22nd Regiment New York State Volunteers from Glens Falls at Camp Auger in Arlington, Virginia. Christmas Eve, 1861.
Historiography is defined simply as the study of history, though technically correct, I feel this definition is a disservice to the methodology. Anyone can read a history book and regurgitate the facts back without ever understanding what they’ve read. Historiography is about understanding history and how it is documented; it broadens our view of history through its refocusing of events. Taking what is often overlooked or seemingly irrelevant information and finding connections, combining them into a larger thesis. It develops our critical thinking skills and is, perhaps, the closest history comes to being defined as a science, requiring a hypothesis and the collection of data to reach a conclusion.
So, how does one do historiography? As you might imagine, it is a very broad topic and I could fill an entire book with its small details. It’ll be far easier to give an example instead and run through the process, and I can think of no better example than the American Civil War.
The Civil War is a good place to start because it is very well documented, and because the very act of explaining how one side won a war over another is itself a kind of historiography, as there is never one singular reason. We’ll be using a small selection of letters housed in the Chapman Museum archives from the Wyman family of Fort Ann, New York that were shared during the war.
The letters include a wide range of people, encompassing the Wymans, a farming family in Fort Ann, and their friends and extended family around that area. The eldest son Rollin, joined up with the 22nd New York Volunteer Regiment and went off to war. The letters are centered around Rollin, both to and from. Interestingly, the various letters can be separated by each individual topic. For instance, Rollin’s mother, who is not named directly, is one of the only people who writes about the war. Primarily, she would wish him luck and pray for his safe return, but she also discusses battles such as First Manassas and Petersburg (Shilo) and the strain that put on the homefront’s morale. The father, who is also not directly named, is more focused on discussing the family farm. He reviews the cost of new crops or residual animals, food prices, and even expanding the farm. Occasionally, he includes a prayer for his son but not much else. Rollin’s brother, Georgie, attends school and discusses how bored he is with the current place. The rest of the letters to Rollin are from friends and cousins who talk at length about the various parties and gatherings they’ve attended, interspersed with concern for Rollin. Notable stories include the local mill burning down in 1861 and a funny little story of one friend whose young cousin gets a new sled and tries to get the cat to pull it while singing Dixie. As for the letters Rollin sends out, he mostly talks about marching and his accommodations. A few letters go over an adventure on pickett or a light skirmish but no mention of major engagements. None of the letters, except for the mother’s, discuss the important events of the Civil War at all. Without any information on the major happenings of the war, how do these letters help us develop how the Union won the war?
After reading these letters, it is interesting to see how little the war is actually discussed. They talk of Rollin’s safety and of others who have joined the army, but the actual war is rarely discussed except in passing. Far more time is dedicated to attending parties and discussing the farm. They seem to spend a good deal of time at parties during wartime, in fact, almost all activity in and around the farm has been wholly unaffected by the war. They converse about crops and harvests like it was business as usual, without any remarks to suggest prices increased during the war. So we have evidence of a very stable homefront, a good thing in a time of war. Then we might ask how that can occur.
To answer this we must continue to Rollin’s letters. Apart from marching and the occasional skirmish, he makes many notes about his accommodations. He notes that the government has set him up with ample supplies, he gets a dinner of bread, buttered potatoes, and beef. That is a hearty meal in wartime and the soldiers even received extra clothing. This is especially impressive considering that the soldiers were marching often and the division was never in one place for long, making the procurement of food and supplies more difficult. Based on what the letters have discussed, it seems like the homefront was barely feeling the effects of the war, and the soldiers on the front were well taken care of. We can confirm with outside sources that the 22nd New York Volunteer Regiment was active on the front line, fighting from Antietam to Chancellorsville. So, we can surmise that the Union had a robust logistics network that maintained and cared for the army and kept the homefront safe. This level of organization would inevitably help lead the Union to victory.
A war may be fought by men, but it is won by logistics. An army marches on its stomach, and an army that cannot sustain itself will fall. The Confederate Army learned this the hard way in the last few years of the war as they took some of their greatest losses of the war from dissertation. The strong logistics network of the Union Army played a key role in the success of the war.
To do a full historiography of the war, we would need to examine many more sources to back up our claim. Our goal with this post is to demonstrate how you can begin your research and the information that can be gleaned from unsuspecting sources. History is like a great, unfinished tapestry. It is easy to get lost in the grandiose spectacle of it all but if you want to see the larger picture, you have to focus on the mundane details; the loose pieces of fabric and subtle laces all add to creating this picture.
Written by: Liam Connelly