Google Maps: A Tool For Understanding a Battle

Without a good map, battles are nearly impossible to understand. There's just too much going on all at once, too many people moving in too many directions. Generally speaking, I define a book about a battle as successful or unsuccessful in large part by how well and how clearly the included maps help to clarify the description of the action taking place.

However, for those unfamiliar with battlefield maps, they can be very intimidating and unclear. Without a foundation of knowledge about the battle, this problem is exacerbated. For example, take a look at this map of the First Battle of Bull Run.


Plan of the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia. July 21st 1861. Compiled from Union and Rebel Maps by R.K. Sneden, Topog. Engr. Heintzelman's Div. Accessed from the Library of Congress Maps Collection at this link.
What are we really looking at here? (if this is too small, access the original record at this link, or view the map here. There are some geographical features of the area - some water, some roads, some trees, kind of a funny looking thing up near the right hand top corner. There are some red lines and some blue lines, and a whole bunch of names. But what does all of this MEAN, and how does it help the viewer to understand the battle?

Not all maps are the same, of course, and while this one has a key, many do not, but there are a few things that are generally true. First, red is almost always Confederate Forces, and Blue is almost always Union Forces. Names given are generally of the brigade commander, but this is less universal and harder to rely on. Important places in general (such as the town of Centerville near the top right corner, or the Warrenton Turnpike, which runs diagonally across the map) are always shown, and places that are important in the battle (such as Blackburns Ford, in the lower center of the map) are also usually labeled. As with in any map, before even worrying about the details, it's worth examining it a few minutes and figuring out what it DOES tell you, such as - on this example - how the railroads are narked, what direction is north, and that the parallel lines along Bull Run denote the steepness of the banks, and that other hills such as the hill where Henry House is (on the left hand side just below center) is located.

For a battle map, the next step is to figure out where the conflict is actually taking place. While this might seem obvious, this is generally where the largest numbers of troops from the two sides are standing - but remember, these groups do not stand still. The only way to really understand a battle is to combine an examination of maps with a narrative account of the battle. Otherwise, for example, you can't tell that Sherman (in this map, the cluster of troops marked Sherman can be found just north of the Warrenton Pike, and on the east side of Bull Run) is soon to charge across a nearby ford and attack the Confederate forces on the other side of the river. A concise, simple description of the battle is of inestimable aid when staring at a map like this - but such a description is not for this blog post. Instead, I'm going to outline a strategy for helping a map like this come alive.

No amount of looking at this map will you tell you who these people were or what the land on which they stood really looked like. However, with the internet, you can get a long way towards doing understanding this better. This is where Google Maps comes in. By combining what a simple battlefield map such as this one can tell us with the plethora of images that can be found on the internet, those trying to learn about a battle can really get in-depth with it, by recreating this map using a custom Google Map. To do this, you will need to have a Google Account and be logged in. Then, go to www.google.com/maps. Select "My Places", then select "Create Map."



Once you have created your map, you fill in the name you'd like to use, and a description. If you are working with a group - for example, a class of students - you can also select "Collaborate," which will give you the option to share the map with any number of other people who can also add features to it.



Once you've got the basic set up, it's time to start adding things to your map! You can add either pins or lines, by using these two buttons:



The one on the left that looks like an inverted tear drop lets you drop a pin; the one on the right lets you draw a line! Dropping a pin looks like this:



You write in the name you want, and a description of the place. You can even copy and paste pictures in to the description! If you click on the representation of the pin in the upper right hand corner, you can change how the pin looks, too. In short, there are a LOT of options. Once you've created a pin, and added what you want, you can save it, and click "Done" over on the left (above the name of your map) and when you got to look, you'll see your pin - and when you click it, the description you wrote will pop up:



I popped in a picture of the Henry House that I took when I visited Bull Run last summer; scrolling down, there is a historical picture of how the house looked after the battle (you can see that image here.) Now you know the basics! Play around until your comfortable with it - Google gives a bunch more information on how to make custom maps here.

So, you've got a map. How can you use it to help teach about the Battle of Bull Run? Lots of ways!

1. Have students figure out where important events took place, and place pins there.
2. Track down images of important figures and sites around the battle field, and use them to illustrate the map (make sure you check copyright information on all such images before using them, though!
3. Add historical data to the description.
4. Use different colored pins to mark different kinds of locations.
5. Collaboratively trace - using lines - the different ways that units came and went from the battlefield.

For getting images, I highly recommend using the Library of Congress American Memory online collection, which hosts a truly amazing number of resources of all kind related to US History, nearly all of which is in the public domain and therefore can be legally used (still cite your sources, though). Just search for what you're looking for!

That's a quick-and-dirty explanation of how Google Maps can be used to help clarify the use of battlefield maps. There's nothing like building your OWN map to help one understand where every one was, why they were there, and what the prominent features of the area were. Going through the process oneself can really help to elucidate maps that seem very cryptic when just glanced at. I've gone ahead and populated my Google Map of Bull Run with many more important features; you can take a look by going to this link. At the time of writing this, it's still a work in progress, but it does demonstrate the various possibilities described in this post!

Next time - more on Bull Run! A strategy for sorting out the confusing back-and-forth and timing issues that come up while trying to navigate this kind of map!

Book Review: A Country of Vast Designs

Last summer, I passed A Country of Vast Designs in the book store, and it immediately caught my eye. I've wanted to learn more about the Mexican War and the politics behind it, yet most of the books I'd read on this topic (such as What Hath God Wrought) have done so only as part of a more general overview of the Antebellum years. What I REALLY want to read is a book that focuses on the military history of the war (the one currently on the wish list is The Training Ground) - but I've had surprising difficulty finding books that really in-depth cover that material. I wasn't sure if A Country of Vast Designs would be that book (as it turns out, it's not - it gives some treatment to the war but only in broad outlines), but it looked very interesting, so a few months after I first spotted it, I decided to pick it up, and I finally got around to reading it!

Review

Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, The Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 2009. 576p. Photographs, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9780743297448.

James K. Polk is one of the more forgotten presidents in US History, at least among the general public. Merry (journalist, Wall Street Journal and others) sets out to rectify this ignorance and highlight how Polk, in office from 1844 to 1848, was one of the most successful and important presidents of the 19th century. Merry demonstrates how, at the onset of Polk's presidency, the Jacksonian protege had four primary goals: treat with the British to settle the controversy over the Oregon territory; acquire California from Mexico; implement a more balanced tariff; and develop an independent treasury. These four goals, reflecting foreign policy ambitions that could add as many as half a million square miles of territory to the United States, and domestic policy that would change the way the government handled it's money for almost a hundred years, were very ambitious, and Polk was determined to see them all accomplished in just one term. Merry then clearly and lucidly explains how, through politicking, force of personality, a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, Polk managed to accomplish all of these goals despite challenges from both his own Democratic party and the Whig opposition, an unpopular war, a resistant Secretary of State with ambitions of his own, and other challenges. Even more impressively, Merry accomplishes this assessment without elevating Polk to a position of hero-worship, instead developing for the reader an understanding of the complex man, his strengths, his weaknesses, his successes, and his failures. The writing in the book is excellent and engaging, and all of the complex threads of foreign and domestic affairs come together, leaving the reader with a clear idea of the events of the time, their causes, their effects, and the colorful personalities - such as John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, future president James Buchanan, General Winfield Scott, and many others - whose actions aided and hindered the achievement of the United States' perceived "Manifest Destiny," and capped the last great age of national expansion.

Presenting a complex and thorough view of only a few short years, this book is partly a biography of Polk, but more an in-depth look at four years that transformed the United States. After reading it, one is left with a clear understanding of how America grew to stretch from "sea to shining sea," how this attitude built on national events from the previous 20 years, and how the way events unfolded caused sectional controversies to grow worse and eventually lead to the US Civil War, 13 years later. It's rare to find a book both this scholarly yet easy to read, and even more rare to find a work of non-fiction history that can be described as a "page turner," yet I found this book to be so.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Book Review: Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi

The second history book that I read this year year was on a topic I've been wanting to read more about for a while - Vicksburg. I had picked up Michael Ballard's book on Vicksburg over the summer, after reading and comparing reviews of it with the other Vicksburg title on the shelf - Winston Groom's Vicksburg, 1863. I started thinking of reading this one next while reading Bonekemper's book, and he mentioned William Shea's work on the same topic, and highly recommended it. I'm interested enough in Grant and the Western front that I expect I'll ultimately end up reading all three, but I'm not sorry to have started with this one.

Review

Ballard, Michael B. Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi. The University of North Carolina Press. 2004. 490p. Photographs, bibliography, maps, index. ISBN: 9780807871287.

Ballard (Congressional and Political Research Center at Mississippi State University) sets out to give an in-depth description of the events leading up to, during, and after the Vicksburg Campaign. Towards that end, he draws on a very impressive range of sources, and places the campaign in to it's geographical, historical, political and military contexts. The most interesting and unusual thing about this work is the use of local Vicksburg sources to paint a picture of what the town of Vicksburg was like before the war reached it's doorstep, how people there felt about the war, and about their cities changing role in it. Ballard also does an excellent job tracing how Vicksburg came to assume it's war-time position as the key to free navigation of the Mississippi River. In a clear, thorough, and incisive way, he also analyzes the actions and behavior of the many historical figures involved, using his extensive research to assess the effectiveness of the decisions made by key participants. He reserves his most harsh judgement for Joseph E. Johnston, and raises the question of how differently events might have gone had Johnston not remained so timid throughout the campaign. He also raises many insightful issues related to the difficult alternatives of abandoning or defending the city, and suggests that abandoning the defense of the physical location would have been a more effective way of preserving Pemberton's army to fight another day for the Confederacy. While there is little new in these analyses, they are here brought together very effectively with high-quality scholarship and clear writing.

In the end, this lucid account leaves the reader with a very clear idea of the importance of the Battle of Vicksburg, the personalities of the people involved in the conflict, and some ideas of how to critically assess the decisions made by the parties involved. While this is very helpful, Ballard is definitely presenting a point of view, and that has to be kept in mind while reading his assessments. Also, the prose is very thorough and detailed, but at times it gets to be dense reading, and the work will at times likely be more information than a non-enthusiast would find interesting or accessible. However, for those with an interest in the events that led to, as Abraham Lincoln said, to "The Father of Waters again [going] unvexed to the sea," Ballard's comprehensive work is an excellent source.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Book Review: Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher

I started off the New Year by getting back to reading about my favorite topic, the Civil War, after having read little in this area since September. I tackled first a book that I've wanted to read ever since I first saw it on the shelf a few years ago. There's something about a book titled "Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher" that is guaranteed to draw in a Grant enthusiast like myself. I'll admit I was eager to see one of my personal heroes acquitted of the title that he earned post-war when people looked back on charges like the second attack on the Vicksburg trenches or the poorly-executed attempt to break Robert E. Lee's lines at Cold Harbor. What I read didn't disappoint me; after finishing Bonekemper's book, I was left with a personal hero smelling perhaps a bit too much look roses...

Review

Bonekemper III, Edward H. Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher. Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2004. 453p. Photographs, bibliography, maps, index. ISBN: 9781596986411.


The thesis of this work is clearly stated in the title: to marshal evidence to dispel the persistent belief among the American public that Ulysses S. Grant, the general who led the Union forces to victory in the US Civil War, was an unskilled general whose poor leadership led to the needless sacrifice of thousands of soldiers. This view is generally contrasted with a far more flattering assessment of his opponent, Robert E. Lee, who is seen as a brilliant tactician. Bonekemper (military historian at Muhlenberg College, PA) uses a wide array of statistical information and extensive research of both period documents and modern histories to describe how the "butcher" myth came about and to thoroughly refute it. His treatment demonstrates clearly that Grant's casualty rates were comparable to other generals throughout the war, that he used tactics and maneuver much more often than brute force when facing an opponent army, and that his results were exceptional, including the capture of multiple opposing armies and the forced surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which brought an effective end to the combat of the Civil War.

This is a solid piece of scholarship, aimed at a lay reader, and therefore treats most topics as if the reader knows little about them. It is written in an engaging and flowing style that draws the reader in, and Bonekemper makes each of his points in support of Grant with a flourish of style and wit. However, it is difficult not to notice that, in Bonekemper's assessment, Grant never does wrong; every decision is thoroughly defended and Grant is acquitted on all counts. It is easy to finish this work convinced that Grant hardly made a wrong step the whole war; even the disastrous first day at Shiloh is quickly explained away as not Grant's fault, while he receives full credit for the turn-around in Union fortunes the next day. In his effort to convince the reader that Grant is not, in fact, a butcher, Bonekemper at times loses sight that Grant did still make mistakes.

For a thorough re-assessment of the generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, taking in to account both the analyses of his contemporaries and the scholarship of prominent historians from the past 150 years, Bonekemper's work is excellent and readable. However, it is a work that is best read with an understanding that Bonekemper has an agenda, and has white-washed or hurried past (though not ignored!) information that would interfere with that agenda.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Irrepressible Conflict

On October 25th, 1858, William H. Seward, powerful member of the new Republican party and presidential hopeful for the 1860 election, was speaking to an audience in Rochester, New York. He stood before a zealous crowd of party supporters, and gave a speech whose message was to define him over the coming years, by placing him, in eyes of many, in a radical camp of Republicanism that could not be made to appeal to the majority of voters. The speech likely cost Seward his chance at being President of the United Sates, and paved the way for those perceived as more moderate members of his party - such as Abraham Lincoln - to take the lead.


William H. Seward, taken on an unknown date between 1860 and 1865, while Seward was Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln. Source: Library of Congress

In this speech, Seward outlined a view point that had slowly entered the mainstream over the previous decade: that no country could maintain itself while half slave and half free. In this, he echoed Abraham Lincoln's earlier "House Divided" speech, but the better known Seward's words spread farther, and branded him more certainly, than had Lincoln's speech (which would nonetheless return to haunt him, as well.)

Seward described slavery as the employment of a people who are "necessarily unintellectual, groveling and base," and that its existence implies that "the white laboring man, whether native or foreigner, is not enslaved only because he can not as yet be reduced to bondage." He declared such a system the province of "hated" foreign nations - the Spanish, Portuguese, Russians, and Turkish. He contrasted this barbarity with the free-labor system, the creation (according to him) of the Germans, Swedes, Dutch, and British, and declared, "we justly ascribe to its influences the strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence and freedom which the whole American people now enjoy."

In comparing the two systems, he went even further in making his point about how freedman are debased by the existence of a system of slavery in the same nation: "the slave system is not only intolerable, unjust, and inhuman toward the laborer...but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only because he is a laborer from necessity, it denies facilities for employment and whom it expels from the community because it can not enslave and convert him into merchandise."

In these statements, Seward paints pictures of the differences between the North and the South: the North, a land of freedom, intelligence, wealth, and greatness, where the virtuous Northern European models are followed and where men are treated as men whose labor has value; in contrast to the unjust, inhuman Southern system, where - like the Spanish, the Eastern Europeans, and the Mohammedans of Turkey - a freeman can have no sense of self-worth, for his labor is treated as valueless because he is not property.

After outlining in broad strokes the history of slavery in Europe, and then in the young United States, Seward succinctly explains why, in his view, this conflict has come bubbling to the surface now, while it lay dormant in the past. "Increase of population...together with a new and extended network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate" had brought the Northern and Southern states in to such frequent interaction with each other that both were now in continual contact with the alien, threatening "other." "Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results." He spurned the idea that this collision was caused by only by recent, foolish agitators or that it would soon pass. "It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation." He proceeded to paint what must have been a sickening image to his Upstate New York supporters - that of a New York where once again, as in the past, the wheat fields of the state would be worked by slave labor, and that "New York [City] [would] become once more [a] market for trade in the bodies and souls of men."

There was a time, earlier in the Union, when many men believed that the slavery issue would end gradually and largely without incident. In the early 19th century, as state after state in the North voted for gradual emancipation, and as the luminaries of the Revolutionary era such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson made clear their hope that there would come a time when all states would relinquish the need for involuntary labor, even such true-blue Southern states as Virginia discussed the possibility of the emancipation of their slave populations. Yet, through the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, the issues grew more and more polarized, the nation become more and more divided, and passions burned brighter and brighter. In the North, men like John Brown dreamed of freeing all the slaves through bloody insurrection; in the south, men like William Yancey longer for a Southern republic where they could be free of all meddling in their peculiar institution. For the passionate fire-eaters in the South, slavery had gone from being perceived as a necessary evil to being embraced as positive good; to the abolitionists in the North, slavery had gone from being perceived as a necessary evil to being reviled as the worst crime ever committed by a free people on their fellow man.


Cartoon from Currier and Ives, c. 1860, describing the bitterness common among New York Republicans when Seward failed to receive the party nomination for the presidency. For a larger, more legible version of the cartoon, visit the original entry for this item at the Library of Congress.

Yet, so often in educating modern generations, these issues are white-washed. Many now graduate from schools thinking that the Civil War began as a result of conflicts over State's Rights. Others do not understand how events went from a relative stability to a place of fratricidal warfare. Even among the highly educated, many of the roots of this conflict have been forgotten, neglected, ignored.

Who am I? My name is Claire Houck. I graduated from Binghamton University in 2004 with a BA in History, though my later studies took me in a different direction, and in 2007 I earned a Masters degree in Library Science. I have loved history my entire life, and have been a Civil War buff for about as long as I can remember. Starting in 2002, I started to work as an evaluator for Federally-funded grant programs in New York City. The primary program with which I work is the Teaching American History program, which funds professional development opportunities for US History teachers of students grades K - 12. Through this work, I have come in contact with a wide range of historians, history educators, museum and historical society staff, and hundreds of teachers, and I have learned a great deal, not just about history, but about how history is taught, communicated, shared, and remembered. I have long yearned to use this knowledge to disseminate what I know about the area of history that I am passionate about - 19th century US History - and through creating this blog, I am taking the first step towards doing so. I hope to take many more steps in the future!

In starting this blog, I seek only to share that which I love: the history of the United States, and in particular, how increasingly vociferous debate over the nature of the role of the Federal Government in regulating and moderating the spread of slavery resulted in the bloodiest conflict in US History. I intend to include three types of content:

1. Primarily, I will be examining and breaking down historical speeches from the time period (1814 - 1865), because these speeches are so rich in content and yet so largely forgotten - or so long and daunting as to render them inaccessible to most readers. I will skirt around the best known speeches - this is not the place to come to learn about the Gettysburg Address, for as fabulous a speech as it is, it has been canvassed over so many times before, and by far better historians than I, that I see little of value that I can add to the discussion. Instead, I will focus on the great speech makers of the time period: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and many others, in a way that brings to life the great debates that eventually led to bloody rebellion. In each instance, over a series of posts, I will begin by writing an essay which places the speech in it's historical context. Then, after providing the full-text of the speech, I will break down the main points made by the speaker. Next, I will provide necessary background information on the references and allusions drawn in the speech. Finally, I will provide vocabulary support, text extracts, at least one classroom lesson, and other materials that will facilitate using the speech as a teaching tool, including audio recordings of both the entire speech and specific sections that I deem most relevant to a K - 12 teaching environment.

2. There are numerous important events from this time period, many of which have been largely forgotten. I'm routinely shocked by how few people I speak to even in the field have even heard of the Gag Rule controversy. While this will not be a "this day in history" blog, I will from time to time highlight controversies, important events, and other such things when the timing seems appropriate.

3. Lastly, I will share book reviews. I frequently read books from the time period, and find many to be of impressively high-quality. The world of books about the Civil War and the Antebellum years can be daunting to those who are not initiated into the scholarship, and so I will discuss the works I'm reading and highlight their strengths and weaknesses for people seeking different information about the past.

I will begin this process with the Seward speech I've already begun to discuss in this post. You can read the full-text of that speech here.