Mary Elizabeth Massey Then, Wikipedia Now

Mary Elizabeth Massey might have been pleased to see how Anne Firor Scott described her book Bonnet Brigades in the Journal of Southern History in 1967, calling it a “guide to resources” and “a skillful mosaic.” This was no narrative tour de force, and, in Scott’s words, it lacked “probing analysis,” but it still offered a series of “chronicles” from which “we may infer something about the broader picture.”⁴² Scott wrote these words out of an apparent sense of frustration (and would later publish her own monumental analysis of southern women in this period). But Massey might have been relieved that Scott got the point, for in the book’s introduction she outlined her goal that “I would not . . . attempt to prove or disprove the theses of any school of history.”⁴³ This was history that would keep the big ideas at an arm’s length.

That alone is fascinating and curious, possibly even scandalous to those coming up in the profession today: a historian who explicitly rejected a place in the scholarly conversation surrounding her research. Massey did not eschew interpretation entirely: her characterizations of women sometimes betray an underlying racism, as emphasized above, and even sexism (in statements such as this one from Bonnet Brigades, that “it is women’s nature to prefer working with a group”).⁴⁴ But what did it all add up to? That is where Massey stopped short and why historians have subsequently picked up where Scott left off and continue to chide Massey for her “analytical shortcomings” or for having “eschewed theory for anecdote.”⁴⁵ But that is also where things get even more puzzling. Why, given these shortcomings, do we continue to talk about Mary Elizabeth Massey? Her books appear at an impressive rate in our citations, as an unscientific search in Google Scholar revealed a continual rise in the citations of Bonnet Brigades, from eighteen in the 1970s to sixty-one in the 2000s. (Perhaps these numbers are skewed because of the greater number of electronic sources available in the later decade, but a search in JSTOR also revealed a similar trend.) Her work is often referred to as “foundational”; it almost seems obligatory to include her when dealing with Civil War women. But again, why? Why do we continue to cite her work?

It may be that the very quality we find frustrating is also the one we rely upon: her prioritization of the archive over explicit argumentation. Massey was a digger—she gave us something new. Her citations are extensive (albeit skewed, as reviewers have noted, in the direction of white elite sources). She was very likely one of the first people to find and read certain voices, now widely quoted, and feature them on the printed page. And so we turn to Massey when we are on some topic because we know that she probably got there first. What did she find, and where did she find it? Massey’s books are “foundational” in a different sense from the ones we more commonly celebrate for big, splashy ideas. She orients us not to any “school of history” but instead to the stuff of history: the letters and diaries, the people and places so essential to our craft. She gives us the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when” that are so foundational to our discussions of “why” and “how.”

Maybe a present-day analogy would help probe this appeal of her work: Wikipedia. Now, before it is assumed that this is some sort of cheap insult, let me admit that I have become a Wikipedia admirer for reasons outlined below. Wikipedia, like Massey’s work, is a place to begin, especially for students, although certainly not an end point. It can be described in the same terms Scott invoked for Massey: “a guide to resources” or a series of “chronicles.” It is a gateway from which students can become oriented to a certain subject, and, in the footnotes and bibliography, find possible directions for their own research. Both aim to give newcomers broad, comprehensive access to the past; both aim to put...