Civil War Military History v. Social History-the debate renewed?

Pat Young

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Many will recall the argument last year over military v. social history of the Civil War. It was set off when Gary Gallagher and Earl Hess published separate essays questioning the shift of Civil War scholarship decisively away from military history. Many pixels were spilled in the subsequent fracas. The Civil War Monitor has a review of a new book by Hess that reopens the argument in its last lines.

Here is the book review. You have to read to the end to see the more controversial parts.

http://civilwarmonitor.com/book-she...ezra-church-and-the-struggle-for-atlanta-2015
 
Hsieh says that while Hess has written a good battle study which places the fight within a larger context;

We are thus left with the dreaded “so what” question when assessing any Civil War battle study... For military historians, Hess places the engagement at Ezra Church in a larger context readily recognizable within the subfield. In line with his larger body of work, he argues that skirmishing played an important role in the Atlanta campaign, but that the increased range of the rifle-musket over smoothbores had little direct effect on the battle. And like most Civil War military history, he makes assessments of commanders, and the larger organizational contexts in which they worked. But it seems doubtful many non-military historians have great interest in any of these issues. And at least some would dismiss these scholarly questions as less significant than lines of inquiry more in the academic mainstream—e.g. research on the war’s memory, the workings of emancipation, etc. Some historians even find a willingness to write a battle study vaguely obscene. The fact that of all of Gary Gallagher’s grad students, only this reviewer wrote a dissertation self-identified as “traditional” (I actually prefer the term “operational”) military historian speaks volumes about the genre’s marginal status among academics.
 
Hsieh continues:

Nevertheless, whatever the merits or lack thereof of these arguments, they swirl about in a scholarly field so fragmented that military history will always still find a place even amongst academic presses (Hess’ work is itself a product of the University of North Carolina’s Civil War America series). Military historians also have access to a broader trade publishing base, and they would be wise to recognize, as Brian Linn at Texas A&M University has pointed out, the distinct advantages they possess over academic counterparts whose higher status within the ivory tower is paired with a closer confinement to campus. Whatever the intellectual (and possibly moral) ambiguities created, the fact also remains that military historians can draw on funding streams associated with the tax-funded American military apparatus not generally available to scholars outside the field.
 
While there is popular support for military history as well as financial support from the Federal government for such work, it is not a path to Ivory Tower advancement:

But in the end, divisions between military and non-military historians originate less from differences in institutional patterns of support, but from differing assumptions on bloodletting in war. Military historians invariably find themselves drawn to war’s violence: not necessarily to glorify it, but certainly at the very least to explain killing to the degree that it possesses some sort of rational logic (including the points at which chance comes into play and logic disappears)—whether via the discovery or creation of a coherent and plausible battle narrative, a focus on command decisions, or a more social scientific approach centered on technology or organizational culture. Like most effect works of history, Hess combines a variety of approaches in this monograph on one battle, but even as senior scholars such as George Rable and Kenneth Noe have imbued the battle study with approaches usually associated with cultural history, it is hard to imagine a graduate student acquiring a tenure-track position having written a battle study as a monograph
 
He says that many academic historians have a great deal of trouble in explaining or justifying deadly violence:

I suspect that lack of interest among many non-military historians stems at least in part from unease toward the military historian’s assumption that martial violence in fact possesses a logic of sorts that goes beyond simple criminality. For many non-military academic historians, in attempting to explain violence, the military historian imposes on war a narrative or causal coherence it does not possess, while inscribing on it a moral legitimacy it does not deserve...
 
He says that; "the reality is that non-military and military historians seem to generally not even talk very much with one another"
 
I haven't read the review, but I have to say I'm not sure why there's a debate about this topic. Both the military history AND the social history of the war are important. Some people are more interested in one than the other and so be it. To each his own. For myself personally I started my studies of the Civil War interested solely in the military history side of the equation. Eventually though that led me to become more interested in the social side. I don't feel that either has been a waste of my time.
 
Many will recall the argument last year over military v. social history of the Civil War. It was set off when Gary Gallagher and Earl Hess published separate essays questioning the shift of Civil War scholarship decisively away from military history.

Are those essays available online? That was an interesting review. I'm curious to find out exactly what the controversy is. I can understand the trend toward social history in academia, but surely both" types" of history serve a purpose and have value. Anyone care to summarize the issue?
 
This seems to be the crux of the issue and would make a good basis for discussion IMO.

He says that many academic historians have a great deal of trouble in explaining or justifying deadly violence:

I suspect that lack of interest among many non-military historians stems at least in part from unease toward the military historian’s assumption that martial violence in fact possesses a logic of sorts that goes beyond simple criminality. For many non-military academic historians, in attempting to explain violence, the military historian imposes on war a narrative or causal coherence it does not possess, while inscribing on it a moral legitimacy it does not deserve...
 
Are those essays available online? That was an interesting review. I'm curious to find out exactly what the controversy is. I can understand the trend toward social history in academia, but surely both" types" of history serve a purpose and have value. Anyone care to summarize the issue?
Answered in the post above.
 
This seems to be the crux of the issue and would make a good basis for discussion IMO.

In regards to that, it seems pretty clear to me that both the Union side and the Confederate side in this war saw a "moral legitimacy" in their own cause, but not in the cause of their opponent. I would imagine that's true of virtually all wars. In studying history, it's the point of view of the people who were there at the time that's important - not our own point of view. Anyone who's studying the military aspect of the war and becomes curious as to how both sides came to believe their side was morally legitimate while the other side was not, is welcome to take up the study of the social aspects of the war, as I did. We're fortunate to have such a wealth of material out there available to us on ALL aspects of the war, and so many fine historians from a wide variety of backgrounds who have uncovered that material and presented it to us in so many different ways. It's all part of the big picture.
 
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Well, I read through a lot of the thread Pat mentioned above along with some of the blog entries, and it turned out to be a lot less interesting than I had hoped. I learned that some "social" historians make mistakes regarding military history, and social history of the war is more popular now than military history. And there was much bickering. And then the black confederate thing. I really have nothing to add that wasn't already stated in that thread.

I didn't see anything related to this in that discussion, though:

...the military historian’s assumption that martial violence in fact possesses a logic of sorts that goes beyond simple criminality.

Is all this military stuff just criminal activity? I'm curious to see someone's argument in favor of that view. Anyone got any links?

Like Brass said above, I don't think the people at the time saw it that way. That way of stating seems to be equivalent to calling someone "crazy" just because you disagree with their point of view. It's a way of dismissing somebody or something as being unworthy of further interest or study, and is a mistake.

Personally, I became interested in the war's social aspect originally. I would skim over all those parts of the books I read when they started talking about regiment XYZ did this, and this brigade fought that brigade. Boooring! I just wanted to learn how one part of the country managed to be at odds with another part that it led to fighting for 4 years. The fighting itself was just meaningless details. And I was never interested in the military at all, so I can understand how someone could be interested in a war yet not think that the military aspect of it was that important.

But after a while I realized I was wrong. It's all part of the story, as Brass stated above, and studying that aspect adds to the understanding of history. Those who fought were not only products of their time and society, but also influenced their time and society. They didn't fight in a vacuum (vacuums are way too small :wink: ).
 

HAHA! No worries. I'm still glad I read it. (mostly...)

I've given some more thought to the notion of military history being important and realized that in my post above, I was actually talking about social history ("Those who fought") not military history. I take it social history is about the people, whereas military history is the X's and O's of battle, troop movements, etc. You know, the stuff almost everyone on this forum likes to read about.

I can think of good reasons why the study of military strategy is valuable and useful, especially for those of us who get to vote for a commander-in-chief every 4 years and vote each year for those who will have the power to approve those strategies. But what about troop movements and military tactics? Sure, they're important for those in the military. But is that what countless hours of research and forests worth of trees should be spent on? It's interesting, but so are baseball statistics to some. Does that mean that's what our academicians should be spending their life's work on? Do those of us not in the military really get any benefit from knowing the arrangement of troops for "Pickett's" charge, other than a nice entertaining diversion?

I think I am starting to understand what is behind the "so what?" in the book review in the OP.
 
HAHA! No worries. I'm still glad I read it. (mostly...)

I've given some more thought to the notion of military history being important and realized that in my post above, I was actually talking about social history ("Those who fought") not military history. I take it social history is about the people, whereas military history is the X's and O's of battle, troop movements, etc. You know, the stuff almost everyone on this forum likes to read about.

I can think of good reasons why the study of military strategy is valuable and useful, especially for those of us who get to vote for a commander-in-chief every 4 years and vote each year for those who will have the power to approve those strategies. But what about troop movements and military tactics? Sure, they're important for those in the military. But is that what countless hours of research and forests worth of trees should be spent on? It's interesting, but so are baseball statistics to some. Does that mean that's what our academicians should be spending their life's work on? Do those of us not in the military really get any benefit from knowing the arrangement of troops for "Pickett's" charge, other than a nice entertaining diversion?

I think I am starting to understand what is behind the "so what?" in the book review in the OP.
I was kidding, of course. The "debate" that opened up when Hess and Gallagher published their separate articles was one that had been going on under the surface for 50 years among Civil War historians. I surveyed my own readers a couple of years ago and found that a quarter liked only military history, about the same number liked only social history, and the majority wanted articles that integrated both.

On this message board the numbers likely skew a little more towards military, but most members seem to like both.
 
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I also think that the two pre-military history articles drew some fire from other academic historians because many of them have no hopes of seeing a mass market read their works. Most university press books by most professors sell a thousand or so copies, while a military history of a battle (Gettysburg Again!) can sell ten or twenty times as many books. A lot of the social historians seemed to be laughing that the military historians were complaining about being marginalized when, in fact, the military historians had much larger readerships. Wayne's noting that the military historians have the advantage in getting employment, grants and contracts from the Defense Department was one I hadn't thought of before, but as he teaches at the Naval Academy he is uniquely placed to observe that funding stream.
 
But what about troop movements and military tactics? Sure, they're important for those in the military. But is that what countless hours of research and forests worth of trees should be spent on? It's interesting, but so are baseball statistics to some. Does that mean that's what our academicians should be spending their life's work on? Do those of us not in the military really get any benefit from knowing the arrangement of troops for "Pickett's" charge, other than a nice entertaining diversion?

Well, there's nothing wrong with benefiting the military and gaining a nice entertaining diversion while we're at it. :smile: But I think there are advantages beyond that. Without some knowledge of the military side of the equation I think it would be very difficult for us to imagine the enormous scope of this whole thing. It's that enormous scope that largely makes the social aspects so important. Along those lines, I think you may have struck a nail squarely on the head in your prior post:

Is all this military stuff just criminal activity?

Without some knowledge of the military side of the equation - the enormous, massive troop movements and deployments; the tremendous sacrifices made by the soldiers on both sides; the political moves that were made to support the military, etc., etc., etc. - it might be too easy to write the whole thing off as nothing more than criminal activity, leading to a poor understanding of the social side of things. But I think it's very difficult to do that once you've read a book like Landscape Turned Red (as just one of countless examples).
 
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