March 2014 – Page 3 – American Environments to 1893

March 17, 2014

American Ruination Supplementary Reading

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Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War by Megan Kate provides an innovative and, in the scope of our class readings, a useful look at the environmental and psychological impact of the Civil War. Nelson argues that the Civil War reshaped the physical landscape and in turn, the cultural landscape of a country that was not ready for such a great war. She examines the impact of both physical and abstract ‘ruination’ in the makeup of the Confederate and Union regional attitudes and psyches. Nelson strength and weakness is her vast and diverse analysis of the ruin of the war. She employs a wide variety of sources including accounts from Northerners, Southerners, slaves, soldiers and civilians. Not only are her sources vast, the themes she studies are as well. She looks at environmental, domestic, urban and bodily destruction. Ultimately Nelson argues that the concept of ruination is a concept that had lasting effects well beyond the Civil War.

Before diving into her arguments, one must understand Nelson’s definition of ‘ruination.’ She first describes ruin as a “material whole that has violently broken into parts; enough of these parts must remain in situ, however, that the observer can recognize what they used to be” (2). In other words the ruin must have some semblance of its former self, at least enough to be recognizable. ‘Ruination’ in short, is the process of something becoming a ruin. In the scope of the Civil War, it was the change from the antebellum whole past, to the fragmented present of the war. Nelson argues that ruins, unlike anything else, capture this “moment of transformation from one time to another, from one material from to another” (3).

Before examining the Civil War, Nelson provides a useful history about American’s fascination with physical remnants of the past. Specifically she looks at the curiosity surrounding the excavated earthworks of the “Mound Builders” who resided in the Mississippi Valley (6). Even American’s before the war understood or at least felt the power that ruins could have on people’s emotions. They used these excavated sites as a way to build and strengthen their national identity at a time when that identity was clearly struggling. Archeologists argued that the mounds were evidence that North American was the “cradle of the human race” (7). Nelson analogizes these mounds to the Pantheon in Greece. It was proof for many Americans that they had a long and glorious past. Not all of this fascination was positive, some ruins of villages, silver mines and missions were sobering reminders of a boom-bust economy, failure in the Southwest and an increasingly weak American character. These two examples are very effective because they setup on of her basic arguments that the war and ‘ruination’ have dualistic power. They can both create and destroy. She shows the war in the framework of a process of destruction and reconstruction.

Nelson’s first chapter may be the most useful one in comparing it to our other readings. She analyzes the effect of urban destruction on not just the South, but the North as well. She points out that the creation of more effective military technologies and changes in federal attitudes towards civilians led to massive destruction in cities (10). Nelson seems more interested in the effect this had on the psyche of the cities inhabitants. This is an innovative approach we may have touched briefly on in class but not to this extent. When we look ant Environmental impact we tend to look at it from how humans impact the environment. We often forget that the environment can affect us as well. Nelson shows how the destruction of cities created discussion on the nature of modern warfare. The ‘ruination’ of cities was an equalizing force in many ways, blurring lines between soldiers and civilians, and giving all types of people the cause to express their fears about the war. For example, the first ruins of Hampton, Virginia prompted a national dialogue on ‘civilized warfare’ and what that term meant (11). Even destruction in the north created rom for discussion. The burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1864 created huge debates about the legitimacy of civilian retaliation and taking responsibility for the defense of your city (12).

Nelson then turns her focus from cities to the destruction of the home. She points out how women were inherently connected to the home in the South in the nineteenth century. This was the one place where women had tremendous influence as the moral guides for their children and the preserves of a sacred household. Therefore, the physical destruction of these homes represented a much greater ‘ruination’ of Southern culture that was deliberately done by Union soldiers (66). She shows how the war reconfigured women’s notion of the home through invasions into the sphere. The war redefined the Southern definitions of womanhood and domesticity (70). It destroyed the house physically but it also destroyed as a beacon of morality and escape.

Nelson does not just look at the white planter perspective who saw the union as a villainous, immoral enemy that invaded their most private spheres and threatened their Southern way of life. She looks at accounts from slaves who saw the destruction of the home as a destruction of oppression and as liberation (75). Along with the destruction of the houses came the destruction of the land they were on. Nelson points out that trees were targeted as resources for fuel or shelters (80). While this led to the ruin of many forests, Nelson argues that the ‘ruination’ of these landscapes represented the technological advancement of man. Again, ‘ruination’ deconstructed and reconstructed at the same time.

The most innovative part of this book is when Nelson examines the ‘ruination’ of the body during the war. The dismembered bodies gave visual proof of a new type of warfare and new types of technologies. Photography became more prominent and brought these morbid images to the public (164). She also engages in a discussion of rape during the war. It is difficult to study this subject, as most women would not tell anyone if they were assaulted. Women were not the only ones to feel that their bodies were under attack. Men suffered a massive crisis of masculinity during and after the war. As they returned home they found that their wives were more independent and not confined to the traditional home (170). Many men were injured as well and could not take care of their families like they were used to. Nelson discusses the difference between the permanent physical and emotional scars that emasculated a man versus the governments attempt to anoint soldiers as brave.

Nelson’s conclusion is the most ambitious and as a result, the most troublesome part of her book. The vastness of her research is matched in her conclusion. She argues that a fascination about ruins and historical objects, combined with a failure to confront the ruins of the Civil War developed “a tendency in American culture to consume rather than directly confront the past” (229). She then attempts to link this problem with the consumption-oriented commemoration process today. She cites the designs of the Oklahoma City and September 11^th memorials. While this link is thought provoking, it is a big jump to take. I don’t think Nelson provides enough historical evidence to show a direct link between these ideas. The massive jump in time is also problematic. However, in the end this book adds further ways to define the term environment that we have discussed in class. Environment can be a way of life. Southerners had their physical environments destroyed by the war, but also their physiological environment. Women were especially susceptible to this type of ‘ruination’ as they watched their sphere of influence be invaded and destroyed. Environment can have as great an effect on us as we can have on it.

March 17, 2014

War Upon the Man? – Nature’s Stance in the Civil War

I found that Brady’s War Upon the Land brought up some interesting concepts for us to consider both with respect to works we have read in weeks passed as well as the history of war and the environment in the United States. One concept that I enjoyed and found particularly effective for Brady was her development of nature as an actor. I thought Brady depicted this especially clearly when she presented the quotes of Captain Thaddeus Minshall stating that “nature and man are at war” (2). While we have previously discussed nature’s potential role in determining the course of American culture and society, this quote from Minshall gives nature both agency an orientation, and one directly opposed to the conquest of humans. With this in mind, I think Brady’s focus on the Civil War becomes a great point at which to start the conversation about war emerging between man and the environment.

As Brady mentions, although the wars of colonial America and the American Revolution housed conflict within North America, the Civil War was the first prolonged and large-scale series of battles to occur on American soil. This compounded with the technology that made the Civil War the first “modern” war in American history places this monograph at the beginning of an age where we see a shift in the way Americans interact within the environment – particularly as industrialization spread rampantly across the United States (4). Additionally by discussing environmental history in conjunction with military history, Brady is able to write a narrative that emphasizes the idea of nature and man as independent, but inherently linked agents. I think this is brought up effectively in Emily’s post where she juxtaposes Brady’s discussion of nature’s “power to shape human decisions” and how Union generals used their own northern ideas about improving, civilizing, and conquering nature in establishing a battle strategy against the Confederacy (emkrall).

Another piece of War Upon the Land that I appreciated was Brady’s use of the concept of “agroecosystems” or “domesticated ecosystems” (9). I think the most effective deployment of these agroecosystems was the ability to use them to highlight the differences between northern and southern farmers leading up to the Civil War. While southern lifestyle was dominated by plantation farms, most northern yeoman looked at their much smaller farmland with industrialist perspectives because the environment did not direct the culture of the North (18). I also think you see the clash between these two divergent environmental cultures in examples like the Union’s efforts to redirect the Mississippi River in the early years of the Civil War. Before finally being able to “embrace the hybrid nature of the river’s landscape,” General Grant’s Union soldiers unsuccessfully tried to turn the river twice, and as a result they suffered at the hands of diseases that plagued the mosquito-ridden region (48). It was not until northerners sought to understand the southern agroecosystem and “ally” with “their erstwhile nemesis, water” that the Union was able to use the southern environment for their own directives (41). Through this work, I think Brady was successful at establishing a framework for future historians to assess the ongoing cause and effect relationship between war and the environment as well as developing an effective frame in which to view nature as an actor in American history.

March 16, 2014

War on the Mississippi

In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady seeks to show us how much nature influenced Northern incursions on Southern soil during the Civil War. According to her, nature influenced Northern strategy in key regions a great deal. For this reason, she labels nature as an historical agent with the power to shape human decisions. She doesn’t go as far as Linda Nash in ascribing some sort of consciousness to nature, but she does manage to tie nature to both strategy and the war’s causes.

Manish’s point about the significance of perceptions of land usage and wilderness ties Lisa Brady’s argument to larger 19^th century ideas of progress and industry. These cultural ideas about nature informed the Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan’s strategic planning. This includes the idea that control over nature is possible through the application of science and technology. In this context, agriculture presents a means for improving or civilizing nature. And most important of all, despite these perceived powers over nature, controlling nature is difficult and liable to be undermined in an inexhaustible variety of ways. For example, despite all of the North’s successes in canal building over the course of the 19^th century, Sherman wrote of the Siege of Vicksburg, “The Mississippi River was very high and rising, and we began that system of canals on which we expended so much hard work fruitlessly” (43).

March 16, 2014

War Upon the Land and The Assumption that Man Can Control Nature

Nineteenth century Americans assumed that they could take control of nature and succeed in achieving their goals. In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady confronted this American assumption by studying the ways in which the Union military attempted to play around with natural forces in order to defeat the Confederates in the Civil War. What amounted in Union attempts, however, was often pure hubris and failure to control nature. Brady provides the reader with the example of Vicksburg, where Union soldiers intended to tunnel under it, control the Mississippi river, and cause its isolation for Confederate destruction. The Union soldiers did in fact take the stronghold, but by fighting a gruesome battle and not by controlling nature. Their attempt to, what Brady calls, “neutralize nature,” did not succeed in this example. (35)

This assumption that man could control nature is tied to another idea that Brady discusses in her work. In her introduction, Brady clarifies that to “improve” nature, meant essentially to “civilize.” (11) This idea echoes our past discussions in class about the relationship between Americans and the wilderness. It also reminds me of Richard Slotkin’s arguments about white supremacy, the belief that natives symbolized an embodiment of the malevolent force of nature, and that the white man could bring nature under his control. Like our conversations about Native Americans and the wilderness and white Americans’ perception of both, white Northern Americans in the Civil War attributed the institution of slavery to something uncivilized and wild. I found her argument about white Northerners looking down upon southerners as uncivilized folk and using that as justification for fighting such a bloody war to prove interesting. Just like Americans must conquer and civilize the wilderness, the North must conquer and civilize the South by demolishing its abhorrent institution of slavery.

Destroying the South’s backbone of life and commerce, essentially, led to the Confederate loss and, like Emily stated, ensured that the South could not return to its previous state before the war (135). Brady referred to it as destroying the “agroecological foundations” of the South. (23) When supplies had to be left behind, the military was forced to live off the land, further stripping the Confederates of their resources. Nature seemed to be working against the Union military in their attempts to starve and destroy the southern way of life. Mosquitoes carrying diseases wreaked havoc on Union soldiers and rivers flooded impeding Northern movement. It was as if nature was fighting back against an arrogant species that believed nature was easily and justifiably conquerable. I found Brady’s work to be an interesting and insightful take on the destruction of Sherman and the Shenandoah and Mississippi River campaigns. I thought her work was essentially an argument of how nature shaped human decisions and how those decisions greatly impacted the outcome of the war.

March 16, 2014

The Civil War and Three Armies

Lisa Brady’s work gives “life” to the most often thought of inanimate world of the physical environment. After reading her work, I think Brady suggests that a third army existed during the Civil War–the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Nature Army. In her post from last week, Chelsea Creta stated, “Myth and history are not mutually exclusive.” In reference to this weeks reading, humans and the physical environment are not mutually exclusive. The American Civil War was a turning point in which many Americans came to this conclusion.

Army officials and soldiers on both sides had to maneuver the land. They had to learn how to use it to their advantage, but they also had to combat it in order to carry out a plan of attack. Northern soldiers who fought in the South encountered terrain and soil unlike what they were accustomed to in the North. Southerns (soldiers and civilians) had to deal with the fact that both sides depleted their resources and that Southern lands experienced the brunt of attack during the war. All soldiers had to deal with disease and weather–both products of the physical environment. The environment had to deal with the soldiers and their destruction of the land.

In the end, while the North technically won the war, the Nature Army is the real winner. As a result of four years of battle, Americans broadened their ideas about nature and the manner in which the national government has the ability to protect the physical environment. Yes, Brady does not attempt to give nature a consciousness or intent, but it does have agency–human thought and action are determined by nature’s role. Nature has the ability to infiltrate individuals’ lives. Brady tells of those who used nature metaphors to explain their conditions and emotions. Others wrote detailed descriptions of their surrounding environment. Thus, humans experienced a closer connection to nature than ever before. Brady states, “That nature retained its beauty in the face of an ugly war seemed to bring solace to some” (135). Of course high-thinkers like poets and philosophers thought of these connections, but this was a defining moment for the everyday American and nature.

Class discussions continually lead back to an important question, “Who are the actors?” In the case of Lisa Brady’s work and the American Civil War, there are three actors, three armies, not two. Thus, nature is not some static force that works against us but rather us and nature work in tandem (or at least that is how it should be).

March 16, 2014

Ideas Have Consequences

After reading Lisa Brady’s War Upon the Land, it’s hard to believe this statue of William Tecumseh Sherman was installed in Central Park in 1903.

Aside from that, I think the blog posts so far show an interesting engagement with Brady’s definition of nature. Ian and Sean helpfully point out why it may be limiting to exclude humans from a definition of nature. I agree with them on a theoretical level. But on the practical level of writing and thinking about environmental history, it makes it easier if we define nature as Brady does: “the nonhuman physical environment in its constituent parts or as a larger whole” (13). But maybe easier isn’t better.

Brady’s notion of “landscape” is a helpful way to think about about how humans shape the environment. So much of Brady’s book deals with designing and manipulating nature that her idea of landscape as “shaped land, land modified for permanent human occupation, for dwelling, agriculture, manufacturing, government, worship, and for pleasure” is useful because it allows for human alteration and usage of the land as a reasonable, and not a negative, process (13).

Brady mentions the proliferation of weeds as one of the consequences of Union armies marching through the South (131). This mention of weeds reminded me of Crosby’s book, when he points out that weeds are among the first plants to populate an area after it has been destroyed. Those weeds make way for longer-lasting plants. This means that, perhaps if we take a larger view of the environmental consequences of the Civil War (as Crosby takes a very wide view of ecological history in his book), the results are less dismal. The combination of the destruction of the land and the dismantling of the institution of slavery, though, spelled doom for the Southern way of life and ensured that the South could not return to how it was before the war (134). Even taking a larger view of history could not help return the South to its previous agroecosystem.

I also appreciated how Brady depicted nature as a historical agent insofar as it has “power to shape human decisions” (6). Brady relied on nineteenth-century Northern ideas about nature as an entity that was able to be conquered, civilized, and improved. Those ideas were the driving force in the book. I think the ideas themselves, carried through by the agents of Union generals (many of whom were trained as engineers at West point) helped bring about the destruction of Southern landscapes. For Brady, these ideas had consequences in the hands of Union generals and their massive armies.

March 16, 2014

Nature: Whose Side Are You On?

I thought one of the most intriguing aspects of Lisa M. Brady’s War Upon the Land was her depiction of General Sherman’s famed march through Georgia and the Carolinas. Growing up I heard a lot about Sherman’s destructive march from Atlanta to Savannah, including many comparisons ending with “like Sherman went through Georgia.” That said, none of my classes ever delved beneath the surface of Sherman’s Civil War-defining march. I really enjoyed the varying eyewitness perspectives that Brady provided on Sherman’s march, including Union, Confederate, and civilian accounts of the destruction. I was not surprised that the Union and Confederate soldiers disagreed over the morality of Sherman’s tactics, but I was fascinated by Brady’s assertion that the morality dispute could be traced back to the Roman military in Britain in 84 AD (p. 127). In a sense, this dispute hinges largely on whether people are considered to exist in nature or separate from it–a discussion we have had several times already. If humans exist in nature, then the argument can be made that the destruction of the land is acceptable since, by extension, the land is associated with the people. If humans exist outside of nature, however, then attacking the land would seem to be the equivalent of assailing an innocent bystander. During our in-class discussions we have failed to reach a consensus on the relationship between humans and nature, and this may indicate why from the time of the Romans through the Civil War and even into the present day people still cannot agree on the morality of land destruction during war.

Wherever one sides on this issue, the regenerative power of nature cannot be denied. Even though many soldiers documented the destruction of the land in Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, immediately following the war many Southerners returned to their land and set to work restoring some resemblance of the agricultural order that existed before the war. Brady writes about Randolph Barton, who returned home to the Shenandoah Valley in 1865 and “his sword was turned into a pruning hook” (p. 133). The Confederates could not afford to dwell upon their defeat, as they relied upon the land for their livelihood. As a result, the land healed much quicker than most soldiers involved in the war ever imagined.

When reading Brady’s book, I agree with Manish that nature needs to be understood as its own person. Throughout her work, Brady details the importance of the landscape in terms of Confederate defenses at cities such as Vicksburg and Savannah. Likewise, Brady details the difficulties Sherman’s army faced traveling through South Carolina due to the many swamps and marshy areas. Furthermore, the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes during the hot summer months inflicted a great toll on the Union forces throughout the war. Because of the impact of nature on the Civil War, it is very helpful to think of nature as a third party in the war–one without a rooting interest. At different times during the war nature seemed to favor both the Union and the Confederacy, but it was really just an uninterested third party acting on whatever army it came into contact with.

March 16, 2014

Nature’s Role in Warfare

In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady looks at the way nature played an active role in the Civil War, both in how it drove strategy on both sides and was often a foe in its own ride to both the Union and Confederacy. She does this in tight, thorough analyses of nature’s role in four different theaters of the Civil War, with each getting its own chapter. For example, as Ian covers in his post, Brady spends a chapter detailing how a desire to control nature determined much of General William Sherman’s strategy in his famous March to the Sea, as well as the challenges brought on by natural agents such as disease and weather. In another chapter, Brady looks at how Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley, led by Philip Sheridan, ravaged the landscape of what Brady calls the “granary of the confederacy.” (73) The strategy originated from Ulysses S. Grant, who ordered that resources in the Shenandoah Valley such as crops, farms, and mills be destroyed in order to weaken the Confederacy. (78) Grant’s strategy paid off in 1864 when he gave control of the area’s forces to Philip Sheridan, a young general who agreed with Grant on the importance of destroying enemy resources in the region. Brady quotes Sheridan as saying that the resource rich territory of the Shenandoah Valley was “a factor of great importance,” showing that Sheridan’s strategy was directly influenced by the region’s natural features. (79) Finally, Brady also points out how ruthless Sheridan was in implementing his strategy, quoting him as saying that he wanted the area to remain a “barren waste” for as long as the war lasted, which of course meant continued hardship for Confederate civilians in the area. (80)

In my Ethics and Warfare class, we have spent some time debating strategies such as Grant and Sherman’s that destroy enemy resources in such a way that the the opposition’s civilians must suffer. We learned that military leaders and ethicists of the Civil War era generally accepted the idea that it was ethically acceptable for civilians of an opposing state to be made to feel the hardships of war, and that therefore such strategies were permissible. I believe that looking at these strategies with a focus toward nature and ecology adds another wrinkle to the moral debates regarding those strategies. In this class, we often look at our subjects of study asking the question of “is this natural” or “was this a natural occurrence.” Therefore, my question is would we consider strategies like enemy crop destruction natural, given that they are driven by an understanding of the importance that control over nature (in the form of agriculture) plays in military strategy. One could argue that it is therefore inevitable in military conflict that opposing forces will mar the landscape in ways to make it less useful for the enemy. However, does that sense of inevitability mean it is morally acceptable to destroy crops when doing so will clearly harm enemy non-combatants? I enjoyed the chapter on Sheridan, as well as Brady’s book as a whole, because it prompts these kinds of tough questions and provides an interesting look at how nature has affected into military history.

March 16, 2014

Nature as a separate entity in “War Upon the Land”

Lisa Brady provides a unique perspective on the Civil War with her environmental history War Upon the Land, as she effectively portrays the importance of the landscape during the Civil War as well as how both the Union and Confederacy approached the environment. However, while her argument is still convincing, I disagree with how she defines nature as a completely separate entity from human society. In her eyes (as Manish noted) nature no longer exists once altered by humans, and that once human’s affect nature it becomes an “agroecosystem.” Brady’s definition of nature doesn’t change her argument all too much, as the argument about the control of nature of the North and the coexistence of nature of the South are unaffected, yet as it pertains to this class, I can’t help but be thrown off by how she disregards humans as a part of nature.

As Manish wrote below, the different perceptions of wilderness were a key element to Brady’s work, and I agree with Manish’s assessment that the Union’s control over the landscape was a result of the industrialism in the North. I disagree that these attempted manipulations of the landscape were a bad thing, however, but instead believe that the North’s manipulation of nature was indicative of the changing landscape of the world and how human’s were playing a greater role within nature than they were previously. The South may have been in harmony with nature (if you consider them different entities), yet their society was reliant on the widespread production of products grown from the earth (tobacco, cotton, etc.) that were reliant on the archaic institution of slavery. Slavery is a part of human society, but as humans progressed and began realizing it was wrong in the 19^th century (evidenced by countries across Latin America abandoned the institution throughout the century, most of which abandoned it before the US), the rise of industrialism occurred at the same time. With the South’s coexisting with nature, as humans in rural society’s had done forever, they were also rooted in institutions like slavery. As humans began to make their mark on the environment with the growth of cities and technology, immoral institutions slowly have disbanded. I apologize as this paragraph has reached “rant status” so I’ll sum up my thoughts briefly: Brady seems to portray the South’s relationship with nature as a positive thing and the North’s approach to nature (and the toll it takes on the environment) as a negative, where I believe that humanity and nature go hand in hand, and as humans become more involved in nature, humanity has become more moral due to the greater communication and control of the landscape.

The Civil War was a battle between the developing North and the unchanging South, and the result of the war left the much of the Southern landscape in ruin. I believe that humanity is part of nature, and that the result of the war was just a further expansion of the urbanizing society. Brady’s work effectively pointed out how the landscape played a role in the War with the different sides, yet her portrayal and definition of nature still bothers me.

March 16, 2014

Lisa Brady’s War upon the Land is an excellent piece of environmental history which analyzes the various ways in which nature shaped the course of the Civil War, specifically when cast as the “enemy” of the Union Army. Brady notes from the start of her piece how another historian, Linda Nash, describes nature in a somewhat conscious manner, indicating that it has the power to shape human decisions (6). Throughout the piece, Brady references this idea through her analysis of military strategy, noting how the weather and environment of a region could significantly alter the army’s direction. One such instance of this is through her description of the Mississippi River as a great theatre for war. Due to the placement of the Mississippi within the confines of the United States and the importance of this waterway as a centerpiece for trade and travel, this area was destined to be a focal point which both armies lobbied to control (26). We see in this description how nature shaped the course of human action instead of humans themselves. As a result of this river being so important to trade and travel, the region for conflict was chosen by nature and not by military strategists. Though the leaders of both armies chose to attack/defend this region because of its importance, this was a predetermined decision based off the environment’s natural design.

Though the environment often shaped human decisions, Brady notes throughout the piece, but specifically in her chapter about Sherman’s March how actively humans fought to control it. In describing the tactics behind Sherman’s March, Brady states how its goal was to gain “control over the landscape,” specifically the natural aspects of the region (95). Yet, Brady also notes how nature was an incredibly hostile force towards either army, but specifically the Union forces in this situation. She notes how the “terrain, weather, and disease” were as threatening or more so than any force that Sherman’s army met on the field of battle (95). Through this perspective, Brady indicates two characteristics of nature and its relationship with humanity. First, like Nash did with her comments on nature shaping human decision, Brady places some human characteristics onto nature, as she casts it as an enemy to Sherman. Though not conscious like in Nash’s interpretation, Brady’s perspective describes nature as much more than a stagnant figure within human interactions.

Secondly, Brady indicates the power of nature against humanity, as she references it as stronger than any army Sherman faced. Nature’s ability to kill thousands with disease or disasters is significantly stronger than any bullet or cannon ball, as it remains an unrelenting force which cannot be killed. Brady references this seeming immortality of nature towards the end of her piece, which indicates humanity’s insignificant amount of power in relation to nature’s own. Quoting John Muir, Brady describes how even after all the natural devastation as a side-effect of war; nature continues to regenerate from the wastelands, thereby displaying its eternality (136-137). Though many people might argue that this does not happen today, we have noted in class how buildings are often taken over by nature within a few years, further indicating nature’s supremacy.

I completely agree with Manish’s points about nature being something beyond human control. As is clear through my previous comments about Sherman’s efforts to annihilate the southern landscape, no matter how much he destroyed, nature inevitably reclaimed its hold on the area, displaying its superiority to humanity. Though I agree with this definition, I believe it needs to be expanded to incorporate humans living in harmony with nature, as we have seen this theme exist in countless works this semester. Whether we agree with human ecological alteration or not, it is evident that humans have and will for the foreseeable future remain a part of the natural ecosystem of the world, indicating their place within it. As a result of this, though humans may not control nature, there exists a place within the “wilderness” for them to coexist with their surroundings, offering a different perspective than the more hierarchical relationship that Brady presents.