USCB historian takes wider look at Civil War

Events such as the Civil War, slavery and Reconstruction are often referenced in both U.S. history and the history of Beaufort County, but historians have the knowledge and ability to contextualize the common narratives to reveal a much more detailed, comprehensive and complex picture.

James Shinn Jr., assistant professor of history at USCB, is one such historian, and the story he tells addresses misconceptions, reveals little-known facts and explains history’s relevance today. Shinn, who earned his doctorate in history from Yale University, specializes in 19th-century history and the Civil War. He is also co-director of the Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era.

Among the misconceptions Shinn works to correct is the idea of a largely domestic and “intranational” civil war.

“For a long time, the way we taught the Civil War was not really the way people experienced it,” Shinn said, adding that this has been changing in recent decades as regional differences have lessened, allowing a wider view of history.

He observed that, after the war, the focus turned to how to put a country back together that had, in his words, “absolutely torn itself apart.”

“Relations between the North and the South continued to be fraught. It was enough just figuring out how these two regions could exist in the same country.”

He explained that, during the Civil War, people were acutely aware of the international implications, economic and otherwise, of their situation. The war influenced the U.S. relationship with Cuba and involved the Confederacy seeking recognition from Britain and France.

“People from the 1860s and 1870s were already thinking in global terms.”

“You look at the newspaper and it’s full of economic information from other parts of the world,” Shinn said.

Shinn wrote his dissertation on the postwar relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and is now writing a book on the connection between the U.S. Civil War and Cuba’s Ten Years’ War. He sees his historical research as adding perspective to the existing narrative rather than completely replacing it.

“I would never dismiss the significance of the classic Civil War narrative of Lee and Grant. There’s just more to it.”

Shinn said some of the misconceptions about this period come from historical omissions, including the untold stories of people and places that shaped America as much as, and perhaps in some cases more than, their more famous narrative cousins.

Those include the stories of Robert Smalls’ seven lesser-known crewmates and their families; Smalls’ postwar political career and involvement in the Port Royal Experiment; figures including Prince Rivers and Hastings Gantt; cross-racial negotiation among planters and farmers, including Black landowners; South Carolina’s distinction of preserving and continuing Reconstruction longer than any other state and into the early 20th century.

“You can start in the 1520s with the Spanish and take the story all the way through to the present day. There’s not a more important site in the history of Reconstruction than right here. You can follow the Revolution, the Civil War, the Antebellum period, and never leave Beaufort County.”

If the Civil War leaves a message of caution, Reconstruction, Shinn said, leaves a different message of hope despite the resistance that often met what Shinn described as the “whiplash-inducing change” instituted at the time that many white Americans could not have imagined becoming reality.

“The American project can be expanded, it can change. It’s plastic. It’s elastic. It’s not written in stone.”

He emphasized the cyclical nature of America — change, reaction, regression and equilibrium — and the influence of human nature itself.

“That’s just how things work.”

He said people should not be discouraged by those realities. Speaking about what he calls the ongoing quest to determine what the U.S. is and what it stands for, Shinn concluded:

“The country is a never-ending process. It’s never complete.”

Channing Heiss is a freelance writer and a member of the Beaufort County disAbilities Coalition.