tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63918630604141819672024-02-18T22:46:26.130-06:00Civil War SesquicentennialTerry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-8734366247427592732015-04-30T10:03:00.000-05:002015-04-30T10:03:08.738-05:00Reviews for The Bloodhound Law<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4LVQzjhkttIrL2XpFNU2Z79tFq3t1LiUoSMuEcrH-IsHzmwuZ1snEdBjU_3aVvvdwRDgQGhtgrzyTEQq0iRU3g721aLhR6NxcD4ZBXVErk3emBrLdU_b5xCDi2-37bpM5MevFLLyM7xTo/s1600/bloodh10-400x280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4LVQzjhkttIrL2XpFNU2Z79tFq3t1LiUoSMuEcrH-IsHzmwuZ1snEdBjU_3aVvvdwRDgQGhtgrzyTEQq0iRU3g721aLhR6NxcD4ZBXVErk3emBrLdU_b5xCDi2-37bpM5MevFLLyM7xTo/s1600/bloodh10-400x280.jpg" height="224" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Left to right: Brian Bradford, Christopher Kidder-Mostrom, <br />Alex Glossman, John Blick</i></td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Kristine Thatcher has written an important play, and it has landed in the hands of exactly the right theatre company . . . . we should all attend." Aaron Hunt, Newcity <i><a href="http://newcitystage.com/2015/04/23/review-the-bloodhound-lawcity-lit-theater-company/">click here for full review </a></i></blockquote>
"Sharp and stirring, taut and true under Terry McCabe's direction . . . . <i>The Bloodhound Law</i> is an invaluable chronicle of a turbulent time."<br />
Lawrence Bommer, Stage and Cinema<br />
<a href="http://www.stageandcinema.com/2015/04/22/bloodhound-law-city-lit/"><i>click here for full review </i></a><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOWHHxGxs-p_z92zAS2hvpoNJ39Hp-p77i_G5u8M1PlzSVRxYThYVbuSlCs9YVmpE9UmdL0CJMgWfvOeBG8eqNK_7RVFvEbtX-Q4hRGg6fn0oJZqHjrARi2sf9TvN-OoF9Ld3QY_OtBd-/s1600/bloodh12-400x354.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOWHHxGxs-p_z92zAS2hvpoNJ39Hp-p77i_G5u8M1PlzSVRxYThYVbuSlCs9YVmpE9UmdL0CJMgWfvOeBG8eqNK_7RVFvEbtX-Q4hRGg6fn0oJZqHjrARi2sf9TvN-OoF9Ld3QY_OtBd-/s1600/bloodh12-400x354.jpg" height="282" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Left to right: David Fink, Alex Glossman, Brian Bradford</i></td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />"An elegant, almost expressionistic collection of scenes that lets the drama of the events speak for itself." Christine Malcom, EDGE Media <i><a href="http://www.edgemedianetwork.com/174750">click here for full review</a></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>The Bloodhound Law</i> needs to be seen . . . . Highly Recommended." Tom Williams, chicagocritic.com <i><a href="http://chicagocritic.com/the-bloodhound-law/">click here for full review </a></i></blockquote>
<br />
And here is the link to our NEW half-price tickets page:<br />
<a href="http://www.citylit.org/#!half-priced-tickets-/c1pd9">http://www.citylit.org/#!half-priced-tickets-/c1pd9</a><br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-79962147369570140982015-04-30T01:01:00.000-05:002015-04-30T01:02:39.488-05:00The Bloodhound Law video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/joXcW-NkUiQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/joXcW-NkUiQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
Here's the promotional trailer for <i>The Bloodhound Law</i>, running through May 24 at City Lit. Later today I'll post reviews.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, here is the link to our new half-price ticket page. We've stopped listing with GoldStar altogether (a step I think more theatres should take) and have replaced them with our own page. Lower service fee for the customer, and no third-party fee at all for us. The link: <a href="http://www.citylit.org/#!half-priced-tickets-/c1pd9">http://www.citylit.org/#!half-priced-tickets-/c1pd9</a></div>
Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-41578781711714873812015-02-20T00:15:00.000-06:002015-02-22T22:06:50.870-06:00Emailed notes to designers of The Bloodhound Law in lieu of a first production meeting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Dustin, Beth, Liz, Hazel:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
The point of <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/08/bloodhound-law.html">our play</a> needs to be more than "slavery is bad," because <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> was the last play that needed to make that point. It is also true that
the intent of our Civil War Project is not to present a bunch of plays
about an interesting historical period, but to try to explore, or
examine, or illustrate, or something, the legacy of the war. The Civil
War is still with us, most obviously in our political divisions: among
those states which were in the Union back then, the most reliable
(though not perfect) indicator of whether it's a red state or blue state
today is whether, 150 years ago, it was a slave state or free state.
The conservative idea that the federal government over-regulates things
and should instead not interfere with the workings of free enterprise is
the descendant of the idea that the federal government should have no
right to interfere with the spread of slavery. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Kristine has
pointed out to me that the play's (historically accurate) scene in which
Francis McIntosh is grabbed off a St. Louis street by police officers
and ends up being killed by a mob is not that different in theme from the riots that happened last year in a St. Louis suburb because a police officer shot a black man on the street.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
All
of Kristine's plays are at bottom about the value of an individual
human life. Throughout this play, we see character after character
confront the stakes of his own life as those stakes relate to the world
around him. Repeatedly, they choose to lose themselves in the pursuit
of something larger than themselves, which paradoxically is what saves
them and makes them who they are. I think that's the point of our play.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
It's worth reminding ourselves that the play--like most of our Civil War plays, by the way--does not take place during the Civil War. This play spans
from 1834 to 1850, which is to say a half- to full generation before
the war. That matters, because the war changed everything about the
country, including how it looked. It made the country more industrial
and less pastoral, more urban and less rural, more mass-manufactured and
less homespun, more dirty and less clean. So our play takes place in a
world we can't even find in old photographs.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's a
happy coincidence: one of the characters is Missouri Senator Thomas
Hart Benton; his great-great-nephew, also named Thomas Hart Benton, was
the 20th-Century American artist whose paintings evoke a mythic
America. Bright and colorful symbolic landscapes, vibrant clothes, wide
blue skies, muscular people. It's tempting to imagine that the old
lost America actually looked like this. Here are five of his paintings,
below which I ramble on some more.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg" class="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg" height="144" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="640" /><br />
<br />
<img alt="Benton-Sources_lowres1" class="" src="http://anam-cara.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451a05569e20120a60c0db3970c-500wi" height="383" style="border: 0px none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 0px;" width="640" /></div>
<a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef0163031ec041970d-600wi" imageanchor="1" style="margin-right: 0px;"><img alt="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef0163031ec041970d-600wi" border="0" class="" src="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef0163031ec041970d-600wi" height="406" width="640" /></a><img alt="Thomas Hart Benton Cradling Wheat" src="http://www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Benton_Thomas_Hart_Cradling%20Wheat.jpg" height="508" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="640" /><br />
<img alt="http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/2005/465/jpeg/02e.jpg" class="" src="http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/2005/465/jpeg/02e.jpg" height="425" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
I
would like us to use Benton's paintings as a starting point for design
discussions. I think the irony of slavery existing in a land founded on
individual liberty is put on stage if the awful events of the play are
happening in an American version of paradise.<br />
<br />
Most of his
settings are rural, whereas our play takes place for the most part in
towns and cities, so maybe I'm talking more about his style than his
specific content. However, my favorite thing about his paintings in
general are his beautiful and clean skies, which is one reason I have
already mentioned I would like our set to have a cyc. I think it will
open up the space and suggest an infinite horizon. The other reason is
practical: the play is a bunch of short scenes, and we can go from one
to the other without the dialogue stopping if we use a cyc to throw
everyone into silhouette as soon as the old scene ends and keep it that
way as actors exit and enter until the actors for the new scene are in
place a line or two into the scene, which we then join in process by
bringing up area lights. This may be an easier device to make clear in
person than by email, but it works great and will keep the play moving. I believe City Lit has a cyc, and I will dig it out before our first face-to-face meeting.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
One thing I like in particular about the bottom one of the five pictures
is how he's used the stage space. There's a country road, and a town
square, and a business district, and whatever locale it is supposed to
be where the two guys are sawing a log, and it's all together and it's all distinct at the same time. Not saying we need to do that--we may need something more fluid--but I do like how he's made it work.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Kristine
has suggested, and I like the idea, that perhaps the actors never or
almost never leave the stage. Perhaps there are places for them to sit
on the fringes of the action until they enter a scene. I'm not married
to this idea, but one advantage it might have relates to the costumes.
Every actor plays multiple characters, and the play is written against
the idea of full costume changes every time an actor becomes someone
else. The idea that changing a single piece changes the character might
be an easier sell if we see the change happen onstage. As long as we
look like a production and not like a workshop. If we go this way, it
seems like it will call for some place onstage for costume pieces to
live when not being worn Hooks on the wall, maybe, though I'm not crazy
about the view of the wall being dominated by costume pieces hanging up
in full sight the whole time. So maybe something else.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As
we have a fair number of political speeches, a raised speaking platform
(one largish one? a couple or a few small ones? I dunno) somewhere
onstage is probably a good idea. Maybe with bunting as in the bottom
painting?<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Certainly the main floor of the stage is an open, fluid area (or areas) that becomes whatever the actors say it is. The furniture can be as simple as a table and a few chairs that are used transformationally to suggest whatever we need.
I expect this means the lighting will be called upon to help define a
given scene--a window gobo when Wright and Mooney are looking out at the
mob, and so on. At one point the script requires us to burn a man
alive onstage, and suggests that be accomplished by shining a red light
or two on him. If there is any way we could achieve a flickering
effect, that would be fab.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
That's all for now from me. Email me any questions you have, if you like. See you soon. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
thanks,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Terry</div>
</div>
Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-65747821680422626252015-02-12T14:13:00.000-06:002015-02-14T09:02:04.505-06:00206-year-old man in the news<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Lock of Lincoln's hair, amid other auction items</i></td></tr>
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<br />
Lincoln in the news on his birthday:<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.fresnobee.com/2015/02/10/4372763_editorial-lincoln-our-greatest.html?rh=1">Fresno Bee </a>has an editorial out this week calling for Lincoln's birthday to be made an official holiday. The editorial maybe doesn't do the best job of making the case: it's unclear if it's calling for a national holiday or a California state holiday, and dwells longer on his having beaten Jack Armstrong in a fight back in New Salem than on his having beaten the Confederacy and saved the Union, plus it gets wrong the date he was shot. But it recognizes the inadequacy of the lamest national holiday, President's Day, and points out the embarrassment that more states officially recognize Robert E. Lee's birthday than Lincoln's. Seems California used to celebrate Lincoln's birthday, but in 2009--the Bee points out the irony that this was his bicentenary year--the legislature deleted the holiday to save money.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKzyF2JvJ9856TZHXUA0blkZy6hZjAXpScdTAHmWam-lqKBrZEwYJGZjP6q8lk02hYOcxQDuAhT-EOh3NiHGva-VVxGwwyN53CoGw-jiWazWK-8GUjTwZ8pMZdUcYoaiX1jfPZ1v1Mm4c/s1600/OldAbeLincoln.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKzyF2JvJ9856TZHXUA0blkZy6hZjAXpScdTAHmWam-lqKBrZEwYJGZjP6q8lk02hYOcxQDuAhT-EOh3NiHGva-VVxGwwyN53CoGw-jiWazWK-8GUjTwZ8pMZdUcYoaiX1jfPZ1v1Mm4c/s1600/OldAbeLincoln.jpg" height="640" width="502" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Pete Muggins's letter (click to enlarge)</i></td></tr>
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The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/arts/design/lincoln-speaks-words-that-transformed-a-nation-at-morgan-library.html?ref=topics">New York Times</a> reviews <i>Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation</i>, an exhibit of original manuscripts of 80-some of his speeches and pieces of correspondence and so on, running through June 7 at New York City's Morgan Library and Museum. Also included in the exhibit is material written to or about Lincoln, including Walt Whitman's handwritten "Oh Captain! My Captain!", and some books from Lincoln's personal library, including one of his Shakespeare collections opened to his favorite play, <i>Macbeth</i>. Perhaps the most entertaining item exhibited<br />
is the original of a letter mailed to Lincoln in Springfield a couple weeks after he was elected President; as the Times decorously puts it, the letter "remains unprintable in a family newspaper 155 years later." Via the less fastidious <a href="http://www.amdigital.co.uk/m-editorial-blog/oldabelincoln/">Adam Matthew Digital</a>, which has the original in its digital archives, here is a transcript:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fillmore, La. Nov 25th 1860</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Old Abe Lincoln</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God damn your god damned of hellfire of god damned soul to hell god damn you and god damn your god damned family's god damn hellfired god damned soul to hell and god damnation god damn them and god damn your god damn friends to hell god damn their god damned souls to damnation god damn them and god damn their god damn families to eternal god damnation god damn souls to hell god damn them and God Almighty God damn Old Hamlin to go hell God damn his God damned soul God all over everywhere double damn his God damned soul to hell.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now you God damned old abolition son of a bitch God damned you I want you to send me God damn you about one dozen good offices Good God almighty God damn you God damned soul and three or four pretty Gals God damn you you</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And by doing God damn you</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Will oblige</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pete Muggins </blockquote>
Speaking of insults, <a href="http://mlive.com/">MLive.com</a>--the M stands for Michigan--posts a piece today <a href="http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2015/02/happy_birthday_abe_lincoln_tha.html">thanking Lincoln</a> for either coining or popularizing the term "Michigander." Attacking Lewis Cass, the 1848 Democratic nominee for president, Lincoln called Cass "the great Michigander," his dual point being that Cass's policies were as silly as a goose and that Cass was so fat he waddled. And we are told that political discourse was more elevated then than it is now. MLive points out that 58% of, um, Michiganders now use the term to refer to themselves. It does not point out that the term of Lincoln's day for someone from Illinois, a "sucker," has not held up as well.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.religionnews.com/2015/02/11/echoes-abraham-lincoln-president-obamas-prayer-breakfast-speech-commentary/">Religion News Service </a> says that anyone claiming to be outraged by President Obama's <br />
comments at last week's National Prayer Breakfast should also feel the same way about Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FmPwaqEzuRiY-kT39gCu6IKQSxkn_cDVAezj3xqE9vIRQblxX5P7WKKCKig0ljNTeOhqgIxlYatGB65egUt8Xog44JXRubHWOxb8brzBpZgKkvCNaee0UcrC9l43ga3gr39fCSO9Qwtk/s1600/obama-lincoln-cp-w61099571-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FmPwaqEzuRiY-kT39gCu6IKQSxkn_cDVAezj3xqE9vIRQblxX5P7WKKCKig0ljNTeOhqgIxlYatGB65egUt8Xog44JXRubHWOxb8brzBpZgKkvCNaee0UcrC9l43ga3gr39fCSO9Qwtk/s1600/obama-lincoln-cp-w61099571-1.jpg" height="178" width="320" /></a>Obama appeals to the mystery of God and, without specifically saying it, asks us to remove the speck from our own eye before we set out to remove the log from our neighbor's eye. . . . When Obama tells Americans to get off their "high horses" and realize that sin has been present throughout human history, even American history, he echoes Lincoln's words on that rainy morning on March 4, 1865. . . . Both the North and the South, he said, "read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we not be judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes." </blockquote>
On the other hand, Mark Levin on Sean Hannity's FOX News show (as a service to the readers of this blog, I am not providing a link) says that if Lincoln had shared the sentiments Obama expressed at the prayer breakfast, he would not have fought to end slavery. Sigh.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ldnews.com/opinion/ci_27508827/what-would-abraham-lincoln-say-modern-u-s">Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News</a> believes that Lincoln would not at all approve of pretty much anything Obama says or does. It delves into metaphysics to prove the point: "Abraham Lincoln's birthday is upon us. And with a reluctant but free-spending captain now at the helm of the free world's flagship, we are reminded how sorely we miss Lincoln. Were he with us now, at the advanced age of 206, what would he think of how his beloved United States has evolved in the 150 years since that fateful night at Ford's Theater? What would he think of the Oval Office's current occupant?" Remarkably, the answer to this poser is that Lincoln would agree with the opinions of the op-ed writer asking the question: "he would want to know what happened to the role of government, and why it sees fit to intrude so regularly in the lives of its citizens." Good to know.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Auctioned: funeral admittance card for White House service</i></td></tr>
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Finally, down in Dallas, a lock of Lincoln's hair was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/24/us-usa-lincoln-auction-idUSKBN0KX0FK20150124">recently sold at auction</a> for an amount equal to a year of his presidential salary, $25,000. It was part of a large collection of Lincoln memorabilia (much of it, for instance a piece of blood-stained linen from his deathbed, and Booth's arrest warrant, centered around the assassination) that brought in a total of $803,889, twice what was expected. Left unsold was an 1862 letter from Lincoln acknowledging that the Civil War was not going well.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-35762435171421355982014-12-31T18:53:00.000-06:002014-12-31T18:53:33.321-06:00Music for New Year's Eve 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Happy New Year. <i>Down by the Riverside </i>is an African American spiritual whose exact pre-Civil War origin is obscure. It may have originated among slaves held on and near the Georgia Sea islands, whose rich musical contributions include <i>Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Wade in the Water</i>, and <i>Swing Low Sweet Chariot. </i>The riverside in question is simultaneously that of the Jordan and the Ohio, across which first the Hebrew slaves and then the American ones would find the promised land and live in peace. The song was popularized after the war by the <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/04/music-of-opus-1861.html">Fisk Jubilee Singers</a>, who also (decades later, with a different lineup) made its first recording.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3qMakzICkKoULp9r56H4krqztc6ThSbsMquqli-B1a5znuPp4QYXEUUKPa73HGPvVw2pN3I7-BmLlaZCGnqk-4JzXWRJR3Q8g4ri9aQe-qPTV1lsl1f78FjmrUFOgEJThi7IDf3UTzNq/s1600/seeger+and+banjo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3qMakzICkKoULp9r56H4krqztc6ThSbsMquqli-B1a5znuPp4QYXEUUKPa73HGPvVw2pN3I7-BmLlaZCGnqk-4JzXWRJR3Q8g4ri9aQe-qPTV1lsl1f78FjmrUFOgEJThi7IDf3UTzNq/s1600/seeger+and+banjo.jpg" height="200" width="156" /></a>This video is from <i>Rainbow Quest</i>, a show that Pete Seeger hosted and produced with money from his own pocket for one season in the mid-1960s, during his fifteen-year ban from network television for refusing to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was shot on a no-budget set without rehearsals or a studio audience and broadcast on a single, mostly Spanish-language, UHF (ultra-high frequency) station in Linden, New Jersey in the days when UHF reception was notoriously poor. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+%22rainbow+quest%22">Clips from it</a>
are all over YouTube these days, not because of the production values,
but because of the quality of the performances by Seeger and his great
guests, at least some of whom declined payment for being there. There
are 39 episodes and only the one with an obviously stoned Johnny Cash is
a disappointment.<br />
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Here, Sonny Terry on harmonica and Brownie McGhee on guitar are less than halfway through their almost forty-year partnership. They paired up in New York City in 1941 or '42, and toured (sometimes eleven months per year) and recorded together until 1980. They were also occasionally actors, and here's a small irony--they appeared in the original Broadway production of <i>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</i> with Burl Ives, who had a few years earlier named Seeger's name to HUAC.</div>
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-50737387611952637992014-12-31T09:58:00.000-06:002015-01-01T17:54:45.270-06:00The Sons of Confederate Veterans' long wait at the Texas DMV may be over soon.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Almost legal.</i></td></tr>
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The Sons of Confederate Veterans seem a giant step closer to winning <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/11/to-living-we-owe-respect-but-to-dead-we.html">their fight with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles</a> over whether the state of Texas should issue specialty license plates displaying the Confederate battle flag. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Texas's appeal of the <a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/13/13-50411-CV0.pdf">Fifth Circuit's Court of Appeal's decision</a> overturning, on First Amendment grounds, a U.S. District Court's decision that the DMV was within its rights to decide not to issue the plates for the specific reason it gave at the time.<br />
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The issue on appeal relates to the Texas state law that says the DMV can reject any application for a specialty license plate if that plate's design "might be offensive to any member of the public." Plenty of Texans testified to the DMV board that they were in fact offended by the proposed SCV plate's design, because they recognize the Confederate battle flag to be both a historical symbol of hate and a contemporary tool of racial intimidation, and the board voted the SCV's application down for that reason.<br />
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But there is nothing in the Constitution granting the right to go through life unoffended. To the contrary, the First Amendment requires us to pretty much suck it up and get over it if someone chooses to use his or her individual right of free speech to offend us. The question the Court has agreed to decide is whether a specialty license plate is part of an individual's private speech, in which case the Texas law against offensiveness is clearly unconstitutional, or if it is part of the state's speech, in which case the First Amendment does not apply and the Texas DMV is free to choose not to offend people.<br />
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There seems to be no firm legal category to contain the possibility that a specialty license plate is in fact a hybrid of private and state speech: the individual requests the specialty plate because he or she supports the specialty content, and the state endorses the specialty content by manufacturing and distributing the plates. Both the individual and the state seem to have spoken.<br />
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The one dissenting Fifth Circuit judge argued for just such a category:<br />
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A fundamental error in the majority opinion is describing the government-speech doctrine as presenting a binary choice: government or private speech. . . . Texas does not prevent SCV from engaging in speech on its or its members' cars in the same way that speech has traditionally been made: by license plate frames, bumper stickers, window stickers, window flags, or even painting cars with the Confederate flag. If SCV and its members can do all of those things, why is it seeking an order from a court compelling Texas to sell Confederate plates? The answer is the same answer in <i>Summum </i><b>[</b>a precedent case involving a monument a religious group had attempted to donate to a municipal park<b>]</b>: SCV seeks the kind of "adoption" and "embrace" that comes with being on Texas license plates, with appearing next to the state's flag, name, and likeness, and being given the kind of validation that follows from appearing on a state-issued license plate. It is precisely the reason that SCV wants to force Texas to produce these plates that it should be denied a court order doing so. Texas, like Pleasant Grove <b>[</b>the municipality in <i>Summum</i><b>]</b>, cannot be forced to associate with messages it does not prefer.</blockquote>
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The analogy applies in another important respect. Unlike pamphleteering, speeches, marches, picketing, and bumper stickers--all of which unquestionably involve private speech, even if they occur on government-owned property--erecting monuments and manufacturing specialty license plates both <i>require</i> the government's assistance and complicity. That distinction, yet again, makes specialty plates more like park monuments and less like leafleting and bumper stickers.</blockquote>
Because of Texas's dumb law, it may be too late for the DMV to reject the plates for the right reason: because they would honor men who took up arms against the United States. Part of the SCV's argument for the plates is that Texas already issues specialty plates honoring Korean War veterans, Vietnam veterans, buffalo soldiers, women veterans, and other such groups; therefore that its refusal to issue plates for Confederate veterans amounts to viewpoint discrimination. Texas failed to make<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Over 3500 Union soldiers are buried at Gettysburg National Cemetery. <br />It should be needless to point out they were killed by Confederate soldiers.</i></td></tr>
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the obvious response: the veterans it recognizes on specialty plates are all veterans of the U. S. armed forces, which Confederate soldiers were not. Surely the government, even of a former Confederate state, should be able to honor those who fought to defend the United States without becoming obliged to embrace honoring those who attacked it. <br />
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Confederate soldiers insisted they weren't Americans and considered themselves the army of a foreign nation, and denying them tribute on specialty license plates is viewpoint discrimination only if Texas issues such plates honoring veterans of the Viet Cong or the Luftwaffe. If the fact that the Confederates were nonetheless of domestic vintage is considered relevant, then Confederate soldiers deserve specialty plate recognition the same day other failed violent domestic groups such as the Weather Underground, FALN, and the Symbionese Liberation Army do so. As long as Texas would be within its rights to deny applications for specialty plates to any of those veterans, it should be able to deny the SCV application.</div>
Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-19213330348347461602014-12-24T11:58:00.000-06:002014-12-25T00:19:00.118-06:00Music for Christmas 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When I first started working at City Lit ten years ago, we put together a Christmas show that included "The One-Horse Open Sleigh," the original version of the song the public renamed "Jingle Bells." As you'll hear, the chorus melody is a bit more complicated than the one we know today, and the song has perfectly lovely verses we don't know at all.<br />
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James Pierpont was born in 1822, in the heart of anti-slavery Boston, the son of the Reverend John Pierpont, an abolitionist Unitarian minister and famous in his day for several anti-slavery poems. James's brother, also named John and also an abolitionist Unitarian minister, moved to Georgia to take on the daunting task of heading an anti-slavery congregation there. In 1853, he invited James to move there as well, to become his church's music director and organist.<br />
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James was 31 and had not really settled down. Married with two children, he had left his family behind with his parents in Massachusetts in 1849 to join the rush for California gold. Finding none, he had returned home, but now left his wife and children again--this time for good--to go to Georgia. In addition to fulfilling his duties at his brother's church, he spent the 1850s writing songs and instrumental pieces for the minstrel circuit. One of the latter, 1854's "The Know Nothing Polka," was a tribute to the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Know-Nothing Party. A song, co-written in 1857 with lyricist Marshall S. Pike, "Gentle Nettie Moore," was recorded in the 1930s by The Sons of the Pioneers when Roy Rogers was still in their line-up, and is the uncredited basis for Bob Dylan's song "Nettie Moore" on his 2006 <i>Modern Times</i> CD.<br />
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Also in 1857, Pierpont wrote "The One-Horse Open Sleigh" for a Thanksgiving celebration at the church. It was successful enough that the performance was repeated the following month at Christmas, and the song has been associated with Christmas (when there is more likely to be snow through which to dash) ever since. Published that same year, it was re-published two years later under the title it had become popularly known by, "Jingle Bells."<br />
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By 1859, whatever demand there had been for an abolitionist church in Georgia had evaporated and the Reverend John Jr had returned to the North. James stayed in Georgia with his second wife and family. When the war broke out and his 76-year-old father enlisted as a chaplain in the Union Army, he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry as a clerk and continued to write songs, now exclusively pro-Confederate war numbers with such titles as "Strike for the South" and "We Conquer or Die."<br />
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Once the war ended, Pierpont never wrote another song. He lived until 1893, teaching music and working as a church organist. Inadequate 19th-Century copyright laws being what they were, he never made much money from his great Christmas hit. </div>
Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-48441224932736305462014-08-28T01:08:00.000-05:002014-08-30T09:05:41.166-05:00Alonzo Cushing has a date with President Obama.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> <i>Alonzo Cushing as a West Point cadet, Class of June 1861</i></td></tr>
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On Tuesday the White House announced that President Obama will award the Medal of Honor to <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2013/12/alonzo-cushing-and-medal-of-honor.html">Alonzo Cushing</a> on September 15 of this year, which will be 151 years, two months, and twelve days after Cushing was shot through the mouth standing at what would become known as the Bloody Angle as the Confederates of Pickett's Charge charged right at him.<br />
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From the White House press release:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
First Lieutenant Cushing was killed in action on July 3, 1863, at the age of 22. On that day, the third day of the battle, in the face of Longstreet's Assault, also known as Pickett's Charge, First Lieutenant Cushing's battery took a severe pounding by Confederate artillery. As the rebel infantry advanced, he manned the only remaining, and serviceable, field piece in his battery. During the advance, he was wounded in the stomach as well as in the right shoulder. Refusing to evacuate to the rear despite his severe wounds, he directed the operation of his lone field piece continuing to fire in the face of the enemy. With the rebels within 100 yards of his position, Cushing was shot and killed during this heroic stand. His actions made it possible for the Union Army to successfully repulse the Confederate assault.</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cushing's headstone at West Point.</i></td></tr>
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-80556801763014275942014-07-11T04:53:00.000-05:002014-10-21T09:39:40.784-05:001864's Civil War commemorative stamps come out this month!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFJx5MuQ46LD0C92dnk4svPNIriU9eL37uHGdDKOCDanpFltKGYiidmSzaBanYMgyY8htEImqj2SmQNWmUeV5Ow15fNjOxN9dOtTNcF4Z3tceVrBqa7ueo7LOKGxIJqXtNU6H6e-mmYQ1o/s1600/$_12.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFJx5MuQ46LD0C92dnk4svPNIriU9eL37uHGdDKOCDanpFltKGYiidmSzaBanYMgyY8htEImqj2SmQNWmUeV5Ow15fNjOxN9dOtTNcF4Z3tceVrBqa7ueo7LOKGxIJqXtNU6H6e-mmYQ1o/s1600/$_12.JPG" height="225" width="400" /></a>Other than our own <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/08/first-post-welcome-to-our-civil-war.html">Civil War Project</a>, my favorite part of the sesquicentennial so far is the gorgeous series of commemorative stamps being issued, two each year, by the U.S. Postal Service, all designed by <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=15">Phil Jordan</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqNDIbWiPUP4x4Y5Lk01itSUDv9JC7VxJkl1ZKhJiz_XTdwR_vL_QmWTLHJf7nDqX7YZYGqYJCjooUrYgXQkxbqAUIW_He-zU7DXoST5D2IsyQVFBUU8ChaGP3wZXxCjNkMx131_yANiUD/s1600/$_35.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqNDIbWiPUP4x4Y5Lk01itSUDv9JC7VxJkl1ZKhJiz_XTdwR_vL_QmWTLHJf7nDqX7YZYGqYJCjooUrYgXQkxbqAUIW_He-zU7DXoST5D2IsyQVFBUU8ChaGP3wZXxCjNkMx131_yANiUD/s1600/$_35.JPG" height="226" width="400" /></a>The stamps for 2014 commemorate key military events from 1864, specifically the early days of the Petersburg Campaign and the Battle of Mobile Bay.<br />
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Petersburg, Virginia is about 30 miles from Richmond, the Confederate capital, and was in 1864 a transportation center instrumental to supplying food to both Richmond and Lee's army. Grant spent nine and a half months trying to take the city through a series of battles and the most extensive trench warfare prior to World War One. The Union scored no victories at Petersburg until late August, and suffered losses that horrified the nation: at least 42,000 casualties over the length of the campaign; more than 11,000 in its first four days. But when Petersburg finally fell, the Confederates were forced to abandon Richmond the same day, and Lee's army had no option but a desperate retreat that led to its being surrounded and forced to surrender at Appomattox six days later.<br />
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The Petersburg Campaign saw the war's largest concentration of African American soldiers; the specific scene depicted on the stamp is the Twenty-Second U. S. Colored Troops charging Petersburg's outer works on the second day of the campaign. It's taken from an 1892 oil painting entitled "Charge of the 22nd Negro Regiment during Civil War, 16 July 1864" by J. Andre Castaigne. The original hangs in the West Point Museum, and no full-color electronic image of it seems to be available anywhere online. Below is the New York Public Library's print of the painting:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Castaigne's </i>Phantom<i>, 1910</i></td></tr>
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Castaigne was a French illustrator who worked in the United States for five years in the 1890s, and occasionally thereafter. When he's remembered, it's mainly as the original illustrator of the novel <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i>. <br />
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The Mobile Bay stamp illustration is taken from an 1886 painting by Julian Oliver Davidson, <i>Battle of Mobile Bay</i>. It shows the sinking of the ironclad <i>USS Tecumseh</i>, following its running into a Confederate torpedo (an 1860s torpedo was not a projectile, but a stationary underwater mine). <i>Tecumseh</i> took only 25 seconds to sink, and moments later Union Admiral David Farragut, on the flagship <i>Hartford</i> (second wooden ship from the right in the painting), ordered it to move through the minefield. It is when the torpedoes in <i>Hartford</i>'s way were pointed out to him that he is supposed to have said "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead." Whether or not he said precisely that, <i>Hartford</i> did lead the way successfully through the minefield. This brought the Union fleet out of the range of Confederate land guns and led to the surrender of the Confederate fleet and the capturing of the last important Confederate Gulf port east of the Mississippi. Here's the full picture:<br />
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Davidson was the country's leading marine artist, and was commissioned by <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=15">Louis Prang</a> (originator of the American Christmas card) to paint six naval battles as part of his series of well-researched depictions of Civil War battles, which he ran off as inexpensively priced chromolithographs. It's the same series for which Prang hired Thure de Thurlstrup to paint twelve infantry scenes<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Farragut</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5LO8oWxTdUTIuSyJYzevUv3FK__hR3Rhl1H1pnR-WFxIxQfQvPVuw9wuWvaCVKiNtUpiO4XDt1VCPljnUyjzl2ziCkFZ7CN6m5qaNkDeFWK-VmEYUT7quo8G3WtimoA18THLW7EwW34C_/s1600/porter_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5LO8oWxTdUTIuSyJYzevUv3FK__hR3Rhl1H1pnR-WFxIxQfQvPVuw9wuWvaCVKiNtUpiO4XDt1VCPljnUyjzl2ziCkFZ7CN6m5qaNkDeFWK-VmEYUT7quo8G3WtimoA18THLW7EwW34C_/s1600/porter_web.jpg" height="200" width="121" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Porter</i></td></tr>
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This is the second stamp in this series to feature Farragut's fleet; in 2012 one of the 1862 stamps showed him in the process of capturing <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-civil-war-stamps-wonderful-pictures.html">New Orleans</a>. His foster brother, Admiral David Porter, commanded the fleet depicted on last year's 1863 stamp running the Confederate blockade at <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2013/07/civil-war-stamps-for-1863-that-is-to.html">Vicksburg</a>, so their family has been represented on three of the eight Civil War stamps so far.<br />
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The stamps are being issued July 30 at Mobile and Petersburg.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-82989657532392433062014-06-27T01:17:00.000-05:002016-11-09T15:59:29.083-06:00Another toxic remnant of slavery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit97AMT0FPB9vumwr9M8Wb7bU4VH48DAtlI2C0dsUi3OiL49MyrR3i6LU_toNL3h1_1BxTdoVIpEzhj1v1wSev6dJuG2fPbYI2XjeceWazqNtrj0waORXBH-7Aj0dovJvLEyd6fHlSbl4c/s1600/U.S.+Constitution+Ratification+Stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit97AMT0FPB9vumwr9M8Wb7bU4VH48DAtlI2C0dsUi3OiL49MyrR3i6LU_toNL3h1_1BxTdoVIpEzhj1v1wSev6dJuG2fPbYI2XjeceWazqNtrj0waORXBH-7Aj0dovJvLEyd6fHlSbl4c/s1600/U.S.+Constitution+Ratification+Stamp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
So-called Constitutional originalists like to say that our understanding of any given clause in the Constitution must be rooted in its original intent, what an average reasonable person at the time of its writing would say it meant and was intended to accomplish. So what does this mean when it turns out the original intent is disgraceful, and in fact would be illegal today? Should that affect our sense of the clause in question?<br />
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Via <a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/06/weekend-reading-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery-the-smirking-chimp.html#more">Brad Delong</a>'s economics blog, we're directed to a website called <a href="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/47623/the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery">The Smirking Chimp</a>, and from that to a body of historical research that indicates that the original intent of the Second Amendment was to help preserve slavery by guaranteeing southern states the ability to terrorize their slaves.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkE2wYFzHn6Z0C551lEXfWIWzE_XuJgVwfvogDw9VrENZgBDLAxdy0RqWsTYSA-Y5obBw8GCTAXEIrYcHEGoP6RXan_wq1fEwNCLfVOFjKBHQN8oGOrF5FGs0wO2SzOVXFMvTLBEUwe3RH/s1600/2ndAmendment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkE2wYFzHn6Z0C551lEXfWIWzE_XuJgVwfvogDw9VrENZgBDLAxdy0RqWsTYSA-Y5obBw8GCTAXEIrYcHEGoP6RXan_wq1fEwNCLfVOFjKBHQN8oGOrF5FGs0wO2SzOVXFMvTLBEUwe3RH/s1600/2ndAmendment.jpg" width="200" /></a>Much of the research quoted was done by Carl T. Bogus of Roger Williams University, whose full paper on what he calls "the hidden history of the Second Amendment" can be downloaded <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1465114">here</a>. He documents that, in order to get Virginia to ratify the Constitution, the Amendment was written to guarantee that abolitionist forces in Congress would never be able to disarm the southern militias whose near-exclusive function was to act as slave patrols to prevent "servile insurrection."<br />
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From the introduction of slavery into the colonies in the 17th century right up to the Civil War, the slaveowner's biggest fear was of being murdered in his bed during a slave revolt. Sensibly enough: Bogus cites research indicating there were around 250<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd126rz3wcPRxm-jtPrSWww8hjtMoq1_9Dr0Tl-nKJAX4A4_Vf_3Iu4abrgvB1mshyphenhyphenE0mfF8sgUh143q6MrN7Kw08TDDJMCD-CFROrErtzyIzMACbARyIGq7pOoRARJ9NK2R6AFt0Rozm/s1600/slaves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd126rz3wcPRxm-jtPrSWww8hjtMoq1_9Dr0Tl-nKJAX4A4_Vf_3Iu4abrgvB1mshyphenhyphenE0mfF8sgUh143q6MrN7Kw08TDDJMCD-CFROrErtzyIzMACbARyIGq7pOoRARJ9NK2R6AFt0Rozm/s1600/slaves.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
slave insurrections throughout the South during colonial times. At the time of the ratification debates, the biggest and best-known was in 1739 South Carolina, when and where a group of 20 blacks broke into a store and stole weapons and gunpowder. Bogus: "They decapitated the two storekeepers, displaying their heads on the front steps, and then headed south, sacking and burning homes and killing whites on the way. They marched while flying banners, beating drums, and calling out "Liberty!" to attract more slaves to the rebellion." Eventually they numbered near 100, and were only subdued after fighting two full-fledged battles with mounted militiamen. After the first, black captives were beheaded and their heads hung from mileposts along the road as a warning to other slaves. Most of those who had escaped were tracked down a week later by another militia company and wiped out.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Newspaper woodcut following Nat Turner's revolt, 1831</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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In many areas of the South, black slaves outnumbered whites. Even where that wasn't the case, the ratio of slaves to total population was huge: while the Constitution was being debated, 44% of Virginia's population was enslaved. How do you control an oppressed people in your midst when their numbers approach or exceed yours? Basically, you run a police state. From early colonial days, a feature of Southern life was organized slave patrols of armed white men who searched slave quarters without notice, whipped slaves found off the plantation without permission, and prevented blacks from gathering in groups of three or more. The formation after the Civil War of terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan was simply an extension of the pre-war slave patrols.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwgyljMg71oupsDDHC5M3A-u5p6Zi8MdeniQM0W6MBmZjjDmNXDhqLbzs4TRuwDAh1KawknKo081dDosqLIjPCJIwaoDbrba4z7rg5RyKFU2PCLyFmbX0_LZzMVO700S6EwmIJizOUrfX/s1600/badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwgyljMg71oupsDDHC5M3A-u5p6Zi8MdeniQM0W6MBmZjjDmNXDhqLbzs4TRuwDAh1KawknKo081dDosqLIjPCJIwaoDbrba4z7rg5RyKFU2PCLyFmbX0_LZzMVO700S6EwmIJizOUrfX/s1600/badge.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
By the mid-1700s, the slave patrols had been put under the auspices of the state militia. The Smirking Chimp cites Sally Haden's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Slave-Patrols-Violence-Carolinas-Historical/dp/0674012348"><i>Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas</i></a> to the effect that virtually all men between 18 and 45--not even physicians or ministers were exempted--were required to serve in the militia, which is to say on slave patrols. One reason the 1739 uprising was quelled promptly was that the white men attending Sunday services at a nearby church were, as required by law, armed.<br />
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The myth of the citizen militia during the Revolution is that it was an important element in defeating the British--patriot Minutemen rushing from their homes to battle redcoats, and all that. Bogus points out that in fact a number of Southern states refused even to contribute any militia to the war effort, for the perfectly sound reason that doing so would leave their homes unprotected against slave uprisings. And on at least one occasion George Washington refused to accept the offer of militiamen, as his experience had taught him that they were too undisciplined to be useful in battle: they tended to desert. At the battle of Camden, militia from Virginia and North Carolina, though outnumbering the entire British force, fled from the field without firing a single shot. No, what the citizen militia was good at was terrorizing slaves, and little else.<br />
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How does the Second Amendment figure into this? Well, the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution had inspired a wave of abolitionism in the North, where slavery was not all that economically important. Between the adoption of the Declaration and the drafting of the Constitution, half the slave states north of the Mason-Dixon line had passed emancipation laws; the rest followed suit by 1804. Things were different in the South. During ratification debates, Southerners wanted protection from the possibility that Northerners would use the Constitution to undermine slavery by disarming the slave patrols. Virginia delegate George Mason, called the Father of the Bill of Rights, and owner of 300 slaves, <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ScIoaidgcn8ksCQrXejs82C2fICuTFuYLAhZGauG8hD8Xw2Yml53odKghAB06jz4pXTBdaejpk7Jo0N4fwCTHEbzkK9j5Kpglu8P4YDf4z7vfe1MnZk9IqIl5FMshIU7hQLifkMgrBZI/s1600/george-mason-gun-rights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ScIoaidgcn8ksCQrXejs82C2fICuTFuYLAhZGauG8hD8Xw2Yml53odKghAB06jz4pXTBdaejpk7Jo0N4fwCTHEbzkK9j5Kpglu8P4YDf4z7vfe1MnZk9IqIl5FMshIU7hQLifkMgrBZI/s1600/george-mason-gun-rights.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>No apparent sense of irony or self-awareness</i></td></tr>
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had refused to sign the Constitution when it was drafted in Philadelphia. Among his reservations was his fear that Article One, Section Eight of the proposed Constitution would empower Northerners to strike against slavery by effectively eliminating the slave patrol militias. He told the ratification convention:<br />
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The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless--by disarming them. Under various pretenses, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them . . .</blockquote>
Patrick Henry, greatest orator of the Revolutionary era and another Virginia delegate to the ratifying convention, agreed:<br />
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If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, [the states] cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress. . . . Congress, <i>and Congress only,</i> can call forth the militia. . . . I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>He feared certain others might take his same course.</i></td></tr>
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The Federalists needed Virginia's vote for ratification in order for the Constitution to come into effect. Nine of thirteen states had to vote yes. Eight had done so. Of the five holdouts, Rhode Island was a definite no, New Hampshire and North Carolina were considered doubtful, New York was unpredictable, and Virginia was on the fence. (In the event, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, four days before Virginia, but that could not have been predicted at the time.) If ratification failed, the Constitution died, and the United States itself would perhaps dissolve. As part of the Bill of Rights required to secure Virginia's vote (and those of other states as well), James Madison agreed to an amendment answering the concerns of Mason and Henry. His first draft spoke in general terms of the "security of a free<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ratification votes and dates</i></td></tr>
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nation;" by the time it was adopted, this had been changed to the more-to-the-point "security of a free State." The security concern was of course not foreign invasion; the nation as a whole would undoubtedly act as one in any such case. Nor was it, as today's gun advocates pretend to believe, that citizens should be empowered to resist the government's tyranny--has there ever been a government that gave formal written permission for itself to be attacked? The security concern at the heart of the Second Amendment's original intent is that the captive Americans among us might rise up to claim their freedom.<br />
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The legacy of all this is that we today have been convinced we have no practical means of stopping crazy people from gunning down children.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-65351711338301387872014-05-31T11:23:00.000-05:002014-05-31T11:26:16.433-05:00John Alexander Logan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4qy8C0qzaju5eIYc4eMbJdInIAIf7cVusY8On-oxM3ERgvz1kfGOCWozdNgW0b79jotGzgfzN1BU6Yua0OqwQMt5xjafttpy1h-9BuJHP_AsU0OaWUW6BA1mpwzP96xz7SNKjfwIN8sWQ/s1600/800px-The_burning_of_Columbia,_South_Carolina,_February_17,_1865.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4qy8C0qzaju5eIYc4eMbJdInIAIf7cVusY8On-oxM3ERgvz1kfGOCWozdNgW0b79jotGzgfzN1BU6Yua0OqwQMt5xjafttpy1h-9BuJHP_AsU0OaWUW6BA1mpwzP96xz7SNKjfwIN8sWQ/s1600/800px-The_burning_of_Columbia,_South_Carolina,_February_17,_1865.jpg" height="451" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The burning of Columbia, South Carolina; February 17, 1865</i></td></tr>
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Toward the end of <i>Life on the Mississippi</i>, Twain sums up the transformational nature of the Civil War as succinctly as anyone could. "In the South," he writes, "the war is what A. D. is elsewhere: they date from it." The war affected those in the South much more deeply and personally than it did those in the North--suddenly the Old South was a civilization gone with the wind, as a lesser writer than Twain put it. But though the physical and economic devastation of war happened where the war was fought, which is to say in the South, a four-year bloodbath fought over the great moral and practical issues of treason and slavery could hardly fail to strike at the core of the whole country, and to transform that core. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoj0w3KMoZdKrPm8CUAefMyH9oo0E0Co6D5BdUBpHPrteq6OLYE5BlLaYHlVPfcA_v-etC28y9ymGpGPW5B8BOjSIc0rUUTCftdaF_TxRZaK9N9cvHACPAyslFTN3Jh8dgHy6CeXB7Fjux/s1600/General-Logan-003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoj0w3KMoZdKrPm8CUAefMyH9oo0E0Co6D5BdUBpHPrteq6OLYE5BlLaYHlVPfcA_v-etC28y9ymGpGPW5B8BOjSIc0rUUTCftdaF_TxRZaK9N9cvHACPAyslFTN3Jh8dgHy6CeXB7Fjux/s1600/General-Logan-003.jpg" height="400" width="261" /></a>Which brings us to John Alexander Logan, remembered today only in passing each May as the former Union general and U.S. senator from Illinois who <a href="http://memorialdayorigin.info/order11.html">originated Memorial Day </a>(commemorated for generations on the day Logan picked, May 30, until Congress decided to cheapen most national holidays by moving them to the nearest Monday so they would merely extend our weekend rather than do what holidays are supposed to do--interrupt our routine. But I digress). <br />
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Logan served as a Democrat representing the southern tip of Illinois, known as Egypt, in the Illinois House of Representatives, where in his first term he led the successful campaign to pass the racist <a href="http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329602.html">Black Code of 1853</a>. It carried over certain Illinois laws already in effect, barring blacks in the state from voting, serving on juries or in the militia, suing whites, testifying in court on any matter, and assembling in public in groups of three or more. Logan's innovation was to bar blacks residing outside Illinois from moving to the state: the new law prohibited any free black entering Illinois from remaining for longer than ten days. After that point, the person was subject to arrest, fine, and imprisonment, followed by physical removal from Illinois. If it were possible to single out a worst feature of the law, it might be the provision that the labor of a person convicted under the law who was unable to pay the fine would be auctioned off by the sheriff to the bidder willing to pay the fine and court costs, and the winning bidder would be entitled to work the African American as a slave for a limited period of time until he had recouped his investment plus a little extra for his trouble.<br />
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In 1858 Logan made the jump to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he earned the nickname "Dirty Work Logan" for <a href="http://randomthoughtsonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/04/john-logan-and-fugitive-slave-law.html">his defense of the Fugitive Slave Act</a>: "You call it the dirty work of the Democratic Party to catch slaves for the Southern people. We are willing to perform that dirty work. I do not consider it disgraceful to perform work, dirty or not dirty, which is in accordance with the laws of the land . . ."<br />
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A few years later, with Lincoln elected and secession proclamations being passed by Southern state legislatures, Logan was one of the voices arguing against going to war to stop them. His epiphany came not on the road to Damascus but to Bull Run. Tagging along with a Michigan regiment so he could get a look at the upcoming battle most Northerners expected the Yankees to win easily--picnickers, including other government officials, drove out from Washington to watch--Logan was shocked when the rebels routed the Federal troops. As the picnickers and other spectators scrambled back to safety, Logan instead picked up a fallen musket and started shooting at Confederates. Shortly afterward, he resigned his seat in Congress and entered the U.S. Army as a colonel, recruiting and organizing his own Illinois regiment.<br />
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He made clear at this point that he was a Unionist, not an abolitionist. Many, perhaps most, of his regiment were from the Egypt section of Illinois, where Logan's positions on the Black Codes and the Fugitive Slave Act had been very popular. He promised his men that if the war became a war to free slaves, he would resign his commission and "lead you home."<br />
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He did not keep that promise. As with most Northerners, what he thought he knew about slavery was rooted in a lack of contact with it. The war <a href="http://thesouthern.com/news/local/gen-logan-s-change-on-slave-rights/article_115f60c0-3c44-11e2-b8eb-001a4bcf887a.html">changed that</a>, as it did so much else. <a href="http://www.soldierstudies.org/">Letters home from Union soldiers</a> attest to this particular change. When I signed up, a number of letters say in essence, I was clear that I was not doing so in order to fight for the freedom of slaves; but now that I have seen slaves and slavery up close, I have become more of an abolitionist.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>After Logan's conversion, his former allies used his previous positions against him. In this 1884 cartoon, "John A. Logan in 1859," Logan prevents William Seward, Abraham Lincoln (shouldn't he be taller?), and Charles Sumner from saving a family of fugitive slaves.</i></td></tr>
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Given Logan's national stature, and his personal history, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/johnaloganpoliti00jonerich/johnaloganpoliti00jonerich_djvu.txt">his transformation</a> on this point was bound to be more visible than the average soldier's. In February 1863, a month after Lincoln proclaimed emancipation as a war goal, with discontent over the new policy so pervasive that another Illinois regiment was under arrest for mutiny, and desertions increasing in his own regiment, Logan--bedridden with wounds from Fort Donelson--sent a letter to his men through division commanders encouraging their loyalty and referring to the full set of war aims as "our cause." This was enough to get him denounced by Democratic papers back in Egypt. That spring he demanded the resignation of one of his officers who said in front of him that he had not joined the war "to fight to free the niggers." In April he gave a public speech to his regiment, saying that the war had changed his way of thinking, and endorsing not only emancipation but black enlistment: "So we'll unite on this policy, putting the one who is the innocent cause of this war in the front rank and press on to victory."<br />
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Back in 1861 he had called Lincoln's election "deplorable," but in 1864 Logan took a leave from Army duty and campaigned for the president's re-election. Once the war ended and Logan re-entered private life, he proclaimed himself a Republican, saying he had left the Democrats when they became "the party of treason." He campaigned in Kentucky for ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery, and in 1866 was elected again to the House of Representatives. He aligned himself with the radical branch of the Republicans, who pressed for expanded rights for freedmen, and he helped draft impeachment articles against President Johnson for--well, actually, for trumped-up charges, but really for not pursuing Reconstruction with a strong emphasis on protecting the rights of blacks--then served as one of seven impeachment managers who prosecuted the case during Johnson's trial in the Senate.<br />
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Logan's fame during his lifetime, and for decades thereafter, was universal. <a href="http://www.loganmuseum.org/biography/item/19-biography">When he died</a> in 1886, he became only the seventh person to lie in state under the Capitol dome; his funeral was held in the Senate chamber. Counties are named after him in four states. In the 1920s, Illinois adopted a state song that mentions him by name, along with only Lincoln and Grant. Since then, however, he has slid into relative obscurity. Other than the obligatory passing reference to him each Memorial Day, his only claim on public attention in the last fifty years was as a result of his Grant Park statue's cameo appearance in the antiwar demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention here in Chicago. The video, despite the trendy modern-day editing, is still kind of shocking:<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-31582690677256230682014-05-17T02:35:00.000-05:002014-05-17T02:36:04.394-05:00Reviews for CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kevin Gladish as Tony Horwitz in </i>Confederates</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Excerpts from reviews for the show, with links to the full pieces:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RATING: “Heckuva
Good Show”</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Since seeing</b> <i>Confederates in the Attic</i> on Sunday evening, I’ve written and
rewritten this column more times than I care to count, let alone admit
to. In truth, I’m struggling with the material of the show, and more
importantly with the questions that the play itself poses. Which means, I
suppose, that this play works remarkably well and does exactly what it sets out
to do<span style="font-size: x-small;">. . . .</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Terry McCabe has adapted Tony Horowitz’s memoir/non-fiction opus <i>Confederates in the Attic </i>into a play that follows a relatively common
travelogue model (i.e. protagonist goes on journey and the audience
sees a number of vignettes that assemble into some sort of whole). . . . The man making this journey, Tony (played with mild-mannered inquisitiveness by Kevin Gladish) . . .collects the pieces while talking to hardcore
reenactors, old men who have lived through the country’s greatest
changes, young men who still think the South should have won, a young
black man who killed a white redneck for flying the Confederate Flag, a
classroom at an African-American school that teaches alienation (if not
hate), and many others. The play is a whirlwind tour of the American
South . . .</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The play changes locations so
frequently that it seems it is a constant parade of newly-changed
costumes. And kudos goes to kClare Kemock for pulling together what must
have been a veritable mountain of clothing. Those outfits were the
primary way through which the setting of any given scene was established, and I
didn’t become lost on this journey thanks to their guidance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The acting company was filled with
good performances, but a couple of folks stood out. Peter Goldsmith
played Tony’s sometimes-sidekick-sometimes-tour-guide Rob. Rob is
a character whose repeated arrival on the stage is always welcomed.
Goldsmith’s infectious energy makes one almost believe that it would be fun to
spend every free weekend out roughing it in a ditch somewhere pretending to be
a soldier from the 1860s.</span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">LaRen Vernea also firmly claimed
the stage whenever she was on. She played a number of characters, much
like most of the cast (other than Gladish and Goldsmith), and each of hers were
clearly drawn and well developed, even when they were only on for a few lines.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">McCabe’s staging of the action
flowed seamlessly from scene to scene. The scenery itself was very
simple, and because of that the content of the show was more in focus.
Which brings us around to the topic of the questions that are raised by <i>Confederates in the Attic</i>. . .</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can’t really distill the show
down to a simple list of questions. But they are asked of every person
who comes in to the audience. They aren’t always directly posited (though
sometimes they are), but through the action of the play one is called upon to
look at how we view the events of the Civil War . . . The journey came to a
sudden end without a clear conclusion, but I think that makes it better than if
it had tried to provide some discovered truth. . . .</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://theatre1234.com/?p=315">Theatre by Numbers</a></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A kind of volatile but compassionate mix of <i>Deliverance, Killer Angels, </i>and <i>Gone with the Wind:</i></span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>I</b><b>t looks</b> humorously and
non-judgmentally at a war that, at least in the South, never really
ended. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Richly adapted and faithfully staged by City
Lit artistic director Terry McCabe, these 130 minutes teem with scary
revelations about the unreconstructed territory below the Mason-Dixon Line
where "it's still half time" in the War Between the States. . . </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The impressive and well-cast 14-member cast describe
the tragedy of Michael Westerman (Christian Isely), a punk white teenager shot
by black kids for flying the Confederate flag from his pickup truck.
Horwitz testifies to K.K.K. rallies in Kentucky and hateful white-supremacist
incitements to race war to preserve an "Aryan nation." Horwitz talks
to African-Americans, like Freddie Morrow (Johnathan Wallace), who shot
Westerman for reasons he can't ken. . . .</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">. . . To his credit, Horwitz does not minimize the unhealed wounds that fester a century and a half later. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">
</span><a href="http://chicagotheaterbeat.com/2014/05/16/confederates-in-the-attic-review-city-lit-theater/#review">ChicagoTheatre Beat</a></span></span></div>
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<b></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<b>The show closes May 25. Here is the all-important link <a href="http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/662626">to buy tickets</a>.</b></div>
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-36172859336739743752014-04-22T00:36:00.001-05:002014-04-22T02:18:23.705-05:00Our Civil War Sesquicentennial Project collects its fourth Jeff nomination.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKXLV_tj342isF9GV0tVOJ6K8SmfRkJBe6eWDZ0yG-TRgDaIOFWuysla1FqwfyLCSTLYgWZjVmomVCZmPlwYvN_sX_1SOa2-E8jXA5BXb5FTscm_LwAHRrBrFqqlMocW_TQ8co4tfuBkzR/s1600/CityLit_Comrades_web.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKXLV_tj342isF9GV0tVOJ6K8SmfRkJBe6eWDZ0yG-TRgDaIOFWuysla1FqwfyLCSTLYgWZjVmomVCZmPlwYvN_sX_1SOa2-E8jXA5BXb5FTscm_LwAHRrBrFqqlMocW_TQ8co4tfuBkzR/s1600/CityLit_Comrades_web.png" height="200" width="182" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Comrades Mine: Emma Edmonds of the Union Army</i> by Maureen Gallagher, our 2013 Civil War Project world premiere play, has been nominated for a Jeff Award in the Best New Work category. <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;">The play </span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;">is</span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"> based on the true story of Emma Edmonds, who
served with the Second Michigan Volunteer Infantry for the first two years of
the Civil War disguised as a man.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;">Congratulations, Maureen.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;">The awards ceremony is June 2. Details for those who wish to attend are <a href="http://www.jeffawards.org/home/index.cfm">here</a>. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Update:</i> As coincidence would have it, the New York Times <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/the-lives-of-emma-edmonds/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0"><i>Disunion</i> blog entry for today</a> is about Emma Edmonds. It repeats as true some stuff <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/10/nurse-uses-stretcher.html">she made up for her memoir</a>, like the yarn about her tending to a dying soldier who is also a woman in disguise. It also says the war broke out in 1860! But it's worth reading anyway.</span> </span></span></div>
Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-74441504983798417112014-04-17T00:19:00.000-05:002014-04-18T15:05:44.658-05:00City Lit's press release for CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;">CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC</span></u></i></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;">,WORLD PREMIERE ADAPTATION OF ACCLAIMED BEST-SELLER,</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;">CLOSES</span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;"> CITY</span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;"> LIT’S 34<sup>TH</sup> SEASON,</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 27.600000381469727px;">FOUR SHOWS IN SERIAL REPERTORY</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Confederates in the Attic </span></i></b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">by Tony Horwitz<i>,<b> </b></i>in a world premiere adaptation by City Lit artistic director Terry McCabe, will begin previews at City Lit on Friday, April 25, 2014 and <b>open for the press</b> <b>on Tuesday, April 29.</b> It is the fourth and final production of City Lit Theater’s 34th season, four productions playing in serial repertory, each show’s scheduled run overlapping that of the one opening before and/or after it in daisy-chain fashion through the season. <i>Confederates in the Attic</i>, <b>directed by McCabe</b>, runs through Saturday, June 7, 2014.</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> Confederates in the Attic</span></i></b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">, called “t</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">he best book that has been written on the Civil War in modern culture”</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and “t</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">he freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time” by the New York Times, is a memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz. When he leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again, this time from the unfinished Civil War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance. In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' re-enactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and hears calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandished a rebel flag; and he takes a marathon trek through the War’s eastern theatre in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Confederates in the Attic</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> is the fourth show in City Lit’s </span><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Civil War Sesquicentennial Project</span></b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">, </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">a series of productions</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">—most of them world premieres—</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">that explore the war’s legacy.</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The Project’s shows so far have been</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> 2011’s <i>The Copperhead,</i> 2012’s <i>Opus 1861</i>, and 2013’s <i>Comrades Mine,</i> all Jeff-recommended. The Project concludes in 2015 with the world premiere of Kristine Thatcher’s <i>The Bloodhound Law</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">In City Lit’s world premiere adaptation of <i>Confederates in the Attic</i>, a cast of fourteen plays 106 characters. When the show begins previews on April 25, it will run in <b>rotating </b></span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"><b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"><b>repertory</b></span></b> with </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The Haunting of Hill House</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">, the already-opened third show of City Lit’s season; the two shows will run in rep through <i>Hill House</i>’s closing on May 11. (A full season schedule is available at </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"><a href="http://www.citylit.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.citylit.org</a>.)</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> Tony Horwitz</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his stories about working conditions in low-wage America published in the Wall Street Journal<i>.</i> He also wrote for the Journal as a foreign correspondent covering wars in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. His most recent book, <i>Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, </i>won the William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Terry McCabe</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">has been City Lit’s artistic director since 2005. He has directed plays professionally in Chicago since 1981. His City Lit adaptations of <i>Holmes and Watson, Gidget, </i><i> </i>(co-adapted with Marissa McKown),<i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i>, <i>Scoundrel Time</i>, and <i>Opus 1861</i>(co-adapted with Elizabeth Margolius) were Jeff-nominated. He won two Jeff Citations for directing at the old Stormfield Theatre and has been thrice nominated for the Jeff Award for Best Director, for shows at Court Theatre, Wisdom Bridge, and Victory Gardens. His book <i>Mis-Directing the Play </i>has</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">been denounced at length in American Theatre magazine and from the podium at the national convention of The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, but is nonetheless used in directing courses on three continents and is now in paperback. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The cast for </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Confederates in the Attic</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> is <b>Nick Ferrin, Kevin Gladish, Peter Goldsmith, Varris Holmes, Christian Isely, Elizabeth Krane, Adrienne Matzen, Christopher McMorris, Charles Schoenherr, Megan Skord, La’ren Vernea, Evan Voboril, Johnathan Wallace, </b>and <b>Freddy Lynn Wilson</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The design team is <b>Devin Carroll </b>(lighting),<b> kClare Kemock </b></span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">(costumes), and<b> Dustin Pettegrew </b>(set). The dialect coach is <b>Catherine </b></span><b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Gillespie</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Confederates in the Attic</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> will play twenty-one performances from</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">April 25 through June 7. The full schedule follows:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, April 25 7:30 First preview</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, April 26 3:00 Second preview</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, April 27 6:30 Final preview</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Tuesday, April 29 7:00 Press opening</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, May 2 7:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, May 3 3:00</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, May 4 6:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, May 9 7:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, May 10 3:00</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, May 11 6:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, May 16 7:30 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, May 17 7:30 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, May 18 2:00 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, May 23 7:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, May 24 7:30</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, May 25 2:00</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, May 30 7:30 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, May 31 7:30 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Sunday, June 1 2:00</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Friday, June 6 7:30 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Saturday, June 7 7:30 Closing performance</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> Ticket prices are $22.00 for previews and $29.00 after opening. A limited number of $25.00 general admission tickets ($18.00 for previews) are available for each performance through the City Lit website.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> Discounts are available for telephone orders by seniors, students, members of the military, and groups of ten or more. Tickets can be reserved by going to </span><a href="http://www.citylit.org/#_blank" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">www.citylit.org</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> or by calling <a href="tel:%28773%29%20293-3682" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank" value="+17732933682">(773) 293-3682</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> City Lit receives funding from the Alphawood Foundation, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council (a state agency), and The Saints. Its outreach program is sponsored in part by A.R.T. League.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> City Lit specializes in literate theatre, including stage adaptations of literary material. It is located in the historic Edgewater Presbyterian Church building at 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue, one block west of Sheridan Road and a block and a half east of the Bryn Mawr Red Line L stop. The 84 Peterson bus, the 147 Lake Shore Express bus, and the 151 Sheridan bus all stop near City Lit. Valet parking is available for theatre customers at Francesca’s Bryn Mawr restaurant across the street from City Lit. Discounted parking is available for theatre customers, with validation from the Edgewater Beach Café, in the Edgewater Beach Apartments’ underground parking lot one block east of the theatre. A limited amount of free parking is available for theatre customers who dine at That Little Mexican Café one block west of the theatre.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; line-height: 14.720000267028809px;">Note: Some of'this press release's biographical information on </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; line-height: 14.720000267028809px;">Tony Horwitz </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style'; line-height: 14.720000267028809px;">and description of the book was taken from tonyhorwitz.com. The photograph at top is copyright 2012 by John Murden Jr. and used by permission.</span></i></div>
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-59722374104032990362014-02-12T14:45:00.002-06:002014-02-13T21:39:29.726-06:00205-year-old man in the news<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lincoln in Bensonhurst</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Lincoln in the news on his birthday:</span><br />
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This afternoon at the Old State Capitol Building in Springfield, where Lincoln gave his House Divided speech, the US Postal Service is unveiling a new Lincoln postage stamp. This one will show an image of the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Land Community College chorus will perform. The <a href="http://sj-r.eviesays.com/event/1561749.html?where=62701&radius=50">State Journal-Register</a> has details.</span><br />
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The Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park has birthday events planned for today as well. One is the official donation to the Park by Hodgenville attorney and Lincoln historian Carl Howell of the marker from the grave of Thomas Lincoln Jr.--the only brother of Abe, who died in infancy in either 1811 or '12. <a href="http://wkms.org/post/hodgenville-ceremony-commemorates-abraham-lincolns-205th-birthday"> WKMS</a>, the local NPR station there, reports that Howell purchased the marker from the owner of the small family cemetery when the owner was selling the cemetery, and quotes Howell as saying, <span style="font-family: inherit;">"<span style="line-height: 115%;">“I think it needs to be displayed
in Larue County at the National Park where people can see it on a
daily basis because of its extreme importance and significance to the Lincoln
heritage." Um, shouldn't it be put back on the kid's grave?</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The <a href="http://www.bensonhurstbean.com/2014/02/vladimir-bubnov-lincoln-graffiti/">Bensonhurst Bean</a> informs us that Bensonhurst police have apprehended 24-year-old<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Vladimir Bubnov and charged him with being the graffiti artist who has spray-painted Lincoln's image, in the Bean's words<span style="font-family: inherit;"> "</span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 21px;">on public and private property along a broad swath of Brooklyn. The images can be seen at almost every Belt Parkway overpass and subway easement, as well as on the sides of many businesses, from Mill Basin to Bay Ridge."</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Bubnov was stopped by police because he failed to signal a turn, which seems a tad careless when it's been publicized that the police are looking for you and you are transporting graffiti stencils and spray paint in your back seat. According to the Bean, Bubnov goes by the street name of AINAC ("Art Is Not A Crime"), and it is speculated that he <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span></span></span><span style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">may also be the person responsible for the “All you need is love” tag that is nearly as ubiquitous as the Lincoln image."</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: inherit;">Kalamazoo, Michigan, civic leaders are organizing efforts to place a statue of Lincoln in a park there, says the <a href="http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/02/kalamazoo_abraham_lincoln_proj.html">Kalamazoo Gazette</a>, to commemorate Lincoln's only public appearance in Michigan. He spoke at a Republican rally there in 1856 in support of the party's first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont (Campaign slogan: "Free Soil! Free Labor! Fremont!"). The city government and the local press are all in favor of it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking of Republican rallies, the GOP in Multnomah County, Oregon, is apparently going ahead with its Lincoln Day raffle this Saturday. From their <a href="http://www.multnomahgop.org/raffling-an-ar15-again">website</a>: <span style="font-family: inherit;">". . .</span></span></span><span style="line-height: 19.5px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">we celebrate the legacy of two great Republicans who demonstrated leadership and courage that all of us still lean on today: Martin Luther King, Jr and Abraham Lincoln. In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against, the Multnomah County Republican Party announces that we have started our third raffle for an AR-15 rifle (or handgun of the winner’s choice)." It apparently really didn't occur to them that there might be something gauche about raffling off a gun to "celebrate" two assassination victims. When there was the predictable outcry, they issued a <a href="http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/Blog/2014/01/21/Oregon-county-GOP-group-apologizes-for-celebrating-MLK-with-gun-raffle/8231390314152/">non-apology apology</a> for having "</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">issued a press release that was unfortunately easily misunderstood." Not for calling King a Republican, though, or for the incoherence of "</span><span style="line-height: 19.5px;">the denial of the rights they fought so hard against." As for the raffle, <i><a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2014/01/despite_criticism_multnomah_go.html">The Oregonian</a></i> reports that the group expects the publicity to sell out all 500 raffle tickets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00355e;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; line-height: 19.5px;">Indiewire.com reports Terrence Malick has produced a Lincoln biopic, directed by A.J. Edwards, that is playing festivals and looking for a distributor. Called <i>The Better Angels</i>, it seems to be about Abe growing up in Indiana. Here's a<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-new-teaser-trailer-for-terrence-malick-produced-abraham-lincoln-biopic-the-better-angels-20140208"> link to watch the trailer</a> on Indiewire.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00355e;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; line-height: 19.5px;">A fun game that everyone can play is to imagine that Abraham Lincoln would completely agree with you about whatever contemporary issue you want to name. <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2014/01/19/killing-liberty-with-kindness-n1781087/page/full">Derek Hunter</a> at Townhall.com seems convinced that Lincoln would side with him in opposing Obamacare; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/jamie-dimons-bird-in-the_b_4769546.html">Mike Lux</a> blogs at HuffPost that Lincoln would want the federal government to start arresting Wall Street CEOs who deserve it; <a href="http://www.jconline.com/article/20140131/OPINION/301310030/Guest-column-What-Lincoln-might-say-about-Indiana-gay-marriage-vote?nclick_check=1">Alissa Wetzel</a> in the Indianapolis Star just knows that he would agree with her about gay marriage; and <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-31/opinion/ct-oped-0131-zorn-20140131_1_cps-lincoln-holiday-pulaski-day">Eric Zorn</a> writes in the Chicago Tribune that Lincoln would agree with him that Lincoln's Birthday should not be a school holiday in Illinois anymore. Nobody seems to care what George Washington would think about any of these issues.</span></span><br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-78615207038634099782013-12-31T03:24:00.000-06:002013-12-31T03:25:05.698-06:00Music for New Year's Eve: Listen to the Mockingbird<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm posting two different versions of "Listen to the Mockingbird." The first is a wonderful instrumental recording by Brother Bones and His Shadows. <br />
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Brother Bones was a guy named Freeman Davis who whistled and played the bones. He made about a dozen records, most or all of them during the late 1940s. Alas, the market for records by guys who whistle and play the bones has never been what you and I might hope it would be, and so Brother Bones never really had any hits. One recording of his is universally recognized, however, though his name is seldom if ever mentioned in conjunction with it: a few years after he recorded "Sweet Georgia Brown," the Harlem Globetrotters adopted his version of it as their theme and have played it at every appearance in the 60+ years since.<br />
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More recordings by Brother Bones and His Shadows can be streamed or downloaded at <a href="http://www.whistlingrecords.net/78/Brother_Bones/index.htm">The Online Guide to Whistling Records</a>. (Of course there is such a thing. Why are you even surprised?)<br />
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But the lyrics to "Listen to the Mockingbird" are too good to omit, so here's Burl Ives's version.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>1855. "Alice Hawthorne" was a Winner pen name.</i></td></tr>
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The irrepressibly sprightly tune was written by Richard Milburn, an African American Philadelphia barber who played guitar, sang, and whistled well enough he was known as "Whistling Dick." The mournful lyrics (the singer is listening to the mockingbird sing on his dead love's grave) were written by Septimus Winner, a white Philadelphia professional songwriter with over 200 published songs, including "Oh Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" and "Ten Little Indians." <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A year later, no sign of Milburn's credit.</i></td></tr>
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The song was one of the biggest hits of the Civil War era. Winner credited Milburn as composer on the original 1855 publication, but a year later the sheet music had an 1856 registration date and no sign of Milburn's name. ("Alice Hawthorne" was a pseudonym Winner used for himself.)<br />
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Ted Widmer wrote a <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/listen-to-the-mockingbird/">nice appreciation</a> of "Listen to the Mockingbird" for the New York Times's "Disunion" Civil War blog a couple months ago. I am happy to borrow from it Lincoln's opinion of the song: "as sincere as the laughter of a little girl at play."<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-7384015251682682672013-12-27T00:22:00.002-06:002014-09-18T15:45:25.254-05:00Alonzo Cushing and the Medal of Honor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
President Obama yesterday signed the <a href="http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3304">defense authorization act</a> that passed Congress last week, which means that, along with all the rest of it, Section 569 becomes law. Here it is:<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SEC. 569. AUTHORIZATION FOR AWARD OF THE MEDAL OF HONOR TO FIRST LIEUTENANT ALONZO H. CUSHING FOR ACTS OF VALOR DURING THE CIVIL WAR.</span></blockquote>
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(a) Authorization.--Notwithstanding the time limitations specified in section 3744 of title 10, Unites States Code, or any other time limitation with respect to the awarding of certain medals to persons who served in the Armed Forces, the President may award the Medal of Honor under section 3741 of such title to then First Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing for conspicuous acts of gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life and beyond the call of duty in the Civil War, as described in subsection (b). </blockquote>
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(b) Acts of Valor Described.--The acts of valor referred to in subsection (a) are the actions of then First Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing while in command of Battery A, 4th United States Artillery, Army of the Potomac, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1863, during the Civil War. </blockquote>
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Alonzo Cushin<span style="font-family: inherit;">g, memb</span>er of the West Point Class of 1861, was only 22 and had already fought at Fredericksburg and Antietam. The battery he commanded at Gettysburg was stationed at what would become known as the Bloody Angle, an area enclosed by a zigzagging section of the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge and including the copse of trees that was the target destination of Pickett's Charge. He had already been wounded twice, but not incapacitated, during the hour-long artillery duel that preceded the Charge, and had lost so many men that he had only enough left to operate two of the battery's six guns. Ordered at first to fall back to where his wounds might be attended to, he instead asked for and received permission to move his two workable guns forward to the stone wall itself. Cushing's sergeant, Frederick Fuger, <a href="http://www.cushingsbatterywi.com/historical.html">wrote later</a>:<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text"><span style="line-height: 17px;">The
Confederate Infantry . . . now began their
advance. They were the best troops in Lee’s army, namely Pickett’s Division,
consisting of three brigades, Garnett’s, Kemper’s and Armistead’s in
the center supported on the left by General Heth’s Division and on the right by General Anderson’s.<br /><br />Kemper
was on the right, Garnett in the center and Armistead on the left,
marching in close order with measured steps, as if on parade. They moved
toward us solidly and deliberately, and when they were within 400
yards, Battery “A” began firing at them with single charges of canister,
mowing down gaps in their lines which appeared to me the front of a company, this they filled up and still came on.</span></span></span></blockquote>
As Pickett's Charge neared its climax, with the Confederates within 150 yards, Cushing was shot through the mouth and killed instantly. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bloody Angle today</td></tr>
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This is heroic enough, certainly, but over the decades Cushing's story has been embellished, mostly due to Sergeant Fuger's campaigning for his own Medal of Honor (it used to be acceptable to do that), which he won in 1897. Fuger apparently had a few different versions, and details survive in online accounts today: we are told that one of Cushing's earlier wounds was so grievous that it exposed his intestines and he held them in with one hand while, no longer able to shout orders loud enough to be heard over the shooting, he leaned on Fuger and whispered commands which the sergeant faithfully transmitted to the battery. Please. The <a href="http://npsgnmp.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/lieutenant-cushing/">Gettysburg National Military Park blog</a> surely has it right:<br />
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What Cushing did at Gettysburg needed no embellishment. His gallantry
was recorded in after-action reports by every officer that served near
his battery. . . . Fuger’s embellishments to Cushing’s tragic story gained traction over
the years, largely because no one questioned the sergeant’s account, and
maybe because we all wanted to believe what he wrote and said about
Cushing. After all, Fuger had been awarded the MOH. But this did not
mean he was above spinning romances about the battle like others we have
discussed on this blog. In this case however, how Cushing led and how
he died needed no spin or embellishment [from] Fuger. As Colonel Norman
Hall wrote two weeks after the battle, “Lieutenant Cushing, of Battery
A, Fourth U.S. Artillery, challenged the admiration of all who saw him.”
<i>[Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, 27, 1:437]</i></blockquote>
The Medal of Honor had been created in 1861 and as of 1863 was not yet awarded posthumously, so Cushing was not eligible at the time. Decades later this criterion was changed, but no one proposed Cushing for the Medal until 1987, when<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/12medal.html?hpw"> Margaret Zerwekh</a>, from Cushing's birthplace of Delafield, Wisconsin, wrote to her senator, William Proxmire. Zerwekh, now 93, has campaigned on Cushing's behalf for 26 years and has been through a lot of Wisconsin senators; a recent one, Russ Feingold, calls Cushing and Zerwekh both heroes and pushed in Congress for Cushing's medal for a decade. It almost happened in 2010--a lot of online sources actually say that it did happen then--but at the last minute House-Senate negotiators for some reason dropped the provision from the final version of that year's defense bill. The provision in this year's bill has backing from both current Wisconsin senators, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin.<br />
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And now the president has signed the bill with the provision intact, so it seems like a sure thing. The two steps left should be no problem: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is expected to make the formal recommendation, and President Obama is expected to accept it. Whenever the ceremony is <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2014/08/alonzo-cushing-has-date-with-president.html">finally held</a>, Alonzo Cushing will have waited longer than any other Medal of Honor recipient. <br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-87356302504317308332013-12-24T04:38:00.001-06:002013-12-24T04:38:22.002-06:00Music for Christmas: Mary Had a Baby<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As far as anyone can tell, "Mary Had a Baby" <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/mary-had-a-baby">originated </a>among slaves on St. Helena Island, one of the South Carolina Sea Islands, sometime during the 1830s. Paul Robeson made this recording of it, with Laurence Brown on piano, in 1931.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-12120502950506492712013-12-16T23:44:00.000-06:002013-12-16T23:46:40.415-06:00Juggling our final two Civil War plays<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Confederates in the Attic</i> opens this April.<br />
<i>Photo (c) 2012 John Murden Jr. Used by permission.</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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When we <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/08/first-post-welcome-to-our-civil-war.html">announced the five shows</a> that make up our Civil War Sesquicentennial Project back in 2011, only one of the scripts actually existed--<a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/10/lovely-but-hard-to-find-play-now.html">Augustus Thomas's 1918 play <i>The Copperhead</i></a>, which as far as we could find out hadn't been produced in maybe 70 years when we opened the Project with it in 2011. (And which is not related to the recent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperhead_(2013_film)">Ron Maxwell film <i>Copperhead</i></a>.) The others were little more than general ideas for shows, but with dates assigned for their world premieres in 2012, '13, '14, and '15. I suppose it was inevitable that that there would at some point need to be an adjustment to these plans, and here it is.<br />
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We're flipping the final two shows of the Project. <a href="http://citylitcivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/08/bloodhound-law.html">The Bloodhound Law by Kristine Thatcher </a>(original working title: <i>Fugitive Slave</i>) was scheduled to open in April 2014, but she and I have agreed to delay it until 2015. So <i>Confederates in the Attic</i>, my adaptation of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Confederates-Attic-Dispatches-Unfinished-Civil/dp/067975833X">Tony Horwitz's bestseller</a>, which was scheduled for 2015, is being moved up a year.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Bloodhound Law</i> will open in April 2015.</td></tr>
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The original inspiration for <i>The Bloodhound Law</i> was an 1850 series of meetings of the Chicago Common Council dealing with its repudiation of the Fugitive Slave Act and Senator Stephen Douglas's rebuttal of that repudiation, as a way of examining the effect of the Act on strongly abolitionist Chicago and its thriving community of free black families. The tale has grown in the telling, as Professor Tolkien said about a different story, and Kristine is now wrestling with it in a broader context, starting with the murder of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Parish_Lovejoy">Elijah Lovejoy</a> in downstate Alton in 1837 leading us to the Council's actions thirteen years later. As a result, the play is taking longer to write than we imagined it would, so it will go up in 2015 instead.<br />
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We're in the midst of auditions for <i>Confederates in the Attic</i> now. We need fourteen actors to play 106 characters who sweep across the modern-day South: Civil War re-enactors, Klan recruiters, national park rangers, teachers, students, and dozens of others. Andrea Dymond is directing. It begins performances April 25.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-77180986264670513152013-11-28T16:00:00.000-06:002013-11-28T16:00:09.237-06:00Civil War Thanksgiving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004660226/">"Thanksgiving in Camp,"</a> sketched on Thursday, November 28, 1861 by Alfred R. Waud, an illustrator for the New York Illustrated News who was with the Army of the Potomac for the length of the war.</i></td></tr>
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What is called<a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm"> Lincoln's proclamation</a> establishing Thanksgiving Day as an annual national holiday was written by his Secretary of State William Seward and merely signed by Lincoln, does not call for annual celebrations but only designates the last Thursday of November 1863 as a day of Thanksgiving, and was not legally binding. Nonetheless, Thanksgiving Day has been celebrated in the United States on a shared date every year since 1863, whereas it was only intermittently officially recognized, and the dates of local celebrations had varied from one another, in the years prior to then. What the proclamation did was serve as an acknowledgment that the country itself had institutionalized the holiday already.<br />
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Few Americans had spent extended periods of time away from their homes prior to the armies North and South mobilizing 3 million men (and a few hundred women in disguise), so Thanksgiving was an important holiday in army camps. The folks at <a href="http://www.soldierstudies.org/">soldierstudies.org </a>collect letters from Civil War soldiers and make them available online; one from Charles Morse provides a striking glimpse into Civil War Thanksgiving.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fessenden_Morse">Charles Fessenden Morse</a> was a lieutenant colonel in the Army of the Potomac's 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, stationed on Thanksgiving Day 1863 outside Tullahoma, Tennessee. The Bob Shaw he mentions in his letter is Robert Gould Shaw, the heroic commander of the equally heroic all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The two of them had been classmates at Harvard and had fought together in the early days of the war; their steady correspondence since then would go on to provide source material for the film <i>Glory</i>, about Shaw and the 54th. <br />
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The three men to whom Shaw asked Morse to give his regards were all killed at Gettysburg the very day Shaw wrote his letter. <a href="http://historicaldigression.com/tag/charles-f-morse/">Lt. Col. Charles Mudge</a>, the commander of the 2nd Massachusetts, was shot just below the throat while leading his troops into combat; Morse inherited the command when Mudge fell dead. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=i8MxAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA151&dq=%22thomas+r.+robeson%22+gettysburg+captain&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fp6XUuSKDYf7oASKyYA4&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22thomas%20r.%20robeson%22%20gettysburg%20captain&f=false">Thomas Robeson and Thomas Fox Jr.</a> were both captains under Mudge; Robeson died of his wounds on July 7, while Fox lingered until July 25. All told, the 2nd Massachusetts had a casualty rate at Gettysburg of <a href="http://historicaldigression.com/tag/charles-f-morse/">43%</a>. Shaw himself was killed at Fort Wagner on July 11 of that year, eight days after writing the letter Morse discusses in this letter, written one hundred fifty years ago today:</div>
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We are in the midst of exciting news from the front, yet we have had no particulars. It is evident, however, that we have taken several thousand prisoners and a large quantity of artillery.</blockquote>
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Since the fight at Wauhatchie, there has been no slurring of the Army of the Potomac men. That little affair was a great thing for us. By our own and rebel accounts, there is no doubt that our men fought most gallantly there against superior numbers of their old antagonists.</blockquote>
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Every train that comes from the South brings a load of prisoners or wounded men, and rumors that fighting is still going on at the front. It seems to me now, for the first time since the war began, that the rebellion is nearly crushed. They have not met with any very decisive success for nearly six months, and are now contracted into the smallest territory they have ever occupied.</blockquote>
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Atlanta is our important point now; get that, and we have again cut the Confederacy in two, and in a vital place. What a glorious thing it would be if we could wind up this rebellion before our original three years are out! It would exceed all my expectations to do this. </blockquote>
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Thanksgiving Day was a very pleasant one, warm and bright as May. I took an escort of half a dozen cavalry and rode down to the regiment, which is about ten miles from here. I found them camped very comfortably just outside strong earthworks built to command the railroad bridge over the Elk river. Colonel Coggswell is in command of the post and has a battery in addition to his regiment. He has made himself very strong, and could defend the place against a large force.</blockquote>
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I took a very quiet dinner with the field and staff. Of course we could not help thinking of our other Thanksgiving Days in the regiment, and it brought up many sad memories. At our first dinner at Seneca, Maryland, all our old officers were present; last year there had been many changes, but there were still left a goodly number of the old stock, and we were knit closer together by our losses. This year I couldn't help a feeling of desolation as I remembered that, of all my friends in the regiment, very few were left. How little I thought, when we left Camp Andrews, that we should have such a sad experience!</blockquote>
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In looking over his trunks for a photograph, Colonel Coggsworth found a letter that had come for me while I was in Massachusetts; he gave it to me, and I found the address was in Bob Shaw's handwriting. You can imagine how glad I was to get it. I always thought it a little strange that he had not answered my last letter. I opened it the first chance I got. It was mostly a description of his movements to Darien and other places; but at the end he spoke in a very feeling way of our friendship and intimacy, and of his happiness since his marriage. It was written on the 3rd of July; in it he asked to be remembered to Robeson, Mudge, and Tom Fox; little did he think that, at the moment he wrote, one of them was lying dead on the field of battle, and the other two suffering with mortal wounds.</blockquote>
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The men of the regiment had a very pleasant day; they had plenty of geese and turkeys for dinner, and in the evening the brigade band came down from Tullahoma, and gave them some music. I am glad that our men have each been able to keep this day somewhat as if they had been at home.</blockquote>
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I stayed next morning and saw guard mounting done as it is done nowhere else, and then rode back here again. </blockquote>
Morse went on to serve as provost marshal of Atlanta following the city's Union occupation. He made it through the war alive, and relocated to Kansas, where he built the Kansas City Stockyards into the nation's second (behind Chicago's) busiest. Periodically, until his death in 1926 at age 87, he<a href="http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00194"> wrote and spoke publicly</a> about his experiences in the war.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-28414147964780610302013-11-22T13:18:00.000-06:002013-11-22T13:18:25.596-06:00President Kennedy's Civil Rights Address<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-7326535006087461532013-11-19T21:16:00.000-06:002013-11-19T21:26:25.715-06:00Eisenhower's other Gettysburg Address<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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President Obama has been slightly criticized for not showing up at today's ceremonies in Gettysburg, but Scott Bomboy at the <a href="http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/11/the-lost-presidential-speech-made-at-the-gettysburg-address-anniversary/">National Constitution Center</a> in Philadelphia reports that no sitting president has ever attended any of the Gettysburg Address anniversaries over the years. Lincoln himself remains the only sitting president ever to give a speech in Gettysburg on a November 19.<br />
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The absence most to be regretted is President Kennedy's from the centennial observance in 1963, as he opted instead to make a fence-mending political tour of Texas cities. As Bomboy points out, former President Eisenhower spoke in his place. Ike lived in Gettysburg in his retirement, right next to the cemetery, so he may well have walked to his speaking engagement that day. (Old joke: What was Eisenhower's Gettysburg Address? 1195 Baltimore Pike.) Due to the awful news from Dallas three days later, the world little noted nor long remembered what Ike said, but it's quite a nice speech. Four hundred eighty-two words in tribute to two hundred seventy-two. Here it is, via the <a href="http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/post_presidential_speeches.pdf">Eisenhower Presidential Library</a> :<br />
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We mark today the centennial of an immortal address. We stand where Abraham Lincoln stood as, a century ago, he gave to the world words as moving in their solemn cadence as they are timeless in their meaning. Little wonder it is that, as here we sense his deep dedication to freedom, our own dedication takes added strength. </blockquote>
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Lincoln had faith that the ancient drums of Gettysburg, throbbing mutual defiance from the battle lines of the blue and the gray, would one day beat in unison, to summon a people, happily united in peace, to fulfill, generation by generation, a noble destiny. His faith has been justified - but the unfinished work of which he spoke in 1863 is still unfinished; because of human frailty, it always will be. </blockquote>
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Where we see the serenity with which time has invested this hallowed ground, Lincoln saw the scarred earth and felt the press of personal grief. Yet he lifted his eyes to the future, the future that is our present. He foresaw a new birth of freedom, a freedom and equality for all which, under God, would restore the purpose and meaning of America, defining a goal that challenges each of us to attain his full stature of citizenship. </blockquote>
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We read Lincoln’s sentiments, we ponder his words - the beauty of the sentiments he expressed enthralls us; the majesty of his words holds us spellbound - but we have not paid to his message its just tribute until we - ourselves - live it. For well he knew that to live for country is a duty, as demanding as is the readiness to die for it. So long as this truth remains our guiding light, self-government in this nation will never die. </blockquote>
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True to democracy’s basic principle that all are created equal and endowed by the Creator with priceless human rights, the good citizen now, as always before, is called upon to defend the rights of others as he does his own; to subordinate self to the country’s good; to refuse to take the easy way today that may invite national disaster tomorrow; to accept the truth that the work still to be done awaits his doing. </blockquote>
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On this day of commemoration, Lincoln still asks of each of us, as clearly as he did of those who heard his words a century ago, to give that increased devotion to the cause for which soldiers in all our wars have given the last full measure of devotion. Our answer, the only worthy one we can render to the memory of the great emancipator, is ever to defend, protect and pass on unblemished, to coming generations the heritage - the trust - that Abraham Lincoln, and all the ghostly legions of patriots of the past, with unflinching faith in their God, have bequeathed to us - a nation free, with liberty, dignity, and justice for all. </blockquote>
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-91384080119197455802013-11-17T01:22:00.001-06:002013-11-17T18:28:37.034-06:00Altogether fitting and proper that we should do this<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is the video made by Jim Gifford of Maryland for the <a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/">Learn the Address</a> website. I like it a lot. To see how to submit one of your own, go to<a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/submit-video/"> http://www.learntheaddress.org/submit-video/</a><br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-15792401300244833402013-11-16T09:13:00.000-06:002013-11-16T09:13:59.181-06:00Who knew Jerry Seinfeld was this smart about the Gettysburg Address?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Most of the videos posted on the Ken Burns <a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/">Learn the Address </a>website are straightforward shots of somebody either reading or reciting the Gettysburg Address. But this one is of the comedian Louis C. K. preparing to make <a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/#4_M6HvZbZIs">his finished video</a> and being coached through it by Jerry Seinfeld. It's terrific. Louis is clearly not deeply familiar with the Address, and we see Jerry give a perceptive overview of what's important about it and then help Louis break down where in the speech a new idea begins and so on. At the end of the video, after an almost-perfect take, Louis allows that he's affected by the speech each time he goes through it.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6391863060414181967.post-4786922194022118732013-11-15T00:41:00.001-06:002013-11-15T03:32:02.771-06:00Learn the Address.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Gettysburg Address sesquicentennial activities are thick on the
ground currently, with the anniversary next Tuesday. None will be more
meaningful than Ken Burns's. He's set up a website called <a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/">Learn The Address</a>
where he has posted videos of various well-known people reading or
reciting it. Above is the extremely moving mashup version he made from
editing together phrases from 25 different videos, including those of
all five living U.S. presidents.<br />
<br />
Best of all, though,
is that the website is set up to collect and showcase Gettysburg Address
videos from anyone who wants to send one in: "a national effort to
encourage everyone in America to video record themselves reading or
reciting the speech," as the site puts it. The instructions on how to submit your video are <a href="http://www.learntheaddress.org/submit-video/">here</a>.<br />
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Terry McCabehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15169443188056767103noreply@blogger.com0