Thursday, June 30, 2016

News---Lend A Hand at Cracking the U.S. Military Telegraph's Encoded Messages Sent During the Civil War

Here’s Your Chance to Decode President Lincoln’s Secret Messages, Edward Rothstein, the Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2016.

A crowd sourced initiative in which anyone can help decipher Civil War telegrams, including messages from Lincoln himself is begin offered by the Huntington Library. The trove of nearly 16,000 Civil War telegrams, formerly belonging to Thomas T. Eckert, are being transcribed and decoded with the help of crowdsourcing platform Zooniverse.org. 

On April 12, 1865—three days after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox and two days before President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated—the president sent a telegram to Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, whose Union forces were occupying Richmond, Va., the former Confederate capital. The message alluded to some of the issues faced by the conquerors. Would churches in the defeated city be permitted to open that Sunday?

Would they be required to offer the customary prayer for the president—now of a newly reunited nation? Lincoln’s telegram begins: “Whats next news I the prayers I to while coming star what you you mean dispatch zebra I you spirit there understanding any if the piloted your offer there such of any and have was I to Emma never seen of of no toby Zodiac…”

The message was written in code. During the war, a large number of such messages had been intercepted by the Confederacy but never deciphered. The Confederacy even took out advertisements in newspapers futilely seeking assistance.

Now, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is requesting similar aid in its project “Decoding the Civil War,” collaborating with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, North Carolina State University’s Digital History and Pedagogy Project, and Zooniverse.org., a “crowdsourcing” platform associated with several academic and research institutions. Scans of 15,971 telegrams handled by the U.S. Military Telegraph office during the Civil War have just been put online.


About a hundred were sent by Lincoln; about 5,400 are enciphered. A selection of the pocket-sized code books used to translate the ciphers have also been scanned.During the first phase of this multiyear project, the transcriptions of these handwritten pages will be “crowd sourced”: anybody can register with Zooniverse—some 75,000 participants are expected—and be guided through the process. Collaborative deciphering will begin in the fall—a process that may have its difficulties since some code books did not survive. A combination of software and human scrutiny will evaluate and combine the public contributions. This method is expected to be more efficient than what could be accomplished by the institutions alone.

Before 2009, no one knew these telegrams still existed. The Military Telegraph office at the War Department was one of the crucial links in the Union Army. Lincoln often peered over operators’ shoulders as the messages were sent and received. When the director of that office, Thomas T. Eckert (1825-1910), retired in 1867, there were no laws governing ownership of public documents. He took with him some 35 ledger books along with code books and records of correspondence.

These records were believed lost, making a reappearance only when they were acquired from Eckert’s descendants and sold at auction in 2009 for $36,000. When they were again put up for sale in 2012, their historical value was better recognized. After the government decided it could not afford the Eckert papers, the Huntington, which has one of the most important Lincoln collections in the country, purchased them for an undisclosed sum.

Coding a Union message was laborious. It would first be written out in a grid with dimensions specified by the code, one word per box. The code book would also list two possible substitutes for each important word or person. In the Weitzel telegram, for example, “President of the United States” could have been replaced by either “Bologna” or “Bolivia.” In the text the time “9 AM” is coded as “Emma,” “Richmond” as “Galway” and “Rebel as “Walnut.” Punctuation is also replaced: a period becomes “Zodiac.” This new grid of words—all of them real (thus minimizing typos)—would then be reordered by moving along columns and rows according to rules in the code book.

As long as you had that book, you could work out the message. Six of some 10 code books now survive, with four in the Huntington and others in the possession of the George C. Marshall Foundation; one of the great cryptographers of the 20th century, William F. Friedman (1891-1969), had rescued them as they were about to be incinerated as trash. In some cases, missing code books will make the project’s deciphering particularly challenging.

And what of Lincoln’s message to Weitzel? What was to happen with Richmond’s Sunday prayers? Lincoln may have had his Second Inaugural message in mind, “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” He had visited Richmond’s ruins and instructed Weitzel to “let ’em up easy.” Weitzel decided the churches would open that Sunday; no loyalty prayer would be required, but no prayers asserting contrary loyalties would be permitted. War Secretary Edwin Stanton objected to the apparent leniency, but in his coded telegram, Lincoln did not. Decrypted and freed of references to a zebra, Zodiac and Emma, one sentence reads: “I have no doubt you have acted in what appeared to you to be the spirit and temper manifested by me while there.”

Text Source: The Wall Street Journal  
Top Image Source: Plaque commemorating members of the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Location: Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

Second Image Source: Library of Congress

News: A Hollywood Film With Footnotes and Viewers Guide--The Free State of Jones

Aiming For Accuracy: Free State of Jones, Contingency, and the Meaning of Freedom, Journal of The Civil War Era, June 29, 2016.                                                                                                        The following is an excerpt from the online website of the Journal of The Civil War Era:

"Early in Free State of Jones a Confederate soldier proclaims he is not fighting for slavery but rather “for honor.” His comrades, including poor Mississippi farmer Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), needle him. Considering the “Twenty Negro Law,” Conscription Act, and tax-in-kind law, they point out that their blood only helps slaveholders get richer. After deserting, Knight leads poor farmers and former slaves against conscription, taxation, and re-enslavement. Against a shared enemy, the Confederacy, he brings black and white fugitives together. But when Knight and his black comrades-in-arms attempt to move from the bullet to the ballot box, white allies fade away and white supremacists rise up."


"Beginning at the Battle of Corinth in 1862, Free State of Jones is about a long Reconstruction. It uniquely explores African Americans’ struggle for political and economic rights in the face of white power. Here, emancipation has an asterisk. Slavery ends with the war, but freedom does not follow. After former Confederates return to power and reassert slavery’s white hierarchy, political organizer and ex-slave Moses (Mahershala Ali) captures the reality for black Americans: “We free and we ain’t free.” Unlike other films, Free State of Jones illuminates the contingency of black freedom in the South after the Civil War in the face of white supremacist violence, northern Republican abandonment, and insufficient federal troops. After the battle scenes, the Federal troops are entirely absent."

Jones4"Throughout the film, class, race, and gender overlap and challenge the assumptions of viewers and characters. Women and men, black and white, resist, fight, and survive together. When a white member of Knight’s company tries to deny Moses food because he is black and a fugitive, Moses responds, “How you ain’t?” How, if both are fugitives from compulsory service to slaveholders in a cotton field or on a battlefield, are they different? Through spirituality and experience, Knight considers this equality of the oppressed to be self-evident."

"McConaughey’s portrayal of Knight suggests Nathaniel Bacon and John Brown: a natural leader wild-eyed for solidarity and justice in the face of economic and racial oppression. Director Gary Ross highlights the many methods of resistance employed by fugitive slaves and enslaved people: fleeing to the wilderness, like Moses; remaining on plantations but assisting runaways, like Rachel (Gugu-Mbatha-Raw); remembering, like Moses’ wife (Kesha Bullard Lewis) and son Isaiah (LaJessie Smith). White characters resist Confederate authority similarly, but Ross also delineates the differences in experience. Rachel’s and Moses’s bodies bear witness to their physical and psychological torture, scars that mark the limits of white abilities to fathom black experiences."

Article continued at Aiming For Accuracy: Free State of Jones, Contingency, and the Meaning of Freedom, Journal of The Civil War Era, June 29, 2016:

Text Source:  Muster--Reflections on Popular Culture by the Journal of the Civil War Era

Director Gary Ross' Scene Guide With Footnotes

Gary Ross:  "We felt it was important in an historical movie, especially a movie about such a crucial time in history, for the audience to know what was true and what was fictionalized, even if it was based on underlying source material."

"In this site you will be able to navigate through the entire movie, click the areas that interest you, and see a brief explanation of the historical facts that informed the screenplay. If you are more curious about that part of the movie, we have footnoted the paragraph to see sources on which it is based. But footnotes themselves can be misleading, so if you want to see the entire primary source, you can click again and be transported to the original document. We hope this is helpful, maybe even fun. Some things need to be invented in a movie, but most things in Jones were not. I think it’s only right that you be able to tell which was which." states Gary Ross, Director
 
 At a meeting of the Union League, Moses (Mahershala Ali) and Newt (Matthew McConaughey) tell the Freedman that all citizens shall have the right to vote.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

News--Publisher's Four Titles Receive Awards

Savas Beatie LLC is the Recipient of Four Book Awards for 2015       Savas Beatie, independent book publisher focusing upon military history and maters, has been notified that three of its titles and one of its book series are the recipients of prestigious awards. Significantly, for the first time in the award's history, every finalist title was from a single publisher, Savas Beatie.  The titles are:

 1. Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee's Invasion of the North, June - July 1863, by Thomas J. Ryan, is the recipient of the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award for the best book published on Gettysburg (awarded by the Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table of Central New Jersey).

2. Fighting for General Lee: Confederate General Rufus Barringer and the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade, by Sheridan R. Barringer, is the recipient of the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award "for the best published book of high merit in the field of Southern history" (awarded by the Military Order of the Stars and Bars).
3. The Chickamauga Campaign-Glory or the Grave, by David A. Powell, is the recipient of the Richard Barksdale Harwell Book Award for the best Civil War book of the year (awarded by the Atlanta Civil War Round Table). Mr. Powell is the first author to win the award twice.

4. The Emerging Civil War Series, Chris Mackowski (series editor) and Kris White (series historian), is the recipient of Army Historical Foundation's Lt. Gen. Richard G. Trefry Award, which honors books or a series of books that deserve special recognition for their contribution to the literature on the U.S. Army.

The authors are: 
1. Thomas J. Ryan served three years in the Army and decades in intelligence operations-related capacities. He is now retired; 
 
2. Sheridan R. Barringer worked decades with NASA and has two other books under contract with Savas Beatie;  
 
3. David A. Powell is a graduate of VMI and works in Chicago. He is the author of two previous award-winning books;  
 
4. Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White are both prolific authors. The former is a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York and works as a historian with the National Park Service at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, while Kris works as a historian for the Penn-Trafford Recreation Board and a continuing education instructor for the Community College of Allegheny County near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
 
"I cannot tell you haw pleased and humbled we arll are by these awards," explained Managing Director Theodore P. Savas.  "These authors all work hard, labor in solitude, and hope others will read and enjoy their work. This is a confirmation of their individual excellence and dedication to shcolarship."   Savas Beatie is a leading independent military and general history publishing company with distribution worldwide.  Savas Beatie's online presence and the source of the text is this post is found at www.SavasBeatie.com

Friday, June 24, 2016

News---The Free State of Jones Film: How Much Of That Is True?

 News---The Free State of Jones Film: How Much Of That Is True?  15 Questions Answered

Free State of Jones is a  inspired by the life of  Newton Knight and the anti-Confederacy rebellion in Jones County, Mississippi. Victoria E. Bynum's The Free State of Jones [2001] served as the basis of the film and the historian served as a script consultant.


1.  Why did Newton Knight initially join the Confederate Army?When the state of Mississippi seceded from the Union in January 1861, many Mississippians were opposed to the decision. Mississippi's Declaration of Secession did not reflect the views of many of the small family-owned farms and cattle herders living in Jones County. It was a decision that primarily reflected the planters' interests. When the American Civil War began in April 1861, anyone who opposed the state's new Confederate government was deemed a traitor and a coward. Immediate death was often the penalty for those who refused to join the Confederate Army. The Free State of Jones true story reveals that Newton Knight enlisted in the army in the early fall of 1861. The Free State of Jones book author Victoria E. Bynum believes that Knight did not necessarily enlist out of fear of conscription but rather because he just wanted to be a soldier. -Mississippi History Now

14 More Questions Answered at Text Source: History Versus Hollywood


Also, Smithsonian Magazine [March 2016] has a superb article on a recent visit to Jones County, the current residents' understanding of Newton Knight and the successful rebellion.  His descendants and those who believe that he is not a hero are interviewed.

Smithsonian Magazine: The True Story of the Free State of Jones

News---The Free State of Jones Film: How Much Of That Is True?

 News---The Free State of Jones Film: How Much Of That Is True?  15 Questions Answered

Free State of Jones is a  inspired by the life of  Newton Knight and the anti-Confederacy rebellion in Jones County, Mississippi. Victoria E. Bynum's The Free State of Jones [2001] served as the basis of the film and the historian served as a script consultant.


1.  Why did Newton Knight initially join the Confederate Army?When the state of Mississippi seceded from the Union in January 1861, many Mississippians were opposed to the decision. Mississippi's Declaration of Secession did not reflect the views of many of the small family-owned farms and cattle herders living in Jones County. It was a decision that primarily reflected the planters' interests. When the American Civil War began in April 1861, anyone who opposed the state's new Confederate government was deemed a traitor and a coward. Immediate death was often the penalty for those who refused to join the Confederate Army. The Free State of Jones true story reveals that Newton Knight enlisted in the army in the early fall of 1861. The Free State of Jones book author Victoria E. Bynum believes that Knight did not necessarily enlist out of fear of conscription but rather because he just wanted to be a soldier. -Mississippi History Now

14 More Questions Answered at Text Source: History Versus Hollywood


Also, Smithsonian Magazine [March 2016] has a superb article on a recent visit to Jones County, the current residents' understanding of Newton Knight and the successful rebellion.  His descendants and those who believe that he is not a hero are interviewed.

Smithsonian Magazine: The True Story of the Free State of Jones