Yours Truly
Greetings Cosmic Americans! – My name is Keith Harris. I live in Hollywood, California with my wife, Coni. I am a historian, a runner, and a lover of all things feline.
I have been to some mighty fine schools – The University of California, Los Angeles – where I received my BA in History (summa cum laude, thank you very much) and the University of Virginia, where I received my Ph.D in United States History. Here’s my VITA – so you can check out what I’ve been up to for the past few years.
I have written some articles, book reviews, and a book on Civil War veterans called Across the Bloody Chasm: Veterans’ Commemorative Cultures in the Wake of Civil War that will be available soon.
At Hollywood Forever Cemetery searching for Civil War veterans - There are plenty there...Union and Confederate.
These days, my professional focus is on digital humanities and bridging the gulf between academia and an informed public. As the scarcity of access rapidly becomes a thing of the past, I am quite certain that my efforts reflect the future of education. I currently have in development several web-based projects that will soon be making their debuts…I would tell you what they are all about, but I would not want to spoil the surprise. I will, however, keep everyone up to date on my various endeavors right here on Cosmic America. So please stay tuned. Until then…
…get to know me!! You’ll see that discussion about the Civil War – arguably the defining event in American history – is what makes me tick.
You’ll find me on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest (just click the Social Media icons on the left). You’ll also catch me turning up at academic conferences, speaking engagements, and on the battlefield – always with a camera or video recorder in hand bringing it all to you. I welcome comments, discussion, whatever – whether you love me, hate me, agree with me or not…just let me know. I promise to let nothing go unanswered.
Peace,
Keith
Reading your article on The Birth of a Nation online. I was pleased to read that the Grand Army of the Republic members opposed The Birth! I am doing a paper for school in my film class and I would appreciate it is you would send me the few peices of evidence from GAR in which they oppose it film. It was a terrible movie!
What I’d like to know was why the white south thought that Reconstruction was terrible, Was it the proverty that some were thrown into? (The loss of their plantations and therefore lively hoods or the thought that people that a short time ago they had viewed as property suddenly given possissions of power and the franchise? Thanks a lot, Cathy J. Redifer
Sure Cathy – please send me an email to cosmic_america@yahoo.com and I will send you what I have.
Interesting blog, added you to the blog roll. Also you might find our archive of interest, http://www.soldierstudies.org
Chris
Thanks Chris – I added you to my blogroll as well!
Hi Keith,
Just saw the mention you made of my blog; thanks for the kind words, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the history nuggets I’m finding in historical newspapers. In glancing over your site, I must say I love your evident zeal for Civil War history, and I’m happy to now be following you. With the sesquicentennial going on, isn’t it great how interest in the Civil War continues to explode?!
Regards,
Tony
Thanks Tony – yes I am really loving all the sesquicentennial activities going on…the interest they are generating in the war…and all the great stuff that I get to write about. These are great times for Civil War historians!
Just now read the book intro.
Does anyone who fights for principles ever look back and revise his principles? After one reaches his mid-20s, say, his principles are most often concretized. In the time period after Atlanta fell it seems to me it didn’t take too long for most Southers to grasp, at least subconsciously, that their condition was hopeless, and with each passing day the economic and human costs would only continue to mount with futility. I have no trouble accepting your premise that Southerners eagerly embraced reunification, since it was a life ring flung to them from the ship of economic and political viability, even as they clung with equal passion to their original principles.
Although it’s not a myth that our still-young America is willing to accept, wars, or any other conflict or disagreement, are never settled because one’s principles are “right” (so far as I can tell, God’s never been on anyone’s side in a war), but because of the relative might of the military assets possessed by those engaged in the conflict in question, and because of the shrewdness of the contestants, and because of random chance, unforeseen and unpredictable. The rhetoric engaged in by both sides before, during, and after any conflict is less important to an understanding of what happened and why it happened than is examination of what were the moral and ethical principals that informed the conflict before it began. The accurate identification of those core beliefs should be an important goal for teachers of history because of its implication for our future history. The principals we embrace today always have dramatic implications for our lives tomorrow, and so we should give them very measured consideration now.
Of course it is almost impossible to engage in anything like an objective consideration of any moral or ethical division. Surely dozens and dozens of moral conflicts informed the Civil War and necessarily distorted the points of view of those alive at the time. No one was fighting for any one reason, but every individual soldier for a multivariate complex of reasons that he himself could hardly be expected to properly express in words. But if we set aside the opinions and written apologetic texts and mythology and legends and ask one single question, I think we can go a long way toward framing the Civil War in a useful way that does no violence to either side and its list of grievances, but does underscore a flaw in principled thinking. That question is this:
Is it ever acceptable for one human being to own another?
Reflection on this question helps to put 250 years of arguments into a better perspective.