Copperheads
When we write the history of national conflicts, we tend to assume that "our" side stood united in monolithic opposition to "them". It's a simple and enjoyable version of history, but it simply isn't true. Sympathizers with the "other side"* are a fact of war. Sometimes they engage in fifth column activities.** Sometimes they simply gather with like-minded folk and grumble into their martini glasses. Sometimes, if they live in a place with freedom of speech, they are vocal in their objections and express them through established public channels. There were Nazi sympathizers in Britain and the United States in World War II. There were British loyalists in the American Revolution. And in the American Civil War, Southern sympathizers in the North were known as Copperheads.***
Copperheads opposed the war and advocated the restoration of the Union through a negotiated peace settlement with the South. Many Copperheads were from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, where many families had southern roots and agrarian interests resented the growing power of the industrialized northern cities. The movement was also prominent in New York City, where many merchants and workers were dependent on the cotton trade. (Demonstrating that there is more than one path to any given political position.) Others were opposed to the draft, abolition, Lincoln's abrogation of civil liberties, the Republican party, or all of the above. Some just wanted the bloodshed of the war to end.
The New York Tribune first used the term in July 20, 1861,**** comparing southern sympathizers to the poisonous snake that strikes without giving its victims the courtesy of a warning rattle. The implication was that southern sympathizers would, by definition, engage in treason given half a chance. In practice, they were more inclined to fight the war at the level of local elections and on the floor of state legislatures.
Peace Democrats embraced the name: "copperhead" was also the slang term for a penny, which at the time had an image of Lady Liberty on one side. They saw themselves as defending the Constitution and civil liberties against presidential incursions. I leave you to draw parallels to current political positions and note the resultant ironies for yourselves.
*NOT the same thing as pacifists.
**When such people fight the "other side" for "us", they are called the resistance. You can see how quickly this gets complicated.
***And before anyone raises their hand to protest: I am not saying that British Tories were the moral equivalent of Nazis. Southern sympathizers are a gray area. Quite frankly, many Northerners who supported the war effort were not pro-abolition and even abolitionists were often racist in ways that shock a modern reader.
****For those of you who have not spent recent months living and breathing the Civil War, that was the day before the the first major battle of the war occurred: the First Battle of Bull Run aka the Battle of Manassas aka the Great Skedaddle (depending on where you hang your hat).
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Crowdsourcing
Earlier this year I watched fellow history buff Sarah Towles run a Kickstarter campaign for her innovative digital history projects at Time Traveler Tours and Tales. As far as I can tell, she ran a model campaign, combining the precision of Bismarck and the charm of Wellington. She's still doing a great job at making her contributors feel like part of the process. If the day ever comes when I want to run my own Kickstarter campaign, she will be my model.*
Crowdsourcing is a wonderful new model for funding projects that takes advantage of our new ability to find our people and make them part of the process. It is innovative, exciting, and looks amazingly like what authors, printmakers and publishers from the earliest days of printing through the nineteenth century knew as selling things "by subscription."
Back in the days when publishers were glorified printers and there was no mass distribution system for books, works that didn't already have a guaranteed market** were often sold by subscription, which meant that people paid up front for a book, which didn't get published unless enough people ponied up. John Milton's Paradise Lost, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, and many of the novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were sold by subscription. Mark Twain was a big fan of the business model. He claimed that "Anything but subscription publication is printing for private circulation." As late as 1926, T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) offered the very expensive first edition of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by private subscription.
Lawrence's experience points up the hazards of the model, then and now. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was expensive, but not expensive enough. The sales price covered only one-third of the production costs. Crowdsourcing does not absolve you from doing the math.
*And, no, that is not a hint. There is no such plan on the horizon. The mere thought makes me want to go lie down. Preferably with a large whiskey in my hand.
**i.e. almost everything
Mercy Street (aka A Moment of Blatant Self-Promotion)
Just so you know, this is what I spent the last ten weeks doing:
It's the companion volume to a new PBS historical drama about nurses in the Civil War. The PBS series uses a real Civil War hospital as the setting for a fictionalized (and quite gorgeous) drama. (Check out some of promotional pieces on YouTube here.) My book uses the same Civil War hospital to look at the stories of historical nurses.
Between now and February, when the book comes out, you can expect some Civil War posts (because I have great stuff I couldn't use), some nursing posts (ditto), and a certain amount of "my book! my book!" (because, "my book! my book!).
Now if you'll excuse, I have a date with fifteenth century Portugal.
Don't touch that dial.