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War Stuff: Author Joan E. Cashin Explores the Struggles for Material Resources During War
By Andrea Marvin
Author and Professor Joan E. Cashin deeply appreciates history and believes understanding the past is fundamental to becoming good citizens and moving society forward as a whole.
Cashin is a professor at Ohio State University and is known for her expertise in the Civil War. In her new book, War Stuff, she brings to light how civilians become involved in conflict, focusing on the struggles for material resources between armies and civilians.
Applying information from historical sources, she illustrates how soldiers would take food, wood, and any supplies they ran out of and needed from villagers.
A conversation with Joan Cashin illustrates the depth of research that went into the book and her passion for educating people about history through the lens of a storyteller.
Joan looks at history as an amazing story that happens to be true, and she hopes her readers will appreciate learning about the past through her work as much as she does.
Her latest book War Stuff takes a closer look at war and its day-to-day impact on civilians.
Tell us about your path to becoming an author.
When I was in college, I loved my classes on American history, and I decided that I wanted to become a professional historian. So, I went to graduate school and got a doctorate from Harvard University.
I’ve been teaching at OSU for most of my career. I work on U.S. history from the Revolution to the late 19th century, and most of my books and essays concern gender, race, material culture, and environmental history.
Tell us a little bit about your new book.
It’s called War Stuff. It’s about the struggles for material resources between armies and civilians inside the South during the war. So, I argue that two struggles are going on parallel to each other.
There’s a fight between two armies, and there’s also a fight going on between armies and civilians. And that’s because neither army is very well supplied. So if they need resources like food, and the supply wagons have not shown up, then they take from civilians. And they take whatever they want.
It’s part of the Articles of War from 1806, asserting that military necessity shall prevail. So that means whatever the armies need, they will take.
So, I organized the book around three important material resources: food, timber, and housing.
What do you hope people take away from the book, possibly learn and recognize?
A couple of things. First, the civilians are involved in warfare. They are not spectators; they are not watching it. They are drawn into it whether they want to be or not.
So, what happens when the armies take resources from civilians – at first, in 1861, they might be willing to sacrifice for one of the armies, especially if they’re pro-confederate and there’s a Confederate army on the farm or if they’re pro-union, and there’s a Union army.
But as time goes by, they start resisting. They don’t think this is fair; they don’t think it’s ethical. By 1864, they started withdrawing their support from the war, and that’s one of the reasons why the Confederacy lost. They can’t maintain the support of the white civilian population.
Is there an underlying message?
I have always thought that historical knowledge is wonderful, so I want to contribute to our knowledge of the time period.
For people who may not necessarily be fascinated with history, it’s important to remember that civilians are always involved in war.
Why do you say that?
Because armies in the field throughout modern history have asserted that they can take what they need. What happened in the American Civil War is not unusual. They take resources. If they need wood to build their winter quarters or put in their campfires, they send out soldiers with axes and chop down every tree in the neighborhood.
For the war, you see more and more deforestation. And if they needed a building to use as a military hospital, they would show up and say, “We need this house; you need to leave now.” And things like this have happened in every modern war in every country.
But the stereotype now is that soldiers fight the war while civilians watch. They’re observing; they’re not involved. Well, in fact, they are involved.
What’s the consequence – taking resources from civilians?
That’s a good question. Deforestation happens all over the region. And what that does is contribute to soil erosion. So, it undermines the agricultural economy. The forests not only provide wood, but they also provide timber.
When they sink their roots into the ground, they also keep the soil in place. And when a small forest has been replaced by a bare patch of ground, what it means is every time it rains, the topsoil runs off.
So, ironically, it makes it harder and harder for people to raise crops. And of course, 19th-century America was largely agricultural, and the most common occupation back then was farming.
And what also happens with deforestation and the seizure of food is you have widespread hunger, you have cases of actual starvation, especially in the last year of the war, because you have civilians who starved to death. After all, the food supply has been undermined.
Were you lecturing on this topic as a professor, or how did the idea of the book come about?
Over the years, while working on my earlier books, I kept coming across evidence of this from historical sources.
The war is very well documented. There are lots of diaries and many letters and newspaper accounts. And I kept coming across these descriptions of soldiers in both armies taking whatever they needed, and I asked myself, what kind of impact does that have?
Again, the stereotype is that if any army committed any wrongdoing, it was the plundering Yankee army or the “evil Yankees.” Well, no, both armies behaved in identical ways.
When did your interest in history begin?
I have always loved to read books, and when I was at college at an American University, I had several first-rate history professors who made the subject come alive. And I thought this was so fascinating; this might be something I want to do for a living.
When I was in graduate school doing history full time every day, I discovered that I really did enjoy it enough to do this for a living, that this was something I could stick with for a long time.
I like to tell my students that history is an adventure story that happens to be true.
Why do you think it’s important to learn about history, to look back at past times?
Well, there are lots of reasons; knowing something about history is part of being a literate adult. It deepens your understanding of the world in which you live.
Thomas Jefferson said that people who know history make better citizens. They’re more likely to vote and participate in the democracy in which they live. So, for all those reasons, I think it’s important.
American history is important to Americans because this is where we live. The Civil War is the central event in 19th-century American history.
Some people think it’s the central event of all of American history. But it’s very, very important, and citizens should know what took place during that war.
What’s next for you? Are you working on another book?
Yes, I am. I am focusing on a family in Kentucky, the Shelby family. They left many manuscripts and material artifacts, and some of their houses are still standing.
I’m covering them for multiple generations from the late 18th to the early 19th century. They are at the heart of all these transformations that are happening throughout the country at large.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Last year, the War Stuff book was translated into Russian and published by Academic Studies Press in Boston. It’s the first book on the Civil War to be translated into that language.
Did they go into detail about why they wanted to publish it?
Yes. The press director has a graduate degree in Russian studies, and he wants to promote cross-cultural understanding. They also publish well-written English-language books that they think will reach a larger audience and they publish them in Spanish as well. So, they’re trying to increase readership in different countries around the world.
War Stuff is one of seven books that Joan Cashin has authored or edited.
Examples of her work include First Lady of the Confederacy, A Family Venture, and War Matters. You can find all of Joan’s books on Amazon.
Further, Joan Cashin serves on several boards such as the Abraham Lincoln Institute.
To learn more about author and professor Joan Cashin visit: https://u.osu.edu/joanecashin/.
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