In a much earlier post, I promised to discuss something about the B.F. Johnson Publishing Company… so…
In a letter written by one F.T. Amiss (we’ll see him again in another post) on April 13, 1914, Amiss remarked:
…as an assistant Editor of the B.F. Johnson Publishing Co., of Richmond, Va., I helped to edit the first school history that even attempted to render justice to the Confederate Soldier and his cause. This book is now extensively used thru the South, and its popularity caused either publishers of histories to come nearer the truth in dealing with the Civil War and its causes. This book was Lee’s School History. After helping to edit it, I took the field and during my stay with Johnson Publishing Company, I worked every state of the South from Texarkana to Richmond, in the interest of the Johnson books, especially this popular history.
Susan Pendleton Lee’s A School History of the United States was published in 1895 by 
the B.F. Johnson Publishing Company of Richmond, Virginia. The preface reads: “Most of the School Histories now in use tell in detail the story of the northern half of the country, while only a few chapters are devoted to its southern half. In this book, an honest effort is made to speak truthfully of both without sectional passion or prejudice”.
Mrs. Lee, by the way, was the daughter of Confederate General/Rev. William Nelson Pendleton, the sister of Sandie Pendleton, the wife of Confederate Gen. Edwin Gray Lee (a second cousin of Gen. Robert E. Lee), and a member of the Mary Custis Lee Chapter, U.D.C. of Lexington, Va.
In her recent book, Burying the Dead, But Not the Past, Caroline Janney mentioned Mrs. Lee as among the Daughters of the U.D.C. who grappled with the efforts to maintain a true standard among histories of slavery and the Civil War. You can see a bit of what Janney had to say about this effort here. Of course, there is also mention of B.F. Johnson Publishing’s works in Fred Arthur Bailey’s essay (Free Speech and the Lost Cause in the Old Dominion) in Virginia Reconsidered.
If books such as those published by the B.F. Johnson Publishing Company held their own among the students in the classrooms of the South, then at what point, really, were Southern children corrupted with “Yankee lies” in school texts? Was this actually an unrealized fear that has developed, over time, into ”perceived fact” (and thereby a new myth) among several in the new age Confederate remembrance?
Kevin
December 22, 2008
Great post. Janney’s book is an excellent source on this issue. I also recommend Karen Cox’s book on the UDC as well as an article by James McPherson in the edited collection by Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture.
cenantua
December 22, 2008
Thanks for the additional sources Kevin. Do any of them address the situation with school texts after the 1940s? It just seems that the UDC and even the SCV (F.T. Amiss was a member through the 1930s, by the way) had a pretty good grip on the Southern education system up until (maybe?) WW2.
Ken Noe
December 22, 2008
Fred Bailey wrote several important articles on the UDC, textbooks, and free speech issues. Instead of listing them all, here’s a link to his c. v.:
http://www.acu.edu/academics/cas/history/faculty/bailey/bailey_vitae.html
cenantua
December 22, 2008
Excellent. Thanks Ken.
caswain01
December 22, 2008
You are referring to those “Yankee lies” like “118,000 men under General Grant?”
cenantua
December 22, 2008
That’s right. Whether there were 118,000 Yankees and Grant, or not, it was all irrelevant… I’m surprised they didn’t just correct the monument to say that the Confederates just opted on an intermission.
caswain01
December 23, 2008
As you know, I spend a lot of time looking at marker text, either transcribing it or proofing those submitted by others. I’m at a point where if the text were read out loud, I can tell you if the marker was erected by the NPS, one of the Preservation groups (CWPT and I’ll say CWT in that group), some state organization, or some local source.
The NPS markers are reviewed at several layers for content. Some will say sanitized. I tend to believe the intent is simply to keep the narrative strict with regard to interpretation. Yet, there are plenty of cases where the truth is not allowed to stand in the way of a good story (i.e. the Gordon-Barlow incident at Gettysburg).
CWPT and CWT are generally non-partisan, in my opinion. Mostly because these stick to interpretation of the battles.
For the state markers, VA has seen many evolutions in regard to tone. Early on any bias was muted by the brevity of the text. The 1920s markers sound as if written by script-writers from a Tarzan movie – “Jackson camp here. March there….” By the 1960s the state used smaller fonts and more words. Then a slight bias appears. Perhaps more slanted to “Virginia’s boys” than Confederates in general.
cenantua
December 23, 2008
Wow, you really are the marker man!
cenantua
December 24, 2008
Craig, I’ve been through the process of text writing and approval with Civil War Trails and the Va. Historic Resources folks. Both are quite different, but the VDHR process is an interesting cycle. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the text review meetings.
Fred A. Bailey
February 16, 2009
I have just stumbled upon your article on the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company out of Richmond. Few people know what a powerful role this company played in shaping the mind of white southern youth — the ground work of this publishing firm supplemented the mission efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the United Confederate Veterans and Sons of the Confederate Veterans as the nineteenth century merged into the twentieth. Ideological ideas that were anti-Negro, anti-Yankee, and pro-upper class white Southern were grounded into the white youth of the South; in turn these children grew into adults intellectually prepared to resist the thrusts for civil rights reform in the 1950s and 1960s.
I make reference to the B. F. Johnson Company in several articles which are listed below. As a sample, here is a short paragraph from an unpublished paper I authored about Mississippi, Confederate societies, and textbooks:
In 1900, Mississippi’s newly elected UDC historian praised recently authored pro-South textbooks, in particular works printed by the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company in Richmond, Virginia, and proclaimed her “purpose to herald their merits and intrinsic worth until every public school in Mississippi [realizes] the importance of including them among their standard textbooks.” She commanded that only books written by “loyal Southerners” be used in the classroom in order to “cancel the false impressions made upon the younger generations, by the northern versions of Southern history.”
Here are other articles relevant to the topic:
“The Best History Money Can Buy: Eugene Campbell Barker, George Washington Littlefield,
and the Quest for a Suitable Past,” Gulf South Historical Review, XX (Fall 2004), 28-48
“Free Speech and the ‘Lost Cause’ in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LV (Summer 1996), 143-66.
Free Speech and the ‘Lost Cause’ in the Old Dominion,” Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography, CIII (April 1995), 237-66.
“Mildred Lewis Rutherford and the Patrician Cult of the Old South,” Georgia Historical Quarterly,
LXXVIII (fall 1994), 509-35.
“Free Speech and the ‘Lost Cause’ in Texas: A Study of Censorship and Social Control in the
New South,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XCVII (January 1994),
433-78.
“Free Speech at the University of Florida: The Enoch M. Banks Case,” Florida
Historical Quarterly, LXXI (July 1992), 1-17.
“Textbooks of the Lost Cause: Censorship and the Creation of Southern State Histories,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, LXXV (fall 1991), 507-33.
cenantua
February 16, 2009
Hello Dr. Bailey, Good to hear from you… and thanks for commenting! The research that you have conducted on this is incredible and I have enjoyed reading your works. It was actually F.T. Amiss’ letter that led me to further investigation on my own… which actually led me to discovering your works. Best, Robert
O. L. Davis, Jr.
February 4, 2013
I am unfamiliar with your article about the Johnson Publishing Co. of Richmond, VA. Will you please give me the reference? I am interested in reading it. I am fascinated by the quotation from F. T. Amiss.
O. L. Davis, Jr.
March 11, 2013
Mr. Moore: I am particularly intereested in seeing the entire letter written by F. T. Amiss from which you quote in this Blog. Please indicate where I can see it or request a copy of it. I am doing research on the BFJohnson Publishing Co. and Amiss apparently was an editor of Lee’s History of the United States.
Robert Moore
March 11, 2013
I’m sorry to say that I no longer have the letter. It was on loan to me for quite some time. I returned it to the owner last year, and I believe she donated it to the Luray Heritage Museum which is affiliated with the Luray Caverns.