Completing “Mine Eyes Have Seen to Glory”: A Work Six Years in the Making

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I haven’t been posting much new material as of late as I have been working overtime to complete my book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory! Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era to Today and Why it Matters Now.

I kind of completed it two years ago, but I wasn’t fully happy with it, however my agent was thrilled with it and he thought that it would quickly get snapped up by a publisher. It didn’t but I was too busy in the swamp of my old chapel to do anything to change it. About three months ago I asked him where things were with it and he gave me some positive news, but nothing on publication. It was then I realized what was wrong. My first two chapters dealt entirely too much with military theory and national policy because it began as a short introductory chapter to my Gettysburg Staff Ride text. Likewise my introduction was pretty much a throw away few paragraphs rather than an explanation of why this was not just important history, but why it is important now.

So I asked him to wait before trying to send it to any other publishers and Over the past three months I have been continuing to read, study, and write. I added new chapters, edited old ones, wrote a completely new introduction and epilogue  in light of the racial violence, much of it instigated by the President of the United States and his political and religious allies. This turned the book into a work of just over two hundred pages, to over four hundred pages. However, I worked to stay remain intellectually honest and present facts, I also decided to do more to better tell the story.

Admittedly, a lot of that was done in the original, but the first two chapters led to it being rejected by publishers because it seemed to academic. I think a lot of that was because of the dryness of the first two chapters and the lack of effort to grab the readers attention on how they too fit into the story. In going back and reading the original manuscript I could understand what that was. About 160 of those pages were really good, but those first two chapters didn’t grab the attention of the reader. That I think is one good thing about rereading it was that I saw what I missed, and I went back to make what initially I thought to be a few revisions, a beefed up introduction and a chapter about the early English Slave trade and a brief conclusion would wrap things up.

However, the more that I read the more the facts that I thought that I already knew came to life. Like in many of my other writings I went back to the contractions of human nature, and the propensity of human beings to mythologize people in the stark Dualistic terminology of good versus evil, Black versus white, instead of the world of grays that we all live.

Yes, as a son of Rebel, slave owning  families that fought against the Union when their neighbors voted to reject the Confederacy and what it stood for, I reject the claims of White Supremacy and “Christian” nationalism, and what my ancestors on both sides of my family fought to maintain, a White Supremacist and Slave Power republic that rebelled against the Union to gain nothing. As for me an my household I reject White Supremacy and the myths of the Noble South and Lost Cause myths, because they are myths, ahistoric, and completely false.

The cover art I chose was unique in terms of emancipation.

It is a wood engraving of Italian artist Francesco Pezzicar’s statue The Freed Slave, which displayed in Philadelphia for the Centennial celebration in 1876. Unlike many representations it shows a single male slave holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and rending his chains asunder. It is unique for the period because it doesn’t show him being assisted by a white man, such as is monument to Lincoln freeing the slaves now in Washington D.C. it was quite popular with Blacks who viewed it and that reaction was  was captured in Fernando Miranda’s illustration for Frank Leslie’s Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition. The statue won a Gold Medal, but was criticized by many White reviewers.  Sadly, it never found an American buyer and was returned to Italy where after Pezzicar’s death it was moved to Curatorio del Museo Revoltella where it remains on display until this day. I think it captures something that even benevolent and sympathetic Whites fail to grasp, that for many Blacks, emancipation and freedom, even today is something extremely personal in which their efforts, sacrifices, and unique abilities are often ignored.

Those that tear apart the bond of their slavery and servitude at the cost of their lives are to be admired and nor treated as a second class partner in their liberation. God knows how many times the United States has been guilty of this since the Civil War, but that could be an article unto itself.

Thank You for your support over the years, and please be safe,

Blessings,

Padre Steve+