Perhaps the cannons were tossed overboard or they served as ballast. Maybe the old artillery pieces are related to a Civil War ironclad, which was scuttled by its Confederate crew. The Corps doubts that theory.
Archaeologists and Britain’s Royal Navy are offering an even more intriguing and exciting possibility.
They told CNN last week that — based on measurements and appearance — the cannons may be from the HMS Rose, a famed British warship that mixed it up with colonists during the revolution or, as the UK calls it, the War of Independence. Nearly 250 years ago, the British scuttled the ship in the Savannah River to block the channel and prevent French ships from coming to the aid of colonists trying to retake the city.
If this is the Rose, then it’s a significant find. That ship’s crackdown on Rhode Island smugglers at the outset of the Revolution prompted that colony to outfit vessels for the protection of American shipping, which in turn laid the basis for the Continental Navy.
After playing a role in the fight for New York in 1776, the Rose’s career ended at the bottom of the Savannah River three years later when British forces defending the city scuttled her to prevent French ships from navigating the channel. The Franco-American assault on the city in 1779 was, of course, one of the allies’ greatest disasters.
He flatly asserts the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery, compares Confederate leaders to the Founding Fathers and is profoundly irritated with what he deems a “cultural cleansing” of Southern history. He also said the Ku Klux Klan, while he didn’t agree with all of their methods, “made a lot of people straighten up.”
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. That’s an elected official defending the KKK in the year 2016. According to Benton, the Klan “was not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order.” And to promote the wearing of festive, pointy-headed costumes, one might add.
Benton’s views are why for years he has pushed legislation that would protect the state’s historical monuments from being marred or moved. This year he is stepping up his efforts with two newly introduced measures, one of which seeks to amend the state constitution to permanently protect the carving of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Stone Mountain.
Aaaannnnnddd this is one reason why it’s hard for conscientious preservationists who prefer to leave historic monuments in their original context to make their case. There are plenty of folks out there who have no desire to endorse or perpetuate the sentiments these monuments’ creators wanted to express; they just want to leave historic landscapes intact so that we can interpret them as we would a historic home or an artifact. But with yahoos like Benton running their mouths, it’s easy to assume that the only folks who oppose removing Confederate monuments are racist ignoramuses. The best thing Rep. Benton could do for historic preservation would be to put as much daylight between himself and other preservationists as possible.
Oh, and he doesn’t think the Civil War was about slavery, because of course he doesn’t.
Benton, a retired middle school history teacher, equates Confederate leaders with the American revolutionaries of the 18th century — fighting a tyrannical government for political independence.
“The war was not fought over slavery,” he said. Those who disagree “can believe what they want to,” he said.
He used to teach middle school history, and now he’s a legislator. You decide which is more disturbing; I’ll be slamming my forehead against a desk somewhere.
One of our Marble Springs staff members is moving on to a position at a Civil War-related site, the T.R.R. Cobb House in Athens, GA. Cobb was a lawyer who figures prominently in Georgia’s legal history, but he’s best remembered as a member of the Confederate congressional committee responsible for drafting the CSA’s constitution and as the organizer of the Georgia Legion. His military career didn’t last long; he bled to death from a mortal wound received at Fredericksburg, but the Legion went on to serve in many of the war’s bloodiest battles. I don’t know if he was any relation to Wilbur Cobb of Ren & Stimpy fame, but I desperately hope so.
Anyway, we had a little send-off for our colleague (who we were very sad to lose) a few days ago, and she mentioned that she’s about to start studying up on Cobb’s life and times for her new job. After years of working on the Tennessee frontier, it’ll be quite a change.
It occurred to me that this is one of the differences between public historians and their academic counterparts. Academic historians have the tremendous luxury of specialization. They spend years immersing themselves in the literature and primary sources of a particular field, and their success depends on how well they can navigate within it. Of course, they’ll end up teaching courses that fall outside their specialization. When it’s their turn to teach the survey course, they’ll have to have a working knowledge of a tremendous swath of historical knowledge. And the academic who can rework his or her specialization to fit a particular department’s strengths and expectations will be at a great advantage on a job search. But if they’re lucky, academic historians will spend much of their time on whatever it is they’ve chosen to study.
Public historians, on the other hand, have to learn to adapt. Their reading and research will depend much more heavily on the job they find themselves in than on their own inclinations. Again, the differences aren’t absolute; some public historians will be fortunate enough to find a position that suits their particular interests and expertise, just as some academic historians will find it necessary to adapt quickly to meet the needs of a department looking to hire new blood. But adaptation is more likely to be a fact of life for the public historian.
A change of job doesn’t just mean a change of zip code and getting to know a new city. It also means getting acquainted with a new mental geography: new contexts, new historiographies, new themes. It might mean a crash course in World War I for your first job, labor history for your second, the antebellum South for your third. One of my former bosses has worked at museums specializing in subjects as varied as the Trans-Mississippi West, the history of firearms, and Abraham Lincoln. I know people who have been posted at sites dealing with the pre-Columbian Southwest and the Kentucky frontier, Jacksonian canals and the Civil War, twentieth-century education and eighteenth-century Appalachia.
On top of all this, remember that public historians have to be generalists in another sense, too. They have to be familiar with the tenets of historical research as well as all the practical know-how required to manage a museum or a site: preservation, exhibits, budgets, pedagogy, and so on.
Adaptability and versatility just might be the two most important qualities for the aspiring public historian. It’s not a career choice for the faint of heart, but if you like learning new things, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.
I’ve been reading Massacre at Cavett’s Station by the eminent Tennessee archaeologist Charles Faulkner. The titular massacre was one of the uglier episodes in the long history of white-Cherokee conflict on the Tennessee frontier. It took place on September 25, 1793 when a massive war party (contemporary reports put their numbers as high as 1,500) headed for the territorial capital of Knoxville heard firing from the town and feared they’d lost the element of surprise. Instead, they fell on Cavett’s Station several miles to the southwest, killing the thirteen men, women, and children who were there.
Remarkably, the Indians had managed to approach Knoxville without detection by John Sevier’s militia, but retaliation was not long in coming. In what would prove to be his last Indian campaign, Sevier marched into Georgia and caught some of the perpetrators at Etowah, near present-day Rome. The Indians were in a position to oppose the militia’s crossing of the Etowah River at the town, but when a party of the whites moved south to cross elsewhere, the Indians followed them and left the fording place near the town undefended. The militiamen galloped back to Etowah, dispersing the defenders and putting the town to the torch.
Apparently Sevier decided that defeating the Indians wasn’t punishment enough, because he decided to up the ownage by sending them the following message, a copy of which is preserved in his journal:
Your murders and savage Barbarities have caused me to come into your Country Expecting you would fight like men, but you are like the Bairs and Wolves. The face of a white man makes you run fast into the woods and hide, u see what we have done and it is nothing to what we shall do in a short time. I pity your women & children for I am sure they must suffer and live like dogs but you are the Cause of it. You will make War, & then is afraid to fight,—our people whiped yours mightily two nights ago Crossing the river and made your people run very fast.
J.S.
To the Cherokees and their warriors if they Have Any.
Ouch. Not much for the niceties of spelling and punctuation, but the guy definitely knew how to twist the rhetorical knife.
A few days ago, some idiot drove through Battlefield Memorial Park in Savannah, GA and did $25,000 worth of damage to the Soldiers Stone Monument, which commemorates one of the Revolutionary War’s bloodiest engagements. The Coastal Heritage Society is offering $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of whoever’s responsible, so if you know something and you’d like to pocket a grand, give them a call.
Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the location of the Confederate president’s capture in 1865, was in serious danger of closing because the State of Georgia pulled its funding. Some folks have thankfully stepped in to keep it open, with the SCV pledging up to $25,000 annually. We historical bloggers are seldom reluctant to criticize the Sons of Confederate Veterans when they do wrong, so it’s only fair that we commend them when they do right.
Thomas Watson of Georgia began his political career in the late nineteenth century as a Populist champion of small farmers and opponent of powerful railroad companies. As a congressman, he was instrumental in implementing Rural Free Delivery by the postal service.
By the early twentieth century, however, Watson was lending his voice to prejudice rather than reform with his virulent denunciations of Catholics, blacks, and Jews. His condemnations of northern and Jewish influence in the wake of Leo Frank’s 1913 trial for the murder of Mary Phagan contributed to the anti-Semitic feeling against Frank that resulted in his August 1915 lynching.
There’s a statue of Watson on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol, but as of this month it’s slated to be moved across the street to make way for a renovation project. The statue’s removal apparently has nothing to do with Watson’s bigotry and everything to do with the prohibitive cost of moving it back once the renovations are done, but it’s prompted an interesting discussion about historical memory and one political figure’s very mixed and quite troubling legacy.
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this until now, but it’s time for John Sevier Days Living History Weekend at Marble Springs State Historic Site in Knoxville, TN. The action starts tomorrow and continues through Sunday—reenacting, demonstrations, food, and presentations on the Lost State of Franklin and King’s Mountain. It’ll be a blast, so stop by if you get the chance.
While we’re talking about Marble Springs, let me also recommend a great way to support the site and get some nifty benefits for yourself. Join the Governor John Sevier Memorial Association and you’ll get free admission when you visit, discounts on gift shop items, access to special events, and more. Memberships start at just $25.
Late September-early October is King’s Mountain season. If you can’t make it to Knoxville for the Marble Springs event, there’s another option for those of you in southwestern Virginia. On Sunday, Abingdon Muster Grounds is hosting Sharyn McCrumb, who will read from her new novel about the battle. They’ll also have living history demonstrations and the unveiling of a new painting of William Campbell, whose unit marched from Abingdon to Sycamore Shoals to meet the other Overmountain Men.
Some Connecticut parents are quite understandably upset over a school function where students got a taste of slavery…including the racial slurs. What. Were. They. Thinking?
Oh, and speaking of Rev War buffs, don’t forget about the Bunker Hill book giveaway. Just pick a number between 1 and 1,775 and send it to me at mlynch5396@hotmail.com by 10:00 P.M. on May 5. I won’t use your e-mail address for any purpose other than contacting the winner to get shipping info for the prize, so don’t be shy. Entries have been coming in since the first day, but the more the merrier.
Two Waynesboro, Ga., men were charged Monday in a Burke County grave robbery in which the remains of an infant casket and the corpses of five Confederate and Revolutionary War soldiers were dug up.
Jerry Atkinson, 39, and Ralph Hillis Jr. could face up to five years in prison if convicted of the seldom-used felony charge of malicious removal of the dead from a grave. The charges were filed by the Burke County Sheriff’s Office.
Hillis, who goes by the nickname “Bubba,” was in custody in Richmond County on Monday night, but Atkinson remained at large, said Burke County Sheriff Greg Coursey.
These guys are also facing meth-related charges. More on this awful story here and here.
Past in the Present 