Viewing the Civil War

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

How did Americans experience the Civil War away from the battlefield? Earlier this spring we hosted our annual Civil War Lecture series online. This year’s talks examined how viewers participated in the war through practices of reading, mapmaking, and prison tourism, and how prisoner of war memoirs shaped public understanding after the war. The three talks are now available to watch as one or in parts, and can be found on both our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Each talk is around twenty minutes and offers a new way to view events that took place over one hundred and fifty years ago. Here’s a brief description to entice you to watch them, or watch them again and share.

Dr. Jillian S. Caddell

Our first speaker was Dr. Jillian S. Caddell. Dr. Caddell’s Civil War talk “To Follow with Eye and Pencil: Experiencing the Civil War from Home” showcased alternative ways that American citizens participated in the war by following accounts published in newspapers or telegrams. Viewers recorded the events on specially printed Marking maps.

As she mentions in her talk’s introduction, Dr. Caddell is familiar with the work we do at the Chemung County Historical Society. She also discovered a personal connection with our area, finding a Confederate relative buried in nearby Woodlawn National Cemetery. She reflects on this personal experience in a wonderful C19 podcast she did on SoundCloud titled “Monumentalizing John W. Jones.” Dr. Caddell is also one of the 2021 Mark Twain Fellows at the Center for Mark Twain Studies and scheduled to speak in Elmira in the fall.

More about Dr. Caddell's scholarship looking at 19th century literature, concurrent history, and how it affected and influenced a sense of place can be found here. 

Dr. Michael P. Gray

Our second speaker was Dr. Michael Gray, a professor at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gray’s talk “Looking Over the Deadline: The Rise of Elmira Prison as a Dark Tourist Destination in the Chemung Valley” considered another kind of viewer participation. Rather than viewing the war through telegrams and reports, Gray’s viewers participated by gawking. They paid money to climb observatory platforms and view the prisoners. These viewers were encouraged to mock, insult, and even throw objects at the prisoners, despite military rules prohibiting this kind of behavior. While not unique to Elmira’s Civil War prison, as Dr. Gray points out, it was practiced enthusiastically and profitably here. Unlike Dr. Caddell’s sympathetic viewers who followed along, these were viewers who wanted to participate directly in the war and were frustrated by social barriers.

Dr. Gray has been series editor on Voices of the Civil War for University of Tennessee Press for over a decade and has published multiple books and writings on the Civil War, including The Business of Captivity: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison published by Kent State University Press, in 2001. His Civil War talk for us was from part of a new chapter in Carceral Footprints Left in the Civil War North: Trappings of the Camp Douglas and Elmira Prison Environs published this spring by Kansas University Press.

Dr. Angela M. Riotto

Our third speaker was Dr. Angela Riotto, a historian with the Army University Press in Kansas, Missouri. Her talk was titled "Poor Helpless Soldiers at their Mercy: Survivors of Elmira and their Memories of Captivity." Viewers in Dr. Riotto’s talk were the Confederate prisoners themselves. Using primary sources in the form of narratives and diaries, she looked at how prisoner views and recollections shapeshifted after the war. During their imprisonment, prisoners made few references of blame in their personal writings, but after the war many feared their confederate cause would be lost. Many prisoner recollections changed to blame, and the shift reinforced common tropes of intentional evil. Rewriting their own experiences affected a public understanding of prisoner experiences, and overall view of the war.

Dr. Riotto has contributed to many books on the Civil War, including The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans published by LSU Press in April, 2020, and more recently, Useful Captives: The Role of POWs in American Military Conflicts published this past February by University of Press, Kansas.

CCHS was honored to host these three speakers from very different parts of the world. Each speaker’s email is posted in the recorded talk and they encourage and welcome any questions and comments.

We do regret they can’t hear our applause.

An Ode to MP (69) 289

by intern Jonah Fisch-Gertz

Good morning faithful readers of this wonderful blog. My name is Jonah Fish-Gertz, and I am one of the slaves interns here at the Chemung County Historical Society. I have spent seven and a half days (or 180 hours) poring through our map cabinets to organize them, and only scratched the surface of what we have. But I’m here today to tell you about just one of the many, many maps we have: MP 69.289. 

 

M(69).289 in all it's glory.

That number does not tell you much about this map, or even where to find it (I left it in MP 02, D-04, F-03 if you are curious. {That is, map cabinet 2, drawer 4, folder 3.}) The formal title of this map is: “Map of the State of New York with the Latest Improvements.” Yet that title does not quite do this map justice. Created around 1833 by one H. Phelps, this map predates the city of Elmira, and Chemung County. Of course, the village of Newtown in Tioga County is on the map, but only true history buffs, like all of you, would be able to discern from this the truth. This is what first drew me to this map, the incongruity caused by the lack of Elmira on a map stored in the historical society based in Elmira.

 However, there is so much more to this map. Many things have changed in these last 183 years, some more so than the name of our fair city. For instance, the New York and Massachusetts border has a much more aggravated angle, and in fact the line running south from Vermont looks very much like a nose, with the kinks and angles between New York and Mass and CT. While we are on the topic of borders, the border of Steuben County, our wonderful neighbor to the West and my childhood home, stretches from its current Western border to Seneca Lake! It is in fact almost fifty percent larger on this map than it is in our day and age. And speaking of our neighbors, let us turn to MP 69.289’s depiction of Canada, or should I say Upper and Lower Canada, the British Colonies. They are still British colonies. That’s all I had to say on them, but that is really cool. So, to summarize the wacky borders, Chemung County does not exist, Steuben County it reaching its fingers across as many Finger Lakes as it can, Massachusetts has a nose, and Canada is still ruled from Europe.

 But that is not all! The wonderful highways and roads that knit this state together, allowing us to get around now are far from extant. Distances on this map are along the post roads, though those are few and far between. Instead, we have this wonderful competition between the canals and the railways to link the state. The canals seem to have the lead, especially with that new “Grand Canal” that stretches from Buffalo to Albany. Numerous other canals connect this Erie waterway to the other major cities, while railroads are depicted mostly in the Southern reaches of the state, and then only over short distances.  Clearly this newfangled fad of roads made from rails will not catch on! The age of the canal will be eternal. Of course, for the common traveler this map does mark the routes for both stage coaches and steamers, though the range of the latter is somewhat limited.

Of course, all these things were not at all unusual for those that would have used the map at the time, even though they fascinate us!  This map served a purpose to its readers, and the title, like all good titles, tells us what it was; to show off how advanced and organized New York was, how improved it had become since the Empire State fought against the British Empire.  I have already mentioned the canals, but this map also shows off the details of these canals, grades, distances, all you need to know about these revolutionary waterways is right there on the map, with charts and tables.  

Map detail showing profile of the Western Canal, aka, the Erie Canal.

Other tables on this map also inform the reader of all eleven of the newspapers available in the state, and the crown jewel, all four colleges! With eleven papers and four colleges, surely New York State is advanced and ready for the modern age!

Map detail showing a chart of newspapers and a profile of the Northern Canal.

With the modern age come a population boom, and New York was a core part of this, as is represented by another table on the map. All fifty five and a half counties (Hamilton County, though de jure independent, was still de facto governed by Montgomery County, and is recognized as such in the chart) of our state at the time are listed, with the county seat, number of citizens eligible to vote, and the size of the militia. So, for instance the entry for Tioga County, with the dual seats of Owego and Newtown had around 20,000 people. 2,000 militia, 3,000 electors. For comparison, the City of Elmira now has around 29,000 people living in it, and all those over the age of 18 {and not convicted felons} can vote. We also do not have a militia. Also, there are 62 counties in New York as of now. May, how things change!    

Detail with population chart.

As a final note on what this map shows, it has normal latitude and longitude, but additionally the map provides its location relative to Washington DC. This is a common theme on maps from this time, relating locations not to England, but to America. And while this map is not dated in years from American Independence, many are as well. There was a strong sense of nationalism growing even then, of America as the nation others ought to measure up to.

That is all that was printed on the map, and that alone is deeply fascinating. Yet there are also other things on the map, things added by those whom have owned it over the years. There is the accession number we gave it, written small and innocuously on the back, but others have outlined some of the counties in color, or scribbled notes on the back. The map itself shows signs of folding, and if folded again (which would be a bad idea. Please refrain from damaging our lovely maps should you ever get a chance to see them) would probably fit into a pocket. This map was used, it was a living document. It served a purpose outside of sitting in a drawer, gathering dust until an overenthusiastic intern pulled it out to write a blog post about it. That is something we should keep in mind as we examine the artifacts we have, that they served a purpose, that they were used. And while the exhibits in the museum do a wonderful job demonstrating this, sometimes living in the archives separates us from remembering the practical uses these artifacts were put to. At one point someone really needed to scrawl a random series of numbers, and they used the map from their pocket to do so. Someone wanted to emphasize one county above the others, and so outlined it. This map has had a life.

That’s why I like this map so much, why I’m writing about it above the other hundreds of things I pulled out of the map drawers. It is a deeply fascinating snap shot of our state from almost two hundred years ago. It is deeply informative both of things common at the time, and specialized knowledge the map was created to represent. At the same time, the map has clearly had a life of its own. It is more than just a reference piece, to be consulted and trawled for knowledge. It is deeply fascinating. That is why this post is an ode to MP (69) 289, to “Map of the State of New York with the Latest Improvements,” to my favorite map that I have come across since coming here.

Blood on the Water: Clubbing a Sea Lion on the Chemung

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

I usually like my blog posts to highlight the quirky, light side of history, like gum chewing controversies or vanilla extract scandals.  However, this week’s post has a decidedly darker subject matter.  In addition to being a museum professional, I am a historian of human-animal interactions, which entails subject matter of both great levity and tales of human cruelty. Unfortunately, the story of Bob the sea lion falls into the latter category.  

In 1903, Bob the sea lion escaped from his home in Trout Park in Cortland, NY.  He swam via the Tioughnioga and Chenango Rivers to the Susquehanna River and then to the Chemung.  All along his route, people gathered to watch the animal poke his head out of the water and swim around in the local rivers.  Some fishermen tried to catch him (there was rumored to be up to a $300 prize for his capture), but Bob eluded them all.
(Use the interactive map below to trace his journey and learn about Bob sightings).

Everyone had sea lion-mania.  The newspapers reported his movements in Towanda, Tunkhannock, Sayre, Chemung, and Elmira.  Some locals noticed that the Susquehanna and Chemung were exhibiting a reddish color, a feat that they attributed to Bob.  In a bit of pseudoscience, the papers claimed that when chased, sea lions gave off a red “exudation,” thus turning the rivers red.  The theory that one sea lion and his mystery excretions were enough to color an entire river was not believed by all. The fine folks of Sayre went on the record saying “no one here” believes Bob was responsible.

Accusations of coloring the rivers red aside, Bob’s jaunt along the waterways was relatively uneventful until he reached Elmira.  In the city, he was met by adoring crowds, but also by people who were intent on capturing him.  One party, John “Stub” Appleton, his son, John Jr., and Charles Bucholtz had made it their mission to wrangle the rogue sea lion, even almost capturing him in their nets several times.  In the morning of July 25 the men cornered Bob in shallow water.  They tried to wrestle the 150 pound sea lion onto the boat, but Bob put up a fight, allegedly lunging at Stub.  In “self-defense,” the men clubbed Bob to death.  

Bob, or "The Sea Lion We Chased"

It is not my job as a historian to pass judgment on people in the past.  I am supposed to remain as objective as possible.  S0, I will let the newspapers from the time speak for me.  Upon hearing news of Bob’s death, the public and the press were outraged.  The Elmira Daily Gazette ran an interview with Bob’s trainer recalling how the animal had toured around the world with Ringling Brothers’ circus.  The trainer exclaimed, “I could not feel worse if someone pointed a gun at my heart and knew that they would pull the trigger.”  The people of Cortland condemned the killing as “stupid, brutal conduct” and lamented the heartbreak of Bob’s pregnant widow, Duchess.

Unfortunately, the indignities of Bob’s stories did not end with his death.  Stub Appleton mailed Bob on ice back to his owner, who lived in Syracuse.  Upon the corpse’s arrival, the owner refused to pay the $50 shipping charge claiming that the sea lion wasn’t worth that much dead or alive, so poor dead Bob was shipped back to Elmira. With his victim back in his possession, Stub announced his intentions to have Bob stuffed and put on display.  Allegedly, Bob was displayed in the window of Berner’s Café on East Water Street.