The “Costs” of War: Crisis of Meaning and the Changing Cultural Attitudes About War Dr. Morse Winter 2016 Today’s Goals: Lecture Review Contrast Artistic Representations of War Trace Shifts and Ruptures in Meaning Close-read Visual and Written Texts

Discussion Questions Review: What activities contribute to the “good death” ? How would you compare Alcott’s work in the hospitals and writing about caring for the wounded and dying soldiers (as a woman) to Whitman’s (as a man)? How does Winslow Homer’s work characterize the human and the war experience differently than today’s featured authors? How do we see war infilitrating Dickinson’s thinking and how does the war shape Whitman’s public or national sense of the war’s meaning?

Daguerreotype camera from 1839

Photograph of Sam Cooley, government photographer (1851) Back view of camera using wet-plate photographic process

Twin-lensed stereoview camera

Civil War era stereoviewing device

Late 20 th century stereoviewing device

Thinking About Medium Think about images designed to capture immediacy (sketches) vs. technologies designed to reproduce and disseminate images (wood engraving, steel engraving, lithography, chromolithography).

John Locke Second Treatise on Government, Book V (1690) Sec. 25. …natural reason, … tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence. Sec. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

How is American National Identity characterized or “pictured” in this image? –What legacy does this farmer leave his son? –What references to the “natural rights” or to Locke/Enlightenment or to the Declaration of Independence are represented in this image? 5 minute Research Exercise (Search: Venerate the Plough) Building Context for Deeper Meaning

What history of America does this image “picture” or frame? Connections to/Departures from the earlier image? –Connections between Douglass’ narrative and the visual texts? Painting by Edward Hicks The Residence of David Twining 1787

What different stories of war and cultural attitudes about war are performed by these visual texts? "Our Heroines," Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, April 9, 1864 Winslow Homer, "The War for the Union, A Cavalry Charge," Harper's Weekly

Given political and cultural factors between 1863 and 1876, how can these perform competing ideas about HOW to remember the Civil War? The Cotton Pickers Winslow Homer, 1876 Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1866

When time's ample curtain shall fall upon our national tragedy, and our hillsides and valleys shall neither redden with the blood nor whiten with the bones of kinsmen and countrymen who have fallen in the sanguinary and wicked strife; when grim visaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front and our country shall have regained its normal condition as a leader of nations in the occupation and blessings of peace—and history shall record the names of heroes and martyrs who bravely answered the call of patriotism and Liberty—against traitors, thieves and assassins—let it not be said that in the long list of glory, composed of men of all nations—there appears the name of no colored man. (Douglass’ Monthly, April, 1863)

How do these images exemplify themes and struggles of “family” and “community”? How does Douglass use his own family experiences to make an appeal to his listeners/readers? (Function of family or female/male relationships or exploitation or personal experience to connect with or to disconnect from an audience?) “Slaves Waiting for the Sale, Richmond, Virginia” Eyre Crowe, 1861, Oil on Canvas (English Artist) (Click on Image)

What cultural attitudes are expressed in these magazine covers from 1862 and 1861? How should men and women contribute to the war differently?