A Liberal Dose, Oct. 28, 2021 "Sparta's Black Union Troops Deserve Honor"

 

A Liberal Dose

October 28, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“Sparta’s Black Union Troops Deserve Honor”

 

This past Saturday (October 23), the city of Franklin unveiled on their town square a statue of a black Union soldier. Roughly 180,000 black men served in the Union Army after the Emancipation Proclamation, most of them former slaves. There were more from Tennessee, by the way, than from any other state. Some of those black troops were at the Battle of Franklin (November 30, 1864), and even more were at the Battle of Nashville two weeks later. They performed so admirably under fire that they were singled out for praise by the Union commander, General George Thomas.

And some of the black troops in those battles were from White County.

African American soldiers were placed in segregated regiments, with white commanders, that were collectively known as USCT (United States Colored Troops). One such regiment, the 14^th United States Colored Infantry (USCI), was formed in November of 1863 in Gallatin. The regiment was commanded by Colonel Thomas Jefferson Morgan, an abolitionist from Ohio who would later serve as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Upon formation, they were initially assigned to Chattanooga to work on the city’s fortifications.

In March of 1864 Morgan received orders to finish filling his regiment via a recruiting expedition to the Caney Fork and Calfkiller Rivers -Sparta, in other words. Morgan’s second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Corbin, led a contingent of the 14^th to Sparta, where he reported to the Union headquarters of Colonel William Brickly Stokes, commanding the 5^th Tennessee (Union) Cavalry. Stokes had placed his headquarters at Sparta Methodist Church (now Sparta First United Methodist Church, on Church Street), tearing out the flooring of the sanctuary and turning it into a stable. Stokes noted in a report on March 28 that “Lieutenant-Colonel Corbin is here with a portion of the Fourteenth Regiment, U. S. Colored Troops, and is recruiting very rapidly.” While the recruiting was going on, Stokes used some of the black troops in pursuit of local guerrillas.

120 new troops were signed up on the expedition. Those who were physically fit for combat were inducted into the 14^th; those too old or too young to fight were inducted into the 44^th USCI, and would spend the war doing garrison duty in Chattanooga. Why was Corbin specifically sent to Sparta? There were some slaves in White County -1145 in the 1860 census -who would have been freed (if they had not already run away and freed themselves) upon occupation of the area by Federals. That number put White County at #4 of the 14 Upper Cumberland counties for slaves. However, that census also recorded 162 free blacks in the county. That is a much smaller number than the slave population, but was still the largest free black population of any county at the time between Nashville and Knoxville. The new recruits included both free blacks and former slaves. Some of them probably came from surrounding counties, but considering the population data it is likely that the majority were from White County. David Anderson was a slave on a cotton farm in the southern part of the county (one of the few in the area); he had married a free black woman from Rock Island, Mary Rickman, whose family had been free since the 1700s. Anderson, his brothers, and his free-born brother-in-law Joseph Rickman all joined the 14^th. So did J. W. Grant, a teenaged slave who would one day be dean of the law school at Central Tennessee College.

These men were not mentioned in any of the county histories, or on any of the military memorials in town -largely because their service was forgotten after the war. I believe that needs to change, the sooner the better. They risked (and some gave) their lives for their country, their families, and their freedom. We need to start calling for some kind of memorial for them right here, in their home county. It is way past due.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, October 21, 2021 "What's So Important about Tenure?"

 

A Liberal Dose

October 21, 2021

Troy D. Smith

"What's So Important about Tenure?"

 

A few years ago my family was watching the newest episode of Big Bang Theory. In the episode, an elderly professor passed away, opening up a tenured position, and the four main characters started competing for it. First of all, let me say, it is no fun watching TV with me when the shows portray life in a university. My immediate response was derision: if these guys don’t have tenure-track jobs, how can they even afford an apartment in California? Non-tenured faculty barely make above minimum wage. And if a spot opened up, the university would have to have a national job search, there’d be at least 100 applicants, and the whole process would take a year or more. But I was willing to let all that go for suspension of disbelief. Instead of focusing on those inaccuracies, I said, “Just watch. Nowhere in this episode will anyone explain what tenure actually is, how it works, or why it’s important.” I was right. The reason the characters gave for tenure were that they wanted a nicer office, and “a job you can’t be fired from.” Which is a total misunderstanding of tenure in higher education –yet it is one which most Americans share, which is why most Americans are not particularly in favor of tenure, and are not disturbed to hear that some politicians are trying to get rid of it.

“Tenure” doesn’t mean you can’t be fired. It means you can’t be fired without due process, and without a compelling reason (such as violation of your contract, proven misconduct, or your department being cut). “Gee,” some say, “I don’t have that kind of job security, why should you?” That is a very good question –and it has a very good answer. Tenure was not intended as an end unto itself; it was intended as a way to protect academic freedom. Faculty academic freedom means that a professor, as a recognized expert in their field, gets to choose how to teach their area of expertise –without being coerced by politics or public opinion. If I have tenure, and I say something in the classroom or out in public about history that politicians or the public (usually not experts in the field, though they often think they are) don’t like, I can’t be fired for it. Therefore, I am not afraid to speak up and tell the truth, as I (the recognized expert) see it, about my field of study. This benefits students, who are thus guaranteed a free and open exchange of ideas, not censored by politicians.

It also helps in “shared governance.” In a university, faculty are required to serve on multiple committees which play a large role in whether and how things get done. On some of the higher-level committees, such as faculty senate, administrative council, faculty affairs, etc., faculty members are in a very exposed position. They are sometimes called upon to disagree with administration, or to passionately present alternate views. They might not be willing to do that, or at least not do so with full candor and honesty, if they were afraid the administration might fire them for disagreeing with them.

Perhaps you’re someone who believes those dadgum liberal professors ought to be censored, and it wouldn’t bother you if they lost those protections. You must be aware that, in other states, that would lead to liberal politicians controlling what conservative professors are allowed to say in the classroom. In reality, at my university, just about any department is going to have some people with a liberal bent, some with a conservative, and some in-between. It is good for students to be exposed to all of them, and to their views –which may not be articulated often, but which sometimes, in the context of their subject matter, will be.  

And that is what makes tenure in higher education so very important. Critically important, in fact.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 14, 2021 "Witch Hunts in America"

 

A Liberal Dose

October 14, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“Witch Hunts in America”

 

It’s October, and many of us have Halloween on our minds. When I drive around town, I seem to see toy ghosts and witches in every yard. Many of us also have our minds on politics, which sometimes doesn’t seem much different. I am reminded, particularly, of the term “witch hunt” -which has been tossed around quite a bit the past few years. In the modern sense, of course, it doesn’t mean hunting for literal witches. It means raising a hew and cry of a different sort; warning the public of a nonexistent or negligible danger as a cover for persecuting your political enemies. This type of behavior is a time-honored American tradition, but seems to come in cycles. During the first Red Scare in the late 1910s-1920s, and the even larger one in the late 1940s-1950s, the “witch” was communism (or just the accusation of it). During WWII it was Japanese-Americans. After 9/11 it was terrorism; in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was not only Muslims but even French words (since many conservatives viewed France as traitorous for not jumping wholeheartedly into a war with us).

More recently, in my opinion, critical race theory has become a witch hunt. Just as in Salem in the 1690s, the mere accusation of teaching CRT can lead to serious repercussions (admittedly with no executions, knock on wood).

It could be argued that it’s all in one’s point of view -that the mere perception of being persecuted makes one feel like the object of a witch hunt. Trump has been throwing the term around since shortly after he was elected, doubling down since he was defeated. Every piece of new evidence that comes to light about his corruption and even illegal activities leads to fresh cries of “witch hunt!” This from the man who, while in the White House, presided loudly over countless witch hunts of his own. Just to clarify, by the way, it is only a witch hunt if the charges are exaggerated or false. Trump himself has been the object, not of witch hunts, but of legitimate legal investigations.

For a little context, I am going to give some background information about the actual Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-93. You probably all know that some young girls were accused of consorting with Satan in the woods, which led to broader accusations and hysteria in the community. Before all was said and done, several people were dead (nineteen by hanging, one by being crushed to death by rocks in an attempt to make him confess) and 150 people had been arrested and tried (several dying in jail). Finally, the community started to calm down and realize what they had done.

Here’s what you probably don’t know -or didn’t connect with Salem. Puritan communities, of course, had no separation of church and state; their church WAS the state, and no one else was allowed in. Quakers and Baptists could be hanged for preaching in Massachusetts. And yet, when William and Mary ascended the English throne in the Glorious Revolution in 1689, they put an end to those practices with the Religious Toleration Act. Puritans could no longer force everyone to be Puritans. At the same time, (Catholic) France had started attacking New England settlements with their Native American allies.

To the Puritans, it seemed like the Devil was winning. Some thought it was the signs of the last days. They were very, vey scared on an existential level -and very paranoid. It was a short step to hysteria.

Just as Americans were terrified after the first Soviet atomic bomb. And 9/11. And many are scared today of recent rapid social changes, with more seemingly on the horizon. Witch hunts, then, come from fear.

When you have politicians willing to stoke that fear for their own benefit, bad things happen (see also: Hitler).

And THAT’S scary.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 7, 2021 "What Is So Bad about Columbus?"

 

A Liberal Dose

October 7, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“What’s So Bad about Columbus?”

 

Last week I wrote that it is the duty of historians to explain things honestly, not to be cheerleaders. This week, days before Columbus Day, I am going to put that in practice. Most of you are aware, I’m sure, of the controversy surrounding this holiday in 21^st century America. Some of you might understand and agree with the premise that Columbus introduced a lot of bad things to the Americas, including the beginnings of Native American genocide and the taking of their land. Many of you, on the other hand, while acknowledging the surface truth of those things, believe they are outweighed by his heroism and the impact of his actions; many of you may think that the criticisms are blown out of proportion and are one more example of “cancel culture” and an effort to revise, or rewrite, history to make Europeans out as the villains in every scenario. You may believe that it is unfair, and ahistorical, to judge someone in the past by today’s standards.

But you probably don’t really know Columbus.

I’m going to start off by acknowledging that, even though Columbus was not the first European in the New World, and even though he refused to believe he had been anywhere but India, his achievement was huge. It opened the way for colonization of the New World and its resources, quickly led to the first truly global trade network, and started the modern era.

My judgment against Columbus comes not from the fact he opened up the possibility for those who came after him to commit terrible acts. It comes from the terrible acts he himself committed. And I do not judge him by the standards of the 21^st century; I judge him by the standards of other people in his own time.

When Columbus arrived on the island he called Hispaniola (and which the natives called Ayiti, or Haiti), he was greeted by the very friendly and peaceful Taino tribe. In his own journal (which is where all the things I recount come from), after noting how peaceful they were, he remarked how easy they would therefore be to enslave. And that’s exactly what he started doing. He also noted how beautiful the Taino children were, and that there were a large number of them in the age range of 9 or 10 -the age, he pointed out, that some gentlemen in Spain like their women, because they can be trained easier. In fact, he noted the trade of young Taino girls as sex slaves among his own sailors.

He ordered the Taino to produce a certain amount of gold for him every three months or, in lieu of gold, 25 pounds of spun cotton. If any Native did not have the required goods, they were to have their hands and feet cut off. And many suffered that fate. When the Taino tried to run away or rebel, Columbus ordered attack dogs set on them to tear them to pieces. The alternative was to stay and be worked to death. Within a generation, almost all the Taino were dead. So, Columbus literally initiated genocide, slavery, and underage sex trafficking.

Queen Isabella was furious at his treatment of the Native people. He was eventually arrested for mismanagement of the colony, his brutality one of the reasons, and sent briefly to a prison in Spain. He was let out after a short time, but he never received his promised payment for his voyage.

A young soldier who had served under Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas, was so traumatized by the things he had witnessed that he became a priest and spent the rest of his life fighting -with some success- for the rights of Native Americans. Every European of the time was not like Columbus, so that excuse is invalid.

I like to think of the upcoming holiday as Taino Remembrance Day.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 30, 2021 "The Duties of a Historian Explained"

 

A Liberal Dose

September 30, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“The Duties of a Historian”

 

I am currently teaching one of my favorite classes: historical methodology. It is taken by history majors, usually in their sophomore year, to prepare them for upper division history courses. As you might imagine, no matter who teaches it, there is a lot of emphasis on how to do research, how to write papers, how to do citations, etc. I also focus on different theoretical approaches they will encounter if they go to graduate school, and the “history of history.” A lot of my approach is modeled on the professor who taught me in this same course 20 years ago, Patrick Reagan. Like him, I spend a lot of time at the beginning of the course exploring these two very important questions: what is history, and what do historians do? History is more than just studying the past, after all, because anthropology and archeology do that. Heck, so do literary and economics classes.

Short answer: History is the study of the past using written records from the time (newspapers, diaries, government reports, etc.) Historians do not just tick those things off in a list of events and names; they attempt to explain them. Not just what happened, but why, and what the consequences were. Doing that requires a deep understanding of context and connections. I also try to teach my students to be better writers, because I think that the dense nature of most academic prose makes it inaccessible to the public, which explains why most nonfiction books about history on the bestseller lists are not actually by professionally trained historians. Those authors often have many strengths, including an ability to write well, but lack the training for finding that deeper historical context and connections with things that might seem unrelated on the surface. I believe that many historians have thereby abdicated one of their important responsibilities: not just learning about the past, but explaining it to the general public in such a way that they can learn from it, too.

Historians have to look, as much as possible, at every angle. This does not mean they present everything as equal: my lectures, and my writings, do not make excuses for Nazis or for slavery, for example, nor should they, although they may include the excuses such people made for themselves. I think that historians must not only help people learn about the past, but also from the past.

I, myself, learned a lot about the potential impact of historians when I was working on my doctorate. I learned principally from the examples of my two co-advisers, Fred Hoxie and Vernon Burton, as well as the other members of my dissertation committee, Bruce Levine and David Roediger. I came in thinking I would just be learning (better) how to do research and teach, and of course I did learn those things. But my eyes were opened by serving for years as a research assistant to Hoxie (an expert in American Indian legal history) and Burton (expert on race relations in the South). I learned that both those individuals (and many others like them) also spent a lot of time writing reports for, and often testifying live in front of, state legislatures and even Congress and the Supreme Court, on behalf of oppressed groups. Because, especially where civil rights are concerned, historians play an important role.

You see, by explaining what happened in the past, and how and why, we shine a light on the present and help people understand what is happening now. We can provide warnings to avoid past disasters and, yes, a moral conscience to sway people from perpetuating past injustices.

Little wonder, then, that some politicians today want to pass laws to keep historians, on all levels, from doing that. But it is not our job to be cheerleaders. It is our job, our duty, to explain things honestly.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE