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Reflections on Module 4 -3D Modeling

For this module, the focus on 3D printing presented plenty of creative opportunity in how we can present our topics. This is not limited merely to depicting scale representations of physical objects. The process can be expanded to convey themes and ideas that concern issues and events related to these chosen areas of research.

To connect to my ongoing project, I chose to create a model of the ‘King Cotton’ caricature, popular in the antebellum and Civil War eras. Connected to the same themes that permeated the Confederacy’s failed attempts of cotton diplomacy, representations of the crop’s status in the South and abroad.

Portrayed in historical materials in a range of presentation formats – across multiple mediums and in both favorable and unfavorable light – depictions of ‘King Cotton’ carried a great deal of metaphor. Symbolism was popular in such imagery, particularly when the concept was satirized in cartoon form by Northern and British illustrators. My creation does not explicitly favor one portrayal or the other, but does represent several of the themes surrounding the idea of cotton as a king from before, during and after the war. If it were a printed image in the 1860s, I believe it would likely have been seen as critical of the concept.

Link to model: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/i8LOYDRCCqB-cotton-king

King Cotton sits upon his throne, carrying with him contrasting symbols of his effect upon the South. To the right, he carries the profits of cotton production, bringing wealth and power to the region’s governments and plantation elite. In his other hand, he carries a taskmaster’s whip, signifying the South’s continued reliance on slavery for its agriculture into the Civil War. Upon his head, he wears a lopsided crown – a bit too big for him – suggesting that he may not fit to be a ruler, nor keep the throne, yet he retains the title all the same.

A feature that did not make it into the final product, despite being modeled, was a series of chains from the throne, attaching the king’s foot to his seat of power. My intention in adding that was to convey the idea that the South had tied itself to the production of cotton and would not easily break itself free from its dependence upon the crop. For one reason or another, the feature was not successfully created by the printer, suggesting either that there are still limitations on the ability of some printers to finely detail their products, or that such additions have a higher likelihood of failing in the printing process.

Having worked with 3D modeled products in past experiences in public history, particularly in educational interactions with individuals and groups, the use of such technologies allows them opportunity to more closely connect with the objects of history. Though plastic, these items still carry some of the weight of the original artifacts – or in the case of symbolic items, related themes – which the public can draw upon to better understand the relevance to a historical subject.

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Reflections on Module 3 – Mapping

               In reflecting upon the work involved in Module 3, I thought back to my experience with GIS in undergrad. Despite the area in focus for my project not being particularly data driven, rather more narrative focused, it was refreshing to be able to build a map again. In utilizing ArcGIS’s story mapping program, I sought to tell the story of the CSS Alabama, through the visual aspects of the maps I included and an accompanying narrative to support and identify significant events, aspects, and characteristics over the course of its two year career. Being highly active in harassing Union shipping, particularly between 1862 and 1863, I wanted to be able to convey through the narrative presented both the impact level and scope of the Alabama’s actions at different points.

               There were obstacles to being able to place the entirety of the Alabama’s career in a spatial setting. Other than the general course of its journeys throughout the world, the exact locations of where the Alabama took or sunk its 65 victims is difficult to determine. Utilizing the narrative presented by its captain, Raphael Semmes, in The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter, some locations can be determined, or at least given a rough estimate for placement. Landmarks such as islands, regions, or towns are key to plotting the course of the Alabama, though gaps in the narrative where nothing significant occurs can hamper this effort.

Additionally, even if each location was able to plotted with absolute certainty it should be noted that with the story map tools available, a full map that marks all 65 vessels captured would appear cluttered. The approach I’ve taken condenses this down in across each of the three maps, assigning individual points to specific locations within specific date ranges, placed in the rough area in which she would likely have been operating. Some may include multiple captures, or a general look at what the crew of the Alabama were doing in regards to its mission at that time. The narrative of the ship’s story is able to move on, but the actions of the raiders in this regard are not overlooked.

               Despite the challenges presented in the information available, I would consider that the three maps created, particularly the second and third, effectively convey a narrative story, even when ignoring the accompanying text. The difference in image scale between the maps was necessary to better display the distances travelled, as well as evoke the an idea of how much time was passing between prizes and other events in the Alabama’s career. Thus, I consider what is shown in these maps to provide sufficient information with which one can understand the role of the Alabama in the overall course of the war, and the threat that it and other vessels of its kind carried, to reflect the described reactions and concerns of Northerners in the accompanying text.

               The challenges in using Story Maps, beyond the matter of no definite location data, are largely in editing and presentation as the functionality of the program can contain errors in display, such as missing points, lines, and misaligned maps with inaccurate default view distance. However, these limitations do not attract from the information within final product. Overall, I consider these final maps to provide readers with understandable visual elements that effectively convey both the space and time the Alabama covered in its service to the Confederacy.

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Reflections on Module 2

Module 2 proved to be interesting way to approach both past analyses of the subject matter my research is concerned with, as well as my own analyses of the thoughts conveyed in primary source materials. At first, I wondered what could be drawn from using data-related tools concerning the American Civil War in the context of foreign dimensions and Great Britain. However, the use of the Google ngram program and the data formats created through Voyant leaves me believing that such tools do have more applications to this subject field than I first thought.

Beginning with the construction of ngrams drawing upon Google’s digital book collection, my intent was to determine the frequency of certain subjects in digitized works, looking for when writing including such terms or figures was most prevalent. The first ngram I tested was to determine the general trend behind the Civil War in literature in the first place, with the inclusion of Abraham Lincoln acting as another trend for comparison. I wanted to see when authors and historians discussed the War, Lincoln, Union and Confederacy most often and draw a conclusion on what factors may have shaped rising and falling recurrence.

The second was more focused comparing the frequency of the American Civil War – as a reference to broader discussion of the subject – to that of three individuals integral to the course of diplomacy during the conflict: William Seward, Earl Russell, and Lord Lyons. The aim here was to identify trends in the inclusion of these officials and compare them to the frequency of general narratives. All appear to have decline in usage since the early-mid 20th century, a trend that aligns with what I have noticed about the range of secondary materials that study this field I’ve encountered in my research. Prominent early works on Civil War diplomacy and the role of Great Britain, while still a smaller subset of the field as a whole, are more concentrated in the roughly 60-70 years following the war’s end. There are still occasional modern publications that use them, but this has declined overtime.

Concerning the use of Voyant-Tools, I wanted to more specifically analyze a group of primary sources to determine common themes. In particular the area I was interested in for this test concerned the possibility of war between the Union and England following the Trent Affair in 1861. Using the corpus of data formed by nine letters pertaining to the events of the Affair, two formats were utilized in analyzing the authors’ thoughts on the idea of war. The first looked at the frequency of words in graph format, with war being the 2nd most used across the letters with twenty-three separate instances. The graph’s most notable trend concerning ‘war’ is seen in the four letters of Thurlow Weed over the first half of December, 1861. His letters reveal the concerns of an unofficial American diplomat over the course of this standoff and possible prelude to another war. His first raises several immediate concern about the British response, while the last included suggests that the situation is gradually cooling, reassuring Weed in his view of the situation.

The second format Voyant presents data through is by displaying a list of each instance that ‘war’ appears in throughout the letters, including some of the context provided by their surrounding text. While this context is provided, it is more of a preliminary step for analysis, as it merely identifies pertinent locations within the text being examined. For a full understanding of the context, the wider narrative of the text still needs to be read.

Ultimately, both the graph and the individual contexts have their own value to analyzing the thoughts and perspectives of the individuals writing these primary source documents. However, it remains important to read through these materials ourselves. There are details that these programs will not display in an immediately apparent manner that a look at the document itself can provide. For example, the rushed nature of Thurlow Weed’s writing in his letters on the 4th, or the serious hand in which Lord Russell communicates the preliminary British stance on Trent to Lord Lyons in the Untied States. Rather, these programs and tools can act as supplements to our own thoughts and analytical work with these writings, indicating points and areas of interest in the text for further examination.

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The Concerns for War

The fear and furor for an Anglo-US conflict

At several points in the American Civil War, the Union threaded the needle of foreign controversy, narrowly avoiding a second military conflict both close to home and abroad. The potential for a concurrent war with Great Britain fluctuated throughout the first years of the main conflict, when neither North or South could achieve a definitive victory. The North did itself no favors in terms of foreign relations when the Lincoln administration embroiled itself in a diplomatic scandal. The last months of 1861 saw tensions between the United States and Great Britain rise almost to the point of military engagement, all over the case of Royal Mail Steamer named Trent.

The RMS Trent had sailed out of Havana on return to Britain, carrying with it both standard deliveries and two particular passengers – Confederate Diplomats James Mason and John Slidell. Intercepted in the Caribbean by a Union Naval vessel under Captain Charles Wilkes, the Trent was stopped and the diplomats removed and arrested. The actions of the Union in this event caused a firestorm when the Trent finally reached its destination, shaking public opinion and the discourses of British government. Views that this action was a violation of the rights of neutral powers spread amid calls for a swift explanation from the U.S., and for the release of the diplomats. Many the North expressed both cheer at the capture of the diplomats as well as concern and frustration over British involvement in a ‘plot’ to bring these diplomats to Europe. It played into fears of outside intervention, and calls for the diplomats’ release were met with calls for a retaliation.

This post examines the topic of war during this period, examining multiple documents and correspondences connected to the diplomatic concerns and dialogues over the Trent controversy. Using the corpus tools provided by Voyant Tools, we can scan transcripts of these documents to determine the frequency with which the idea of war with Britain was discussed. These nine papers come from different backgrounds, from American politicians giving advice to Lincoln to American agents in London providing reports on public and government opinion.

Digitized images of the documents themselves, along with their transcripts, can be found on their respective item pages in the Omeka Collection. A page displaying the full Corpus page created through Voyant can be found here.

The documents include:

A letter from J.R. Doolittle to President Lincoln, December 19, 1861

A letter from Thomas Ewing to President Lincoln, December 28, 1861

A letter from Millard Fillmore to President Lincoln, December 16, 1861

A letter from the Prince de Joinville to President Lincoln, December 1, 1861

A missive from Earl Russell to Lord Lyons, November 30, 1861

Four letters from Thurlow Weed to William Seward, Dec. 4 (1), Dec. 4 (2), Dec. 11, Dec. 13

Looking at the frequency trends created by the corpus of these documents, the five words that appear most often are ‘government,’ ‘war,’ ‘Trent,’ ‘England,’ and ‘Great’ (used before Britain). ‘War’ is the second most frequent term across these letters, appearing twenty-three times in total, only surpassed by ‘government’ – a common term for discourse concerning representatives or discussion of policies and events between multiple nations. Surpassing the Lincoln letters of both former President Millard Fillmore and the French Prince de Joinville in discussing the threat of war with Britain are the concerns of Thurlow Weed in his correspondence to Secretary of State William Seward. In London as an unofficial American agent, Weed makes mention of war twelve times in his four letters back to Washington. Writing these over a period of roughly a week and a half between the 4th and the 13th, Weed’s fear is evident in the frequency of both his letters and his language in the early stages of the standoff.

The corpus formed by Voyant can provide more specific information about these documents and their writers’ perspectives using another format. looking at the document containing the highest frequency of ‘war,’ the longer of two letters Weed wrote to Secretary Seward on the 4th of December

The instances in which Weed mentions war in this first correspondence reflect the man’s rising concern over the situation as he understands it at that moment. “Prompt and efficient preparations for war.” “Already war steamers are being got ready.” Due to the context we have today, Weed’s observations can be connected to the height of the controversy, where a decision on the freedom of the Confederate diplomats had not been made by the Union and neither had an apology been delivered to Great Britain. The possible threat of the Union to British Canada prompted Parliament to order troop movements to reinforce the border while the Confederacy saw opportunity to sow tension despite their captive diplomats.

By the time of Weed’s letter to Seward from the 13th (data below), the situation has cooled slightly and the man has met with high-ranking British officials, including Foreign Minister Russell. Though war could still be considered a possibility, Weed appears reassured by his discussion with Russell and others that war is not desired as much as initial thinking had suggested.

President Lincoln received his own counsels on the matter, not just from men such as Seward – kept appraised of the situation in London by men such as Weed and the American minister Charles Francis Adams – but also by other prominent figures in American politics. Governors, representatives, and senators sent their thoughts on the Affair to the White House. One such letter-writer, the 12th president Millard Fillmore, offered thoughts on the war that reflected the consensus growing within Lincoln’s inner circle.

Fillmore’s use of ‘war,’ in the context of surrounding text, wars of the dangers of engaging enemies on multiple fronts – the “calamities of civil and foreign war at the same time.” The Union could not “take the hazards of a war at a most inconvenient time,” and expect to do well in either conflict it found itself in. What did the Union have to gain in prolonging this dispute over the captives that outweighed what it had to lose? Fillmore’s words convey the same general themes that structured Lincoln and Seward’s solution to easing the tensions caused by Trent.

Shown below, the Links format presented in the Corpus also reinforces these connections and themes. The words ‘time’ and ‘demand’ are both closely linked to ‘war’ in these writings, which itself is connected to ‘government.’ Groups in both the Union and Britain escalated calls for war, or at the least a demand for some response from their respective governments so as not to back down from the perceived slight they had recieved. The authors of these letters and others cautioned against these demands, expressing that it was not the time for a secondary conflict, that such a time could later, if the tensions caused by the situation persisted.

Ultimately, the philosophy of ‘One War at a Time’ proved the best possible course, in which the Confederate diplomats were returned to the custody of Great Britain, resolving the primary point of contention that had caused the dispute. Dispite fear and anger over the Affair, a possible second war had been averted for the present, though Anglo-Union relations for the rest of the American conflict remained shaky as Seward and his English counterparts worked to mend the divide.

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What was Written?

A gathering of Diplomats
A delegation of foreign diplomats led by Secretary Seward, New York, 1863
A Comparison of Civil War Topics across Digitized Works

Even before the official start of the American Civil War in 1861, authors and commentators both in the country and abroad offered their own analyses of the deteriorating situation in the United States. The aftermath of the conflict saw a wave a publications and prints summarizing the causes, course, and outcomes of the ‘War between the States.’ Studies of this era continued to fascinate scholars into the modern era, with new growth in interest surrounding the centennial period in the 1960s. A similar trend occurred in the later 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly around the sesquicentennial commemoration in 2011, including new focuses on historical diversity and the application of the Civil War era to modern issues.

Below is a set of ngram graphs that follow the fluctuations in published and digitized source materials that include specific terms or subject materials relating to the area of the American Civil War. They follow the use of more general terms in written works digitized by Google books, namely ‘American Civil War,’ ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ ‘The Union,’ and ‘The Confederacy.’

As shown, writings including mention or discussion of Lincoln boomed during the era of the conflict itself, likely capped by the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. The next generation of historical writings on the late President arose by the late 19th century and historians continued to write much on the man and his administration well into the next. Writing including ‘The Union’ experienced a similar boom during the crisis of secession and the ensuing Civil War, but it should be noted that the course charted by Google’s program is likely picking up additional uses and instances of the phrase not applicable to the Civil War era, particularly in periods that saw the rise of labor movements and the 20th century. Instances of the ‘The Confederacy’ appears largely flat throughout, though the same issue as before can arise with other instances of the phrase – it is not unique to writing on the Civil War faction.

The slow growth of writing on or considering the ‘American Civil War’ begins before the conflict even ends, reaching a plateau point with the generation of authors and historians in the early 20th century. The recurrence of such writing fluctuates throughout the ensuing century, reaching high points in three rough sections – 1940-41, 1965-66, and the 2000s. The first could be connected to the time frame that saw the last Civil War veterans dying, drawing public attention. The second is tied to the period of the War’s centennial, and the third could be explained by the rise in new interests in diversity in historical narratives, in contemporary political cultural tensions, or in interest surrounding the sesquicentennial celebration of the war.

Moving on, another comparison can be made concerning writings on the American Civil War and the commonality of terms and figures relating to the subject of this project: Diplomacy and Britain in the conflict. The following ngrams similarly follow four terms, one again being the ‘American Civil War.’ The others are three prominent individuals involved in the this dimension of the conflict being Secretary of State ‘William H. Seward,’ British ambassador ‘Lord Lyons,’ and British Foreign Minister the ‘Earl Russell’

A significant portion of the digitized writings shown are centered in the 1860s, and connects to the life and career of John Russell, the 1st ‘Earl Russell,’ even before digitized works on the ‘Civil War’ began to become more frequent. However, the recurrence of his incorporation in papers and narratives on Google declines swiftly in published works the 1870s, after his leaving political office and last years of life. On the other hand, his American counterpart, ‘William Seward,’ only begins to have digital works related to him after 1860-61, the start of his career with the Lincoln Administration, though into the subsequent Johnson years. For ‘Lord Lyons,’ mentions appear to be roughly aligned with that of Seward prior to the turn of the century, though he experiences a slight increase in frequency in Late Victorian writing amid the new generation of authors.

Other than this bump, all three figures in diplomacy have the same trend through the rest of the twentieth century, with Seward slightly higher than the other two – a characteristic that could be attributed to his importance as an figure in American history beyond the Civil War in other analyses. The usage of all three of these men in digitized writing on Google remained consistently below that of the ‘American Civil War’ following the end of the 19th century, declining to a plateau by the end of the twentieth.

The bulk of analyses or writings that make mention of these gentlemen – each integral to the course of diplomacy – and would be connected to their roles in the Civil War, appear to be concentrated in the first half of the twentieth centuries. This trend aligns with something I have noticed thus far in secondary research of the subject. While studies of the Civil War’s diplomatic side are not rare today, they appear with more frequency the farther back one goes. These early analyses of the subject area, while still a smaller subset of the overall field, was more popular among Victorian and early modern writing than in later generations

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Reflections on Module One

For this first module of the course, I thought that there were several important takeaways concerning the value of digital history and the information that can be communicated or derived through such formats. Furthermore, as I’ve worked through planning, structuring and detailing the first stages of my website on Omeka, the topics and material discussed thus far have certainly been helpful in determining how my project should move forward. Over the course of these past weeks I’ve thought about what I want that site to be able to provide, both in terms of the variety of materials to include and the how best to present them.

            Regarding the various subjects and issues covered in the readings and the in-class discussions about them, there were several areas that I found to be applicable to the work performed on the website. In constructing the first stages of the website, alongside my plans for future work, I’ve been reflecting on the types of questions that I believe the information presented should be able to address, thinking back to discussion of whether a digital history project needed to answer anything. The most prominent question that arose in relation to my research, and will form a part of my final thesis project, is ‘Why is discussion of the diplomatic and international aspects of the American Civil War, primarily a domestic conflict, important to the overall narrative of the conflict?’

A second area that I considered in the process of structuring the website was discussion of the various public archival websites and the collection of material. What sort of material did I want to display on the website and how would present it? In my research over the past year, one of the problems I’ve run into with my topic area is how dispersed much of the material is online. Documents and information, selectively digitized and compiled across a range of different archives and online repositories, from the Library of Congress to the Internet Archive, could be limited in what they contained, lacking in contextual information, or else were difficult to find or analyze. These kinds of issues are what I want to avoid with the final website product for my project, so that it can be useful and easily navigable for referencing primary sources and other materials in the public domain.

            Concerning the actual processes and work surrounding the website through Omeka, as well as on the associated WordPress site, I have a couple of thoughts about what I’ve worked on thus far, and where I want to go next. First, having never really constructed anything of this variety in an online format before, I’ve found the experience of working on the collections site to be highly engaging. Constructing and organizing collections of different items for others utilizing the materials you’ve been referencing and analyzing in your own research provides an alternative way of looking at the meaning and significance of the items in question. Interpreting these images and documents for an audience besides myself.

            Thinking about to work on for future stages of the websites, I definitely want to continue to expand upon the items compiled thus far in terms of providing detail and supplementary information for those that currently lack it. Another area for expansion is in the creation of additional exhibits utilized current and new materials. Currently, the featured exhibit presents a broad narrative of the area of history being explored. What I want to do is to create exhibits focusing on some of the more specific areas in greater detail, with more in-depth referencing of associated figures, documents, and imagery. These include views on the role of slavery, Anglo-American diplomatic communication, and the perspectives of British observers in American society and as eyewitnesses to the events of the Civil War. In this way, the site can provide informative narratives that can better fit the different interests and backgrounds of visitors.

            Ultimately, the same is true for what I want to do with the WordPress site, though to a lesser degree. As this site draws upon the same information and materials as the Omeka collection, there will be some similarities at first. As I figure out the right format and structure to use for presenting information through that avenue, that website will be changed to reflect it. Narratives there, at the moment, would be more condensed to various pages and posts until a more effective format is determined. The desired end goal for this work is a product – or products – that is educational, useful to research, and easy to navigate.

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The Project Ahead

John Bull expresses frustration with the economic impact of the Civil War

Going forward, expect to see more here as the project develops!

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