As Craig and Courtney mentioned, the three of us were introduced to the ArcGIS software on Wednesday afternoon.  After learning a little bit about the software and its possible applications to our project, we settled on three general areas that our project might cover, split up into two maps.

As has already been mentioned, one of the maps would be of Houston and possibly have two layers.  One of the layers would encompass locations important to Dowling’s life in Houston and the other would cover evidence of his legacy that is still present in Houston today such as his statue in Hermann Park and Dowling Street.  From what we learned, the software could easily be used to generate a layered map like this.

The second map would be of the Sabine Pass area and help illustrate the battle.  Like Courtney, I also tried to do a little research to get a better understanding of the geographical layout of Sabine Pass now and when the battle took place.  I wasn’t able to find a significant amount of useful information, so I think our group will definitely have to put a little more time into researching that so we can settle on a concrete plan for what our map of the area might include.

I believe our group has a good start, but we definitely need to finalize some details for our project.  I think the archive of articles that our class has already digitized may come in handy for assisting in creating a list of points relevant to Dowling’s life and legacy.  I will also do some more research at Fondren into Dowling’s biographical information before our group meets again to try and determine some more locations that might be relevant to Dowling’s life.

I was unable to meet up with the group on Wednesday because of a prior commitment, but I was able to talk to the group and begin work on my portion of the project. At this point I believe that I will primarily be working on the map of the Sabine Pass site.

To do this part I have begun looking at maps and accounts of the battle trying to determine what actually happened, so that we can accurately chart the movements of Dick Dowling and the Davis Guards. I have begun looking at military history books in an attempt to find the best description of the battle. Also I have taken the steps to acquire topo-maps and navigational charts of the battle site so that we can get an accurate image of the geography of the battle site.

I believe that we still need to find finalized direction for the project, but we have a concrete start. Also I still need to go to the library and become familiar with the ArcGIS software. I think that the next time we meet all of the little things will get resolved and we will have a clear direction for the project.

As Craig explained, three of us went down and learned the basics of the ArcGIS software. Although we are not quite settled on the details, we decided that while we have this state-of-the-art software within our grasp, we should make two maps: one of Houston and one of the Sabine Pass site.

For both maps, we plan to mark pinpoints relevant to both Dowling’s life and the impact he has left through posthumous memorials. It occurs to me now that we could perhaps make these as two separate layers on the maps, or perhaps do them in different colors. So instead of looking at the map and seeing a confused jumble of pinpoints, you could toggle layers or pick out certain colors, and view only the footprints that Dowling himself left, OR the various memorials to him.

After looking at the Sabine Pass area, we realized we knew little about it, from the actual geography of the battle to the layout of the area today. So I took it upon myself to look further into it.

To start off, I found a map from the University of Texas Library that should help us get a better mental image of the battle itself.

As for the battleground today, it is now a historical site: here is its official website. It is quite a low-key historical site; I took a browse using the embedded Google map here and, to be honest, it seems like a whole lot of nothing. There is no visitor’s center or any place to buy refreshments. I couldn’t find an actual map of the park, and even poking around on the Google satellite imagery, couldn’t locate the monument statue and “interpretive pavilion” that are supposed to be there.

If anyone can help me locate where these memorials are placed, that would be great. Right now, I feel like I’m flailing around in the dark!

On Wednesday, Renee Courtney and I met up to venture down to the GIS data center at Fondren Library. (Ross had prior arrangements and had to sit the bench on this one) What we found was a huge amount of data that we could use to make the Dowling Map. Becoming acquainted with the GIS software presented the problem of depth. An effective map could not span the city of Houston and Sabine Pass. Thus we decided to make two maps and began to research what we would put on the maps.

The main thrust of the map, I thought, was to chronicle Dowling’s effect on Houston. So I began to search through the Dublin Metadata set and the City of Houston archive to look for articles that mention his statue/ his gravestone etc. I have compiled a list of these articles below (as much for my convenience) split into categories.

Although the actual format has yet to take concrete form, we hope that an integral part of the map will be a map of Houston superimposed with “pins” to designate significant locations important in Dowling’s memory. In addition, the grunt work of the project which will make it a real asset to the Omeka site is to hopefully link each of these pings to a page with primary source transcriptions, the scanned articles, and a short blurb on how each site relates to the life and memory of Dowling.

Currently, the project is still in its research phase. I have pointed out four major points that should be labeled on the map and at least one article relating to each.

St. Vincent’s Cemetery – DD0010a-c , with picture DD0044

Original proposed Monument site – DD0019

1939 move to Sam Houston Park – DD0016

1958 move to Hermann park – DD0018

Hopefully with a bit more searching, I can find the location of the Bank of Bacchus in order to introduce a bit more of Dowling’s personal life outside of the war into the map.

In the book: “Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War,” author Bruce Levine attempts to rationalize the attempts made by the upper levels of Confederate government towards emancipation of southern slaves. In late 1864 and early 1864, the south began freeing slaves and arming them to fight against the North.

But why would the south who was fighting to preserve slavery emancipate slaves? Levine answers this question by arguing that it was a necessary action directed at preserving the CSA. Like the Union’s actions towards emancipation the CSA were forced to free slaves to use in the war effort. After crushing defeats in early 1864 the south was desperate for manpower, Levine also asserts that there was growing hostility in the south to the institution of slavery caused by the war. Levine notes the massive numbers of slaves who fled the south for Union lines, as a further point that frustrated southerners. Levine argues that the confederacy’s willingness to emancipate slaves was also partially related to the success of black Union regiments against the confederacy.

One of the shortcomings in the southern emancipation plan was the fact that slaves first had to be released from slavery by there owners, and then they had to voluntarily enlist in the Rebel army. Levine argues that because the slaveholder and the slave both had to agree to emancipation, the movement could never muster enough momentum to prove effective to the CSA war effort. Levine believes that a stronger stance on emancipation by the leaders of the CSA would have provided much needed relief to the Confederate Army, and they would have firmly established the movement towards gradual emancipation of slaves through sharecropping and gradually granted freedoms.

The southern actions never freed slaves in bulk; they could have represented a turning point in Southern Slave culture. The willingness of CSA lawmakers to emancipate slaves signaled a definite end to the institution of southern slavery. With the beginning of 1865 we saw the beginning of an end to slavery in America.

“Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War.” To judge a book by its cover, Bruce Levine’s work may seem to offer a vision of the South that Lost Cause supporters, and proponents of the Black Confederates thesis we discussed early in this course, have constructed and tried to keep alive: a South where a close bond existed between master and slave, such as the two would actually fight side-by-side. That the South would craft plans involving “emancipation” at all seems to suggest that they were quite more progressive than we are typically led to believe today. However, reading the book reveals quite the opposite situation. Bruce Levine uses his evidence to tear down rose-tinted Lost Cause idealizations and show that the Confederacy considered turning slaves into freedmen soldiers only as a last-ditch effort to retain power for the planter class; even if slavery had to be sacrificed in part or whole, the government hoped to salvage as much of the South’s social order – that is, the inequality between blacks and whites – as possible.

As Levine notes, many contemporary commentators throughout both the North and South dismissed the idea that the Confederacy might free and arm slaves as madness. After all, was it worth winning the war if it meant giving up the very reason they had gone to war in the first place? Indeed, such a policy makes little sense unless, as Levine argues, it had become a practical necessity. How could policy-makers in the highest echelons of government – including the president and the secretary of state – support a plan that seemed to go against all of their efforts so far? Levine argues that it was not madness which led the government to such radical ideas, but rather, a frank and realistic look at circumstances. Arming slaves, and holding up freedom as an incentive, was the most sensible and far-sighted method they could enact to try and preserve as much of the status quo as could realistically be maintained. “The plan’s architects were inspired not by doubts concerning the merits or justice of slavery and white supremacy, nor by a late-in-the-day decision to prize southern independence more highly than the social and economic foundations of southern life,” argues Levine. “Political and military leaders came to champion the use of black troops not despite their antebellum values but because of them. In pushing to enact this measure, they were trying to preserve as much of the Old South as they could” (153). With Union invasions and slaves fleeing in great numbers or committing various forms of domestic disobedience, realistic Confederates had come to see slavery as doomed, at least in certain areas. Only by winning the war could white Confederates at least retain political and social supremacy, and if blacks became nominally free, they would certainly not be equal. Levine shows that “Both Patrick Cleburne and Jefferson Davis had looked to a salvaged Confederacy to enforce strict limits on prospective postwar black freedom” (158). But the war could not be won without more manpower, for which the Confederate States were desperate. Thus the idea to draw upon slaves as soldiers was born.

Levine uses examples of similar situations in roughly the same time period to show that the situation of Confederate masters, while certainly unique, was not unparalleled in the history of the world. Like the ruling classes in Prussia and Russia, the Confederate government attempted to realistically face social change while still retaining as much of their own power as possible. They did this by trying to adapt the social change to their own needs and define it on their own terms. That is, rather than letting the Union conquer their territory and define freedom for their former slaves, they hoped to win the war, retain their independence, and let the planter-controlled Southern government define such freedom. Such “freedom” as they hoped to eventually enact could hardly be called freedom at all, and therefore such “emancipation” as they promised was hardly a gift. While freedmen would attain rights to receive an education, to organize their own churches, and would never again have to worry about spouses or children being sold away, they would still be subject to crushing inequality and limitations in their economic outlook. Bruce Levine believes that what Confederate states tried to enact as “black codes” shortly after the war provide a glimpse at the kind of “freedom” they would have offered blacks if the Confederacy had won its independence. For instance, this law from Lousiana, which came into being shortly after the war:

A newly enacted state law required Louisiana blacks to obtain “a comfortable home and a visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of this act.” Those who failed to meet that deadline would “be immediately arrested…and hired out” to “the highest bidder, for the remainder of the year in which hired.” Should said freedman leave his employer’s service before the year’s end, he would be apprehended and made “to labor on some public work without compensation until his employer reclaimed him.” Louisiana lawmakers also provided that a freedman’s children be assigned to the same employer and that if a freedman died during his term of employment, his children would remain in the employer’s “service until they are twenty-one years of age, under the same conditions as the father” (160-161).

Fortunately, this law (and many others like it) was blocked and repealed by the Republican government during Reconstruction – just as Southern politicians had feared. The harsh labor statutes of this and similar laws provided for a system that was little more than slavery.

Examining such labor laws is one way to show that Confederate “emancipation” would have been very limited indeed. But the most crucial point is that the Southern government would not have allowed blacks to vote. Therefore, not only were former slaves trapped under such laws; they were powerless to change them. Levine offers a quote which sums up “confederate emancipation” quite nicely:  “When we ‘have a white man’s civil government again,’ South Carolina planter William Heyward expected, the landowners will once more impose their will on black laborers, and the latter ‘will be more slaves than they ever were'” (162).

But how does the Confederate emancipation proposal compare with the Union’s efforts to free and arm slaves? Levine notes that the Confederate plan’s crucial weakness was its lack of spine, its tiptoeing efforts not to upset masters: it stipulated that the slaveholders must agree to give up their slaves to the Confederate cause. However, the government and army soon found masters less than willing; this tight-fistedness prompted outrage throughout the South, but did not change the fact that slaveholders simply were not about to give up their property. The Union’s conscription acts and emancipation proclamation, however, made no scruples to pander to slaveowners. These documents declared property in slaves to be simply lost, without compensation, and needed no permission on behalf of the masters. This enabled these acts to be highly efficient, in contrast to the Confederate counterpart, which never took off, and did not seem like it was about to unless altered, no matter how much time it was given to act.

Hello Map Group! We’ve reached that part of the course where it’s time to start working on your small group projects for the Dick Dowling archive. In this post I’m going to talk a little bit about the project you’ve been assigned–making a map related to Dowling’s statue and memory. Please take time to read this post carefully so that you can begin to talk amongst yourselves about what you plan to do.

As you’ve probably already discovered in the course of your own research, or have learned from reading about other students’ findings, Dowling has left his mark on Houston’s city landscape in a variety of locations over the years. First, there are locations in the city associated with his life, like the sites of his bars. Then, of course, there are the places where the statue that now sits in Hermann Park used to reside. There are also places where the planners of the statue originally wanted to put it (see DD0019). Moreover, besides the statue, there are other markers to Dowling elsewhere in the city, like St. Vincent’s Cemetery (see DD0010), and outside the city, like the statue at Sabine Pass. There are also various places named after Dowling or in his honor, including a middle school named after him and two streets–Dowling Street and Tuam Street–downtown.

Your job will be to use GIS mapping software to make a map that will help visitors to the Dowling archive site understand Dowling’s place in the city (literally). That may sound to you as simple as dropping some flags on a Google Map, but you should think of the project as having two broader–and more complicated–dimensions, one technical and one interpretive.

The Technical Dimension

To make your map, you must use the ArcGIS software available at the Rice GIS/Data center in Fondren Library. This powerful mapping software is the same software used to make maps like this one, which shows detailed information about all the trees on the Rice University campus.

This software comes with several capabilities that could be useful to you for your project: (a) the ability to mark locations on a map and then include a pop-up with information, like a description of the location, links to images of the site, and so on; (b) the ability to create time-series animations to show, for example, the movement of a site over time; (c) the ability to “layer” historical maps on top of other maps, in a way similar to the layering of this historic map of nineteenth-century Richmond’s slave market over a Google Earth map of present-day Richmond; (d) the ability to display demographic data from the census from different moments in history; and much, much more!

Using ArcGIS software will probably bring with it a significant learning curve for you, but have no fear–the wonderful staff at the GIS/Data Center in Fondren are equipped to help you. They will be able to show you the ropes, answer your questions, and help you whip the software into shape. One of the first things you should do as a group is make an appointment when all of you can meet with either Kim Ricker or Jean Niswonger in the GIS/Data Center and talk about the project. They are expecting you.

In addition to using ArcGIS software (with the help of Fondren staff), you may encounter other technical dimensions to this project. For example, in order to “pin” locations on the map, you will need specific GIS location data. To obtain that you may need to go to some sites in the city that you want to place on your map and use a mobile device to get that data. You may discover other tasks depending on the kind of information you decide to associate with the map. For example, if you want to put images of the various sites on your map, some of those images may already be available in our class database of scans. If you decided that photographs would help you, you might decide that it makes sense to obtain new photos of the sites, in which case you might talk to staff in the Digital Media Center about renting camera.

You may also wish to decide on a way to keep in touch with each other as you plan various stages of your project. For example, you could use Writeboard or Google Docs to keep track of tasks that need to be done and note when they’ve been achieved.

The Content Dimension

The technical aspects of this project will determine what can be done on you map. But you may find that the more difficult decisions concern what you should put on the map.

You’ll need to decide, for instance, what sites you want to include on your map. Any site relevant to Dowling? Some of them? All of them, with the ability to alternately hide and show some of them? Are there sites (like the places where the statue was put in storage) whose specific locations you’ll have to do research to locate?

Moreover, you’ll need to think about what the larger purpose is for your map. Is your map just so that viewers will have addresses and driving directions to Dowling sites? If that’s the case, it would be just as easy for them to enter addresses into Google Maps or use GPS in their car. By using ArcGIS, you have the opportunity to give the viewer more than just that basic map of where things are–you also have the opportunity to help the viewer interpret Dowling’s memory and its place in the city by making decisions about what else to include on the map.

For example, would it be important for a viewer of the map to know the racial makeup of the neighborhood where Dowling Middle School is located today, compared to when the school was named? Would it help to know where Irish Catholics tended to settle, and to visualize that on the map in relation to places where Dowling hung out or is commemorated today? If you mark Dowling and Tuam street, should Emancipation Park be marked and explained as well? Given that the statue was once very near another statue to the Confederacy (as Mercy explained in her lecture), should that statue be included as well? How can you communicate to the viewer the vast difference between the statue’s first location in front of City Hall and its current resting place, which one supporter of Dowling’s complained was “some obscure corner” of the city? Should you attempt to represent changes in the map of Houston over time? What information do you want the viewer to be able to get to easily when they click on any location you put on the map?

Ultimately, these are the sorts of questions that you can only answer by deciding what point or points you want the viewer to take away from the map. Only be having a clear point in mind will you be able to make your map meaningful and keep it from just being a jumble of locations.

What Next?

It could be that not everything you would like to do with your map will be feasible within the time frame you have to work on this project. That introduces another level of choices you will have to make about what to prioritize, what your main objectives are, and how you will pool your collective skills and divide the labor among you. For now, think broadly about what–in an ideal world–your map would be able to do. Begin to talk with each other and make that appointment to meet with the GIS/Data Center.

By the time that Blog Post #9 is due next Thursday, you should have done at least enough groundwork and discussion on this project to be able to give a progress report and share ideas you have for the map. The following week, you will meet with me to draft a contract for your project. That meeting won’t be useful to you, however, if you’ve done no thinking or learning about the project before then.

So you should think of these as your next two steps and strive to complete them sometime in the next two weeks: (a) meet with the GIS/Data Center staff to get a quick feel for ArcGIS and its capabilities; (b) talk with each other about the project, paying special attention to sharing information about particular skills and interests you have; (c) begin to discuss with each other what the objective of your map will be, since so many of your decisions will hinge on that.

And as always, if you have questions, let me know!

Prior to reading Bruce Levine’s book, Confederate Emancipation, (Oxford U Press, 2006), I was unaware of any efforts of Confederate attempts to enlist slaves into their armies in the exchange for freedom.  Our previous discussion on the rebuttal of claims for Black Confederates, had primed my perspective to believe that voluntary Confederate emancipation was ludicrous.  However, the arguments put forth in Levine’s novel were sufficiently strong and (most importantly to my skepticism) ranged across multiple factions of approach to the influencers of history to provide a rather complete answer to what caused the Confederate government to begin arming and emancipating male slaves in 1864/1865.

As we had previously discussed in class, a maximal answer to a causal question has to tackle why and when Confederate Emancipation occurred and how it was enacted. Levine’s answer to the question “why did Confederates who began the war to defend slavery voluntarily act to abolish it?” is both simple and nuanced. His immediate answer is that military necessity as the war dragged on forced southern politicians and generals to accept the proposal to arm slaves – their last untapped source for desperately needed manpower.  Levine was particularly forceful in cementing the link between the war’s outcome with the increase in cries for slave armament in citing the famous ‘Culloden Letter’. The letter written by Gen. Hindman of the Army of Tennessee asked “Cannot [the slaves] afford their quota of soldiers?” (pg. 26) in direct response to the disastrous defeat of his army at Chattanooga one month earlier by a Union force that almost doubled his manpower. He also points to the outburst in pro- slave-soldier sentiment in Georgia after Sherman’s invasion in 1864.

However, up until 1864, proponents of arming the slaves do not mention emancipation. Levine explains the introduction of the idea of emancipation alongside arming slaves as a result of slave desertions in the early years of the war. In the footsteps of Ira Berlin and Steven Hahn, Levine argues that the slave flight to Union lines not only prompted the Emancipation Proclamation but Confederate Emancipation as well. He reasons that the Union use of black soldiers in battles like Port Hudson and Milliken’s bend dispelled the belief that African-Americans would be hindrances and poor soldiers. Most importantly, he says that massive slave defections had convinced many southerners that slavery was dead and that the call to “salvage southern independence at slavery’s expense” was most important.  Because slaves after 1863 could expect freedom at Union lines, he quotes Robert E Lee as writing that the idea of gradual and general emancipation “the best means for securing the efficiency and fidelity of this [slave] auxiliary force”. (pg 36)   Thus, it could be boiled down into the fact that southerners were merely reacting to Northern military victories and slave defection when they decided to begin arming and emancipating slaves.

The “when” of Confederate Emancipation is less-directly addressed in the book. However, it is indirectly addressed in its converse form of “why did it fail”? In answering this question, Levine argues that emancipation failed because it was enacted too late to be implemented in the war effort.  The ideas of emancipation ran against very strong opposition politically. JT Leach, Congressman from North Carolina, wrote that emancipation was “an insult to our brave soldiers” (40). Socially, blacks in the Army “abdicated whites’ proper, divinely ordained control over black life.” (51) Thus, until it was absolute military necessity (which it wasn’t until after the fall of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in June 1863), emancipation would have zero chance of implementation. While Levine states no direct cause, it was eventually military necessity in 1864 and the needs for a means of assuring fidelity in the face of massive slave defection post-1863 that determined when Emancipation could get political support.

Finally, the “how”.  Throughout the book, Levine returns continuously to his thesis that Confederate Emancipation was precipitated by the need to arm slaves to fight in the CSA armies. The “how” is the least clear of the causal questions. He begins by refuting arguments that important figures in the Confederate cause had stopped seeing the war as a defense of the “peculiar institution”. He shows that even in 1865, figures like Robert Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Gen. Cleburne still belonged in the pro-slavery ideological camp. In contrast, he reiterates constantly that they believed that military necessity mandated slaves’ involvement in the war and the freedom would be the only carrot with which to entice them.  Levine compares how Confederates planned to emancipate slaves with Prussian and Russian serf emancipation (30 and 3 years before, respectively) – by manumitting voluntarily so “they could specify the conditions on which freedom is granted and make statues for the regulation of labor” (pg 122). Ultimately by giving freedom but not rights to property, slaves could be held in pseudo-bondage as sharecroppers.  This resonated with politicians who did not wish to upset the traditional hierarchy.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed reasoning through Levine’s argument for the reasons for Confederate emancipation. In particular, his explanation of why emancipation was seen as a necessity was his strongest argument. The south was in dire need of soldiers, which slaves could become provided they were given freedom to assure their fidelity.  By Levine’s logic, had the Union not gone through with the Emancipation Proclamation, this carrot would not have been needed and Confederate emancipation would not have occurred.  His argument for when emancipation was finally approved (because it had been proposed as early as 1861) rested firmly on his case that military necessity after 1863 forced the issue of black soldiers. Overall, the arguments were firm and really tied into our past discussions – particularly the parallels between Northern and Southern Emancipation.

Although the book by Bruce Levine is titled “Confederate Emancipation,” emancipation is not what Confederate leaders had in mind when they began considering proposals to arm slaves to fight for the Confederacy.  The Southern proponents of “emancipation” like Cleburne, Benjamin, Lee, and Davis, did not actually envision giving blacks true freedom if they fought for the Confederacy.  Rather, as Levine points out: “Blacks would no longer be slaves, but they would be free only in the narrowest possible sense of that word.”  Slaves would stop being personal property and would gain the rights to marry and own property, but they would still lack the right to vote or hold office (Levine 154).  This cannot be construed as true emancipation.  In fact, it was nothing more than attempt by the crumbling Confederacy to salvage what could still be saved.  The hope was that arming slaves might solve the Confederate Army’s manpower shortage and then, if they survived the war, former slaves would’ve had no property or ability to escape a life working for white landowners in conditions similar to slavery (Levine 159).

Confederate notions of emancipation were very different than those outlined in the Emancipation Proclamation and other Union policies.  Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free any slaves, as Union troops advanced or escaped slaves reached Union lines, they were freed permanently (Levine 118).  Additionally, slaves were never required to serve in the Union army.  The Emancipation Proclamation and the second Confiscation Act suggested the use of contraband slaves in the Union Army, but their service was voluntary, not a mandatory condition for emancipation.  In contrast, Confederate proposals for “emancipation” required slaves to obtain permission from their masters and then risk their lives serving in the Confederate army.  The power of emancipating slaves was still up to individual slave owners (Levine 120).  Essentially, most of the Confederate proposals were toothless because it was still necessary to gain slave-owners’ cooperation.  Gaining the compliance of slave-owners was a difficult task and the Confederate government was unwilling or unable to make any of their emancipation plans mandatory (Levine 157).

Basically, Confederate “emancipation” was a desperate plan by the South to win a war they were losing and still maintain an amount of control over Southern blacks.  The plan failed for a number of reasons, including slave-owners adamant refusal to let go of slavery even in the face of Confederate defeat.

I thought this book was really interesting.  I had never read anything about Confederate proposals to “emancipate” the slaves.  I was initially a little shocked that the proposals occurred since slavery was so central to the South’s secession, but Levine did a good job of illuminating the true motivation behind Confederate “emancipation” proposals and explaining how they weren’t really emancipation proposals at all.