Adjutant’s Call - May 2021
Circular Memorandum #526 - May 2021
“War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion” Presented by Thomas Flagel
Meet our Speaker Thomas Flagel
Thomas Flagel is a professor of History at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. He holds degrees from Loras College (B.A., History), Kansas State University (M.A., European History), Creighton University (M.A., International Relations), Middle Tennessee State University (PhD., Public History) and has studied at the University of Vienna. Author of several books and articles on the Civil War, Flagel has spoken multiple times at Gettysburg, including the 150th Anniversary Commemoration. He has also worked with multiple historic preservation groups, including the American Battlefield Trust and the National Park Service. Originally from Iowa, he currently resides in Franklin, Tennessee.
"War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion"
War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion is a case study of how combat veterans cope with trauma. An exploration of the largest Blue/Gray reunion ever held, it examines why over 55,000 survivors of the Civil War journeyed back to a place of pain and suffering, and how the reunion helped them heal.
Reviews of War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion
"Flagel's Book provides the first real 'bottom up' account of what the reunion actually looked like for the veterans themselves...his gem of a book has managed to say something truly new about Gettysburg and memory." - Civil War Book Review
"With this work, Flagel has added a new level of insight to the field of Civil War memory." - Kevin Caprice, University of Virginia
An Interview With Thomas R. Flagel
**This interview was taken from the The Civil War Trust’s website.
The Civil War Trust recently had the opportunity to talk with Thomas Flagel, Professor of History at Columbia State Community College and member of The Battle of Franklin Trust's Board of Directors.
Civil War Trust: You produce short history movies called “Stories of Middle Tennessee.” What do these stories, which explore topics such as the Civil War roots of Elvis’ “Love Me Tender” and the role of horses in battle, tell us about the Civil War?
Thomas R. Flagel: Hopefully, these stories remind us how connected we are to our past, and in many ways, our world is not all that much different than theirs.
Our “Love Me Tender” was their “Aura Lee,” and both songs were about missing a loved one. Their horses were our motor vehicles, and our respective worlds depended on them. Many Americans assume that “history” is about something that is unrelated and long gone. I am of the camp that believes the past and present are inseparable – we simply reshape what we inherit from yesterday.
How do you decide which topics to cover?
TRF: The topics tend to find us. That is why I find the research so fascinating. And that is one of the great aspects about studying the Civil War. Our soil is rich with its stories. Such is certainly the case here in Franklin. For example, I knew that quinine played a major role in treating and prevent malaria during the Civil War. But further research taught me that John Sappington, who helped develop the quinine pill, had practiced medicine in Franklin. I knew that the Franklin’s Masonic Lodge was used as a hospital after the Battle of Franklin, but until recently, I did not know that it was one of the first three-story buildings ever constructed in Tennessee. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am learning something every day, an experience I get whenever I study any community in detail.
Though you have studied European history and international relations, much your work now tends to focus on the specific history of middle Tennessee. Why?
TRF: My fellow Europeanists and I used to joke that “American History” was a contradiction in terms, that the country was too young to have a history. One of my colleagues was rather irked by our aloofness, so she took me on a two-week whirlwind tour of Civil War sites in Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia. When we got back home to the Midwest, she said, “There, now tell me again how this country doesn’t have history.” I was so moved by the experience that I began to study the Civil War in earnest. Fifteen years later, American History is my profession, Tennessee is my home, and that colleague is now my wife.
How was Franklin, Tennessee a microcosm of the nation during the Civil War?
TRF: Williamson County, of which Franklin is the county seat, was literally half slave and half free. Nearly 52 percent of its population was enslaved when the war began. It was a rural place, much like the vast majority of the country. Despite popular assumptions that the North was relatively urbanized, around 70 percent of Union troops and 80 percent of Confederate soldiers came from communities that had 2,000 or fewer residents.
I find it fascinating that the Census Department in 1860 classified any town with 2,000 or more resident as a “city.” In 1860, Franklin itself contained about 1,500 people. While this region did have the quintessential cash crops of cotton and tobacco, it was just as wealthy in hogs, horses, mules, corn, wheat and hardwoods. The Adjutant’s Call 6 May 2021 Franklin’s town shops sold insurance from Connecticut, silks and candies from New York, linens from Massachusetts, and news from around the world. Lastly, when this community went to war, many residents assumed the affair would be brief. Four years later, it had to make entirely new cemeteries. Nearly every family was affected. The land saw skirmishes, raids, ravenous foragers, military occupation, and massive battles. When the war was over, its enslaved were free, but sadly neither Franklin nor the country altogether were fully committed to human equality under the law.