Kenneth Noe discusses 'Reluctant Rebels'

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'Reluctant Rebels' author Kenneth W. Noe to speak at UM April 19

Published: Sunday, April 01, 2012, 1:45 PM

By Press-Register Correspondent

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Civil War historian Kenneth W. Noe

MOBILE, Alabama -- Kenneth W. Noe, Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn University, will be the featured speaker at the University of Mobile’s annual Billy Hinson Lecture on April 19 at 7:00 p.m. in Moorer Auditorium. An award-winning historian of the Civil War, Noe’s most recent book is “Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army After 1861” (Chapel Hill, $35). He will serve as editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on Alabama and the Civil War to be published by the University of Alabama Press.

In an interview, Noe discussed his work and the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

Q: In “Reluctant Rebels,” you explore the motivations of later-enlisting Confederates. Based on your research, what distinguished these latecomers from the men who rushed to enlist in the early days of the war?

A: Many things. Demographically, two-thirds of the men I sampled were older recruits on average and thus more likely to be husbands, fathers and men who had something tangible to lose, a farm or business. Ideologically, they were much less interested in the political causes of the day. Rhetoric about states’ rights or independence or “Old Abe’s tyranny” doesn’t appear to have moved more than a handful of men in my sample of 320 soldiers, whereas other scholars maintain that it decisively moved the first wave. Most Confederates’ identities were tied strongly to kin and neighborhood, but it seems to me that those ties were even stronger for later enlisters. Once in the army they seemed to have remained in tight, locally-based groups rather than integrating themselves into the larger units, even when it came to practices such as worship. And about 10 percent of them clearly enlisted to some extent for the money, the pay and bounty. All of the soldiers I studied enlisted as the Confederate government was trying to encourage enlistment and re-enlistment with positive offerings, such as bounties or the right to elect officers.

Interview by Scotty E. KirklandCorrespondent
Q: Like most historians of the Civil War, you do not treat any work published by soldiers after 1865 as a primary source. Why do you think that the accuracy of many of these postwar reminiscences is so suspect?

A: I think it’s human nature to interpret the past with questions raised by the present. We all do it. So a memoir written in the 1880s or 1890s not only is a source that may reflect the war from an older man’s perspective but a memory of the war filtered through Reconstruction, Redemption, the rise of veterans groups and, especially, whatever else the author has read or heard in the meantime. Memoirs are useful for many things, but if you want to understand how men thought at a certain moment, you need to get as close to that moment as possible.

Q: Then do you see any direct relationship between sources like these and the prevailing myths about the war on both sides?

A: I’m often dismayed by the Civil War books I find at my local bookstore that are based solely on familiar published sources. Yes, many of those are very useful, and I used quite a few myself. But to stop there means ignoring a plethora of underutilized contemporary sources available at archives, sources that often were written on the battlefield before the smoke had cleared. I worry that we are too attracted to the familiar and the comfortable, the hundredth retelling of Pickett’s Charge, always with the same quotations and the same ending. But frankly I see a more serious problem these days with the Internet. It’s depressing to realize that so much one can read about the war online is just cut and pasted from somebody else’s Web site, and a lot of it is badly interpreted or just made-up. That’s how old myths survive and new ones appear.

Q: You give the reader a very clear-eyed picture of the conflict. I wonder what you make of the events marking the war’s sesquicentennial thus far?

A: Obviously the Civil War Sesquicentennial is a more low-key affair than the Centennial. But unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t think that makes it a failure, as a few already have argued.
Even without national sponsorship and the hoopla and beard-growing contests of the 1960s, the Sesquicentennial is still happening, at universities such as Auburn and Mobile, at parks and other historic sites and, notably, on the Internet, for good or ill. The sorts of discussion and debates that occurred in 1962 at a Civil War round table now take place increasingly on Facebook or on blogs. We may well remember this commemoration as the war’s first digital anniversary.

Q: Finally, what will be the topic of your Hinson Lecture?

A: I’ll be talking about the issues that motivated Alabama Confederates to enlist, both in the first wave and later in the war.

For more information on the Hinson Lecture, contact the University of Mobile at 251-675-5990.

Scotty E. Kirkland is an historian living in Mobile.

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/04/reluctant_rebels_author_kennet.html
 
Historians often hold autobiographical sources suspect and for good reason. Many true heroes with no need or reason often embellish events decades after the fact. I agree with the author in that many speak of the past tempered with trace elements of events and times since the actual events. Sometimes memories fade and sometimes they morph a tad too.........
 
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