UA Little Rock History Professor: Commemoration to Keeping What We Have
Carl Moneyhon, UA Little Rock professor of history, has authored, co-authored, or edited 20 publications on the American Civil War, making him one of the nation's foremost authorities on the subject.
Moneyhon's books include Arkansas in the New South, 1877-1929; The Impact of Civil War and the Reconstruction on Arkansas: Persistence in the Midst of Ruin, and his latest title, Edmund J. Davis of Texas: Civil War General, Republican Leader, Reconstruction Governor.
"It's important to commemorate the Civil War, because it was the one time in our history that democracy failed," said Moneyhon about the statewide Civil War sesquicentennial. "Not to memorialize, not to romanticize, but not to forget how close the country came to destruction. Also, how dangerous moral politics are - the two sides claim to have the moral right, and there is no compromise."
He added, "If you don't understand why the world you live in exists, how do keep what you have?"
When asked why he chose to specialize in Civil War history, Moneyhon laughed and said the research found him. "At the time, I was studying the post-war period at the University of Chicago," he said. "My advisor suggested that to understand the post-war period that I needed an understanding of what happened during the war. I became interested in not so much the military history of the war but the social, economic, and personal side of it."
As Moneyhon turned his attention toward letters, journals, and other personal documents during his research, he uncovered a fact about the South that still lingers today. "The enduring legacy of the South is loss," he said. "They lost fighting for an institution that has no place in the modern world, so the South began creating a history without slavery; the issue of states' rights was much more principled."
In the UA Little Rock Center for History and Culture, the Civil War collection is the largest holding of historical documents. Two notable collections in the archives are the J.N. Heiskell Historical Collection and the John Merrick Moore Papers.
Heiskell was the editor of the Arkansas Gazette for 70 years beginning in July 1902 and, for 23 days in January 1913, served in the United States Senate after the previous senator's sudden death until a successor was elected.
He was an avid collector of Civil War documents from both the North and the South, including books, war diaries and personal letters, Confederate currency and bonds, war-era newspapers, and even sheet music from the period.
"The Heiskell Collection is valuable, because it contains a wide variety of documents related to the Civil War in Arkansas and particularly to secession," said Moneyhon. "It also contains histories written by the actual participants in the war amassed all in one place. It's an incredible resource of published literature of the era."
Moore's father was John Mordecai Moore who served in the 3rd Arkansas Calvalry. The collection contains priceless glimpses in to life of Civil War soldiers.
"There are letters between Moore and his family describing everyday life in Civil War South," he said. "We think we know so much about the Civil War, and we don't. When we get in to the human experience of the war, the generalizations that historians make always weaken."
Moneyhon's research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he received one of the first UA Little Rock College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer Fellowships for Research. He is a Fellow of the Texas Historical Association. Currently, he's completing research for a book exploring the connection of wartime experience and developed identity among Confederate soldiers.
"In Making Johnny Reb, I ask 'Who was this Confederate soldier?'" he said. "Did Johnny Reb exist? In fact there were 600,000 different men. They were all types - heroes, cowards, and slackers. I concluded that, in the end, he was being created in least in part by the contemporary Southern press. Journalists created Johnny Reb - the honorable, Christian soldier."
Moneyhon also serves as the faculty liaison for the University History Institute, which sponsors "Evenings With History." This series features six lectures by UA Little Rock history faculty each year at the Historic Arkansas Museum in downtown Little Rock.