Historian and author Jill Titus will be speaking on the legacy of the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address this week at Shepherd University.
The talk, titled “The Battlefield Belongs to the Nation: Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Gettysburg,” examines how America observed the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil Rights era. Titus’ interest in the topic is detailed in her book, “Gettysburg 1963.”
“It really started with me walking the battlefield in the evening and looking at some of the large Confederate monuments lining West Confederate Avenue,” Titus said. “And as I looked at those dedication dates, and I looked at the language on these monuments, it immediately jumped out to me that those monuments themselves were dated from the 1960s.”
Titus will be speaking about how the commemoration of the Civil War was used as a framing device for debating the racial issues of the 1960s, connecting how Americans memorialized the war during the Civil Rights movement. Activists used the centennial to shine a light on racial inequality, arguing the commemoration was used to glorify the Confederacy and set back the civil rights movement. She says the goal of the talk is to help those in attendance understand Gettysburg’s legacy from multiple political and social angles, noting the contentiousness of the battle’s centennial celebration.
“I think that anyone living in 21st century America, anyone living in this moment, we’re having a debate over our cultural symbols and debate over how we remember and memorialize our history, can learn things by understanding how previous generations have wrestled with the legacies of the past,” Titus said.
The talk will be at Shepherd University’s Robert C. Byrd Center on Thursday. It will be open to the public and Titus will sign her book afterward.
An art exhibit of full-sized portraits of 17 Black Civil War soldiers from across America alongside biographies of their lives before, during, and after the Civil War. Artist and medical illustrator Shayne Davidson has been touring the country with the exhibit titled Seventeen Men since 2012.
This spring, the exhibit is coming to Charleston’s Craik-Patton House, a historic, 19th-century home listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Reporter Shepherd Snyder sat down with Davidson and Craik-Patton House Director Nathan Jones to talk about the exhibit.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Snyder: Shayne, I’m going to start with a couple of questions for you. Can you tell me a little bit about this exhibit? What inspired Seventeen Men in particular? Was there anything in particular you wanted to convey with this exhibit?
Davidson: You’ll have to bear with me, because there’s a little bit of backstory to it. I was working on a family tree for a friend, and she happened to mention that she had this tiny little album of Civil War soldiers that had belonged to her great-grandfather. And she asked me if I was interested in seeing it, even though the men in the album weren’t related to him… So I said, sure, I’d be interested in seeing it, as I also collect vintage photography. And I knew that photos of Black Civil War soldiers were very unusual. They’re quite rare. So I was interested in seeing it, and she photographed all the photos in it. There were 18 photos. She photographed them all and emailed them to me. And as I was looking at them, I thought they were really fascinating photos, even though they’re extremely tiny – about the size of a postage stamp. They’re what’s called a gem photo. And I realized that, as I was looking at them, they were identified. Somebody had written their name on the matte around the photo for each person. So I got intrigued with this little album, and I decided to do a family tree for each man to see if I could kind of give him some background. So when I had some time, I started to do full size portraits of each man, after I had done the genealogical background. And I ended up doing portraits of all the men in the album, and then writing little biographical accounts of their lives. Since then, the people who own the album have donated it to the African American Museum of History and Culture at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, where it is on display. I knew it was a rare piece. But now I understand how rare identified Black Civil War soldier photos are. So it wasn’t really planned, it just sort of happened.
Shayne Davidson
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Snyder: And speaking of biographies, Shayne, you said that each of the drawings in your art exhibit come with a biography of each depicted person’s life story before, during, and after the Civil War. Can you touch on that a little bit?
Davidson: Well, that was part of what inspired me to do the drawings. I found so much information out about them. Most of the men; not all, but most – there’s one man who isn’t identified. And by the way, the identifications, we’re fairly sure, were done by Captain (William A.) Prickett (of the United States Colored Troops) who owned the album. We believe that the album was a gift to him from the men. We don’t know that for sure, but we think that’s probably how it came to exist. And let me say that, as far as I know, gifts like that were extremely unusual and to have it survive is more unusual still. He apparently wrote the names of the men in the album, which allowed me to identify them and do the research into them. So there are little biographical stories about each man. Some of them were free when they signed up to serve. Several of them were signed up by their slave holders, the slave holder receiving the bounty that would have been paid to the man. And some of them it’s just a little unclear. The men who, for instance, lived in Delaware, a border state. There was one man from Maryland. It’s a little unclear whether they were free or enslaved at the time of signing up. It’s also possible that a couple of the men may have actually left the country through the Underground Railroad and came back to sign up. They may have been in Canada and came back to sign up for the USCT because they signed up in Erie, Pennsylvania, very close to Lake Erie.
Snyder: I’m going to pivot here and ask Nathan: As the director of Charleston’s Craik-Patton House, why was it important for the museum to feature this exhibit?
Jones: Well, with nearly 200,000 African American men serving as soldiers and sailors during the Civil War, it’s a subject that is not often portrayed. And I felt like it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to share this with our community. I believe it was the spring of 2020 here in Charleston, the state set up a historical roadside marker for the 45th United States Colored Troops. It was something that when I first saw it, I was excited that they had placed it there. And when (Executive Director) Drew Gruber approached me from the Civil War Trails Association with Shayne’s exhibit, I knew that the Craik-Patton House was the place for this display. I think it’s an excellent exhibit that does not get the recognition that it deserves. And that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to have it here on display at the Craik-Patton House.
Civil rights trailblazer J. R. Clifford died on October 6, 1933, at age 85. A native of present-day Grant County, he served in an African American unit during the Civil War. Afterward, he taught at a black school and founded Martinsburg’s Pioneer Press, the first black-owned newspaper in West Virginia. He used its editorial pages to fight for better economic and social conditions for African Americans.
Five years later, Clifford became West Virginia’s first African American attorney. In this role, he fought landmark trials against racial discrimination. In the case of a Tucker County teacher, he was one of the first lawyers in the nation to successfully challenge segregated schools. He also helped organize a national civil rights meeting in Harpers Ferry that was a springboard for the N.A.A.C.P.
In 1917, he wrote a series of forceful editorials opposing U.S. involvement in World War I. In response to the criticism, the government shut down the Pioneer Press—after 35 years in print—for violating postal laws. Today, Clifford is remembered as one of the great civil rights leaders in West Virginia and the nation.
On September 14, 1862, General Jesse Lee Reno was killed during the Battle of South Mountain in Maryland. The Wheeling native was the highest-ranking Union general from present-day West Virginia to be killed during the Civil War.
Reno graduated in the same West Point class that included George McClellan and another cadet from Western Virginia: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. During the Mexican War, Reno served in a howitzer battery and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultapec.
Three months before the start of the Civil War, he was commanding a federal arsenal in Alabama, when it was seized by pro-Confederate state forces. In late 1861, he was called east to command a brigade, which he led during Ambrose Burnside’s expedition through coastal North Carolina. Promoted to brevet major general, Reno’s division took part in the Union debacle at Second Manassas and temporarily commanded Burnside’s 9th Corps.
Jesse Lee Reno was mortally wounded during the struggle for South Mountain—trying to repel Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Maryland. Three days later, members of the 9th Corps charged into battle at Antietam with the cry of “Remember Reno.”
On August 5, 1863, the West Virginia Legislature voted to admit Berkeley County officially into West Virginia. Three months later, the legislature also admitted Berkeley’s neighbor, Jefferson County.
Earlier in 1863, residents of the two counties had voted to join the new state. The vote was curious, though—to say the least—because Berkeley and Jefferson had been decidedly pro-Southern in their political leanings, with closer ties to the Shenandoah Valley and Virginia.
However, at the time of the vote, the United States Army was in control of both Berkeley and Jefferson. These Union soldiers helped ensure that mostly pro-West Virginia voters went to the polls and intimidated most pro-Virginians from voting.
After the Civil War ended, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act that claimed Berkeley and Jefferson back from West Virginia. But Congress sided with West Virginia and ruled that Berkeley and Jefferson were part of the 35th state. Virginia argued the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in 1871, also took West Virginia’s side, ruling that Berkeley and Jefferson counties are permanent parts of the Mountain State.
July 3, 1863, was a pivotal day in the Civil War. On that day, the Union Army scored a key victory in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, and Confederates offered their surrender at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Battle of Gettysburg ended the Confederates’ last major invasion of the North and is viewed by some as the war’s turning point. The Confederate loss of Vicksburg was perhaps more important because it opened the way for the North to seize control of the entire Mississippi River, cutting the Confederacy in half.
West Virginians played important roles in both efforts. At Gettysburg, Union troops in the 1st West Virginia Cavalry participated in a charge against Confederate infantrymen during the battle’s waning moments on July 3. That same day, Confederate soldiers from West Virginia were part of General George Pickett’s disastrous charge, climaxing the battle. Union soldiers from the 1st West Virginia Light Artillery’s Battery C were on the opposing side of Pickett’s Charge.
Hundreds of miles to the southwest, seven soldiers in the 4th West Virginia Infantry earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism in the Union assault on Vicksburg’s defenses.
