Where America came to die

I’ve been in every state except Hawaii, and most Americans have seemed smart, informed, and good-natured.

Shenandoah Valley, by Carol L. Douglas, from a prior trip.

“The south,” in American parlance, isn’t a geographical distinction. Rather, it’s a political distinction. Those states that seceded in 1860-61 are “the south,” and the rest of us are “the north.”

I’m heading south, but I don’t intend to start my poking and painting properly until after Chattanooga. Still, I occasionally exit the interstate in places where the landscape means something to me.

Old Federal Route 11 is the historic highway that US 81 largely supplants. At Chambersburg, PA, it crosses the Lincoln Highway. That’s one of the earliest transcontinental highways, built in 1912-13. Years ago, I painted my way north through Virginia and Maryland to Dauphin County, PA, with a tent and my little dog Max, who was just a youngster at the time. Much of that trip was spent on the Civil War battlefields of Northern Virginia.

Campbell's Field, by Carol L. Douglas, was painted in Dauphin County, PA.

The Shenandoah Valley is one of those places that calls me inexorably off the road. This has nothing to do with the valley’s natural beauty, which is considerable. Because of its strategic importance it was the scene of many bloody engagements in the Civil War. That history can be compressed into two armies chasing each other up and down the length of the valley. Finally, in the fall of 1864, Phil Sheridan cleared Jubal Early out, once and for all, with a scorched-earth campaign that foreshadowed Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Yesterday, I drove slowly along the verge at Cedar Creek Battlefield and up a side road to Belle Grove Plantation. Nothing has changed since I was last here in 2014. Cows graze on the battlefields, and the plantation house sits in rather bleak splendor. Still, you can’t pitch a penny in this countryside without hitting a spot where some American died, violently.

Why was General Sheridan so ruthless, so effective, compared to the generals who went before him? The answer, I think, lies in our deep reluctance to hurt our fellows. Finally, after the election of 1864, the American public had had enough. Sheridan and Sherman (and Grant, of course) had the license to wrap it up.

It was a driving day yesterday, but I couldn't resist doing this one small sketch, Early Spring in the Shenandoah Valley.

Four years of intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, in a nation of 31 million people. It’s no wonder that their voices seem to call from every rock and spring in Virginia.

Imagine what that would mean with our current population: between six and seven million casualties.

Every time we casually drop terms like “libtards” or “deplorables” to describe our political opponents, we contribute to the same kind of hatred that led to Senator Charles Sumner being caned in the well of the Senate, and from there to civil war. We face issues now that bite at the nature of our Union, the same way slavery bit at our union in 1856. Can we solve them without establishing new killing fields?

I’ve been in every state except Hawaii, and the people I’ve met have been smart, informed, and good-natured. Cultivating peace starts with cultivating respect.

Willful ignorance

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Trooper Meditating Beside a Grave, 1865, Winslow Homer, Joslyn Art Museum

Tomorrow is the celebration of the consecration of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, PA, where President Abraham Lincoln delivered what is now known as the Gettysburg Address. Since that day in 1863, when Union Soldiers marched with Lincoln from the bustling town to the cemetery, people have marked the occasion with a solemn parade on the Saturday closest to November 19.

At first, it was Civil War veterans themselves who organized the remembrance. As they petered out, it became reenactors, from both north and south, coming together to make a powerful statement of unity.

Union and Confederate veterans shake hands at the Assembly Tent at Gettysburg, US Library of Congress

This year will be no exception, but participants and visitors have been told to not bring backpacks or coolers to the parade route or other scheduled events. They’ve also been warned not to engage with ‘anti-Confederate groups’ that might be in the crowds on Saturday afternoon. This is because they’ve received a ‘credible threat,’ which is now being investigated by the FBI, state police and local cops.

This is only the latest threat against Civil War reenactors. In October, a reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek was marred by threats and the discovery of a pipe bomb. Manassas, VA, cancelled its annual tribute to the two bloody battles fought there due to similar threats. Also canceled was a similar reenactment at McConnels, SC.

Reenactors are the dramatists of history. They tend to be fascinated with specific periods, learning about them with great accuracy. I know specialists from the French and Indian War, the Revolution, nautical history, and the domestic economy. But the most visible reenactment community is the Civil War one.

Sharpshooter, 1863, Winslow Homer, Portland Museum of Art

They are, in my experience, history buffs with a strong creative streak, well-read and meticulous. They’re not donning the blue and grey to advance any kind of political agenda. They’re harmless. For many people, seeing a Civil War reenactment is a cheap and painless history lesson.

“A 2012 ACTA survey found that less than 20 [percent] of American college graduates could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown, and only 42 [percent] knew that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during World War II,” reported National Review.

If Americans weren’t so woefully ignorant of their own history, could a book entitled Did Lincoln Own Slaves even exist? It was written by a college professor in response to his students asking dumb questions. That should indicate the depth of our cultural illiteracy problem.

Organizers have played down the threats to Civil War events. They don’t want to alarm the public unnecessarily. But as citizens, we need to calmly consider why they’re happening and what we ought to do about them.

Song of the Lark, 1876, Winslow Homer, Chrysler Museum of Art

“I believe it’s part of the monument issue, about rewriting history,” one reenactor told me. The parade isn’t about reenactors strutting their stuff, she added, but about recreating the historic parade itself. 

“Truly, you can’t change history, only the story that's told,” she noted.

Intimidation always threatens free speech. “I am afraid that the threats will make it so expensive for the local governments that we will no longer be welcome to put on the events. Then they win,” another reenactor told me.

The Civil War is something we should never revise, downplay or forget. Almost one in 30 American citizens died in the fighting.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana. I’d add a coda to that: Willful ignorance is the worst offense possible against your fellow citizens. We all end up paying for it.

The most famous painter you never heard of

Moonlight, c. 1883-1889, Ralph Albert Blakelock, courtesy of the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia

With the time change, the rhythms of the night are all wrong. Between that, the full moon, and the low-pressure system that is bearing down on us, I’ve spent too many hours up during the long reaches of the night.

Whenever I watch moonlight, I think of Ralph Albert Blakelock, the most famous painter you never heard of. In 1916 he managed to set a record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living American artist ($20,000). Sadly, he was in an insane asylum at the time.

Blakelock was born on Christopher Street in what is now Greenwich Village, in 1847. He was just too young to have served in the American Civil War, at that impressionable age of boyhood where war is glorious and terrifying.

He started studies at what is now City College of New York, intending to be a homoeopathist like his father. After three terms, he dropped out.

Moonlight, c. 1885-1889, Ralph Albert Blakelock, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

After the Civil War, many artists traveled through the American west under the auspices of the Federal government or trading companies. From 1869-72, Blakelock did a similar thing, but as a free agent. Traveling alone in the west at that time was a very dangerous matter. Blakelock lived among the Sioux for a time, traveled down the California coast to Mexico, and returned to New York via a fruit boat from Panama.

Almost completely self-taught, he began producing landscapes and scenes of Indian life based on his notes and sketches. His work was recognized and lauded, and he produced a show at the National Academy of Design. In 1877, Blakelock married; he and his wife had nine kids.

Moonlight, Indian Encampment, 1885-1889, Ralph Albert Blakelock, courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Blakelock may have been a great painter, but he was a financial incompetent and plagued by doubts about the worth of his work. He was simply unable to establish any kind of business to support his family. Profoundly depressed, he began to show signs of mental breakdown. Meanwhile, his wife and children lived in acute financial hardship, which was amplified by the Depression of 1893.

Blakelock suffered his first complete breakdown in 1891. For eight years he suffered from schizophrenic delusions until he was committed to the Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital in Orange County, New York. At the time, that was the backwoods. He would live there almost until his death.

And that’s where his story went from tragic to sordid. The 19^th century romanticized mental illness. Rich people visited asylums for fun, watching the antics of inmates with great interest, or inviting them to be entertainment at their parties. Newspapers printed stories of the odd adventures of lunatics. Blakelock, with his quirks, his odd way of painting, and his weird behavior, was perfect fodder for this cruel mania.

Enter the swindler, in the form of one Beatrice Van Rensselaer Adams, née Sadie Filbert. Her questionable charities were outweighed by her political and social credentials. Blakelock was a perfect lamb to be led to slaughter. Adams established the Blakelock Fund to support his family, but of course, its purpose was to enrich her.

Moonlight, 1885-1889, Ralph Albert Blakelock, courtesy of the Corcoran Museum. Are you detecting a theme here?

Harrison Smith, a reporter for the New York Tribune eventually convinced Blakelock’s keepers that he was, in fact, a famous artist with work in a major retrospective in the city. When taken to New York to see the show, Blakelock confided to Smith that several of the paintings on exhibit were forgeries. Since the man was a diagnosed lunatic, however, Smith kept this information under his hat.

At the time of his death on August 9, 1919, Blakelock was hailed by the London Times as “one of the greatest of American artists.”

Blakelock painted in the style we now call tonalism. Popular between 1880 and 1915, it emphasized mood, myth and spirituality, in landscapes that were rendered in dark, neutral tones. Tonalism was in part an emotional reaction to the profound, heartbreaking damage of the Civil War. It was the perfect métier for a fragile, broken man.