Author: Julia Wall

Usually when asked about the 4th of July, people think about fireworks, barbecue, and other activities to celebrate the freedom bestowed upon us from the tyranny of Great Britain. Readings of the Declaration of Independence were prominent on its 245th anniversary.

I have a Fourth of July reading that you won’t see from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s called What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, an address given by Frederick Douglass at a Fourth of July celebration in 1852. In 1852, the Civil War hadn’t started, nor had slavery been fully abolished.

With the resounding words “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” Douglass highlighted the great hypocrisy of America and her people. For how could a nation claim to be free when half of it holds fellow men in bondage?

This is relevant today in the discussion of American freedom and liberty. Douglass brings up the reality that our founding fathers, the men who built this nation were mostly slave owners.

“Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies of souls and men shout-“We have Washington to our father.””

Part of being a citizen of any nation is realizing and accepting your history. To sweep slavery, genocide, and racial discrimination under the grand rug of the history of the United States of America is an injustice and mockery to the very concept of freedom. We must acknowledge that at one time, America was not free because others were enslaved. I do not say this to create guilt or out of a lack of patriotism, I say this because it is something that our nation needs to acknowledge and once we do, we can move forward unto a new birth of freedom.

-Julia

I grew up in Georgia, to a very southern family. I grew up wanting to be Scarlett O’Hara and taught that the Yankees took everything not tied down, and everything they didn’t take was burned to the ground. I grew up hearing about the “War of Northern Aggression” and how Marse Robert (E. Lee), was a god among men.

I often find myself wondering, considering my background, how I am not a Lost Causer.

And then I remember it is because I think that PoC deserve equal rights, that slavery was wrong, and a society built on racial hierarchy should not exist.

This is the most common argument defending the Confederacy and the Battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. And to anyone and everyone who says this, I say to you:

It’s my heritage too. My ancestors were Louisiana planters and slave owners from Baton Rouge and Colfax. They fought and some died for the confederacy. It is my heritage. But I recognize my heritage is full of hate. Slavery started as an economic institution, but in the Southern United States it quickly became a social and cultural institution that built a racial hierarchy that benefited from the suffering, labor, submission, and oppression of blacks. The Confederacy fought and died to keep that institution alive, even after the end of the Civil War white southerners did everything in their power to keep blacks from gaining basic freedoms and rights. White supremacy groups like the KKK fly this flag with the knowledge that it means racial hierarchy through oppression and violence of minorities, so don’t you dare tell me that the Confederacy or any other confederate symbol is justified because of your heritage.

-Julia

 

 

Tuesday morning I hopped on the trolley to the Visitor’s Center to see the love of my life.

In case you haven’t gathered that I really love Alonzo Cushing.

The Gettysburg Visitor’s Center has a little exhibit on Medal of Honor Recipients in the battle of Gettysburg. Which includes (you guessed it)

Alonzo.(Lon actually, he hated being called Alonzo)

The exhibit featured Lon’s Medal of Honor, his belt worn by him on July 3, 1863, two letters: one from Lon to his aunt and another to Lon from a friend, Confederate currency sent by Lon to his aunt as a souvenir, and a photograph of Alonzo from Fredericksburg.

I also saw the cyclorama and noticed this little gem that hurt my heart. But while at the cyclorama, I realized why I’m here, why I’m doing my project, why I went up north.

This is sacred ground. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

The world may have forgotten or never even heard of names like Alonzo Cushing, George Woodruff, or Julius Adams, but they served, they fought, they died so that this nation could have a future. I am doing this so that people will know of their sacrifice, of their names, of what they did. For as long as there is a breath left in my body, these cadets will never be forgotten.

-Julia

I have many problems with the article Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities. But I am going to pick out a few quotes and insert my commentary on them, seeing as if I did a full review of this article it would be well over a few pages.

“It (Digital Humanities) is, instead, about the promotion of project-based learning and lab-based research over reading and writing,”

Oh yes, because all my time is spent on lab-based research.

No reading whatsoever.

See? I’m on my computer, definitely not reading for my research.

Books and traditional humanities research will always be around, we are not trying to replace it but rather expand the field and become more opening and accepting of those who do not work well or do not prefer traditional research methods.

“Digital Humanities instead aims to archive materials, produce data, and develop software, while bracketing off the work of interpretation to a later moment or leaving it to other scholars”

I can see why one would think that with all of the scans and data I’ve been collecting, it seems like I’m just collecting everything and putting it together. Well, I am. Because to interpret research and data, one needs to have data in the first place. Please find me a second-hand source that does not have citations or data.

““Look, not everyone committed to Digital Humanities is a white man.” “Look, there are Digital Humanities projects committed to politically engaged scholarly methods and questions.” We are not negating the value of these exceptions when we ask: What is the dominant current supported even by the invocation of these exceptions?”

White men were the only force in Humanities for centuries up until the last one. Digital humanities is a relatively new field that started from two fields that are both dominated by white men, so is it such a surprise that the first Digital Humanists are white males?  The demographics of fields change, it just takes time and willingness of the field to be accepting. I look to go into the field of military history and theory, it is overwhelmingly dominated by white men and I realize that it is going to be hard even though there are women who have succeeded in it before me. The goal is not to conform to the dominant current but rather critique it and give room for expansion of the field to make it better. Which is what Digital Humanities is trying to do. It is trying to expand the field and make it more available to the world, not trying to destroy or minimize the importance of traditional Humanities.

According to Standford, “The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience.”

This article takes a false high-ground in humanities, creating an elitism that should not be there. Every human can do humanities because it is about our shared experience in this world, not because you have a higher education level, have read more books, or written more papers. The entire purpose of Humanities is to find what connects us, not how to divide us. Not everyone has the access to great archives or collections, but in this digital age, most people have connection to the internet. Digital Humanities is not replacing traditional Humanities, just expanding and diversifying it. This article is saying Humanities for the humanists, I’m saying Humanities for humans.

-Julia

At the end of Week 5, I set myself to the grand task of compiling what battles the cadets fought at and where they were together. I did this using the information I compiled from Cullum’s Register (I honestly cannot say how much I love George Cullum, he is a godsend).

So I made a board.

And then I made a map.

The Army Markers are for Graduation and Training/Defense of DC

The Green Markers are the battles of the Manassas Campaign

The Pink Markers are for battles in the Southern Theater that were not a part of the Atlanta Campaign.

The Blue Markers are for battles in the Western Theater

The Yellow Markers are for the battles of the Peninsula Campaign

The Light Blue Markers are for the battles of the Maryland Campign

The White Markers are for the battles of the Rappahanock Campaign

The Red Markers are for the battles of the Pennsylvania Campaign

The Green Tree Markers are for the battles in Virginia 1864 and onward

The Red Flame Markers are for the battles of Sherman’s Atlanta and Carolinas Campaigns

And the White Flag Marker is for the battles around Appomattox.

There are 74 battle locations that I included in the map, not counting skirmishes or the arsenals that they were also posted at. I got the places and dates that I wanted compiled but I’m not sure if Tour Builder is for me because the presentation style is a bit of a mess, especially with this many markers.

-Julia

 

The end of Week Four of DSSF left off at an interesting place. Leaving me to go to the annual Civil War Conference hosted by the Civil War Institute here at Gettysburg. It was amazing and I had the time of my life going to lectures about Reconstruction, probably the least talked about period in Civil War Era history.

I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and to a very deep-rooted Southern family that can trace back heritage to the 1600s. A family that not only served in the Confederate Army but that also owned slaves as planters in Louisiana. So growing up I just heard of Reconstruction in passing as the worst thing since Sherman and how those “darn Yankees” ruined the southern way of life. (Honestly it’s a miracle that I’m not a lost causer considering my background) It was honestly refreshing to get a new view of reconstruction and to debunk some myths that had been pounded into my head ever since I was old enough to watch Gone With the Wind.

So often historians of the Civil War get carried away with tactics, generals, weapons, and battles that we forget why it was fought and how it impacted us as a nation. But by placing the focus of the conference on the topic of Reconstruction the CWI made me remember that the war was not just how many men died at Gettysburg but rather what they died for: not just that “that nation might live” but to also redefine that nation and give it “a new birth of freedom”.

(The title comes from a quote by my dear friend Thomas)

-Julia

The project is called Lesbians, Feminism, and Social Change, OH MY!, it is a part of The Student Timelines of Women’s Studies 101 at Wheaton College in Norton, MA (Fall 2013) collection. The topics are Art, Beauty, Civil Rights, Health & Reproduction, Film, Labor, LGBTQ, Music, Political Inclusion, and Human Trafficking. The project was created by Ray Souza, Kimberly Belgrave, and Dani Dickinson. The project was created to give a brief overview of the history of lesbians around the world and feminist involvement in American LGBTQ movements and the progress that has been made through them.
The audiences of this project are women, people who are interested in the history of the LGBTQ movement with a focus on lesbians, and people who just want brief information/synopsis/breakdown of the LGBTQ movement. It is not for particular hard-core academic use, but rather for the public to give them an insight into the history of the LGBTQ movement and progress of lesbians.
This timeline covers moments in the American LGBT movement and international progress of lesbians in politics and media. The thesis of the project is trying to prove that progress has been made through these events and movements perpetuated by lesbians and women.
The project is minimalistic and only has a couple of pictures for illustrative purposes, with that said because it is minimalistic it is very easy to navigate through options and not have to look through another page to get to the one that the user is looking for. The homepage has a very organized block of subjects and the user clicks on one to discover a timeline on that subject.
The writing is clear and succinct but it is simplistic. The project is really only a synopsis on LGBTQ and lesbian movements rather than a drawn out analysis of a scholarly paper. Most of the text of the project is less than two paragraphs, very brief and only giving a summary rather than going into details.
Is there an About page, or other information page? Is there any technical information about the creation of the project?
There is an about page on the main page of the project, but not about the LGBTQ project specifically. In this about page there is mention of the use of TimelineJS, which was used for all of the projects.
Only pictures and text are included in the timeline. Minimal metadata is available, only the source of the photograph and the title are provided.
TimelineJS was the basis of the project; actually the entire project was just one Timeline. TimelineJS was chosen to exhibit the changes and progress over time and the history of the movement.
Because this project is only a brief history of lesbians and the LGBTQ movement it just gives a cut summary of the events. It gives less information quicker and covers more ground faster than a traditional research paper could, giving the user a baseline knowledge of the history of lesbianism and feminism in the American LGBTQ movement and progress of lesbians around the world.

-Julia

The project is called Martha Washington: A Life (http://marthawashington.us/), it is about the life and history of Marta Custis Washington, wife of General and Former President George Washington. The project was a collaboration between George Washington’s Mount Vernon, a private non-profit that runs the Mount Vernon Home, and the Center for History and New Media.
The target audiences for this online project are school groups and visitors that go to Mount Vernon or want to know more about Martha Washington. It especially has a focus on school groups because it includes lesson plans for middle and high school teachers; it even has the national history standards for schools.
The questions that this project seeks to answer are: Who was Martha Washington? How did she live and what was her life like in Mount Vernon and how was her life affected by the events and institutions of the time?
The project is pretty easy to navigate; there is a menu that divides the site into four sections: Martha’s biography, teaching materials, archive, and resources. The front page gives a description of the menu sections and has links.
The writing is not only clear, succinct, and precise but it is also easy to read and does not use difficult or advanced terms. The writing was obviously meant for the public, not a hard-core Martha Custis Washington biographer; however it does not come across as condescending to someone’s intelligence.
The link to the about page is at the bottom of the site, it has the staff and information about both of the foundations. There is some technical information about the site included in the information about the staff that worked on the site in what they did to contribute to the site. It says that it is powered by Omeka on the bottom of the site and in one of the staff’s information it said that he “implemented the design and did all of the custom programming for the website on the Omeka web publishing platform.”
Digital assets in the form of artifacts, pictures, and documents obtained by the Mount Vernon foundation were used. Metadata is readily available because it is an Omeka powered website which puts its importance on metadata. Omeka is an online exhibition tool that lets you identify, log, and present artifacts and pictures. In my experience, there’s not much to Omeka besides a display of pictures and artifacts but this project did more than I ever expected from Omeka.
This project is unique in the way that the artifacts coincide with the writing. Like for every section of Martha’s life there are artifacts that coincide with the story, such as the courtship between George and Martha, off to the side it has artifacts one of them being a garnet necklace believed to be from early in the marriage of George and Martha Custis Washington. It brings the artifacts and pictures to life in the context of the story that is being told which is rarely done even in physical exhibits but overall very pleasing to me.

-Julia

ZeeMaps is a mapping tool that has multiple marking tools and annotative abilities. ZeeMaps is different from other mapping tools in its simplicity, it is literally just a map that you can add annotations to or connect markers. Other mapping tools like StoryMap JS or ArcGIS try to present their maps like stories, which is great for presentation but the presentation takes away from the map itself in some regards.

ZeeMaps would help me in regard with the visualization of the journeys of all the cadets through the war and would show their connections since many of them were at the same battles or arsenals. Using the Connect tool, you can connect multiple locations which can show the individual journeys of cadets.

However, what I at the current moment cannot figure out is how to turn off the distance calculator for the connections because it makes it quite messy and you cannot see the connections or markers as well.

What makes ZeeMaps super helpful to me is that it has the ability for different colored markers and connections that can easily differentiate the cadets.

ZeeMaps is free except a couple of features that require payment to use. The features that you have to pay to use are just bulk features so really, you get the full experience of ZeeMaps for free.

ZeeMaps only requires location to put down a marker, but there are many features that you can add to the markers such as: title, annotations, media, audio, youtube videos, pictures, etc.

ZeeMaps is very easy to use, no expert needed. Every feature on ZeeMaps can be figured out and explained easily. Even if you already put down a marker, it can be easily edited, removed, what have you. There is no html, CSS, JavaScript experience needed to work ZeeMaps unless you wanted to edit the code itself.

I could very well use this tool in my project. I have shifted my thinking from doing a huge timeline/map that encompassed each cadet into making a timeline for each cadet individually and a big map for a visual reference, showing their journeys and the connections in their journeys. While ZeeMaps does not have the neat presentation of other mapping apps like StoryMap JS and ArcGIS, it would serve the purpose of showing the cadets’ journeys. But it does have very very simple presentation which I think might clash with the aesthetic of my project, but I could see if it would look better while embedded into a website. Another downside to ZeeMaps is that there are only 31 markers, I need at least 38 for all of my cadets. However, with all 38 cadets, the map will get messy and confusing and I am not really sure how to handle that at this current moment, but I am sure that I will figure it out with more experimentation and work on ZeeMaps and other mapping tools.

This week, while doing my research I learned the position of a cadet’s battery at the Battle of Gettysburg. Not just any cadet but James Dearing, West Point Southern hotshot who would’ve graduated first in the class if he didn’t drop out when Virginia seceded. Also, one of Alonzo Cushing’s best friends. The full tragic and heroic story of Alonzo will be posted at a later date, but for this micro-blog’s purpose, Alonzo was basically disemboweled by an artillery shell or shrapnel that came before the charge from near the Peach Orchard. Kent M. Brown’s biography of Alonzo Cushing, Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander said the fire started from Eshleman’s guns from Washington Artillery, right before the main bombardment.

Eshleman’s Battalion had 8 Napoleons and 2 12 lb. Howitzers at the time of the assault.

A Napoleons’ range is 1480 yards.
A 12 lb. Howitzers’ range is 1072 yards.

Alonzo’s position was over a mile away which is 1760 yards.  I do not think that it is very plausible that Eschleman’s Battalion wounded Alonzo. However, there was a battalion beside Eschelman’s. The batteries commanded by James Dearing, Alonzo’s former comrade and classmate.

Dearing’s Battalion had

2 20 lb. Parrotts
3 10 lb. Parrotts1 3 in. Rifle
12 Napoleons

A 20 lb. Parrotts’ range is 2100 yards
A 10 lb. Parrotts’ range is 1900 yards
A 3 in. Rifle’s range is 1830 yards
Again the Napoleons’ range is 1480 yards.

3 out of 4 of Dearing’s guns were able to hit over a mile. I created a map through Google maps with the position of their monuments in the approximate positions of their receptive guns.

In conclusion, my heart now hurts knowing that James Dearing probably inadvertently caused the eventual death of Alonzo Cushing, his friend and classmate. And that’s what I learned this week.