National Geographic Civil War Centennial Coverage: Part 4

A few weeks ago, I received an email about National Geographic's online coverage of the Civil War Sesquicentennial

This reminded me that I owned some bound volumes of this magazine from the early 1960s and I decided to compare and contrast how this publication covered the current observance and the 100th anniversary of the war. Below are links to the three previous entries I made on this subject.

part 1
part 2
Part 3

For today's entry, presumable the final one on this topic, I turn to the National Geographic from April 1965, volume 127, number 4.

The coverage in this edition is very similar to its initial coverage, in "part 1" linked above. Once again, it features an article written by Ulysses S Grant 3rd, the grandson of the famous Union General and President.

The article discusses the last few days of the Civil War, as Union troops tried to trap the forces commanded by Robert E Lee and force them to surrender. The article includes photographs, from the war period and from the magazine's own era, as well as maps and illustrations of people, places and events during those chaotic few days.

Deciding to focus the coverage on that part of the war was a natural choice and one I can support, but what bothered me about this article was how frequently the author used it to praise his grandfather, either from his own thoughts and memories (though the general died when this grandson was only 4 years old) or from quotes by others. I do not dislike praise for the original U.S. Grant, and much, if not all, of it, was well-deserved, but I did find it difficult to take it as seriously, coming from his own descendant. It struck me almost as being hagiography at times, and certainly not as an objective discussion of the general and his performance. The author's using various terms like "my grandfather," "General Grant" and "the general" throughout the article did not help either.

The author's telling of a story told by his grandmother of a discussion with President Lincoln was quite interesting and something I had not seen before, but, again, I'm not sure an article commemorating the end of the war was the right place for a piece of family history.

I understand why Grant III wrote as he did, and think it's great he felt so proud of his ancestor, but it was not a good idea to have him write this article due to the obvious lack of objectivity.

Besides the frequent praise for General Grant, this article did at times fall back on the 1961's reliance on a theme of "reunification" and how the war brought "a Nation united for all time."  This theme was not as constant as in the 1961 article, but did appear at times throughout it.

A large portion of this theme of reconciliation is in the ending pages of the article, where the author makes frequent mention of and reference to his ancestor's generosity in the terms offered to Lee, even including quotes from an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson and from a 1912 speech by Lee staff member Colonel Charles Marshall, showing how "magnanimous" and "gentlemanly" Grant the elder was

It is a good article and worth reading, but while I understand the magazine's decision to have the grandson of what many consider to be an American hero write for it, I wish they had let him do an article to serve as a brief biography of the general and had another author discuss the  race to Appomattox.

Currier and Ives' image of the surrender, courtesy of Library of Congress

More on National Geographic's Centennial coverage

A few days ago, I posted two entries linking some current coverage of the Civil War Sesquicentennial by National Geographic on its website and comparing that to its coverage of the Centennial in a 1961 edition of that magazine. Here is a link to part two of my previous observations- a link to the first part is within part two.

Today, I'm reviewing the coverage they provided two years after the Centennial had stared, this time from the July 1963 edition (volume 124,  number 1.)

This magazine featured two different articles on what had happened 100 years before, focusing on the popular battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

The first article is a brief review of those fights by poet Carl Sandburg, but it focuses mostly on Abraham Lincoln and  Ulysses S. Grant. It particularly focuses on Lincoln's interpretation of those victories, quoting from his famous unsent letter to George Meade about letting Lee "escape" and his Proclamation of Thanksgiving from July 15. The theme of reconciliation, so obvious in the 1961 edition, is not so clear in this article, though the last sentence hints at it when talking about how "we" honor "events that made us not a parcel of quarreling states, but a united Nation."

Following this is a much longer more in-depth article by Robert Paul Jordan entitled Gettysburg and Vicksburg: the Battle Towns Today. In this article, Jordan describes his trips to each battlefield and discussion he has with locals and with tour guides including Frederick H Tilberg and Edwin C. Bearss. Mixed in with pictures from his time as well as wartime images, Jordan's story goes back and forth, describing what he sees in the modern towns, and comparing it to what had happened on that land a century before.

Like Sandburg's piece, Jordan's article does not focus on the concept of reunion or reconciliation, despite occasional glimpses of such thoughts. It pretty much covers his observations about the areas and the people he meets, including comments from local citizens, and a few remarks about battlefield preservation. He does try to find "words" that describe each city and comes up with "All roads lead to Gettysburg" and "We have a long way to go (but had come a long way too)" for Vicksburg.

Both articles are enjoyable, and the pictures definitely add to it. I liked one picture in Jordan's article showing a souvenir table along a road - it had the US flag and Confederate Battle Flag flying from the top of the stand, and the items for sale were similar to what you might see today - bullets (30 cents each), books, small metal busts of Lincoln (I have a couple that resemble the ones on that table), a plastic flute with a Civil War logo glued to it and miniature cannons as well. It really did not look much different than such a table 50 years later does.

Jordan's article does have a picture of a re-enactment of a "Southern ball" from 1862 and though that picture does not look appropriate, it was a recreation of an actual 1862 event. A few pages later, though, is a 1860s picture showing many of the "caves" Vicksburg citizens had dug as shelter during the batter. The contrast of those two pictures - the modern colored photo of people in fancy clothes or uniforms dancing and then the gritty black and white image of rough, muddy shelters is quite impressive. I wish they had been put closer together to make their contrast more obvious, but the differences between the two are still quite stark.

Overall, this 1863 magazine did not focus on reconciliation as the main 1961 article had. Instead, the editors chose to feature the two famous battles that ended in the same month 100 years previously, and chose a good combination of articles and images to convey those towns during the war and during the time of these articles.

Then and Now: National Geographic Covers the Civil War Centennial and Sesquicentennial, part 2

Please see part one of my coverage of this subject


For convenience's sake, here is the link to the National Geographic coverage of the sesquicentennial.

While the coverage of the centennial featured a review of the war and how the centennial commission wanted it to be viewed, the reporting on the current commemoration features more about the sesquicentennial itself than on the war; even this focus stays on the basics (how/whats/whys) of this commemoration and not how the readers should interpret it . It does include a couple articles and images about the war, but it also has multiple stories about various issues involved in the remembrance of the war, making for a nice selection of old and new issues.

The article by Mark Collins Jenkins, Civil War at 150: Expect Subdued Salutes, Raising Voices strikes me as representative of the basic themes of the magazine's current coverage (though it repeats the "commemorate, not celebrate" theme that apparently is a staple of Civil War anniversaries. Maybe that - the fear of "celebrating" the war - is a topic for future thought and blogging.) 

I also like how it includes several stories rather than just one or two that try to tell the whole story. This provides a broader picture of the issues involved in the anniversary and how it is being marked. These stories include a list of the top 10 Civil War sites to visit, discussion of battlefield preservation, a link to an "inside" look at a re-enactment and more. (Of course, in 1961 magazine space was much more limited than modern website space, but it is good that the current editors are taking advantage of that additional space.)

The main difference between this coverage and the 1961 reporting lies in what appears to be the focus of each era. The 1961 article by U.S Grant III featured a high-level review of the war, with a few specific incidents or battles mentioned, followed by discussion of reconciliation and reunion at then end of the war.That main article basically directs its readers in how/what to feel about the war and does not make any mention of the causes of the war or anything that could have offended supporters of either the Union or Confederacy. A modern article like this may be accused of "political correctness" in its attempt to avoid controversial topics altogether. (Even the article on Vizetelly mostly featured well-known events, battles and personalities; it did not discuss the actual centennial.)

The current coverage, as mentioned above, provides a broader view of the issues surrounding the sesquicentennial, including issues of resources budgeted for this event (or lack thereof) and does not push any certain agenda on its readers.The centennial's apparent obsession with making everybody feel happy about the Civil War (while paying little attention to anything negative about it) is the biggest difference between the coverage in the two eras. Perhaps responsibility for that falls more on the Centennial Commission than on National Geographic but the magazines editors at the time did choose to publish the article as written.



I am certainly no expert on Civil War historiography, but maybe this exercise will help me gain a new perspective on that subject. It was fascinating to see the earlier coverage show the Centennial Commission's focused more on patriotism, pride and general good feelings about the war's end and the reunited nation rather than increased knowledge or understanding of the issues that led to the war and the destruction it caused.The sesquicentennial coverage strikes me as being more balanced, reporting on issues but not leading its readers to a preordained opinion.I do wish the current coverage included more discussion on issues from the war (such as causes, or how the war affected people on the home-front, or any of many other possibilities) but the variety of articles on the magazine's site is a good start to studying the sesquicentennial.

I also have other editions of National Geographic from 1963 and 1965 that include articles about the war. I will try to review them in the near future and see how those descriptions compare to what appeared in 1961 and we see here in the first year of the sesquicentennial.

Then and Now: National Geographic Covers the Civil War Centennial and Sesquicentennial, part 1

Here's a link to Civil War Sesquicentennial coverage that National Geographic is offering, with several different articles about this anniversary and related topics. (Please note various pages do include ads for other stories on their website as well as some of the books its society has published. Also, I realize their television channel is offering some programming on the war tonight as well, but my review is limited to the written/published words only.)

Seeing this link reminded me that I own some bound editions of National Geographic from the years of the Civil War centennial; once I saw this link, I decided to try to compare the past coverage of the centennial with the current coverage of the sesquicentennial. In order to keep it at a reasonable length, I have broken this entry up into two parts. (I do fully understand that over 50 years people change as do editorial policies, but I think having information from the same source about both anniversaries provides a good chance to make some basic observations of each era's coverage.)

The April 1961 edition (Vol. 119, No. 4) of this magazine features an overview of the war in an article by Ulysses S. Grant III, chairman of the National Civil War Centennial commission and grandson of Union General U.S. Grant. It includes both wartime illustrations modern photographs of various sites and events.

The article itself is a quick review of the war, touching on topics commonly witnessed in such overviews such as new technologies, the "modern" aspects of the war, the bravery of soldiers on both sides, and the lack of complete unity on both sides (I was surprised to see this article mention that many in the South did not favor secession.) It mentions the Crittenden family as an example of "brother against brother" and also how men of the armies fraternized with each other after a major battle. It does include a section that mentions U.S. Grant's "consideration for the people in territory occupied by his troops" which I have to wonder if any other author would have included.

In the article's last several paragraphs, it moves to a discussion of the centennial and the war's legacy. It uses a phrase much like once seen recently - the Civil War Centennial Commission did not see that time "as an occasion for celebration"  but then adds that it "must give us a new understanding of the way in which Americans built from suffering and sacrifice an enduring Nation" which seems to mean it wishes to focus more on reconciliation after the war rather than the causes of the war itself. Other phrases in the following paragraphs confirm that suspicion, including a mention that the people in the country "have given the world an example not only of how to fight a war, but of how to end a war," which it calls an "inspiring" lesson. The article goes on to claim that "the centennial must be a new study of American patriotism" that would help provide a "deeper appreciation of the bravery, sacrifice, and idealism in the American character." Again, not a word is said about slavery, politics, or any of the causes of the war or the violence it produced (or, really, any negative aspect of the era), but its re-conciliatory, almost jingoistic themes are plentiful.

The final sentence of this article takes this theme to a new level:  "From this added knowledge, from the entire centennial observance, we should and will gain enhanced pride in being Americans." 

Was that really the goal and expectation of the Civil War Centennial Commission? Should it have been? Are we expecting similar results from the sesquicentennial? 

This magazine also includes a brief article of a new map its society had produced and approximately 50 more pages concerning the experiences and drawings of Frank Vizetelly, a British reporter for the Illustrated London News. Topics include events he witnessed and observed, including First Bull Run, his thoughts on the White House (Union) reception on New Year's Day 1862,  Fredericksburg, and other happenings such as Jefferson's Davis' departure from Richmond.  (Here is a link where some of his drawings are available to view)

Please see my next entry for part two of this discussion, where I will mention more about the current reporting and how the two compare or contrast.