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Stumpage Reports
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Saturday, January 10, 2004 :::
But Its Fun Chasing Footnotes ...
Thursday a couple of eighth graders came into my workplace to work on their Civil War projects. Of course they had not done their research in secondary sources like we told them to when we gave a presentation at their school last month.
They were interested in the Confederate Prisoner of War Camp in Salisbury, North Carolina. I found them a reference in an index to a journal and turned to the journal article. The article was transcriptions of same senator's letter from 1866, complete with extensive annotations. The pages were about 1/3 letter and about 2/3 footnotes, I loved the sight of it. In one of the letters the guy mentioned someone from the camp was on trial for mistreating prisoners. Excitedly showing the kind the footnote, I pointed out how it gave a thumbnail sketch of the situation and used as its source a book about North Carolina during Reconstruction. I excitedly pointed out to them if they could get this book and if the author did the footnotes correct, it should lead them to some primary sources.
They could've cared less. Fuck 'em. I handed them the index and told them to look for more articles and walked away. It was the second time I'd showed them how to do the work. I didn't even get into the fact the book cited was from the 1940's, and probably written by some lost cause apologist from "Birth of a Nation" school of historiography.
Reading:
"A Stong Force of Ladies: Women, Politics, and Confederate Memorial Associations in Nineteenth-Century Raleigh," by Catherine Bishir, in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory.
"Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past in Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina, 1885-1915", by Catherine Bishir, in Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity
Also almost done with The Two Towers and ready to start on The Return of the King. I couldn't be happier.
Also on deck, books I hope to get to in the next couple weeks:
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson.
According to the Rolling Stones by the Rolling Stones.
As you may have guessed from the above articles, I'm getting cranked up about my Confederate Monument research and may actually start some production on the project. I hope to revisit these books soon also: Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913 by Gaines Foster
Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America by Kirk Savage .
::: posted by tom at 8:32 AM
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