Radio War Nerd #340 — The US Civil War, Part 11: Culture Wars (Live in Brooklyn)
Guest: William Hogeland, historian & author
Recorded: June 30, 2022 at the Littlefield in Brooklyn
Part 10 in the War Nerd's US Civil War series, filmed at our live show, looks at the songs and literature during the war...and the bubble gum trading cards during the war's centennial celebration, when we're joined by friend of the show William Hogeland.
Big shout-out to Eric Snow for filming the show & animating the intro...and to Katherine for making it happen.
*SONG LIST:
-"BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC"
-"JOHNNY WE HARDLY KNEW YE"
-"WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME"
-"GOOBER PEAS"
-"MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA"
-"WEARING OF THE GRAY"
*
Previous RWN US Civil War episodes:
*EP #295: The US Civil War, Part 1: Count Adam Gurowski
*EP #297: The US Civil War, Part 2: Bleeding Kansas
*EP #300: The US Civil War, Part 3: First Battle of Bull Run
*EP #303: The US Civil War, Part 4: McClellan, Treason & The Battle of Antietam
*EP #307: The US Civil War, Part 5: Vicksburg
*EP #311: The US Civil War, Part 6: Buchanan's Treason & The Mormon War
*EP #315: The US Civil War, Part 7: German '48ers, with Matt Christman
*EP #323: The US Civil War, Part 8: Thomas, Hood & Southern Honor
*EP #327: The US Civil War, Part 9: War on the Water
Previous RWN episodes with William Hogeland:
-EP #91: Recovered history of July 4, 1776
-EP #85 America's First Forgotten War/Creation of US Army
-EP #63: The Whiskey Rebellion
Total time: 1:46:05
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
Radio War Nerd Live at the Littlefield June 30, 2022 (YouTube)
Comments (16)
OMG Mark looks like the dad from The Wonder Years!!! (I’m so sorry but I didn’t imagine anyone doing a history podcast as looking like they could have been an actor)
A minor historical error in the discussion of Emily D: She wasn't at all celebrated during the war. In fact she was virtually unknown until after she died; and her high place in literature wasn't acknowledged until I think the 1920s.
re: blue and grey bowl, when i was a kid i had a tee shirt from a collegiate north v south tae kwon do tournament, with a guy in a blue gi and a guy in a gray gi side-kicking toward each other in front of their respective flags (usa and stars and bars).
Who won?
Re. the Marvel/Civil War painting: One of the movies is called Civil War, about a split between the superheroes into roughly equal groups, in which they punch out their disagreements. (It’s fairly fucking stupid, even for those movies.) Most of the characters in the painting are in that movie, and Ant-Man learning he could grow large is one of the few memorable visuals. So, my guess is the painting is no deeper than a pun.
Oh, OK. Good to know.
I grew up in Virginia about 45 minutes away from Suffolk, which is sometimes called the "peanut capital of the world." The only person I ever heard call them goober peas was my friend's dad who was from Tennessee. He also would sing the song.
That's interesting because I get that song mixed up with 'Cumberland Gap': 'Lay down boys, take a little nap / They're kicking up a fuss in the Cumberland Gap." Indeed, scholars may wonder whether they were not only kicking up a fuss but, in fact, eating goober peas.
Funny thing. Marching Through Georgia is very common at Scottish football grounds, or used to be, among Protestant fans. Changed the lyrics to "Hello, Hello we are the Billy Boys" (for king William among Rangers fans, or ""Gorgie Boys" for Hearts fans ((the stadium is on Gorgie road)). There used to be a line about "up to our knees in Fenian grease". And I don't know if that is clamped down on, but there is supposedly a law against it.
The version I'm familiar has "Fenian blood" instead. And yes it's a banned sectarian song. I think you get a ban and the club gets a fine if you're caught singing it maybe?
Yeah (re: mark’s comment), recently in rural NY - it was the town of Perry, outside of Warsaw, with every second house flying a confederate flag that had me twist in dry revulsion and land in an uncanny valley - so weird, even if you do know the tracing of its symbolic evolution
On that Indian pop-art painting: I don't know anything about that artist in particular, but there appears to be a real wave of attachment to various historical far-right causes in Modist India. More than once, I've found an image with swastikas in it and asked, "So, uh, which kind of swastika?," and the answer has been, "Both."
Wasn't Shelley's "Ozymandias" actually the second poem on that subject? I can't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure he had a bet with another guy about getting out the first verse on recent "discoveries" in the Middle East & North Africa, and the other dude wrote stanza after stanza after stanza (also called "Ozymandias"), so Horny Percy potshotted him with a terse 14-liner.
Thanks for uploading this! When I saw it was from the live event I got ready to grit my teeth and endure some shitty audio, but in fact the audio was excellent!
Growing up in Georgia in the 80's I knew peanuts were "goober peas" and sometimes people would refer to them as such, maybe just facetiously, but "peanuts" was predominant.
Thanks for posting this, and great photo. Really wanted to attend live with all the cool people...