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<\/p>\nAmerican novelist Pearl Buck said, \u201cIf you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Buck wasn\u2019t born until the end of the 19th century, Civil War-era Americans did use the past to understand and deal with the turbulence of their own time. That\u2019s the subject of Dr. Aaron Sheehan-Dean\u2019s upcoming book, \u201cFighting with the Past: How Seventeenth Century History Shaped the American Civil War\u201d and his talk, \u201cWhat the Irish Taught Civil War Americans\u201d on Sept. 24 at the American Civil War Museum.<\/p>\n
Sheehan-Dean had written a previous book exploring how Civil War Americans compared their conflict to others like it around the world.\u00a0In the process, he noticed that a lot of people used the English Civil Wars as their way to understand what was happening in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect the\u00a0wide and deep awareness of English history that Americans of all stations manifested,\u201d he says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t study the history that academics do today, but they knew the stories and characters.\u00a0So, it was part of the language they had available to make sense of their own conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
To research the book, he spent a lot of time reading Civil War-era newspapers and the speeches of major figures \u2014 Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Charles Sumner \u2014 and other leading abolitionists. \u201cThe more I looked, the more surprised I was to find how many people used English history as a way to think about their own situation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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And while it might seem inevitable that the North and South interpreted the past differently, Sheehan-Dean\u2019s book addresses a larger view. \u201cThe difference between Northern and Southern readings of the past reminds us that history has always been contested, even political,\u201d he says. \u201cOn the other hand, the past was not infinitely malleable, and the most interesting points were where people really had to reckon with a past that they didn\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n
For one thing, not all Northerners were united in how they interpreted English history. Northern conservatives portrayed Lincoln as a tyrant in the mold of English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, while radical abolitionists drew inspiration from Cromwell and sought to rebuild the South as Cromwell had attempted with Ireland. \u201cOne of things I was shocked by was how vigorously Northerners disagreed with one another,\u201d he says. \u201cToday, I think we don\u2019t appreciate how much those differences shaped the war\u2019s outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Confederates likened themselves to England\u2019s Royalists who were also known as Cavaliers, hoping to preserve a social order built on hierarchy and claiming the right to resist what they perceived as radicals\u2019 assaults on tradition.<\/p>\n
In many ways, knowing that England had experienced civil wars allowed many 19th century Americans to view them as a precedent for what was unfolding in their own time. Some people felt reassured knowing that the English had persevered through a similar domestic conflict 200 years earlier, while others took it as a danger signal, knowing how difficult and unpredictable that period had been for the English.<\/p>\n
As a historian, Sheehan-Dean\u2019s primary\u00a0goal in writing the book had been to fully understand how 19th century citizens thought about history and the past. \u201cDoing so changed the way I think about the past,\u201d he says. \u201cIt helped me become, I hope, a more thoughtful historian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about parallels today to how Americans look at history, Sheehan-Dean is quick to acknowledge that we certainly argue about the past just as much as people did in the 19th century.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that even if we continue to disagree, the practice of thinking about history might slow us down a little,\u201d he says. \u201cA big part of this story is the triumph of the moderates. That\u2019s not a conclusion I was expecting, but perhaps something that people might appreciate today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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