Untold Stories

blog.preservationnation.org/2013/08/23/interview-civil-war-the-untold-story-qa-with-director-chris-wheeler/#.UhpW8WRVR91

Hello Everyone:

Hurray!  We hit 2000 page views.  Let's break out the champagne and the party hats.  I'm so honored by your continued support.  My gratitude is endless.  When I started this blog in January, and my other blog outlet.blogspot.com, it was with the idea of staying out of trouble and the malls.  This blog in particular began as a research tool with the intention of eventually doing something scholarly.  Well I am doing the something scholarly and I'm definitely learning plenty.  I hope you are too.  I've grown to enjoy the time I spend writing about architecture, historic preservation, urban planning and design.  I'm finding that now that I write for myself and you, I'm feeling more confident in the fact that I have something meaningful to contribute.  As always, I'm indebted to you for your continued support.  I look forward to continuing to build my readership with your help.  As always, I'll keep writing if you keep reading.  With much love and gratitude,
Lenore Lowen

African American Union Soldier
civilwartours.tumblr.com

Now on to today's subject: an upcoming documentary on the untold stories of the American Civil War (1861-65).  I chose this subject because, with all the focus on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, the Civil War seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.  Ending slavery was one of the reasons for the conflict.  There were a myriad of other reasons.  However, in director Chris Wheeler's documentary series Civil War: The Untold Story, slated for 2014, looks at the "War Between The States" through the prism of the Western Campaign, exploring the role that slavery, politics, the home front, and the unknown roles of the African Americans played in the Civil War.  For the purposes of this blog, we'll focus on the last point.  Thanks in part to popular literature, most Americans still hold the assumption that "The Emancipation Proclamation," issued by President Abraham Lincoln (not Daniel Day Lewis)  instantly set all the slaves held in the southern states free.  However, Ira Berlin, in his paper "Who Freed The Slaves? Emancipation And Its Meaning in American Life," (http://wwwlibrary.vanderbilt.edu/Qauderno/Quaderno5/Q5.C3.Berlin) explores the question of did President Lincoln's document actually free the slaves or was there something else at work.  The point Mr. Berlin makes is that there are two schools of thought at work on the subject: those who view emancipation as the slaves' great struggle to free themselves and those who see the hand of the "Great Emancipator" at work.  While I'm not going to get into the subject, it is worth reading up on if only to gain greater insight.

Like most Americans, director Chris Wheeler

 

Corinth Contraband Camp
myancestorsname.blogspot.com

knew nothing about the contraband camps.  Mr. Wheeler first learned about the camps while working on a film for the Shiloh National Military Park in southern Tennessee.  For the record, the National Park Service interprets both Shiloh and Corinth Contraband Camp in Corinth, Mississippi.  Mr. Wheeler never gave much pause to the gap between the start of the Civil War in April 1861 and the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation.  What fascinated the director was the courageous manner used by the slave to secure their own destiny.  He interviewed Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens of the University of Mississippi who explained, "The very presence of a contraband camp I think speaks volumes to the testimony of black people's ability to create power even in the most powerless situation."

Verandah House, Corinth
civilwartraveler.com

How does one connect the Contraband Camps with the Emancipation Proclamation?  Like many historic events, the Emancipation Proclamation did not exist in a vacuum.  The former could not exist without the latter.  To put it in proper perspective, thousands of men, women, children, and the elderly saw the beginning of the war as an opportunity to seize the moment and make a run a freedom in the Union states.  No one, including the president himself could've anticipated this.  The Fugitive Slave of 1850 was still on the books and for all intents and purposes, the Union forces were legally obligated to return runaway slaves to their masters.  The question before lawmakers was "In this time of civil war, were the contrabands still slaves or were they now free?"  Congress attempted to address the situation with The Confiscation Acts."  Mr. Wheeler found the actions of the escaping slaves inspiring and it gave him the political capital to what he intended to do-free the  3.9 million human beings living bondage in the South.  Thus, the Emancipation Proclamation was positioned as crucial to the Union "war effort."

Battle of Corinth, MS
civilwartraveler.com

 Corinth is a particularly interesting case study. Following the victory of the Union forces at Shiloh under General (later President) Ulysses S. Grant, the troops advanced on the south and captured a strategic rail center at Corinth, Mississippi.  Corinth was in the heart of cotton country and had a large slave population within a 200-mile radius.  Most of the contraband camps in the South were overcrowded, disease-ridden, and chaotic.  However, the Corinth camp was the exception to this.  The camp was organized in November 1862.  The escaping slaves set to build a community-laying out streets, constructing homes, a church, and hospital.  Volunteers from the American Missionary Association arrived and began to teach the refugees to read and write, still forbidden by law.  The missionaries were astounded by the zeal in which the former slaves showed for learning.  I wish more people still had that kind of zeal.

Corinth Contraband Camp
blog.preservationnation.org

Corinth Contraband Camp was eventually disbanded but in the interim, it represent the necessary first step to freedom.  The camp was a look at what freedom could be like and a what the struggles ahead were like.  During the building of the camp, the refugees were ordered to evacuate to another camp in Memphis.  Dr. Amy Murrell Taylor of the University of Kentucky noted that Corinth, "has a lot of hope and a lot of promise but it is blown away in some ways by the changes in the military situation, and in some ways that really is representative of what happens in a lot of places, tell use something about what it means to become free in the middle of a war.  So the story of Corinth is, in some ways the story of what happens everywhere."  The story of Corinth Contraband Camp illustrates the point that the slaves were not waiting around to be emancipated, as it has been passed down through popular lore.  Rather, they seized the moment and took matters into their own hands, becoming agents of their own freedom.  In many ways, the story of Corinth Contraband Camp reflects the struggles and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement that continues to this very day.

Woman and girl learning to read
nps.gov

Woman doing the laundry
visitmississippi.org

        Finally, what is the take away from Chris Wheeler's  Civil War: The Untold Story?  Ken Burns' monumental series Civil Wars relied mainly on archival photography, supplemented by with highly produced battle re-enactments that involved hundreds of re-enactors and shot on the actual sites.  Regarding the film Lincoln, Civil War: The Untold Story delves into the story line that ultimately led to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and, thus, can be viewed as a sort of prequel.  Mr. Wheeler's documentary focuses on the "Western Campaigns" that took places in Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia.  The camera lens is trained on the previously untold stories of the conflict, particularly those of the African Americans and their journey from slave, to contraband, to emancipation to joining the military to fight for their freedom.

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