Sumter.”[6]

The first state to secede, the first shots of the Civil War, and now a haven for Southern supplies, Charleston and South Carolina attracted the North’s ire. The Union focused on Fort Sumter as a key target. For twenty-two months, Union cannons from first sea and then land targeted the fort. A Confederate log book from the fort recorded the action: “Aug. 18, 1863- enemy opened fire 5 am to 7 pm. 876 shots and shells fired. 452 struck outside, 24, inside, 180 passed over.” In total, Union cannons shot more than 44,000 shells during its almost two year long bombardment. At the fort, 309 Southern soldiers died.

Confederate held Fort Sumter under attack (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Fort Sumter sparked the Civil War and was reduced to almost rubble. Standing on the rail of the ferry after the 1 ½ hour visit and watching it recede, I imagined an overlay of a multi-storied brick fortress rising out of the straits at the mouth of Charleston Harbor but saw a short stump, a symbol of the amputated country, of the veterans without limbs, and how the legacy of Civil War continues to impact the country.

The fort as the ferry sails back to Charleston (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Sumter joined the NPS as a National Monument in 1948 under President Truman. Fort Moultrie was acquired on May 1, 1963 and added to Fort Sumter.

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[1] From exhibit at Old Slave Market, SC. Web?

[2] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC. Web?

[3] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC,

[4] From the Fort Sumter exhibit at Liberty Square, Charleston, S.C.

[5] I borrowed this term from Rick Atkinson’s title of the same. He wrote about the Allied forces at the beginning of World War II in north Africa.

[6] Both quotes come from the exhibit at Fort Sumter.

Notes from the Road, October 10, 2016

After my side trip to Scandinavia, I returned to driving to history on Wednesday, Sept. 28 when I visited Manassas National Battlefield Park. The next day, I picked up the trailer at Shannon Farms (thanks again to the kind folks there for letting me store it and especially to Barbara and George for their hospitality) and on Thursday, spent the afternoon at Petersburg National Battlefield. Ranger Christopher immersed Kath from Maryland and me in an in-depth tour of the site. Immersed because at times, a torrential downpour drenched us. I am glad to say the storm did not dampen our spirits.

A tour of the Manassas Battlefield (Photo by Hunner)

A tour of the  trenches at the Petersburg Battlefield, in a downpour. (Photo by Hunner)

Christopher showed us three units of the park along the Dimmock Line, an earthen embankment that ran for thirty miles protecting Petersburg and Richmond in 1864-65. For 9 ½ months, Confederates and Union forces fought from trenches in a stalemate that lasted through that winter. We went to a reconstruction of a gabion where Christopher walked us through  attack and defense of such a fortified position. We also saw trenches from World War I used to train U.S. soldiers on their way to the front in Europe. Civil War Petersburg was a precursor to the trench warfare that happened in Flanders Field and other places during World War I.

The next day, I visited Colonial Williamsburg. As many of you know, I teach living history at New Mexico State University. But I had never spent time at Williamsburg, one of the premier living history parks in the country. They interpret this capital of Virginia in 1775, as revolutionary fervor fanned by some of the people from Williamsburg started to burst in the flames. I learned a lot about colonial life in the houses I went into, and a lot about the founding of our democracy at the State House. Then at the end of the afternoon, not having seen any first person interpreters, I stumbled on five African Americans sitting on a bench on the Duke of Gloucester Street in period costume. They portrayed slaves from the time period. In an accompanying blog this week, I write more about the causes of the Civil War.

Interpreters talking about slavery at Colonial Williamsburg (Photo by Hunner)

It took me a full day to drive from Virginia to Charleston, South Carolina. I was going to pay my respects to Kitty Hawk, but I got worried that Hurricane Matthew could curtail my coastal ramblings. One of my must-see parks is Fort Sumter NHS. So I by-passed the Outer Banks and went to Charleston and Fort Sumter on Sunday.

Painting of the shelling of Fort Sumter which started the Civil War (From exhibit at the fort)

Fort Sumter is a small place considering the big part it played in starting the Civil War. I took a ferry from Patriots Point where we motored under the bow of the venerable U.S.S. Yorktown, the aircraft carrier from World War II to Ft. Sumter. Driving by History will focus on the Civil War over the next few weeks so stay tuned.

The ferry to Fort Sumter motoring under the U.S.S. Yorktown (Photo by Hunner)

After Fort Sumter, I walked around Charleston, one of the prettiest cities in the country. The colonial style houses, the narrow cobblestone streets, and friendly people all contributed to its charm and authenticity. I was definitely in the South. I also decided to go to one of the forts at the mouth of Charleston Bay which fired on Fort Sumter so I drove around to Fort Moultrie.

I was looking forward to spending a couple of days at the Huntington Beach State Park, catching up on my writing and enjoying the beach. I cycled over to Brookgreen Gardens and followed their trail through the rice fields and the grounds where the slave village used to be.

The beach at Huntington Beach State Park, South Carolina several days before Hurricane Matthew hit (Photo by Hunner)

On a tour at Huntington Beach State Park, this alligator bellows, possibly a  warning of the impending hurricane.
 (Photo by Hunner)

When I got back to my trailer, a ranger knocked on my door and told me I would have to evacuate by noon the next day because of Hurricane Matthew. The news estimated that 1,000,000 were in the evacuation zone, so I decided to bug out that night and headed for a special hurricane evacuation center in Asheville—that is, at my brother Chuck and Annette, his wife’s, house. On the way, I stopped by King’s Mountain, an American Revolutionary war park which Thomas Jefferson said “turned the tide.”

At King's Mountain, we stop at the grave of the British officer Ferguson who led the Loyalist Americans. (Photo by Hunner)

While in Asheville riding out the hurricane, I popped over to Greenville, Tennessee and the Andrew Johnson NHS. Johnson took over the presidency after Lincoln was murdered, and he had a difficult time bringing the country back together after the Civil War. He was impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate in 1868-1869. A former student of the Public History Program at NMSU works there-- Stephanie Steinhorst. She is the Chief of Interpretation and Education, and it was great seeing her advance in the NPS. Well done Stephanie.

Former NMSU student Stephanie Steinhorst at the Andrew Johnson NHS in front of the photos of Yosemite that Lincoln saw. Afterwards, Lincoln signed an agreement to protect Yosemite,  which was the start of the National Parks. (Photo by Hunner)

Hurricane Matthew dropped only rain on Asheville so I was glad to be away from the force of its winds, rain, and surf. Hearing the news from the affected areas in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Haiti, I am lucky to be able to evacuate and find safe haven away from the storm. With perhaps 2,000 people dead in Haiti, and parts of these three states with their own deaths and massive flooding, I know that some of the places I enjoyed just a week ago in Charleston and Huntington Beach have taken an almost direct hit. The eye of Matthew came ashore twenty-five miles south of my campsite and about twenty-five miles north of Charleston. I hope they recover quickly.

Many thanks to Annette and Chuck for their southern hospitality—the home grown tomatoes, the micro-brews, and the arts and crafts of the area.

The entry by the Andrew Johnson NHS into the Halloween contest at Greenville, Tennessee (Photo by Hunner)

I leave on Monday, October 10 for the last part of my road trip to the East Coast and the South—here’s is a revised schedule of my travels. Of course, this itinerary is subject to change.

Week of Oct 10

Great Smoky Mountains NP, Tennessee

Manhattan Project NHP at Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Tennessee Valley Authority, Tennessee

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Parks, Tennessee

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Georgia

Week of Oct 17

Andersonville NHS, Georgia

Tuskegee Airmen NHS, Alabama

Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights Trail, Alabama

Week of Oct 24

Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail and Parkway, Alabama and Mississippi

Vicksburg NMP, Mississippi

New Orleans Jazz NHP, Louisiana

Acadian Village, Louisiana

Week of Oct 30

San Jacinto State Historic Park, Texas

Palo Alto Battlefield NHP, Texas

San Antonio Missions NHP, Texas

Fort Davis NHS, Texas

Return to Las Cruces, New Mexico

The Causes of the Civil War

Traveling around the East Coast since August, I have visited many NPS sites that commemorate the Civil War. To begin to understand that war, we have to discuss its causes. Even 150 years later, this raises disagreements and even high emotions. I want to say from the beginning that slavery was the main cause. The following blog weaves experiences I had at various sites with a history of slavery in the United States. Finally, I will offer some thoughts on why some continue to debate what caused the Civil War.

The historical park Colonial Williamsburg has a core of interpreters who portray people from 1775. On the Duke of Gloucester Street, Revolutionary hero General Knox rallied the crowd with his shouts for freedom. Hearing this, slave Jacob turned to me and asked: “How can you trust a man who cries for freedom but has slaves? A man can’t love freedom and slaves at the same time.” Benjamin, also sitting on the bench with Jacob, chimed in: “If my master, Mr. Witt, stood on these steps and said ‘Freedom for all,’ he’d get cheered. If I stood and said ‘Freedom for all,’ I’d get jeered.” At Colonial Williamsburg, the contradiction of the American Revolution to make all men equal is evident to those who interpret slavery there.

Interpreters Jacob on left and Benjamin standing in grey vest talk to visitors about being slaves in 1775.
(Photo by Hunner)

Slavery came early to the shores of North America. In 1619, a Dutch ship carrying some twenty captured Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia and traded them for food. Then in 1626, Dutch merchants sold eleven West African slaves at New Amsterdam (which became New York). Slavery spread throughout the colonies and continued even after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal. By the start of the Revolution, 470,000 slaves lived in the British colonies, which equaled 22% of the total population. Colonies north of the Mason-Dixon line had a population of 4% slaves, while North Carolina had 35% slaves and South Carolina’s numbers totaled 61%.[1]

Map of slave population in the South (From exhibit at Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

Slavery increased in the 18^th century in both the North and the South. New York served as a center for trade between England, its American colonies (including West Indian plantations), and Africa, and so it transshipped slaves, sugar, and sterling in a profitable exchange of goods and peoples. Ships delivered slaves to docks outside of the fort on the tip of Manhattan. See the blog on The African Burial Grounds. New England shipping firms made money on building slave ships as well as transporting captured West Africans to the Americas.

Perhaps the first Muslims to land on the shores of North America were slaves. Some 15% of people taken in Sub-Saharan Africa and brought to the western hemisphere were Muslims according to the "Islam and the United States" podcast on Backstory.[2]

Many slaves worked in fields, growing tobacco, rice, and cotton, but some were skilled laborers who worked in blacksmith and wheelwright shops, restaurants and hotels, distilleries, shipyards, and lumber camps. As a NPS publication states: “African slavery was central to the success of British North America.”[3]

Slaves working in the cotton fields (From exhibit at Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

At Colonial Williamsburg, Benjamin-- one of the slave interpreters—told us: “These beautiful buildings were built by slaves. Nothing’s paid for here.” Without slaves, there would be no Williamsburg. In fact, before the Civil War, slaves worked on both the White House and the Capitol buildings in Washington D.C., a fact not lost on President Obama. Indeed, without slaves, the early history of America would be vastly different, our towns and cities would look vastly different, and our commerce would not have been as vigorous. Slaves fueled a lot of growth during the colonial and early Republic period.

Jacob offered another reason for the American Revolution. He said: “A couple of years ago, in 1772, England banned slavery. So are these white men going to war against taxes or because they are afraid of losing their slaves?” When the American Revolution ignited, slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies. But afterwards, northern states began to ban slavery—Vermont in 1777 and Massachusetts in 1783 or passed laws for its gradual abolition—Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire in 1783, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, and New York in 1785.[4]

The contradiction of a country established on liberty dependent on slaves troubled some people; however, the Constitution of 1787 side-stepped the issue and did not mention “slavery” once. Instead they used the term “property” to denote slaves. The Constitution did include the “three-fifths clause” that representation in the House of Representatives “shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons … three fifths of all other Persons.” So slaves were 3/5ths of a person for counting population toward determining legislative representation.

Map of the Compromise of 1820 (From the exhibit at the Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

As the nation expanded westward, slavery took center stage. Would the new territories allow slavery? The Missouri Compromise of 1820 addressed this issue as it set the boundary between free and slave territories at the 36° 30’ parallel. Afterwards, Thomas Jefferson worried about slavery: “This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror…. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed … for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.” Over the first half of the 19th century, the reprieve and compromises slowly unraveled, strained by sectional conflicts and by competing moral and Biblical arguments about slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 sought to settle whether slavery would exist in the new territories gained from the Mexican-American War. This Compromise admitted California as a free state and allowed the territories of New Mexico and Utah to vote on the matter. As recompense to Southerners, the Fugitive Slave Act forced Northerners to assist in the capture of escaped slaves.

Map of the Kansas Nebraska Act 1854 (From exhibit at the Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

Slave labor was essential for the economy of the South. By 1860, the region produced 1,650,000,000 pounds of cotton.  Much of that cotton supplied the textile mills of the U.S. Northeast and England. During the first half of the 19th century, cotton far outpaced all other American foreign exports. The twelve richest counties in the country resided there, and in the 1840s and 1850s, the South constituted the fourth largest economy in the world. Part of this wealth came from slave labor, and some of it came from the value of slaves as property.

Many abolitionists fought hard to abolish slavery on moral and Biblical grounds. One of the most vocal opponents of slavery was Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave.  In 1852, he asked this question to an audience about the nation’s July 4^th celebrations: 

“This Fourth July is yours, not mine.... Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them…. To [a slave], your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity…. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”[5] Many abolitionists worked with Douglass to end slavery, including John Brown.

Frederick Douglass's parlor with his bust on the right (From Frederick Douglass's NHS in Washington, D.C.) 

When I toured the Petersburg Battlefield, a man walked up at the end of the tour. He said that everyone knows that the Civil War was about money. I politely differed with him. I agreed that the North fought to protect its growing industrial might and so profits were a motivation. But for the South, protecting slavery was the primary cause. Those politicians and elites who voted for secession, voted so to protect slavery. 

For example, here is the Vice-President of the Confederate State of America, Alexander Stevens: “[Our] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Numerous leaders in the South agreed with Stevens that preserving slavery was the cornerstone of the reason to leave the Union. I will discuss why individual soldiers on both sides of war fought in a future blog.

So why do people claim causes other than slavery? Descendants of Confederate veterans want to see their ancestors as not fighting to enslave fellow humans, but for more noble reasons—like ensuring states’ rights or resisting northern aggression. The Lost Cause myth grew post-Civil War to help shift the reason away from slavery to something more acceptable. For anyone interested in what motivated at least the leaders in the South, read the transcripts from the floor of the U.S. Congress and from the various secession conventions in the South between November 1860 and May 1861. Any reading of these documents will reveal that states seceded to protect slavery.[6]

Granted, this is tricky territory, partially because the Civil War is still contentious in many parts of our nation. But to dive into the Civil War as we will over the next few weeks, I wanted to be clear about what caused the war. Sure, not everyone fought for or against slavery. Yes, very few whites thought slaves were equal in either the North or the South.

Nonetheless, the United States had to reconcile our promise of liberty and freedom for all with the 4,000,000 slaves denied that promise. As Robert Watson, who portrayed a slave candle maker at Colonial Williamsburg, said after a long discussion about civil rights then and now: “We still got a lot of work to do.”

Robert Watson making candles and talking about human rights at the Randolph House in Colonial Williamsburg
(Photo by Hunner) 

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[1] Robert Sutton, John Latschar, and Rick Beard, Slavery in the United States: A Brief History (Washington, DC: Eastern National, 2013), 19.

[2] Backstory broadcast on Oct. 24, 2014. Archived at http://backstoryradio.org/shows/islam-the-united-states/

[3] Slavery: Cause and Catalyst of the Civil War, (NPS, Southeast Region, Division of Interpretation and Education), 2.

[4] Slavery in the United States, 22.

[5] Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Given in Rochester, NY, July 5, 1852. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13837.htm

[6] Thanks to Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, former chief historian of the NPS, for his work on plowing through these volumes of primary sources to uncover what people who debated and voted on secession said as to why they did so.