There’s a lot going on in my neck of the woods:
1. I am pleased to announce that my manuscript on Ulysses S. Grant’s relationship with slavery has been published with The Journal of the Civil War Era. I won’t spill all the beans here, but my central thesis is that most Grant biographers and Civil War historians have missed crucial details about Grant’s views towards slavery and experiences while living at his wife’s family plantation in St. Louis, White Haven, from 1854 to 1859. These oversights occurred in large part because scholars have relied too much on Grant’s Personal Memoirs and personal recollections from his St. Louis contemporaries that were conducted in the 1880s and 1890s, long after Grant had lived in St. Louis. By going back to the limited documentation we have from the 1850s and continuing into the first year of the Civil War, we can see how Grant wasn’t necessarily the strong, lifelong anti-slavery advocate he is often portrayed to be in popular scholarship.
If you are not a subscriber to the journal, here’s a direct link to the article for download and purchase if you’re interested in reading it.
2. I have been thinking a lot about visitation to historic sites, particularly the narratives that have emerged about an alleged lack of interest in Civil War historic sites. I interviewed several public historians who work at these sites and shared some of my own thoughts in a blog post for Muster that you can read here.
3. I have another blog post that I’m currently working on for the National Council on Public History’s History@Work blog about inclusive public history. I’m hoping this essay will be published within the next week or so.
4. I joined a group of scholars in proposing a panel for the NCPH 2020 Annual Meeting to be hosted in Atlanta, Georgia. We were interested in looking at public iconography beyond Confederate monuments and I was going to discuss St. Louis’s three monuments to Unionists Edward Bates, Franz Sigel, and Frank Blair that are located in Forest Park. Unfortunately the panel was rejected for the final program. No worries, however! I am changing course and looking into possibly presenting at the Society for Civil War Historians’ conference next summer to discuss my Grant and slavery article and/or blogging for The Journal of the Civil War Era. For the first time since 2014 I will not be attending NCPH’s annual meeting, but I feel like I have an opportunity to expand my professional network and connect with more Civil War scholars if I’m able to get to the SCWH conference. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my research on the three St. Louis Unionist monuments, but there’s definitely an interesting discussion to be had about them and I will keep working on this little side project in my free time.
5. Finally, I got married earlier this month to my best friend in the whole world. Mrs. Sacco and I met in early 2016 and I proposed to her about a year and a half ago. After lots of planning and several other unrelated life events that have kept us very busy we were finally able to tie the knot and enjoy a wonderful day with our loved ones and best friends. Life is good and we are very blessed!
Cheers
Exploring the Past 