I will probably live to regret posting the following but here goes anyway.
There has been a lot posted on the Civil War on the Campfire lately. Some good, some bad, and a bunch that is really stupid and absurd.
In terms of a historical event there have been more barrels of ink and reams of paper spent on the War Between the States than almost any other single thing in American History.
Since I am an Historian by professional training I have thought I might post some on how you can develop a better understanding of the events surrounding the Civil War if you are interested in doing some work and digging on your own.
Be forewarned there is an absolute Himalayan mountain range amount of material to sift through. A few quick internet searches are not going to get you anything but mostly perplexed and disgusted. Forget finding a single cause for the war because there is NO single overriding cause. Nor will you find a consensus list of causes. The Civil War is simply too complex an event for that.
The first step I would suggest is to see how the Civil War fits into the continuum of history. To do this you are going to have to begin with a clear understanding of the events prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
To this end I would suggest using 1861 as a starting date and go back at least 50 years. Once there begin with a well done textbook on American History. I would recommend the following volume:
I will probably live to regret posting the following but here goes anyway.
There has been a lot posted on the Civil War on the Campfire lately. Some good, some bad, and a bunch that is really stupid and absurd.
In terms of a historical event there have been more barrels of ink and reams of paper spent on the War Between the States than almost any other single thing in American History.
Since I am an Historian by professional training I have thought I might post some on how you can develop a better understanding of the events surrounding the Civil War if you are interested in doing some work and digging on your own.
Be forewarned there is an absolute Himalayan mountain range amount of material to sift through. A few quick internet searches are not going to get you anything but mostly perplexed and disgusted. Forget finding a single cause for the war because there is NO single overriding cause. Nor will you find a consensus list of causes. The Civil War is simply too complex an event for that.
The first step I would suggest is to see how the Civil War fits into the continuum of history. To do this you are going to have to begin with a clear understanding of the events prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
To this end I would suggest using 1861 as a starting date and go back at least 50 years. Once there begin with a well done textbook on American History. I would recommend the following volume:
If war were to break out this weekend in the US, 150 years from now anyone looking for answers would need to look back about 50 years from now as well. So, good call. I bet you nailed it.
I recently picked up William R Trotters "Bushwackers" , "Silk Flags And Cold Steel" , "Ironclads And Columbiads". All of these are about the civil war in North Carolina.
I started with and have almost finished Bushwackers , the civil war in the NC mountains. It certainly shows a different perspective , that of the non slave holding common man.
Are you familiar with Trotter's work hbb ? , if so , what do you think of it ?
I recently picked up William R Trotters "Bushwackers" , "Silk Flags And Cold Steel" , "Ironclads And Columbiads". All of these are about the civil war in North Carolina.
I started with and have almost finished Bushwackers , the civil war in the NC mountains. It certainly shows a different perspective , that of the non slave holding common man.
Are you familiar with Trotter's work hbb ? , if so , what do you think of it ?
Mike
I have read some of Trotter's work and its pretty good.
The stuff that takes in the common man's perspective is usually very informative.
all of this means nothing when they take it out of the history books and say it never happened. i say we hurry up and do the same thing with obama.
No, it is up to US to insure that history is not lost, that the truth remains out there, and that WE educate our children, grandchildren, and any others we can.
After you work through the Tindall and Shi history book up to 1861 its time to move on to different sources. Oh, you should probably have at a minimum of 100 pages of typewritten or 200- 250 pages of hand written reading notes if you're doing the historian thing.
Now, that you have laid the foundation (you might want to think of being an Historian as partially the process of layering up a cake or a brick wall) its time to start building upon it.
First, attack as much primary source material as you can lay hand on. Remember that these sources will likely be localized or regionalized.
I would recommend starting with the newspapers dating back to at least 1835 if possible. Many towns did not have a paper in those days so concentrate in general terms on the bigger cities.
I would try to get at least two from North, South, and West.
Say the Boston and/or NYC papers. Baltimore and Richmond. Atlanta and New Orleans. St.Louis and Kansas City, etc.
The majority of these papers are available on microfilm and can be accessed via the Inter-library Loan system at public libraries, or community college and university libraries. For the most part librarians at the collegiate libraries are really happy to help and help you learn to use a microfilm reader.
Hitting the newspapers will let you see what and how people were thinking about things. Look especially for articles and editorials and letters to the editor dealing with slavery, sectionalism, and new states entering the union. Look at the advertisements for things such as land sales, cotton markets, slave auction, etc. to inform you on the thinking of people.
By the end of the newspapers you should have another 250-400 pages of notes and or copies of newspaper articles.
all of this means nothing when they take it out of the history books and say it never happened. i say we hurry up and do the same thing with obama.
No, it is up to US to insure that history is not lost, that the truth remains out there, and that WE educate our children, grandchildren, and any others we can.
The gov't has its agenda; we must have our own.
This is exactly what must be done. The better we all understand the hows and whys of history and pass that understanding along the more we can limit the grip of the goobermint.
HBB, I know that you teach at the university level. Given the current slant toward everything being PC and the academic slide to everything left and progressive, can you even teach history as it really happened today?
Or are you obligated to teach a whitewashed version that never happened so as to never offend anyone?
HBB, I know that you teach at the university level. Given the current slant toward everything being PC and the academic slide to everything left and progressive, can you even teach history as it really happened today?
Or are you obligated to teach a whitewashed version that never happened so as to never offend anyone?
Before a state budget cut eliminated my position and put me out of a job, I taught real History. No whitewash and NO PC BS.
I made a BUNCH of people mad because I wouldn't get on the Liberal Train but academic freedom reigned.
HBB, I know that you teach at the university level. Given the current slant toward everything being PC and the academic slide to everything left and progressive, can you even teach history as it really happened today?
Or are you obligated to teach a mulattowashed version that never happened so as to never offend anyone?
HBB, I know that you teach at the university level. Given the current slant toward everything being PC and the academic slide to everything left and progressive, can you even teach history as it really happened today?
Or are you obligated to teach a mulattowashed version that never happened so as to never offend anyone?
not civil war....but indirectly related and interesting
ROMMEL AND THE REBEL
By Lawrence Wells. 415 pp. New York: Doubleday & Company. $17.95.
FIVE German Army officers, traveling under assumed names, arrive in New York in June 1937, on their way to Oxford, Miss., where an R.O.T.C. professor of tactics at the University of Mississippi is to explain to them the fighting methods of the Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. German officers openly visited United States military sites and even attended American military schools before the war, but in his novel, ''Rommel and the Rebel,'' Lawrence Wells packs this delegation with three future field marshals: Erwin Rommel, who would become ''the desert fox''; Walter Model, who succeeded von Rundstedt as the commander in chief in the west; and Ferdinand Schorner, later to head three different army groups in Russia.
To serve as translator the R.O.T.C. professor has summoned the young Lieut. Speigner, an ''Ole Miss'' graduate in German studies, now collecting information on future German commanders in an obscure office in the War Department. He already has a complete dossier on Rommel in his files.
Sometimes a historical novelist will invent improbabilities when an exploitation of the actual facts might serve him well. For example, in this novel the German attache, General Boetticher, might have suggested that before the officers left Berlin they call on a brilliant American major who was then a student at the German War College. The major might have invited them to stop in Washington to see his father-in-law, chief of the war plans division. They might also have paid their respects in Berlin to the American military attache, later an intelligence expert on the German Army. The young Major Wedemeyer, then in school in Berlin, was to help develop the cross-Channel attack plans, which were Rommel's undoing at Normandy. The historical possibilities abound.
In ''Rommel and the Rebel,'' Mr. Wells wants to write about the potential influence of General Forrest's way of fighting on Rommel's tactics. He makes Lieut. Speigner the one Allied officer who can predict Rommel's actions.
In New York Rommel escapes from his group to see a baseball game, to chat with a Harlem streetwalker by using his pocket dictionary; he outwits three muggers in Central Park. Watching a re-enactment of the battle of Gettysburg, Rommel climbs Little Round Top as if he were a combatant. In Washington he makes a late-night visit to the Lincoln Memorial, where a young black boy helps him translate the Gettysburg Address.
In Mississippi, after the Germans have retraced the fighting at Brices Cross Roads, Rommel meets William Faulkner at a party. Faulkner drags him away for a midnight game of tennis and an introduction to sipping whisky. They set out in Faulkner's car in the middle of the night for Shiloh, the young lieutenant as a fly on the wall while the novelist expatiates on Forrest's spirit and also guesses that the pseudonymous ''Mr. Rilke'' is really Rommel.
The half of the novel that takes place in the States is discursive and reverential toward Rommel. What he is thinking is related as well as what he does, and there are long harangues by various characters on Civil War battles and on Forrest. THE writing becomes more active in the second half of the book, which jumps four years to the Western Desert in Egypt. The British, threatened by the desert fox, discover Lieut. Speigner and his special knowledge about Rommel. Once near the fighting, Speigner gets involved, even though the United States is not yet in the war. After the American entry, the lieutenant persuades an Australian pilot to fly him over the German lines. The plane crashes and Speigner is captured personally by Rommel, then frees himself and takes the field marshal captive; the arrival of German forces saves Rommel for the battles at Alamein and Normandy, and sends Speigner to a prison camp. In the fall of 1944, in the camp, Speigner sees a movie of the splendid state funeral given Rommel, who had cheated the hangman by agreeing to take poison as punishment for his part in an attempt on Hitler's life.
Mr. Wells draws on well-known secondary sources for his accounts of Rommel and Forrest. The editor of a book on Faulkner and a resident of Oxford, Miss., he makes the brief appearance of the novelist the most interesting part of his book. The snippets on Gettysburg, Brices Cross Roads, Shiloh, and especially the lively action in the Western Desert, have a strong cinematic appeal. The idea that Forrest's tactics surfaced again in World War II makes fascinating reading even if Rommel never made it to Mississippi. [/u][u]
HBB what do you think of rush limbaughs books for kids...the Rush Revere series? anything like that thats better?
From what I have seen Rush does a good job.
One thing that is great for kids is an animated cartoon series called History's Kids that PBS/CBS did. Its a bit PC but not too bad and they get the history stuff right for the most part.
not civil war....but indirectly related and interesting
ROMMEL AND THE REBEL
By Lawrence Wells. 415 pp. New York: Doubleday & Company. $17.95.
FIVE German Army officers, traveling under assumed names, arrive in New York in June 1937, on their way to Oxford, Miss., where an R.O.T.C. professor of tactics at the University of Mississippi is to explain to them the fighting methods of the Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. German officers openly visited United States military sites and even attended American military schools before the war, but in his novel, ''Rommel and the Rebel,'' Lawrence Wells packs this delegation with three future field marshals: Erwin Rommel, who would become ''the desert fox''; Walter Model, who succeeded von Rundstedt as the commander in chief in the west; and Ferdinand Schorner, later to head three different army groups in Russia.
To serve as translator the R.O.T.C. professor has summoned the young Lieut. Speigner, an ''Ole Miss'' graduate in German studies, now collecting information on future German commanders in an obscure office in the War Department. He already has a complete dossier on Rommel in his files.
Sometimes a historical novelist will invent improbabilities when an exploitation of the actual facts might serve him well. For example, in this novel the German attache, General Boetticher, might have suggested that before the officers left Berlin they call on a brilliant American major who was then a student at the German War College. The major might have invited them to stop in Washington to see his father-in-law, chief of the war plans division. They might also have paid their respects in Berlin to the American military attache, later an intelligence expert on the German Army. The young Major Wedemeyer, then in school in Berlin, was to help develop the cross-Channel attack plans, which were Rommel's undoing at Normandy. The historical possibilities abound.
In ''Rommel and the Rebel,'' Mr. Wells wants to write about the potential influence of General Forrest's way of fighting on Rommel's tactics. He makes Lieut. Speigner the one Allied officer who can predict Rommel's actions.
In New York Rommel escapes from his group to see a baseball game, to chat with a Harlem streetwalker by using his pocket dictionary; he outwits three muggers in Central Park. Watching a re-enactment of the battle of Gettysburg, Rommel climbs Little Round Top as if he were a combatant. In Washington he makes a late-night visit to the Lincoln Memorial, where a young black boy helps him translate the Gettysburg Address.
In Mississippi, after the Germans have retraced the fighting at Brices Cross Roads, Rommel meets William Faulkner at a party. Faulkner drags him away for a midnight game of tennis and an introduction to sipping whisky. They set out in Faulkner's car in the middle of the night for Shiloh, the young lieutenant as a fly on the wall while the novelist expatiates on Forrest's spirit and also guesses that the pseudonymous ''Mr. Rilke'' is really Rommel.
The half of the novel that takes place in the States is discursive and reverential toward Rommel. What he is thinking is related as well as what he does, and there are long harangues by various characters on Civil War battles and on Forrest. THE writing becomes more active in the second half of the book, which jumps four years to the Western Desert in Egypt. The British, threatened by the desert fox, discover Lieut. Speigner and his special knowledge about Rommel. Once near the fighting, Speigner gets involved, even though the United States is not yet in the war. After the American entry, the lieutenant persuades an Australian pilot to fly him over the German lines. The plane crashes and Speigner is captured personally by Rommel, then frees himself and takes the field marshal captive; the arrival of German forces saves Rommel for the battles at Alamein and Normandy, and sends Speigner to a prison camp. In the fall of 1944, in the camp, Speigner sees a movie of the splendid state funeral given Rommel, who had cheated the hangman by agreeing to take poison as punishment for his part in an attempt on Hitler's life.
Mr. Wells draws on well-known secondary sources for his accounts of Rommel and Forrest. The editor of a book on Faulkner and a resident of Oxford, Miss., he makes the brief appearance of the novelist the most interesting part of his book. The snippets on Gettysburg, Brices Cross Roads, Shiloh, and especially the lively action in the Western Desert, have a strong cinematic appeal. The idea that Forrest's tactics surfaced again in World War II makes fascinating reading even if Rommel never made it to Mississippi. [/u][u]
A part of my family tree authored the the Wilmot Proviso that was put forth in the House in 1846.
Do you have any notes, journals, or diaries from their work? If so, your are in high cotton with primary sources.
No notes, journals, or diaries, but Wiki says the handwritten draft of the Wilmot Proviso is in the Library of Congress. It was drafted by Jacob Brinkerhoff and introduced by David Wilmot.
Just to be clear, I am not a direct descendant of Jacob Brinkerhoff, but rather a descendant of Jacob Brinkerhoff's grandfather or great grandfather. I would need to do a little more research to find out for sure how we are related.
Searching Google books brings up this reference, page 234. An interesting few pages of reading.
In my opinion, the seeds of the Civil War were planted during the Constitution Convention when slavery and the slave trade were left hanging. The delegates felt they had to so that they could end up with a constitution at all. My belief is that since slavery seemed to be dying, the Founding Fathers though it would die out and cease to be an issue. The invention of the cotton gin and the addition of western lands refueled the growth of slavery. The issue became too toxic for either side to compromise. There were plenty of wrongs on both sides and we are still arguing them 150 years later.
A part of my family tree authored the the Wilmot Proviso that was put forth in the House in 1846.
Do you have any notes, journals, or diaries from their work? If so, your are in high cotton with primary sources.
No notes, journals, or diaries, but Wiki says the handwritten draft of the Wilmot Proviso is in the Library of Congress. It was drafted by Jacob Brinkerhoff and introduced by David Wilmot.
Just to be clear, I am not a direct descendant of Jacob Brinkerhoff, but rather a descendant of Jacob Brinkerhoff's grandfather or great grandfather. I would need to do a little more research to find out for sure how we are related.
Searching Google books brings up this reference, page 234. An interesting few pages of reading.
In my opinion, the seeds of the Civil War were planted during the Constitution Convention when slavery and the slave trade were left hanging. The delegates felt they had to so that they could end up with a constitution at all. My belief is that since slavery seemed to be dying, the Founding Fathers though it would die out and cease to be an issue. The invention of the cotton gin and the addition of western lands refueled the growth of slavery. The issue became too toxic for either side to compromise. There were plenty of wrongs on both sides and we are still arguing them 150 years later.
And... key thing to understand is there is no one reason for the Civil War. The reasons varied from person to person and from state to state.
Most northerners weren't fighting and dying to free the slaves, no more than most southerners were fighting to keep their slaves - since most southerners didn't have any.
But slavery sat there behind everything, being the core catalyst for pretty much the entire thing.
And... key thing to understand is there is no one reason for the Civil War. The reasons varied from person to person and from state to state.
Most northerners weren't fighting and dying to free the slaves, no more than most southerners were fighting to keep their slaves - since most southerners didn't have any.
But slavery sat there behind everything, being the core catalyst for pretty much the entire thing.
And, here we go.
HBB, I suspect your suspicion will be proven right, and it only took just over three pages for it to start.
And... key thing to understand is there is no one reason for the Civil War. The reasons varied from person to person and from state to state.
Most northerners weren't fighting and dying to free the slaves, no more than most southerners were fighting to keep their slaves - since most southerners didn't have any.
But slavery sat there behind everything, being the core catalyst for pretty much the entire thing.
And, here we go.
HBB, I suspect your suspicion will be proven right, and it only took just over three pages for it to start.
And... key thing to understand is there is no one reason for the Civil War. The reasons varied from person to person and from state to state.
Most northerners weren't fighting and dying to free the slaves, no more than most southerners were fighting to keep their slaves - since most southerners didn't have any.
But slavery sat there behind everything, being the core catalyst for pretty much the entire thing.
Once you get through the newspapers its time to move on to the other primary sources associated with the war. The sky is the limit here. Court cases, Articles of Session, State Constitutions, the Confederate Constitution, Executive Orders et al. Pick some and have at it. Read carefully and take copious notes.
Next, start looking at the writings/memoirs of key participants in the war. There are a bunch to choose from. It will give a good perspective.
It is important to remember here that many of these books will be written in 19th century style prose which is usually much more wordy and flowery than modern English. Some, like me, love it. Others hate it.
Not trying to start anything, sorry if this pushes off the path you're wanting to head down.
My primary goal here is mainly just to highlight how to do your own research and the work of an Historian not come to any great conclusions. If one goes through the process and thinks a clearer picture will develop.
A lot of modern day Sons of Confederate Veterans would be in for a shock if they could actually talk to their ancestor "Private Johnny Reb"
This was after all the 1860's , a lot of Private Johnny Rebs were subsistence farmers , owned no slaves , didn't care about the politics of the time & sure as hell didn't want to leave their farms to go off & fight in some war.
For Johnny to go off & fight meant that he left his wife & children on a hardscrabble farm that they could not work , with starvation a real possibility.
Johnny had no illusions about fighting for someone else's "noble cause" but he was faced with a couple not so good choices. 1. Go to war & leave the family to their own devices. 2. Stay home & be hunted by several different factions.
It amazes me that some of the young modern day Sheltons fly the Confederate flag considering what happened to their ancestors at the hands of Confederate soldiers in Shelton Laurel NC
A lot of modern day Sons of Confederate Veterans would be in for a shock if they could actually talk to their ancestor "Private Johnny Reb"
This was after all the 1860's , a lot of Private Johnny Rebs were subsistence farmers , owned no slaves , didn't care about the politics of the time & sure as hell didn't want to leave their farms to go off & fight in some war.
For Johnny to go off & fight meant that he left his wife & children on a hardscrabble farm that they could not work , with starvation a real possibility.
Johnny had no illusions about fighting for someone else's "noble cause" but he was faced with a couple not so good choices. 1. Go to war & leave the family to their own devices. 2. Stay home & be hunted by several different factions.
It amazes me that some of the young modern day Sheltons fly the Confederate flag considering what happened to their ancestors at the hands of Confederate soldiers in Shelton Laurel NC
Mike
That was a real problem especially in the mountains.
Robert E. Lee understood the purpose of the Civil War better than anyone. I just found this quote by him today and it struck such a chord that I had to make it my tagline. Nostradamus had nothing on Robert E. Lee when it came to foretelling future events.
The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.
It was Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. TR 's pappy. He hired the surrogate to maintain domestic bliss. His wife "Mittie" was from the prominent Bulloch family from Roswell, GA and her brothers fought for the Confederacy. One was killed in combat.
In an interview years later TR described his mother as "a lovely southern woman ....who was Unreconstructed until her dying day."
Many sources say that "Mittie" Bulloch Roosevelt was who the character of Scarlett O'Hara was based on
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. served as the Allotment Commissioner for NY which was essentially a man who sold Union soldiers a form of a life insurance plan with the premiums paid by what we would call a payroll deduction today.
His mother in law also lived with the Roosevelts during the Civil War and being a good southern woman of Scottish extraction, Mother Bulloch had her own still for making whiskey and knitted socks for care packages she sent to Confederate soldiers back home in GA.
Here is a superb look, one the best History books ever written really, at TR's early life and his family done by David McCullough:
... The first step I would suggest is to see how the Civil War fits into the continuum of history. To do this you are going to have to begin with a clear understanding of the events prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
To this end I would suggest using 1861 as a starting date and go back at least 50 years....
HBB,
I don't disagree with your methodology if your intent is to raise awareness or knowledge among academics.
I think to help the general public understand what they think and feel about the Civil War, the most important 50 years is the last 50 years, and how the symbols of the civil War have been used to influence and manipulate peoples emotions for political or financial gain.
Whether Senator X caned Senator Y and when, and whatfor, probably doesn't amount to a hill of beans to a person of 30, 40 or 50 years old today.
It's what Daddy told them, or GrandPappy told them, and understanding where and why GrandPappy heard it, and repeated it is most important.
I have a substantial knowledge of WWII, a medium knowledge of Vietnam, and have only read a few books (Killer Angels stands out) on the War Against the States. While I've seen several of the battlefields, I wouldn't add much.
I want to take time and learn about it as it seems to be the focal point of the talking head media/government right now.
... The first step I would suggest is to see how the Civil War fits into the continuum of history. To do this you are going to have to begin with a clear understanding of the events prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
To this end I would suggest using 1861 as a starting date and go back at least 50 years....
HBB,
I don't disagree with your methodology if your intent is to raise awareness or knowledge among academics.
I think to help the general public understand what they think and feel about the Civil War, the most important 50 years is the last 50 years, and how the symbols of the civil War have been used to influence and manipulate peoples emotions for political or financial gain.
Whether Senator X caned Senator Y and when, and whatfor, probably doesn't amount to a hill of beans to a person of 30, 40 or 50 years old today.
It's what Daddy told them, or GrandPappy told them, and understanding where and why GrandPappy heard it, and repeated it is most important.
YMMV,
Sycamore
If you are going to open the eyes of these people they will have to know what really happened and just how complex it was.
If they go back and do their own research and see for themselves and can think at all they will be able to see beyond all that has happened in the last 50 years.
If they can't get to that understanding themselves they will never listen to a fat, old Historian like me.
The study and synthesis of History can be a tough job and its not tied to videos and cell phones which makes it even tougher for the current generation. That is why the knotheads in the public schools are either rewriting or just avoiding History altogether and the far Left is making so much hay.
I have a substantial knowledge of WWII, a medium knowledge of Vietnam, and have only read a few books (Killer Angels stands out) on the War Against the States. While I've seen several of the battlefields, I wouldn't add much.
I want to take time and learn about it as it seems to be the focal point of the talking head media/government right now.
Killer Angels is a good book. Ask questions and add what you can. Every little bit helps a thread like this.
hillbillybear; Good evening to you sir and thanks so much for the very interesting thread.
Hopefully it's OK for me as a northern neighbor to express an interest in another country's history - but then as a historian you likely know that somewhere around 40000 Canucks or folks from what was soon to be Canada went south to fight for both sides.
There were also something like 12000 from the states who crossed north to avoid the draft so I read.
Lastly, there's strong evidence that the War Between the States was a major catalyst to the formation of Canada itself so it's always been of interest to me personally.
On another personal note my wife's great grandfather fought in it and is buried in Minnesota.
Anyway sir, thanks for the reading list and methodology involved I appreciate you taking the time. All the best to you and yours this summer.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereignty of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
A book I enjoyed was the account written by Sir Arthur J L Fremantle and how he got from Mexico to the field at Gettysburg. Then Back to Great Britain.
hillbillybear; Good evening to you sir and thanks so much for the very interesting thread.
Hopefully it's OK for me as a northern neighbor to express an interest in another country's history - but then as a historian you likely know that somewhere around 40000 Canucks or folks from what was soon to be Canada went south to fight for both sides.
There were also something like 12000 from the states who crossed north to avoid the draft so I read.
Lastly, there's strong evidence that the War Between the States was a major catalyst to the formation of Canada itself so it's always been of interest to me personally.
On another personal note my wife's great grandfather fought in it and is buried in Minnesota.
Anyway sir, thanks for the reading list and methodology involved I appreciate you taking the time. All the best to you and yours this summer.
Dwayne
Glad you joined us. That is great information on the Canadian side, Hope all is well in the north Country.
A book I enjoyed was the account written by Sir Arthur J L Fremantle and how he got from Mexico to the field at Gettysburg. Then Back to Great Britain.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereignty of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
The Marxists are doing their best to hang us and we are helping to knot the rope.
A book I enjoyed was the account written by Sir Arthur J L Fremantle and how he got from Mexico to the field at Gettysburg. Then Back to Great Britain.
That is an outstanding book.
His serendipitous meeting with an aged Sam Houston on the coach made for a good story!
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereignty of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
The Marxists are doing their best to hang us and we are helping to knot the rope.
Well,....once a central power took hold of America, it was just a matter of time.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereigntny of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
The Marxists are doing their best to hang us and we are helping to knot the rope.
Brother, you are not kidding! They, never, ever disengage, either.
It's a day-to-day observation by Chestnut, whose husband, James Chestnut, was a well known, influential politician, very high up in the Confederate Administration. Mary and James knew many of the very heavy hitters, including high level generals and colonels, southern senators, congressmen, governors, etc. She noted from her perspective the beginning of the War, its horrendous course, and its tragic ending.
It's a very interesting read of the era, from the perspective of one who was there.
I will take your suggested reading material and hope to read it before I get cslled. I am now reading a most interesting book by Orlando Figes, "A Peoples Tragedy - The Russian Revolution 1891 - 1924. I will be looking for parallels to our Civil War which predates their conflagration and our current situation USA 2015. Looking back from FDR to Obozo.
I haven't read all of the replies on this thread. At 80 years my attention span is short.
I lived in Wisconsin for 69 years near Madison (the liberal capital of the world). I have the greatest respect for the South and for the cause they fought so valiantly for. My great-grandfather served in the Wisconsin Regiment so I believe I have some voice here.
The Civil War was not about slavery but State's Rights and Lincoln's ego. No president ever cost so many patriotic American lives - North and South. v
In a succinct & elegantly simple way, this is about as close as a simple explanation of the Civil War as I've ever seen.......especially the comment about Lincoln's ego, what a POS he was.
Robert E. Lee understood the purpose of the Civil War better than anyone. I just found this quote by him today and it struck such a chord that I had to make it my tagline. Nostradamus had nothing on Robert E. Lee when it came to foretelling future events.
The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.
So if the South was all about reduction of federal power and increase of state's rights, how does that reconcile with the South using federal power for decades to push the federal Fugitive Slave Act onto the North, threatening anybody who even fed a SUSPECTED runaway with a year in jail and $1000 fine? Using the federal gov't to refuse to allow free blacks in the North to even be allowed to testify in court about whether they were runaway or free?
Interesting to me is that the largest increase in the use of jury nullification was Northerners refusing to convict people violating the immoral and unConstitutional Fugitive Slave Act.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereigntny of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
The Marxists are doing their best to hang us and we are helping to knot the rope.
Brother, you are not kidding! They, never, ever disengage, either.
It's a day-to-day observation by Chestnut, whose husband, James Chestnut, was a well known, influential politician, very high up in the Confederate Administration. Mary and James knew many of the very heavy hitters, including high level generals and colonels, southern senators, congressmen, governors, etc. She noted from her perspective the beginning of the War, its horrendous course, and its tragic ending.
It's a very interesting read of the era, from the perspective of one who was there.
So if the South was all about reduction of federal power and increase of state's rights, how does that reconcile with the South using federal power for decades to push the federal Fugitive Slave Act onto the North, threatening anybody who even fed a SUSPECTED runaway with a year in jail and $1000 fine? Using the federal gov't to refuse to allow free blacks in the North to even be allowed to testify in court about whether they were runaway or free?
Interesting to me is that the largest increase in the use of jury nullification was Northerners refusing to convict people violating the immoral and unConstitutional Fugitive Slave Act.
Have you ever looked at this issue in this way?
First,leave the morality of slavery aside. I do not and nobody I know will argue that it is not a blight on the soul of humanity. It has been a terrible evil since slavery was first conceived all those long millennia ago but to better understand the times of the pre- Civil War period this larger slavery question must be set aside.
It was much more an economic issue than a state's rights issue at this juncture.
At the time slavery was legal in the United States and it was a business proposition. Slaves were viewed as personal property.
Large southern slaveholders had huge amounts of their money invested in the slaves. A runaway slave represented a major business loss. As the abolition movement gained steam the large slave owners came under increasingly more pressure and their fiscal losses mounted.
Thus, they wanted a harsh enforcement of a fugitive slave law to protect their interests and dissuade abolitionist intervention.
This harshness in turn led to the jury nullification in the North.
While I well understand that everyone here recognises the almost incomprehensible evil that was slavery, and no-one here would fight to defend it, there's a reason that this institution divided the whole country since our nation's very inception like no other and it is inaccurate to "set aside" the morality of it.
To suggest that the morality of slavery had no effect would be like suggesting North and South would have split in a reality where slavery did not exist (or was universal) and the South allowed only oxen whereas the North had no restriction. The nation then dividing into those defining themselves as "Oxen States" versus "Free States".
The South then becoming increasingly alarmed because only "Free States" would be formed from territories in the future, making a federally-imposed lifting of Southern "ox-only" laws across the South as inevitable.
Was an enormous amount of capital tied up in slaves? Sure, practically all of it in many areas, but if wealthy Southerners were known instead merely for their expensive draft animals and farm equipment, their would have been no issue.
To argue otherwise suggests that the collective North philosophically WELCOMED the loss of State's rights and the rise of an overbearing central government.
"To argue otherwise suggests that the collective North philosophically WELCOMED the loss of State's rights and the rise of an overbearing central government."
A pretty apt description of the collective North today, won't you agree?
"Large southern slaveholders had huge amounts of their money invested in the slaves. A runaway slave represented a major business loss. As the abolition movement gained steam the large slave owners came under increasingly more pressure and their fiscal losses mounted."
That would be similar to Kansas deciding that the cattle driven up from Texas were wildlife and should be set free.
Seems the North did not have much problem with slaves, as long as they had the market for them. Once they lost that, their morals kicked in. miles
..and a cautionary tale in that for all of us for sure; what evils we have the ability to rationalize.
Anyhow, glimpse of the big picture, just because its flat interesting....
For us Texian reenactors the rise of cotton production after the invention of the cotton gin presents a number of practical clothing/equipment issues, mostly cotton vs. linen.
Wool, being both durable and good insulation of course remained in use throughout, even in warm climates. For woven cloth, linen was the common up until the 19th Century, and if ya ain't gonna try to iron it, still IS far superior to cotton IMHO.
Enter the invention of the steam-driven textile mill and the worldwide demand for cotton takes off, cotton fabric produced so abundantly and cheaply in conjunction with the burgeoning scale of cotton production in the Old South such that you could load finished cotton fabric on wagons, haul it clear across the Santa Fe Trail and STILL sell it at a profit in Mexico, were they actually grew cotton.
During the Seminole War the War Department conducted trials of linen vs. cotton canvas for tents and wagon covers and concluded that, while linen was superior in every respect, by then cotton production had increased to the point that cotton was far cheaper.
IIRC where lined canvas held out the longest was on sailing ships, where they took the durability of their fabrics very seriously.
...anyhow, back to the main issue.
One group who certainly did NOT rationalize slavery were our Texas Hill Country Germans who, though in close contact with slavery, would as a group not use slaves on principle. Today THEY remember their old folks telling bitter tales of the "hangenkader" (sp?? hanging squads).
For those interested in Texas History, a fine read....
While I well understand that everyone here recognises the almost incomprehensible evil that was slavery, and no-one here would fight to defend it, there's a reason that this institution divided the whole country since our nation's very inception like no other and it is inaccurate to "set aside" the morality of it.
To suggest that the morality of slavery had no effect would be like suggesting North and South would have split in a reality where slavery did not exist (or was universal) and the South allowed only oxen whereas the North had no restriction. The nation then dividing into those defining themselves as "Oxen States" versus "Free States".
The South then becoming increasingly alarmed because only "Free States" would be formed from territories in the future, making a federally-imposed lifting of Southern "ox-only" laws across the South as inevitable.
Was an enormous amount of capital tied up in slaves? Sure, practically all of it in many areas, but if wealthy Southerners were known instead merely for their expensive draft animals and farm equipment, their would have been no issue.
To argue otherwise suggests that the collective North philosophically WELCOMED the loss of State's rights and the rise of an overbearing central government.
Birdwatcher
To someone like yourself who is so firmly convinced that Slavery was THE cause of the Civil War despite a mountain of evidence from a multitude of sources to the contrary makes discussion and consideration with you a moot point and a fruitless endeavor.
hat would be similar to Kansas deciding that the cattle driven up from Texas were wildlife and should be set free.
We all agree that a slave represented an enormously valuable commodity, and big bucks could equally well be had capturing runaways and selling them South.
Yet, this does not seem to have been common practice in the North, even adjacent to slave holding States. And Northern juries, as mentioned, simply ignored the law when it came to returning runaways.
On this general topic, one of the proudest incidents in that whole war, when the residents of Greencastle, Pa., south and west of Gettysburg, collectively flipped the bird at the Army of Northern Virginia, risking their lives over the issue of the local Free Blacks.
The ANV comes down through history largely un-tainted, and rightfully so. But when they went into Pennsylvania elements of their cavalry acted as slave-catchers, free-born and runaway alike....
For now, all that Jenkins was concerned with was removing the fifty or so black women and children out of Chambersburg. Before being transported south, they kept them in Greencastle.
When they were brought into the town, they were lightly guarded. Only a chaplain and four soldiers oversaw the wagons. A number of conscientious residents, perhaps even the Lincoln-man who was called an “abolitionist” by Jenkins the previous day, make a charge at the guards. They quickly disarmed them and took them to the jail. All of the black prisoners were freed.
It didn’t take long for Jenkins to catch wind of this bit of direct action (though it might have been the following day). He demanded $50,000 to compensate him for the people he was trying to kidnap, claiming they were his own property. The town council of Greencastle refused to pay him, and he threatened to burn down the town in retaliation.
Fourteen of the freed blacks approached the town council and offered to give themselves up to Jenkins to spare the town, but the council refused. Jenkins’ mind, however, was quickly brought to other fronts on the following day and never came back to Greencastle.
When passing though going north, I often stop in at Greencastle when I can....
Aside from the fact that family quarrels seem to be the most horrific, I've always felt that in most conflicts, technology always trumps tactics. Seems the military always goes into a conflict prepared ( more or less) to fight the last conflict they were in.
To someone like yourself who is so firmly convinced that Slavery was THE cause of the Civil War despite a mountain of evidence from a multitude of sources to the contrary makes discussion and consideration with you a moot point and a fruitless endeavor.
Sir, given the magnitude of cotton production by 1860, the enormous acreage devoted to it, and the iron grip the wealthy Planter minority had long had on almost all public policy decisions in the South, one cannot "disregard the morality of slavery" for a moment and "focus on the economic forces".
In the Antebellum South, slavery, mostly through cotton production, WAS the economy.
Did your average small-town guy, North and South, like Miles said, happen to join the side most of the people where they lived joined?
Of course.
But that wasn't how the war got started, nor the cause.
Nowhere have I said slavery was the only cause, indeed one only has read the links I previously provided where Southerners carefully described the causes in their own words.
But... my opinion.... absent slavery, that whole war weren't happening....
Why was the War Between The States so particularly bloody and the casualty rates so epizootic in proportion?
Because both sides were American, and Americans don't quit.
Oh, the technology part is easy to explore, and the fact that everyone except a few guy like Forrest had learned from Napoleon's playbook.
Re: the standard "rifles behind cover firing on lines of guys in the open" argument, in his The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth Hess argues that the new rifle-musket technology itself, because of the way it was actually deployed and used, had but little effect on the death toll....
Thanks for that book suggestion. Got a lightly used one cheap off Amazon....
First they burn flags...then books. My wife is a teacher and the common core material does little to build confidence that history won't be changed for the sake of agenda...
Was at Gettyburg at Christmas time and I realized how light I was in the history of it, particularly dealing with some of the areas my kids (grown) were discussing.
My Ma's side had independence & civil war vets--the data sitting in a box somewhere in our basement--time to dig it out...:)
Aside from the fact that family quarrels seem to be the most horrific, I've always felt that in most conflicts, technology always trumps tactics. Seems the military always goes into a conflict prepared ( more or less) to fight the last conflict they were in.
Just rambling this morning.
Bingo! The technology far outstripped the tactics and new weapons systems (i.e. gatling gun, railroad borne artillery) foreshadowed things to come on later battlefields.
...carefully examines casualty rates between War Between the States battles and many comparable previous smoothbore musket battles where similar line tactics were used and finds no significant difference.
His contention is that the extreme parabolic curve of the slow-moving Minie bullet was such that exact range estimation beyond what most men on either side commonly practiced would have been necessary, The ranges at which most guys were actually hit by bullets little exceeded that of the smoothbore musket era.
In fact he gives examples of some Union units who purposefully hung on to their smoothbore muskets well into the war, preferring buck and ball over the Minie.
On the Confederate side, General Patrick Cleburne, who had previous experience with Enfield rifle-musket in the British Army, actually instituted British-style marksmanship training among his Confederate troops to familiarize them with the quirks of the Minie system (and ironic that systematic marksmanship training appeared in England before it did here).
I shoot a flintlock quite often, and I know from experience that a well set-up flintlock is practically as reliable as a percussion mechanism for most casual civilian uses, where a flintlock stumbles badly is when you need to fire several rounds in a row, like at a battle reenactment.
So I suppose the perfection of a practical and reliable percussion cap by 1860 may have enabled those situations where a line of men, typically behind cover such as the Sunken Road, St Mary's Heights, the Bloody Angle, and on the Union Side at Franklin may have been able to pour out the sustained volume of fire that they did because no one had to stop to change or sharpen a flint, or to clear a pan or vent.
Other than that, while the smoothbore twelve-pounder was still the most common mobile field artillery (not for nothing called the "Napoleon"), rifled artillery like the Parrot guns were deployed.
How much difference the extra range and accuracy of rifled artillery pieces made in those campaigns I do not know.
Who knocked up his sister-in-law and ran off, if I remember correctly. The problem of teaching history at the middle/elementary school level was that I could never tell the really good stories.
Who knocked up his sister-in-law and ran off, if I remember correctly. The problem of teaching history at the middle/elementary school level was that I could never tell the really good stories.
Weren't Jefferson's mixed-blood slave concubine actually his father-in-laws biological duughter ie. his wife's half-sister?
Yes. The apologists say it was a cousin who got her pregnant (multiple times), but she was always around Tom, and while she was in France with him she acted wifely.
I had heard or read somewhere there was a bit of angst ( on the personal side) between Jackson and A. P. Hill. In reference to How Jackson felt of Hills morality. As if Hill was syphillitic. ( rumor I had heard). But this attitude didn't carry over to the professional side. Hill generally showing up at the right place at the needed time. Like with Lee at Sharpsburg.
Exactly right. Lighthorse Harry Lee was RE Lee's father. Lighthorse Harry was also a classic example of a great hero who ended his days as a great scoundrel.
Aside from the fact that family quarrels seem to be the most horrific, I've always felt that in most conflicts, technology always trumps tactics. Seems the military always goes into a conflict prepared ( more or less) to fight the last conflict they were in.
Just rambling this morning.
Bingo! The technology far outstripped the tactics and new weapons systems (i.e. gatling gun, railroad borne artillery) foreshadowed things to come on later battlefields.
Possibly even more significant, was the willingness of that much humanity on each side to be ran through the meat grinder the technology had become.
I personally believe the technology that played the greater roll was in shear manufacturing. The ability of the Union to get the greatest amount of material and toys to the troops.
I personally believe the technology that played the greater roll was in shear manufacturing. The ability of the Union to get the greatest amount of material and toys to the troops.
The North's manufacturing advantage and the advantage they held in railroads and rolling stock to transport the materials of war to the combat theater was what proved decisive in the end.
The Union simply had too much of a logistical advantage for the Confederacy to overcome and the South was just ground down over time.
At Gettysburg, the repeating rifle and the breech-loader.
Day 1, John Buford brilliantly deploys his cavalry in preparation for a prolonged defense in depth. The high rater of fire thrown out causes the advancing Confederates to pause and deploy in line of battle a number of times, losing critical time.
Here's the "First Shot" monument, erected by the guys who took it. Its on the main drag from Chambersburg (Hwy 30??) a couple of miles west of the battlefield proper.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereignty of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
I'm curious as to what we would look like, had the States gone their various directions? Would we have expanded west successfully? Who would control the vast western territories, Mexico? Would Texas have become a country, and would they have survived?
This is an academic question and not a swipe at anyone.
The problem America has today is that our entire society is being intentionally demonized and corrupted. The conditions in America prior to the civil war makes for an easy target and those who are contaminating our country with their extreme leftist ideology are using that history to expedite their agenda.
This is *ONLY* possible because the Civil War destroyed the individual sovereignty of the states and put us under the thumb of a central power.
I'm curious as to what we would look like, had the States gone their various directions? Would we have expanded west successfully? Who would control the vast western territories, Mexico? Would Texas have become a country, and would they have survived?
This is an academic question and not a swipe at anyone.
The US would probably look a lot like the Balkans do in Europe. Several smaller nations or confederations of states.
You can bet the great powers like England would have been very active in either setting up client states or outright annexing territory if they thought it could be done without too much opposition.
Perhaps lots Of variables could come into play. There were still European powers interested in portions of North America. Great Britain, France, and the soon to be on the scene Unified Germany. Not to mention the czar and don't forget Spain
Over on Seminary RIdge of course one finds all the Confederate markers and monuments, yet back in the woods it may come as a surprise to find these, not much further along from the much more recent Longstreet statue.
Markers for the Third Maine, a regular infantry unit, and the 1st US Sharpshooters who were not regular infantry. By then the Sharpshooters were armed with breech loading Sharps rifles, a percussion arm accepting paper cartridges. The Sharpshooters were picked marksmen who could fire nine rounds a minute.
It was Dan Sickles who had deployed these men out ahead of the Union line to find out what was occurring to his front.
I haven't seen a detailed accountof the action, but these guys had to be pushed out by Alabama troops IIRC, incrementally impeding the Confederate advance in that battle decided by so many close calls and almosts.
More to the point, in the confusion of battle and retreat, at least fifteen Sharpshooters ended up cut off from the left flank of the Union line at Little Round Top, these men deployed themselves on the hillside of Big Round Top and in a pile of boulders between the two, all of them in a position to fire into the flank and rear of the Confederates famously assaulting Chamberlaine's 20th Maine.
Even if we back off to an estimate of six rounds per minute, per man, that translates to ninety aimed rounds per minute, from hand picked marksmen, into the flank and rear of the attacking Confederates at Little Round Top. I have often wondered if this is why those attacks faltered so suddenly.
Finally Day 3, repeating rifles again, this time in the hands of Michigan cavalry pickets deployed in the path of JEB Stuart's cavalry which was attempting to get around the Union right flank to attack the rear of the Union line in concert with Pickett's charge.
THese few men put up such a stubborn defense and high volume of fire, that Stuart was already late even before he was hit head-on by the magnificent lunatic George Armstrong Custer.
Well, for one thing conservative states wouldn't be subject to laws conceived in liberal states and implemented by a central governing authority,...because there would be no central governing authority.
Perhaps lots Of variables could come into play. There were still European powers interested in portions of North America. Great Britain, France, and the soon to be on the scene Unified Germany. Not to mention the czar and don't forget Spain
I found a number of my old Mormon friends in California, and without an exception found them secessionists, not from any partiality for the Southern people, who were even more intolerant of Mormonism than the Northern people, nor yet because of any sympathy with the peculiar institutions of the South. They wanted to see the South succeed in its purpose to withdraw from the Union, thereby establishing a precedent - which Brigham Young would have made haste to follow. Had there been no other reason for opposing secession, that dangerous precedent, which would have been a constant menace to the South as well as to the North, would have been sufficient ground.
I do recall reading of the difficulties faced in the war years by a Confederacy struggling to reconcile the dire necessities of war with the prerogative of states' rights and the difficulties encountered therein. DOn't recall much of the specifics though.
The Civil War, or the War Between the States if you like, resulted from the suspicion that the North meant to use the power of the Union to destroy the sovereignty of the Southern states. Whether or not that suspicion was justified, the war itself produced that very result. The South was subjugated and occupied like a conquered country. Its institutions were profoundly remade by the federal government; the United States of America was taking on the character of an extensive, and highly centralized, empire. Similar processes were under way in Europe, as small states were consolidated into large ones, setting the stage for the tyrannies and gigantic wars of the twentieth century.
Even so, the three constitutional amendment ratified after the war contain a significant clause: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Why is this significant? Because it shows that even the conquerors still understood that a new power of Congress required a constitutional amendment. It couldn’t just be taken by majority vote, as it would be today. If the Congress then had wanted a national health plan, it would have begun by asking the people for an amendment to the Constitution authorizing it to legislate in the area of health care. The immediate purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to provide a constitutional basis for a proposed civil rights act.
But the Supreme Court soon found other uses for the Fourteenth Amendment. It began striking down state laws as unconstitutional. This was an important new twist in American constitutional law. Hamilton, in arguing for judicial review in Federalist No. 78, had envisioned the Court as a check on Congress, resisting the illicit consolidation or centralization of power. And our civics books still describe the function of checks and balances in terms of the three branches of the federal government mutually controlling each other. But in fact, the Court was now countermanding the state legislatures, where the principle of checks and balances had no meaning, since those state legislatures had no reciprocal control on the Court. This development eventually set the stage for the convulsive Supreme Court rulings of the late twentieth century, from Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade.
The big thing to recognize here is that the Court had become the very opposite of the institution Hamilton and others had had in mind. Instead of blocking the centralization of power in the federal government, the Court was assisting it.
The original point of the federal system was that the federal government would have very little to say about the internal affairs of the states. But the result of the Civil War was that the federal government had a great deal to say about those affairs — in Northern as well as Southern states.
Perhaps lots Of variables could come into play. There were still European powers interested in portions of North America. Great Britain, France, and the soon to be on the scene Unified Germany. Not to mention the czar and don't forget Spain
THAT's what my question addresses.
The west coast would be Russian, bet on it. I can also see the European powers warring over the rich middle farmlands, much of which already settled by Germans, and there was a large German population in Texas.
Spain, France, and England would have no doubt squabbled over portions of the east coast. France and Spain might have bloodied noses over the Mississippi river system.
Floridians would probably be speaking Spanish exclusively, who knows about Texas...Spanish, German...?? The rest of the southeast could well be a British colony or a little warm Canada.
The southwest sure could be under either Spanish or Mexican flags.
Even so, the three constitutional amendment ratified after the war contain a significant clause: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Why is this significant? Because it shows that even the conquerors still understood that a new power of Congress required a constitutional amendment. It couldn’t just be taken by majority vote, as it would be today. If the Congress then had wanted a national health plan, it would have begun by asking the people for an amendment to the Constitution authorizing it to legislate in the area of health care. The immediate purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to provide a constitutional basis for a proposed civil rights act.
But the Supreme Court soon found other uses for the Fourteenth Amendment. It began striking down state laws as unconstitutional. This was an important new twist in American constitutional law.
Thanks for a concise recap, tho it should be pointed out that IIRC the state laws the Supremes struck down back then included the more blatant Jim Crow legislation.
Perhaps lots Of variables could come into play. There were still European powers interested in portions of North America. Great Britain, France, and the soon to be on the scene Unified Germany. Not to mention the czar and don't forget Spain
THAT's what my question addresses.
The west coast would be Russian, bet on it. I can also see the European powers warring over the rich middle farmlands, much of which already settled by Germans, and there was a large German population in Texas.
Spain, France, and England would have no doubt squabbled over portions of the east coast. France and Spain might have bloodied noses over the Mississippi river system.
Floridians would probably be speaking Spanish exclusively, who knows about Texas...Spanish, German...?? The rest of the southeast could well be a British colony or a little warm Canada.
The southwest sure could be under either Spanish or Mexican flags.
We just might not be one nation.
Maybe,..maybe not.
But what's more important to you,....being free or being part of a large nation?
Thanks for a concise recap, tho it should be pointed out that IIRC the state laws the Supremes struck down back then included the more blatant Jim Crow legislation.
Birdwatcher
There's always going to be a boogeyman to point to when it comes to defending the empire. But the over-riding fact of all empires, is that it's population is never anything more than subjects of the empire.
Don't want Obamacare? "Fug you!, says the empire. You get it anyway.
There's thousands upon thousands of other examples, but Obamacare is the freedom draining legislation that's in the news today.
The problem with "free" small nations is that bigger nations have a tendency to swallow them. At which point they're not free anymore. For most of its history, the US has been pretty isolated geographically, but a US composed of loosely federated states might not have stayed that way too long, even if the War between the States had not happened.
The problem with "free" small nations is that bigger nations have a tendency to swallow them. At which point they're not free anymore. For most of its history, the US has been pretty isolated geographically, but a US composed of loosely federated states might not have stayed that way too long, even if the War between the States had not happened.
Gottcha, trade freedom for security. What do you have now that we've done that? No freedom and no security.
That's one way to look at it, although the North was not technically another nation until secession occurred. My point was that some other political entity or combination of entities might have taken over some states if they had stayed loosely federated.
That's one way to look at it, although the North was not technically another nation until secession occurred. My point was that some other political entity or combination of entities might have taken over some states if they had stayed loosely federated.
So we all should be happy that we got conquered,...or we might have been conquered?
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Twenty-one Syrian refugees will arrive here in the next two weeks, a figure expected to increase as the U.S. begins to take in an expanded number of refugees fleeing Syria's bloody civil war.
The refugees, from four families who fled to Jordan and Egypt, are part of a larger U.S. resettlement effort expected to bring as many as 10,000 Syrians to cities across the USA over the next few years, according to the U.S. State Department. ___________________________________________________
Kentucky, home to two Louisville resettlement affiliates, has taken in 6,428 refugees since 2011, including 1,113 from Iraq, according to State Department figures. That has left the area with resources and interpreters that could make it a landing spot for Syrians, Koehlinger said, though exact numbers are unknown. ___________________________________________________
Advocates said the refugees from Syria bring added security concerns, in part because of fears of Islamic extremism among Islamic State followers and others.
In 2013, two Iraqi refugees living in Bowling Green, Ky., were sentenced on terrorism charges. They were arrested in 2011 after helping a confidential government informant load cash and weapons that they thought were bound for al-Qaida in Iraq into a tractor-trailer.
That's one way to look at it, although the North was not technically another nation until secession occurred. My point was that some other political entity or combination of entities might have taken over some states if they had stayed loosely federated.
So we all should be happy that we got conquered,...or we might have been conquered?
All I'm saying is that reality is messy. And doesn't necessarily comport with an idealized version of how the world should be.
But I too am unhappy with the way the feds are pushing their agenda down out throats. So I'll agree with you on that.
What we really have in this country are two basically different peoples, and the difference is not geographic.
There have always been those who are restless, unsettled, and discontent unless they know the exact pecking order and know their place in it.
Others are confident in their own abilities, don't seek to control another, and reject the others' claim to an interest in making them conform "for the greater good".
The first group longs for "a benign dictator" who will bring the unruly ones into line.
The second groups' primary wish is to be left alone.
The second group gets smaller each generation and has never been represented by ANY political party.
What we really have in this country are two basically different peoples, and the difference is not geographic.
There have always been those who are restless, unsettled, and discontent unless they know the exact pecking order and know their place in it.
Others are confident in their own abilities, don't seek to control another, and reject the others' claim to an interest in making them conform "for the greater good".
The first group longs for "a benign dictator" who will bring the unruly ones into line.
The second groups' primary wish is to be left alone.
The second group gets smaller each generation and has never been represented by ANY political party.
Lots of the first group are represented here.
That's true,...but the first group doesn't realize that both of the dominant political parties consider *them* to be the unruly ones.
Perhaps lots Of variables could come into play. There were still European powers interested in portions of North America. Great Britain, France, and the soon to be on the scene Unified Germany. Not to mention the czar and don't forget Spain
THAT's what my question addresses.
The west coast would be Russian, bet on it. I can also see the European powers warring over the rich middle farmlands, much of which already settled by Germans, and there was a large German population in Texas.
Spain, France, and England would have no doubt squabbled over portions of the east coast. France and Spain might have bloodied noses over the Mississippi river system.
Floridians would probably be speaking Spanish exclusively, who knows about Texas...Spanish, German...?? The rest of the southeast could well be a British colony or a little warm Canada.
The southwest sure could be under either Spanish or Mexican flags.
We just might not be one nation.
Does anyone think Napoleon was really "finished"'with Louisiana after his people worked out the deal with Jefferson? He had an idea where he could invade a it would all be on the up and up!!! Breach of contract!!!
Reading this thread and others like it reminds me that it's nice to know history; as the man said, "those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it."
What have we learned from this so that we don't repeat it?
The lesson I'm seeing is don't start a war with someone that can out produce you. Don't start a war with someone who has a better supply system than you.
But other than that, what? Don't have an economy based on slaves? Okay, let's promise not to do that again. Now, what else?
It's fun to rehash old battles with coulda, shoulda, woulda, next week let's refight Gallipolli and Agincourt. But you can't change history one tiny bit. Crying about it, wishing it were different, none of that does anything. Whatever actually happened, actually happened. You can change the future but the only time you have to do that is in the present. (deep thought right there - let's get back to that momentarily).
What I see as a major theme in all these CW, WONA, WBTS or other acronym threads is what a rotten deal the South got, and as an extension the entire country got. And everybody arguing that point wants everybody else to admit that the South was in the right and the North led by Mr. Lincoln was in the wrong. Okay, be it resolved - "The South Got A Rotten Deal!". The argument is settled once and for all. The South henceforth and forevermore held the political and moral High Ground of Freedom. Those rotten, despicable men from the North despoiled the highest achievement of genteel civilization that ever existed. Let's have a moment of silence for the shining glory that was the antebellum South. Good, glad we got that out of the way so we can quit rehashing it ad infinitum.
But, it's gone. Forever. Never to return. Hasn't existed for 150 years. Too bad. How long are we gonna cry over it?
Now we're here. 2015. What happened, happened, and we are where are are - economically, politically and socially. For better or worse, here we are.
So, what are we going to do now? What lessons from history have we learned that we can apply now to change the future?
As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to the same ill treatment to which they subjected others. Here, America is unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police, with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning. When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.
And to answer the Freedom vs Security, it would appear that Mr. Orwell nailed it..............................
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
"So, what are we going to do now? What lessons from history have we learned that we can apply now to change the future?"
The lesson we should learn is that we should never ever forget what happened in the past for that is the History, once forgotten is soon repeated again. And once forgotten it leaves the door open to be rewritten and falsified.
Again from George Orwell..........................
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
And as was quoted in another thread .................... "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984"
The empire is in its death throes. The best thing to do is stay out of its way as best as possible until it has expired.
Empires have a habit of killing off a lot of people during their grand finale.
That's a lesson I fortunately learned in the first few days of basic training and it has stuck with me all these years.
Minding my own business... "here comes the sh*t, better step aside." Step aside. Whooossshhhh!!! sound of sh*t passing by. "Okay, there goes the sh*t, back to what I was doing."
The lesson is universal enough that it can be applied on a micro or macro scale...
I personally believe the technology that played the greater roll was in shear manufacturing.
I was blown away recently to read that, during stalemate at Petersburg in late 1864 the Army if Northern Virginia was blowing off 37,000 rifle-musket rounds per day. This from an army on its last legs.
At Gettysburg an estimated 1.5 million small arms rounds fired off by each side during the three day battle. As I understand it, all those paper or linen cartridges were rolled mostly by hand by someone, somewhere. I can find no estimate of cannon ammunition fired except estimates of somewhere in excess of 2,000 rounds.
We generally talk of armies moving this way and that, represented by arrows on the maps, without considering the enormous logistics necessary to make that happen....
It is an axiom in the military — amateurs study tactics while professionals study supply.
At this point in 1862 the army commanders of both the Union and Confederate forces were just coming to grips with the problems of maintaining an army on campaign. Think of how much a teenager, or a young 20-something can eat. Multiply that amount by three times a day, and again by 30 days in a month. Then multiply it again by thousands, then tens of thousands. That is the amount of food needed. Add in the needed extra clothes, arms, equipment, ammunition, buttons, tents, sewing needles, buckles, bayonets, beer, boots and blankets.
All of this material, bought from a thousand suppliers in thousands of places, had to be shipped, accumulated, sorted, and distributed to the troops. Ships and trains carried the goods. Thousands of men were needed to load the ships and trains. Thousands more were needed to unload the ships and trains, and then repack it all into army wagons to be carried along with the armies. Hundreds and thousands of wagons pulled by mules and horses; hungry mules and horses. They have to eat, too — and fodder is a bulky load. More wagons and mules were needed just to haul the fodder. The farther the army got from its railhead, the more transportation it required. At 10 miles from the railhead supply problems became difficult, at 25 miles men and mules were hungry, and at 50 miles they began to starve.
And what of the sick and wounded? They had to be transported to the rear, hopefully to a hospital. Wounded horses and mules were simply put out of their misery, but disabled men had to be moved. More wagons, more mules, more fodder, more men, more food. More, more, more. Civil War armies had a huge logistical “tail” that reached all the way back to its sources. This tail had to be protected at all costs, and this took even more men — and wagons — and mules.
Take a look at just about any map showing the major battles fought during the Civil War. Nearly all were fought within a few miles of a railroad or a navigable water way. The strategy and tactics of the Civil War took a backseat to the logistics that fed the armies. Often mules were more important than generals.
What amazes me they could pull all this off in an age of pen-and-ink communication.
What Union commander was forced into an action with a Confederate unit commanded by his son in law that wound up being a major embarrassment for the Union and allowed the Confederacy to eventually stop the Union advance?
JEB Stuart being chased behind Union lines by his father-in-law. BTW, JEB had named his son after him until the war broke out and they were on opposite sides. JEB then renamed the boy.
What future very famous and important American general was caught up in the midst of a "Swoop & Hooraw" raid by Confederate guerrillas when he was a young boy?
JEB Stuart being chased behind Union lines by his father-in-law. BTW, JEB had named his son after him until the war broke out and they were on opposite sides. JEB then renamed the boy.
Right on. The war tore the families apart.
Phillip St. George Cooke's (himself a native Virginian) son John Rogers Cooke also became a Confederate officer.
If you are reading the Tindall and Shi History text back to 50 years before the war also read read through the turn of the 20th Century to get an idea of how the war impact future events.
Be especially mindful to look for salient events that changed for good or ill the relationship between North and South.
What future very famous and important American general was caught up in the midst of a "Swoop & Hooraw" raid by Confederate guerrillas when he was a young boy?
We were brothers, before, during and after the civil war. What we will be experiencing shortly will require more brotherhood than heretofore imaginable. The post Obama years are going to be tough, but we are all Americans.
What future very famous and important American general was caught up in the midst of a "Swoop & Hooraw" raid by Confederate guerrillas when he was a young boy?
John J. Pershing.
Outstanding. I wish I would have had you in one of my classes.
First,leave the morality of slavery aside. I do not and nobody I know will argue that it is not a blight on the soul of humanity. It has been a terrible evil since slavery was first conceived all those long millennia ago but to better understand the times of the pre- Civil War period this larger slavery question must be set aside.
It was much more an economic issue than a state's rights issue at this juncture.
At the time slavery was legal in the United States and it was a business proposition. Slaves were viewed as personal property.
Large southern slaveholders had huge amounts of their money invested in the slaves. A runaway slave represented a major business loss. As the abolition movement gained steam the large slave owners came under increasingly more pressure and their fiscal losses mounted.
Absolutely agree, and whenever I've said that slavery was the primary cause behind the Civil War, I meant the threat to the economics of slavery in regards to the South. The morality of slavery was behind a lot of things in the North, but the South was viewing economic ruin for not only slaveholders but the financial institutions as well. Think Great Depression... The South almost stayed part of the British Empire 90 years earlier due to attempts by the Founders to end slavery with the founding of our nation.
But the Fugitive Slave Act (and many other federal maneuvers) still shows, in my mind, that the talk of State's Rights was mostly propaganda put out by the Southern Democrats to rile up the "common" man. Ones who had no slaves but the South needed for political support and soldiers. The wealthy politicians and ruling class had the most to lose, much of the common folk were so bad off that a Great Southern Depression would have hardly been felt. So they needed to make the the average Joe feel threatened by them "Dam Yankees". The South used federal power just as aggressively as the North did prior to the war, but Democrats have always been good at using the "lie often enough and everybody will believe it" strategy and they did it aggressively in the South. Just read the New York Times or watch CNN today, the Dems are still good at it.
The Civil War did end much of the State's Rights due to things like the 14th Amendment, mostly due to Supreme Court decision making (as was said by others) rather than ole Abe directly. Some good things resulted (such as 2A being binding on the State's as a recent example), but far too much power centralized in the federal gov't.
Another good one for the reading list. It offers an interesting look into the post-bellum Southern mindset. It also makes the liberals queasy which is always a good thing.
The roots of the American Civil War really go back to England. England was composed of very different ethnic groups that had very different ideas of government.
These groups immigrated to North America and made up the dominant groups in the various areas of America. The English Civil War had many men in Massachusetts going back to England to fight for parliament and the Roundheads. The southern colonies remained loyal to the Crown.
Slavery was the catalyst and the issue de jour that caused the American Civil War, but the sides had been chosen long before and they were two peoples who did not like each other.
Back in the 70's I remember my American History textbook (went to school in Minnesota/or the North). In Junior High said that the cause of the Civil war was slavery and tariffs. When I got to high school the textbook was silent about the tariffs. I always thought it was interesting how my textbooks changed from 7th grade to 10th grade. Just an observation I notice in school how recorded history changed.
Another question that gave a lot of my students grief on exams:
What post-bellum event led to the first concerted reconciliation efforts between the North and South? Why?
The Spanish American War?
Correct. It was the War O' 98. Now why? What elements in that war drove the reconciliation?
A common foe, imperialistic nationalism, and so on and so forth. It was the first instance of significant numbers of US troops being in the south since Reconstruction. Lots of southerners and northerners fought together and formed relationships. Plus, with no standing army to speak of, the government was still heavily dependent on volunteers and HAD to foster a feeling of reconciliation to get the south fully on board and behind the effort.
Back in the 70's I remember my American History textbook (went to school in Minnesota/or the North). In Junior High said that the cause of the Civil war was slavery and tariffs. When I got to high school the textbook was silent about the tariffs. I always thought it was interesting how my textbooks changed from 7th grade to 10th grade. Just an observation I notice in school how recorded history changed.
Changes like that are common in HS textbooks. I once saw a History text that was used in some districts in OH, PA, and NY that never mentioned anything about the Civil War but the cause was slavery and Lincoln saved everything in the section on the war.
There was no mention at all of Lee, Grant, Jackson, etc. Only a brief mention of Gettysburg focused almost entirely on Lincoln's address was it for any of the battles.
Another question that gave a lot of my students grief on exams:
What post-bellum event led to the first concerted reconciliation efforts between the North and South? Why?
The Spanish American War?
Correct. It was the War O' 98. Now why? What elements in that war drove the reconciliation?
A common foe, imperialistic nationalism, and so on and so forth. It was the first instance of significant numbers of US troops being in the south since Reconstruction. Lots of southerners and northerners fought together and formed relationships. Plus, with no standing army to speak of, the government was still heavily dependent on volunteers and HAD to foster a feeling of reconciliation to get the south fully on board and behind the effort.
Good. Now, what was the main thing, the final little bit that really sweetened the pot and brought the South enthusiastically on board with the war plan?
After you work through the Tindall and Shi history book up to 1861 its time to move on to different sources. Oh, you should probably have at a minimum of 100 pages of typewritten or 200- 250 pages of hand written reading notes if you're doing the historian thing.
Now, that you have laid the foundation (you might want to think of being an Historian as partially the process of layering up a cake or a brick wall) its time to start building upon it.
First, attack as much primary source material as you can lay hand on. Remember that these sources will likely be localized or regionalized.
I would recommend starting with the newspapers dating back to at least 1835 if possible. Many towns did not have a paper in those days so concentrate in general terms on the bigger cities.
I would try to get at least two from North, South, and West.
Say the Boston and/or NYC papers. Baltimore and Richmond. Atlanta and New Orleans. St.Louis and Kansas City, etc.
The majority of these papers are available on microfilm and can be accessed via the Inter-library Loan system at public libraries, or community college and university libraries. For the most part librarians at the collegiate libraries are really happy to help and help you learn to use a microfilm reader.
Hitting the newspapers will let you see what and how people were thinking about things. Look especially for articles and editorials and letters to the editor dealing with slavery, sectionalism, and new states entering the union. Look at the advertisements for things such as land sales, cotton markets, slave auction, etc. to inform you on the thinking of people.
By the end of the newspapers you should have another 250-400 pages of notes and or copies of newspaper articles.
I am not disagreeing with your newspaper research. But beware of rampant sensational journalism that went along with the rise of the telegraph that fed the newspapers.
And... key thing to understand is there is no one reason for the Civil War. The reasons varied from person to person and from state to state.
Most northerners weren't fighting and dying to free the slaves, no more than most southerners were fighting to keep their slaves - since most southerners didn't have any.
But slavery sat there behind everything, being the core catalyst for pretty much the entire thing.
“States rights were what Texas was seceding against. Texas also made clear what it was seceding for — white supremacy: We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
They put a former confederate general in charge of all mounted troops.
I also seem to remember reading that we almost went to war with Spain like in the early 1880's. And N B Forrest offered his services to the cause at that time.
They put a former confederate general in charge of all mounted troops.
I also seem to remember reading that we almost went to war with Spain like in the early 1880's. And N B Forrest offered his services to the cause at that time.
Right on. Man, where were you at when I needed good students in class?
After you work through the Tindall and Shi history book up to 1861 its time to move on to different sources. Oh, you should probably have at a minimum of 100 pages of typewritten or 200- 250 pages of hand written reading notes if you're doing the historian thing.
Now, that you have laid the foundation (you might want to think of being an Historian as partially the process of layering up a cake or a brick wall) its time to start building upon it.
First, attack as much primary source material as you can lay hand on. Remember that these sources will likely be localized or regionalized.
I would recommend starting with the newspapers dating back to at least 1835 if possible. Many towns did not have a paper in those days so concentrate in general terms on the bigger cities.
I would try to get at least two from North, South, and West.
Say the Boston and/or NYC papers. Baltimore and Richmond. Atlanta and New Orleans. St.Louis and Kansas City, etc.
The majority of these papers are available on microfilm and can be accessed via the Inter-library Loan system at public libraries, or community college and university libraries. For the most part librarians at the collegiate libraries are really happy to help and help you learn to use a microfilm reader.
Hitting the newspapers will let you see what and how people were thinking about things. Look especially for articles and editorials and letters to the editor dealing with slavery, sectionalism, and new states entering the union. Look at the advertisements for things such as land sales, cotton markets, slave auction, etc. to inform you on the thinking of people.
By the end of the newspapers you should have another 250-400 pages of notes and or copies of newspaper articles.
I am not disagreeing with your newspaper research. But beware of rampant sensational journalism that went along with the rise of the telegraph that fed the newspapers.
You always have to consider the source when doing research.
They put a former confederate general in charge of all mounted troops.
I also seem to remember reading that we almost went to war with Spain like in the early 1880's. And N B Forrest offered his services to the cause at that time.
Right on. Man, where were you at when I needed good students in class?
I thought you were asking something significant. Everyone knows that Gary Bussy was in command at San Juan Hill.
They put a former confederate general in charge of all mounted troops.
I also seem to remember reading that we almost went to war with Spain like in the early 1880's. And N B Forrest offered his services to the cause at that time.
Right on. Man, where were you at when I needed good students in class?
I thought you were asking something significant. Everyone knows that Gary Bussy was in command at San Juan Hill.
Gary Busey being cast as Joe wheeler is one of the most epic miscasts in cinematic history.
They put a former confederate general in charge of all mounted troops.
I also seem to remember reading that we almost went to war with Spain like in the early 1880's. And N B Forrest offered his services to the cause at that time.
Right on. Man, where were you at when I needed good students in class?
I thought you were asking something significant. Everyone knows that Gary Bussy was in command at San Juan Hill.
Gary Busey being cast as Joe wheeler is one of the most epic miscasts in cinematic history.
Roflmao! To me, from photos, Wheeler always looked like he was about die any minute in 1898!
Mostly I'm mortified to find ME the topic of discussion here, but whatever....
I'm Pro-Life, pro gun and pro-environment, pretty much in that order. Dunno of global warming exists or is human caused.
The War Between the States?
Morality sure as heck was important, those people with moral objections were called "abolitionists", and the South collectively despised 'em, feared they would outlaw slavery once the North got more and more control of the House and Senate. And no, being an abolitionist did not mean you wanted to marry 'em, most folks on both side wanted to send free Blacks to Africa.
In the South, you couldn't separate slavery and the economy, slavery WAS the economy; most of their capital and thought essential for the production of cotton and sugar cane. The politics and policy of the South were in the iron grip of the wealthy planter class, including '61-'65.
Lincoln, I find nothing hypocritical yet re: slavery. He said up front that while he didn't like slavery and wanted to limit its spread, he was in the war to preserve the Union, end of story. Ain't read up enough on him yet to form and opinion of any greater nefarious motives.
Other than that, folks here should know that during those years all of MY ancestors were good looking.
OK, if ya ain't got nothing better to do, fire away. Seems sorta pathetic tho...
I'm Pro-Life, pro gun and pro-environment, pretty much in that order. Dunno of global warming exists or is human caused.
This would have been absolutely alien to a 19th Century typologist because these concepts/debates did not even exist at that point in time. They are all mid to late 20th century constructs.
No slam on that general American history book (got here already) in general but it states up front that Columbus was 'blinded by his greed for gold' and that he was eventually recalled in chains because his greed and brutality (it uses the word greed three separate times re: Columbus)...
"he grew more greedy for gold and more brutal in his treatment of the people he called Indians. His savagery eventually led the monarchy to have him arrested and returned to Spain in chains."
"Greed?" I woulda thought that in the Fifteenth Century one had damn better have a lucrative return on someone else's investment if they actually fronted you three ships and the crews to man 'em as well as thousands of men and more ships your next three go-rounds.
History back then was not at all kind to commoners who rose to enough national prominence to incite jealousy and make enemies. Hard for me to imagine the Spanish crown had him arrested merely for being brutal to Indians, unless they thought that impeded profits. But, like I said, this is at the opening of the book and may not reflect the whole.
Birdwatcher
Anyways, might be true as written I guess, sure seems like projecting modern day values on 15th Century people.
No slam on that general American history book (got here already) in general but it states up front that Columbus was 'blinded by his greed for gold' and that he was eventually recalled in chains because his greed and brutality (it uses the word greed three separate times re: Columbus)...
"he grew more greedy for gold and more brutal in his treatment of the people he called Indians. His savagery eventually led the monarchy to have him arrested and returned to Spain in chains."
"Greed?" I woulda thought that in the Fifteenth Century one had damn better have a lucrative return on someone else's investment if they actually fronted you three ships and the crews to man 'em as well as thousands of men and more ships your next three go-rounds.
History back then was not at all kind to commoners who rose to enough national prominence to incite jealousy and make enemies. Hard for me to imagine the Spanish crown had him arrested merely for being brutal to Indians, unless they thought that impeded profits. But, like I said, this is at the opening of the book and may not reflect the whole.
Birdwatcher
Anyways, might be true as written I guess, sure seems like projecting modern day values on 15th Century people.
It was due to his greed and incompetence as a governor of a colony, not as to his merit as an explorer/captain.
7. Columbus returned to Spain in chains in 1500. Columbus’s governance of Hispaniola could be brutal and tyrannical. Native islanders who didn’t collect enough gold could have their hands cut off, and rebel Spanish colonists were executed at the gallows. Colonists complained to the monarchy about mismanagement, and a royal commissioner dispatched to Hispaniola arrested Columbus in August 1500 and brought him back to Spain in chains. Although Columbus was stripped of his governorship, King Ferdinand not only granted the explorer his freedom but subsidized a fourth voyage.
His greed blinded him to the fact that he had arrived not in the Orient, but in a New World..
Setting aside "greed" for a moment, how on earth could he have known he wasn't in some remote part of Asia without finding a Pacific Ocean on the other side?
The book says (after describing the first two voyages)....
"Columbus made two more voyages to the New World. In each instance he grew more greedy for gold and more brutal in his treatment of the people he called Indians. His savagery eventually led the monarchy to have him arrested and returned to Spain in chains. To the end Columbus refused to believe that he had discovered anything other than outlying parts of Asia"
Thats it, then the narrative moves on.
No mention of complaining colonists or the hanging of the same, nor of that fourth voyage being AFTER his arrest and release.
I think we all agree this part could use a re-write (I have the fifth edition).
There were three main reasons Europeans went in search of the Americas and all three were intertwined.
1. God: i.e. The missionary zeal to spread the gospel to all corners of the earth.
2. Gold: Gold= Power. Remember Spain, England, and France were three major powers looking for dominance then. Dominance takes a lot of money.
3. Glory: Winning fame as a great explorer was the best way a commoner (i.e. Columbus) or the lesser sons of the nobility could attain lasting wealth and position.
They would likely have classified Birdwatcher as a Statist or Monarchist (this more so in Europe): One who supports the overarching power of a government to maintain order and protect the rights (either actual or perceived) of the people by force of law or martially.
Bristoe would have made the Anarchist/Revolutionary list: One who opposes the power of the state to infringe on personal liberties and in general distrusts the power of the government.
So - and this is a very broad shallow brush statement since I haven't read all the stuff listed (yet). The primary driver of the Civil War was Southern States resisting the, in their minds, over controlling nature of the Northern states (states rights versus Fedal rights ((laws, taxes, strong federal power, etc.))?
Did Lincoln (or the US Government) use the 'slavery' platform to incite in the South in to a war they couldn't win (I'm sure the North realized the resource advantage) to settle who was "in charge" once and for all - and unify (in a strange way) the country?
So - and this is a very broad shallow brush statement since I haven't read all the stuff listed (yet). The primary driver of the Civil War was Southern States resisting the, in their minds, over controlling nature of the Northern states (states rights versus Fedal rights ((laws, taxes, strong federal power, etc.))?
Did Lincoln (or the US Government) use the 'slavery' platform to incite in the South in to a war they couldn't win (I'm sure the North realized the resource advantage) to settle who was "in charge" once and for all - and unify (in a strange way) the country?
The states rights arguments were there from the outset. Slavery came into the fore for the North later as the war ground on.
The main reason the European Age of Discovery got kicked off was the fall of Constantinople in 1453. With that, what tenuous European access that still remained to the Orient through Asia was cut off, for good more or less.
While Portugal had blazed paths around the Horn of Africa and established colonies and outposts all the way down Africa and in India, the trip around the Horn was perilous to the extreme. Common understanding of the size of the world at that time had it being much smaller than it actually was and Columbus thought it would actually be shorter to sail across the Atlantic to the Orient. He found North American right about where his calculations told him the Indies would be.
As for cruelty to the Indians, yes, the Spaniards were very concerned about it. The first stated purpose of their exploration was to bring Christ to the world. So, if their people were too cruel, then it was frowned upon. Granted, their standards of what was cruel and not cruel differed from ours today, but once one understands the logic of the time, you discover that there very definitely were rules. For instance, for all the wealth he brought to Spain, Cortez could never quite make it to respectability back home because of his humble origins and the brutality with which he dealt with the Mexicans.
They would likely have classified Birdwatcher as a Statist or Monarchist (this more so in Europe): One who supports the overarching power of a government to maintain order and protect the rights (either actual or perceived) of the people by force of law or martially.
How so?
Birdwatcher would have fought to preserve the Union, as was the stated objective of the vast majority on the Union side..... nothing more. And like almost everyone today, he could NEVER have fought for a Constitution that enshrined for perpetuity the enslavement of four million Southerners.
As for the rest, you're actually saying an Irish Catholic was a Monarchist.... (OK, there are some that were )
My own sentiments on that matter were best stated by a certain fictional Irishman before Little Round Top....
"I'm Kilrain, and I damn all gentlemen."
...to understand this, it helps immensely if one has any familiarity with the old British class system.
The states rights arguments were there from the outset. Slavery came into the fore for the North later as the war ground on
Just as you cannot separate pre-war Southern economic and political issues from slavery, neither can you separate states rights issues when slavery WAS the states' right issue front and center, that had divided this country from the very beginning.
This is precisely why the South called themselves "Slave States" , rewrote their constitution to preserve it, and why all those five states that gave statements of causes listed slavery front and center.
A government that insists on preserving the Union is a government that insists on holding power over its people.
Everyone talks about "the government or "a government", what if more than half the United States thought that the Union as it existed was worth preserving, period. Lincoln did not act alone.
They would likely have classified Birdwatcher as a Statist or Monarchist (this more so in Europe): One who supports the overarching power of a government to maintain order and protect the rights (either actual or perceived) of the people by force of law or martially.
How so?
Birdwatcher would have fought to preserve the Union, as was the stated objective of the vast majority on the Union side..... nothing more. And like almost everyone today, he could NEVER have fought for a Constitution that enshrined for perpetuity the enslavement of four million Southerners.
As for the rest, you're actually saying an Irish Catholic was a Monarchist.... (OK, there are some that were )
My own sentiments on that matter were best stated by a certain fictional Irishman before Little Round Top....
"I'm Kilrain, and I damn all gentlemen."
...to understand this, it helps immensely if one has any familiarity with the old British class system.
Birdwatcher
Sorry Mike, You can't devote your entire life working for the State in one form or other, and claim to be an anarchist or revolutionary.
And Bristoe is the prototype "lazy revolutionary". [here's what y'all oughta be raisin' hell about]
Pretty good fit for Mr. Bear's categories, I'd say.
A government that insists on preserving the Union is a government that insists on holding power over its people.
Everyone talks about "the government or "a government", what if more than half the United States thought that the Union as it existed was worth preserving, period. Lincoln did not act alone.
Birdwatcher
What if more than half wanted you to give your house to an illegal immigrant?
The Royal Spanish regulations on caste and class were extreme to say the least.
I wonder how the Spanish court of that time would deal with us here at the Campfire?
I am thinking exile to a life at hard labor in a penal colony.
Chances are none of us would be allowed to use or own computers. So we probably would not known who each other were. The Spanish ruled with a pretty tight fist. Hand in hand with the church they kept a pretty tight rein on things!
What if more than half wanted you to give your house to an illegal immigrant?
Not sure they'd care to live in it...
...but, more than half of us already supports abortion on demand, I ain't gonna go propose dividing the Union over it.
OK, things could get so bad that I MIGHT want to leave, as they did in 1861, but if ya ask 'em in '61 what REALLY had them PO'd.... slavery... sorry, just the way it was.
A government that insists on preserving the Union is a government that insists on holding power over its people.
Everyone talks about "the government or "a government", what if more than half the United States thought that the Union as it existed was worth preserving, period. Lincoln did not act alone.
Birdwatcher
I think it is referred to as Tyranny by majority.
The North was making good money off the South while contributing little.
"Preserving the Union" was holding captive an entire region who wanted no part of that Union any longer.
Even today... should this generation of Texans be inseparably bound to 49 other States because of treaties or laws passed by previous generations?
If you say that Texas exists only as one of the United States of America, then you have no argument for the USA claiming any Sovereignty among the other nations of planet earth.
The North was making good money off the South while contributing little.
"Preserving the Union" was holding captive an entire region who wanted no part of that Union any longer.
Even today... should this generation of Texans be inseparably bound to 49 other States because of treaties or laws passed by previous generations?
If you say that Texas exists only as one of the United States of America, then you have no argument for the USA claiming any Sovereignty among the other nations of planet earth.
The World has always been a shark tank, today we'd most likely have a dis-united South, maybe an independent Mormon nation in Utah, and Europe would most likely be Communist.
Quote
I just can't see any benefit to the Union at this point.
Really, we are still the only game in town championing World freedom. I know you don't agree. But if we ain't number one, somebody else will be, and most likely they won't be nearly as nice as us.
Dave is a Jet, he is talking about running and jumping around on tippy toes against a bunch of similarly effeminate Puerto Ricans. Roger prob'ly ain't interested, I don't think he can even pleiae.
I think we are all flattered you have even been reading this thread.
Just as much so as you taking this thread that hbb tried very hard to make educational right back into the "it's for the children; self-determination matters only when I say it doesn't" direction that the other thread (where this conversation would be more appropriate).
Or, simply carry your ass back to the other thread where it was being handed to you and let HBB get back to having a thread that actually increases knowledge. Just a suggestion.
I'm suggesting that this schit ain't appropriate for this thread. Clear?
You mean humor?
(Sorry fer yanking your chain again, its just so very easy to do. OK, proceed with more insults oh vituperous one.)
No insults here, Mike. Of course, for someone that was lamenting this thread being about him, you've done everything you could to make it exactly that for hours.
Nope, just responded to things directed at me. Not contested things I agreed with (like some of Curdog's posts). Only exception was Travis, but that was funny.
I am going to try to drag this back out of the nether regions of the Campfire. For a while at least
Here is another great book for the reading list. Pay particular attention to the chapter where the Rough Riders were moving from their training camp at San Antonio to the embarkation port in Tampa. TR speaks to the attitude of reconciliation between North and South is his narrative of the experience.
Just recently re-read that, and it's a fine treatise on leadership and morale.
Want to take the opportunity to thank you for carrying this forward, ....am REALLY enjoying the historical brush-up, and making a "must read" list for the coming winter.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Just recently re-read that, and it's a fine treatise on leadership and morale.
Want to take the opportunity to thank you for carrying this forward, ....am REALLY enjoying the historical brush-up, and making a "must read" list for the coming winter.
GTC
Thank you for the kind words. The reading list was one of my main goals
If we move ahead a few years. I would like to throw out one of the miracles of the punitive campaign against Villa. Govt. Purchasers were able to get new Quad trucks and Ford TT's from Wisconsin to Columbus NM by train in 48 hours!
If we move ahead a few years. I would like to throw out one of the miracles of the punitive campaign against Villa. Govt. Purchasers were able to get new Quad trucks and Ford TT's from Wisconsin to Columbus NM by train in 48 hours!
Somebody understood logistics.
I doubt that government purchasers could pull that off today.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Yes, and no.
We had no clue what we were going up against as far as advanced weaponry (bolt action rifles) and were still stuck in the musket era as far as infantry weapons. We had no clue how to do amphibious invasions. We still had no clue how to do light infantry assaults or use of unconventional tactics/combatants (RoughRiders figured that out, along with better weaponry).
We had an advantage when in came to some assault tactics and especially in assaults on fortified defenses and use of trenches. However, this was essentially a draw with what the Spaniards brought to the table.
By far, our greatest advancement and advantage was in the use of ironclad warships. We learned very quickly that wooden vessels were no match for iron clads and that proved decisive against the Spanish.
Thumbnail sketch of a much larger and longer topic.
Yes. Looked it over a while back. Pretty cool stuff
On another note, had an old hunting bud who's grand dad lost his left arm to a Moro's kris!
Did you ever get to talk to that fellow any about his experiences?
No he died in the 40's. Long before my time!! Wifey had a Phillipino care giver that would come here to the house. He loved firearms. I drug out my Krag and bayonet for him. He had to have his photo made with it! He was a cool guy!!
Did you also know there was an assassination plot headed by the state dept to poison Pancho Villa? The co-conspirators were two Japanese businessmen. They were to give him small doses of poison until it built up enough in his system to kill him. They even experimented on a dog. But they chickened out in the end
Did you also know there was an assassination plot headed by the state dept to poison Pancho Villa? The co-conspirators were two Japanese businessmen. They were to give him small doses of poison until it built up enough in his system to kill him. They even experimented on a dog. But they chickened out in the end
Yep, they should have hired some of the disenchanted Mexicans.
I like the fact that Pershing was dating Patton's sister in 1915/16. Now you know how he got on his staff in Mexico!!!
Pershing was a real ladies man before his marriage and after he lost his wife in the Presidio fire.
He had a pretty 23 year old Romanian artist's model as his paramour during his time in France during WWI (Pershing was 57).
They maintained their relationship after the war and Pershing secretly married Micheline Resco just before his death and left her a sizable inheritance.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Yes, and no.
We had no clue what we were going up against as far as advanced weaponry (bolt action rifles) and were still stuck in the musket era as far as infantry weapons. We had no clue how to do amphibious invasions. We still had no clue how to do light infantry assaults or use of unconventional tactics/combatants (RoughRiders figured that out, along with better weaponry).
We had an advantage when in came to some assault tactics and especially in assaults on fortified defenses and use of trenches. However, this was essentially a draw with what the Spaniards brought to the table.
By far, our greatest advancement and advantage was in the use of ironclad warships. We learned very quickly that wooden vessels were no match for iron clads and that proved decisive against the Spanish.
Thumbnail sketch of a much larger and longer topic.
I'm curious as to what we would look like, had the States gone their various directions?
Before Lincoln consolidated the states under a central power, they were already in "their various directions".
And this was (is) a good thing?, particularly in light of we were at the height of the European imperial era and possible expansion into the continent? While I agree the CSA were very much in their right to secede, a United States (at lest until recently, and more specifically Universal Suffrage and democrats), this country is one HELL of a great place to live in...
I'm curious as to what we would look like, had the States gone their various directions?
Before Lincoln consolidated the states under a central power, they were already in "their various directions".
And this was (is) a good thing?, particularly in light of we were at the height of the European imperial era and possible expansion into the continent? While I agree the CSA were very much in their right to secede, a United States (at lest until recently, and more specifically Universal Suffrage and democrats), this country is one HELL of a great place to live in...
The Royal Spanish regulations on caste and class were extreme to say the least.
I wonder how the Spanish court of that time would deal with us here at the Campfire?
I am thinking exile to a life at hard labor in a penal colony.
Chances are none of us would be allowed to use or own computers. So we probably would not known who each other were. The Spanish ruled with a pretty tight fist. Hand in hand with the church they kept a pretty tight rein on things!
My family on my dad's side would have agreed. My G-Grandfather was one of the last Civil Governors in Cuba, until Geneal Weiler took over. He was most assuredly rooting for the Confederacy, and obviously against the war in 98. Once the Spanish flag came down in Havana, my grandfather (and dad) told me he closed his shutters (he was retired by then) and died a few months later.
One thing that seems obvious to me, but hasn't been mentioned, is this:
If the States had been allowed to secede peacefully, it would not have necessarily ended the Union forever. Slavery, for instance, was a damned expensive way of raising cotton. Economic forces and technology would have done away with it a few years down the road.
Any threat from abroad would have been met with some sort of Alliance.The Union was formed originally out of necessity... strength in numbers.
Trade between North and South would have continued, but on more even terms.
The War was caused because self-perpetuation is the first rule of government and Lincoln followed it. His successors have doubled down on it.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Yes, and no.
We had no clue what we were going up against as far as advanced weaponry (bolt action rifles) and were still stuck in the musket era as far as infantry weapons. We had no clue how to do amphibious invasions. We still had no clue how to do light infantry assaults or use of unconventional tactics/combatants (RoughRiders figured that out, along with better weaponry).
We had an advantage when in came to some assault tactics and especially in assaults on fortified defenses and use of trenches. However, this was essentially a draw with what the Spaniards brought to the table.
By far, our greatest advancement and advantage was in the use of ironclad warships. We learned very quickly that wooden vessels were no match for iron clads and that proved decisive against the Spanish.
Thumbnail sketch of a much larger and longer topic.
This. Especially when you consider the number of Spaniards holding San Juan and Kettle Hills....
Everyone acts as though the South was some sort of backwater and weak sister that would have been ripe for European exploitation. Nothing could be from the truth.
Geographically, the South was far larger than any European nation. Economically, it was doing quite well in 1860. It was the third most industrialized nation on earth with the third most railroad after the North and Britain. In Europe of the day, France couldn't even manage imperial ambitions in Mexico. Germany, was nothing more than a collection of weak principalities. Spain? Already tottering on the edge of imperial collapse. Russia? In a state of revolution and near revolution for the last half of the 19th Century.
Only England and the North could have dealt with the South economically and militarily in 1860. The South dismembered by European imperialists? No, far more likely that the Caribbean and North America down to the Isthmus of Panama would be part of the Confederate States of America.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Yes, and no.
We had no clue what we were going up against as far as advanced weaponry (bolt action rifles) and were still stuck in the musket era as far as infantry weapons. We had no clue how to do amphibious invasions. We still had no clue how to do light infantry assaults or use of unconventional tactics/combatants (RoughRiders figured that out, along with better weaponry).
We had an advantage when in came to some assault tactics and especially in assaults on fortified defenses and use of trenches. However, this was essentially a draw with what the Spaniards brought to the table.
By far, our greatest advancement and advantage was in the use of ironclad warships. We learned very quickly that wooden vessels were no match for iron clads and that proved decisive against the Spanish.
Thumbnail sketch of a much larger and longer topic.
This. Especially when you consider the number of Spaniards holding San Juan and Kettle Hills....
and don't forget the German advisers and their Krupp cannon and Maxim guns.
There was also another smaller conflict that broke out in 1900 that is often overlooked. The Boxer Rebellion.
Exactly. Lots of stuff going on, and who is to say what would have happened to our own imperial Manifest Destiny expansion (something a lot of folks here with issues outside our shores conveniently hide behind Manifest Destiny that was nothing more than imperial expansion and destruction of several native geopolitical entities (Indian Nations)) had the North and South competed for the Territories, coupled with all the unrest in Mexico? The Brits, although siding with the South for obvious reasons, would (and did) changed sides to suit their own national interests. Like I said, all conjecture, but at least in my view, the United States didn't turn out so bad, that is until my aforementioned stuff happened.
Here is yet another question that gave my students fits in the post-bellum lectures:
Did the US military learn any lessons from the Civil War that helped them in the Spanish American War?
Were they more/better prepared for major military operations in the spring of 1898 than they were in the spring of 1861? Use comparison and contrast to examine this issue in detail.
Yes, and no.
We had no clue what we were going up against as far as advanced weaponry (bolt action rifles) and were still stuck in the musket era as far as infantry weapons. We had no clue how to do amphibious invasions. We still had no clue how to do light infantry assaults or use of unconventional tactics/combatants (RoughRiders figured that out, along with better weaponry).
We had an advantage when in came to some assault tactics and especially in assaults on fortified defenses and use of trenches. However, this was essentially a draw with what the Spaniards brought to the table.
By far, our greatest advancement and advantage was in the use of ironclad warships. We learned very quickly that wooden vessels were no match for iron clads and that proved decisive against the Spanish.
Thumbnail sketch of a much larger and longer topic.
This. Especially when you consider the number of Spaniards holding San Juan and Kettle Hills....
and don't forget the German advisers and their Krupp cannon and Maxim guns.
There was a considerable bit of artistic license concerning these two items in the movie earlier mentioned by JoeBob. ( hell in the movie there were t even Kruppe they were 75 mm French Puteaux guns).
There was a considerable bit of artistic license concerning these two items in the movie earlier mentioned by JoeBob. ( hell in the movie there were t even Kruppe they were 75 mm French Puteaux guns).
During the scenes of the American advance there are several British SMLE in the hands on the Rough Riders and other troops.
There is also a left hand conversion Krag in the mix.
There was a considerable bit of artistic license concerning these two items in the movie earlier mentioned by JoeBob. ( hell in the movie there were t even Kruppe they were 75 mm French Puteaux guns).
During the scenes of the American advance there are several British SMLE in the hands on the Rough Riders and other troops.
There is also a left hand conversion Krag in the mix.
Hmmmm dunno about the SMLE's. I knew the reenactor coordinator on that movie. He was pretty strict. However you never know what props will come up with. I've seen the same LH Krag scene. That is a flipped frame. Bad editing.
There was a considerable bit of artistic license concerning these two items in the movie earlier mentioned by JoeBob. ( hell in the movie there were t even Kruppe they were 75 mm French Puteaux guns).
During the scenes of the American advance there are several British SMLE in the hands on the Rough Riders and other troops.
There is also a left hand conversion Krag in the mix.
Hmmmm dunno about the SMLE's. I knew the reenactor coordinator on that movie. He was pretty strict. However you never know what props will come up with. I've seen the same LH Krag scene. That is a flipped frame. Bad editing.
The SMLE is in the scene just before the LH Krag. Looks like the extras instead of a reenactor.
Oh, I got a dvd copy of the Rough Riders and put it in the department film library. It drove the liberals nuts because it didn't speak out against Imperialism enough and it had all the guns in it.
Seriously, these people think you can make a war movie without guns.
I thought the American artillerists in the movie did a really good job. I suspect those boys are some serious renactors.
Actually they were extremely authentic to what was actually present! What would have been cool would have been a recreation of one of the dynamite guns made up for use on land!!!!
I do not know. I wasn't on the set of that one. Had lots of friends who were but I dunno. Being John Milius was involved they have ways of finding lots of stuff out there. I imagine it was the real thing. The guy who was in charge of the Reenactors also had a vast network of resources. All types cavalry, artillery, infantry, etc. He was a great guy! He died of a massive heart attack after one of the big productions. Gods and Generals Mebbe??? Can't remember. He was a heck of a guy!!! He had two scenes in flicks. One was he was the officer that brought the msg to Gene Hackman at the dance in Geronimo and he was the army officer who started the land rush in "Far And Away".
The Marine Corps history was an easy one. The mining engineer had me stumped until I thought that whomever it was had to have gone on to become much more famous later, and I couldn't recall any generals with such a background so I went politicians. Hoover was easy after that.
Who was the highest ranking US civilian authority in Cuba at the outbreak of war with Spain in the spring of 1898?
This one has me stumped. But I am now getting oil changed i. Wifey's car and my best book on the subject is on my nightstand. I was going to say Frederick Funston. But there had to be someone there hightre than him. And he actually was military. In a sense.
Unless it was the Ambassador to Spain, I haven't a clue either. Something tells me, though, that it was a rather politically influential and rather privately wealthy businessman.
Back to punitive expedition to Mexico. A recently uncovered statment made by Col. Slocum ( commanded the forces at Columbus March 1916) to another army officer stated that the real reason for Villa's raid on Columbus was to kidnap (Slocums) wife for ransom. She was the daughter of a back east millionaire. And Slocum and Villa knew each other well.
Slocum made this comment at a dinner party in 1927. In total confidence to the officer. He stated no reason for this other that his own Intel at the time. He had long sense retired from service.
Unless it was the Ambassador to Spain, I haven't a clue either. Something tells me, though, that it was a rather politically influential and rather privately wealthy businessman.
Ever hear of a fellow named Fitzhugh Lee? He was US Consul General in Havana when the war broke out.
Back to punitive expedition to Mexico. A recently uncovered statment made by Col. Slocum ( commanded the forces at Columbus March 1916) to another army officer stated that the real reason for Villa's raid on Columbus was to kidnap (Slocums) wife for ransom. She was the daughter of a back east millionaire. And Slocum and Villa knew each other well.
Slocum made this comment at a dinner party in 1927. In total confidence to the officer. He stated no reason for this other that his own Intel at the time. He had long sense retired from service.
I can also appreciate the media playing up the mexican army sending water purification units to New Orleans after Katrina. I remember the newscaster stating " This is the first time since1847 that the Mexican Army has been on US soil!"
LOL! Ok I'm not counting the times here recently that they have made incursions here into texas as of late, but Woodrow Wilson allowed several regiments of Federales to travel by train. On US soil from New Mexico to Douglas Ariz. In fall of 1915 to flank Villa's forces dug in across the border at Agua Preita. And to top it off officials on this side of the border set up search lights to assist theFederales with night time attacks on the Villastas. Another good reason for Villa to set his sights on Columbus.
I will probably live to regret posting the following but here goes anyway.
There has been a lot posted on the Civil War on the Campfire lately. Some good, some bad, and a bunch that is really stupid and absurd.
In terms of a historical event there have been more barrels of ink and reams of paper spent on the War Between the States than almost any other single thing in American History.
Since I am an Historian by professional training I have thought I might post some on how you can develop a better understanding of the events surrounding the Civil War if you are interested in doing some work and digging on your own.
Be forewarned there is an absolute Himalayan mountain range amount of material to sift through. A few quick internet searches are not going to get you anything but mostly perplexed and disgusted. Forget finding a single cause for the war because there is NO single overriding cause. Nor will you find a consensus list of causes. The Civil War is simply too complex an event for that.
The first step I would suggest is to see how the Civil War fits into the continuum of history. To do this you are going to have to begin with a clear understanding of the events prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
To this end I would suggest using 1861 as a starting date and go back at least 50 years. Once there begin with a well done textbook on American History. I would recommend the following volume:
While the Confederate Battle Flag is an historical relic, other issues have clouded its history. Given that it has been used by the KKK and other hate groups, it's role in history has been greatly tarnished and is seen as insulting to many Americans. It needs to be replaced.
While the Confederate Battle Flag is an historical relic, other issues have clouded its history. Given that it has been used by the KKK and other hate groups, it's role in history has been greatly tarnished and is seen as insulting to many Americans. It needs to be replaced.
While the Confederate Battle Flag is an historical relic, other issues have clouded its history. Given that it has been used by the KKK and other hate groups, it's role in history has been greatly tarnished and is seen as insulting to many Americans. It needs to be replaced.
With what, a ham sandwich?
Look, assigning personal connotations (modern day at that) to an idea or symbol to the extent it dilutes history is... stooopid.
Are you comfortable assigning these arbiters of "good taste" to replacing other facets of US history as they see fit?
Yep. That's the reason why accordions, tubas, and essentially polka music are such a part of Mexican culture. Weirdest damned combo going.
Hey, I like Mexican polka.
Figures.
You mean yo don't like a good Mexican Polka.
Oh yeah! I hear them every night. At about 10:30 and midnight the. Again when then next shift drives by about 2:30 am!!! But we're not being taken over.
Oh yeah! I hear them every night. At about 10:30 and midnight the. Again when then next shift drives by about 2:30 am!!! But we're not being taken over.
Most days around here its like Guadalajara on Saturday night after dark. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more Mexicans in NC than in Mexico.
Y'all 'scuse me for taking the thread in this direction...... On a visit to Opolouses, La. several years ago, I was surprised to discover that it claimed to have been the Capitol of the Confederacy at one time.[ By God..YOU try spelling it from memory.]
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,-- Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips, To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue-- A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; Blood and destruction shall be so in use And dreadful objects so familiar That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war; All pity choked with custom of fell deeds: And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.
There was a video recording somewhere of my "Road Kill Puppet Show" at Fort Toulouse Ala. I had a dead raccoon. And a dead possum. Doing the balcony scene from Romero and Juliet.
There was a video recording somewhere of my "Road Kill Puppet Show" at Fort Toulouse Ala. I had a dead raccoon. And a dead possum. Doing the balcony scene from Romero and Juliet.
There was a video recording somewhere of my "Road Kill Puppet Show" at Fort Toulouse Ala. I had a dead raccoon. And a dead possum. Doing the balcony scene from Romero and Juliet.
It was very wrong.
You need to youtube that thing and become famous.
Yeah! And start receiver death threats from chicks like this!
There was a video recording somewhere of my "Road Kill Puppet Show" at Fort Toulouse Ala. I had a dead raccoon. And a dead possum. Doing the balcony scene from Romero and Juliet.
It was very wrong.
You need to youtube that thing and become famous.
Yeah! And start receiver death threats from chicks like this!
There was a video recording somewhere of my "Road Kill Puppet Show" at Fort Toulouse Ala. I had a dead raccoon. And a dead possum. Doing the balcony scene from Romero and Juliet.
It was very wrong.
You need to youtube that thing and become famous.
Yeah! And start receiver death threats from chicks like this!
Its was the 23rd of Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers..The 2nd Bn fought alongside the USMC, having previously being on opposing sides when facing the Continental Marines during the Revolution.
Its was the 23rd of Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers..The 2nd Bn fought alongside the USMC, having previously being on opposing sides when facing the Continental Marines during the Revolution.
Was this the same regiment that was involved at Rourke's Drift?
Ok. I'll try again. Only the fifth time I've tried to post only to be told there was an occurrence that required a total shut down and reload.
The Chauchat was the first real endeavor in the development of what we know now as the squad assault weapon. The team consisted of a gunner and two asst. gunners. The a gunners were fitted with extra magazines. It was there duty to to watch the big slots in the mags and when ammo was depleted have a fresh one ready. Here was about the only real drawback the french had with the gun. Mags suceptable to mud etc.
The French also put the gunners and a gunners thru a three month course on the guns. Tactics ( walking fire), care and maintenance and shooting. The Americans had 2 weeks training with the guns before heading off to the front. The BIGGEST ISSUE with the guns and the doughboys was withthe guns the Americans tried to convert to 30/06 ctg. Several important parts were left out of the bolt assembly!
When you look at the old photos, as added security, you always see a poilu with his gun in transport case, on his way to front. The doughboys never use the transport case as suggested.
There are several operational Chauchats here locally in our little group of WWI hobbyist. One has recently been transferred to a new owner. I had one for a while, but I no longer have it in my possession. . Gone the way of the dodo!
Frederick “Fritz” Joubert Duquesne. Captured as leader of a German spy ring in the U.S. during WWII. The claim for killing Kitchner has never been substantiated.
It's easy to understand Duquesne's hatred of the British, in general and Kitchener in particular, and why he wanted credit for Kitchener's demise. So much of what was wrong with the Empire was displayed in the 2nd Boer war. Breaker Morant was shot for killing guerrilla combatants. Horatio Kitchner killed 26,000 woman and children and was made an Earl. The only true British hero of the war was Emily Hobhouse.
Duquesne always stated thru his espionage, he supplied the German navy with the Intel Of Kitchener leaving scotland bound for Russia. So he never let a good incident go to waste !
Duquesne always stated thru his espionage, he supplied the German navy with the Intel Of Kitchener leaving scotland bound for Russia. So he never let a good incident go to waste !
Gadfly, I believe Duquesne's mom and lil sis were some of those that died at Bloemfontain (sic). Weren't they?
Duquesne always stated thru his espionage, he supplied the German navy with the Intel Of Kitchener leaving scotland bound for Russia. So he never let a good incident go to waste !
Gadfly, I believe Duquesne's mom and lil sis were some of those that died at Bloemfontain (sic). Weren't they?
The family farm was razed by the British, his sister raped and killed, with his mother later dying in a concentration camp.
Ok. I'll try again. Only the fifth time I've tried to post only to be told there was an occurrence that required a total shut down and reload.
The Chauchat was the first real endeavor in the development of what we know now as the squad assault weapon. The team consisted of a gunner and two asst. gunners. The a gunners were fitted with extra magazines. It was there duty to to watch the big slots in the mags and when ammo was depleted have a fresh one ready. Here was about the only real drawback the french had with the gun. Mags suceptable to mud etc.
The French also put the gunners and a gunners thru a three month course on the guns. Tactics ( walking fire), care and maintenance and shooting. The Americans had 2 weeks training with the guns before heading off to the front. The BIGGEST ISSUE with the guns and the doughboys was withthe guns the Americans tried to convert to 30/06 ctg. Several important parts were left out of the bolt assembly!
When you look at the old photos, as added security, you always see a poilu with his gun in transport case, on his way to front. The doughboys never use the transport case as suggested.
There are several operational Chauchats here locally in our little group of WWI hobbyist. One has recently been transferred to a new owner. I had one for a while, but I no longer have it in my possession. . Gone the way of the dodo!
Did you call your Chauchat the same thing the Doughboy's did?
Ok. I'll try again. Only the fifth time I've tried to post only to be told there was an occurrence that required a total shut down and reload.
The Chauchat was the first real endeavor in the development of what we know now as the squad assault weapon. The team consisted of a gunner and two asst. gunners. The a gunners were fitted with extra magazines. It was there duty to to watch the big slots in the mags and when ammo was depleted have a fresh one ready. Here was about the only real drawback the french had with the gun. Mags suceptable to mud etc.
The French also put the gunners and a gunners thru a three month course on the guns. Tactics ( walking fire), care and maintenance and shooting. The Americans had 2 weeks training with the guns before heading off to the front. The BIGGEST ISSUE with the guns and the doughboys was withthe guns the Americans tried to convert to 30/06 ctg. Several important parts were left out of the bolt assembly!
When you look at the old photos, as added security, you always see a poilu with his gun in transport case, on his way to front. The doughboys never use the transport case as suggested.
There are several operational Chauchats here locally in our little group of WWI hobbyist. One has recently been transferred to a new owner. I had one for a while, but I no longer have it in my possession. . Gone the way of the dodo!
Did you call your Chauchat the same thing the Doughboy's did?
Ok. I'll try again. Only the fifth time I've tried to post only to be told there was an occurrence that required a total shut down and reload.
The Chauchat was the first real endeavor in the development of what we know now as the squad assault weapon. The team consisted of a gunner and two asst. gunners. The a gunners were fitted with extra magazines. It was there duty to to watch the big slots in the mags and when ammo was depleted have a fresh one ready. Here was about the only real drawback the french had with the gun. Mags suceptable to mud etc.
The French also put the gunners and a gunners thru a three month course on the guns. Tactics ( walking fire), care and maintenance and shooting. The Americans had 2 weeks training with the guns before heading off to the front. The BIGGEST ISSUE with the guns and the doughboys was withthe guns the Americans tried to convert to 30/06 ctg. Several important parts were left out of the bolt assembly!
When you look at the old photos, as added security, you always see a poilu with his gun in transport case, on his way to front. The doughboys never use the transport case as suggested.
There are several operational Chauchats here locally in our little group of WWI hobbyist. One has recently been transferred to a new owner. I had one for a while, but I no longer have it in my possession. . Gone the way of the dodo!
Did you call your Chauchat the same thing the Doughboy's did?
LOL! No.
Man, I am disappointed. I figured for sure you would have done a whole soliloquy on it to rival your Shakespeare presentation.
I need to get back into Frederick Russell Burnhams book, "Scouting On Two Continents". I was right in the middle when wifey's health went south. And Ive just been to tired to read at night when in I finally lay down. Suppose I should just start back from the beginning. It's a good read!!!
I need to get back into Frederick Russell Burnhams book, "Scouting On Two Continents". I was right in the middle when wifey's health went south. And Ive just been to tired to read at night when in I finally lay down. Suppose I should just start back from the beginning. It's a good read!!!
It is a great book and starting over on one those is never a mistake.
They had colt mfg 1895's in .30 US Army. Gatling guns in 45/70 , 1" naval and I believe the 30 Army's were available too. I believe they also had some Nordenfelts in 1".
I don't think the US Army had any Gardner guns.
Technically Gatlings, Nordenfelts etc are t really machine guns.
They had colt mfg 1895's in .30 US Army. Gatling guns in 45/70 , 1" naval and I believe the 30 Army's were available too. I believe they also had some Nordenfelts in 1".
I don't think the US Army had any Gardner guns.
Technically Gatlings, Nordenfelts etc are t really machine guns.
Now where were you at in class? I could have really used you.
The Tiffany family donated two 1895 Colt guns to the Rough Riders chambered in 7x57 so they could use captured Spanish ammo after their own supply ran out.
I didn't know that about the VC award policy. Who would have had to approve such an award during this period?
To be honest, I am not 100% sure..The War Office would have had the primary responsiblity, but I have no doubt that there was wider political considerations also meaning the Giovernment of the day may well have had a say..
IIRC, during the Boer War there were 5 or 6 times when this particular policy was waiverd before the policy was eventually overhauled completely.
I didn't know that about the VC award policy. Who would have had to approve such an award during this period?
To be honest, I am not 100% sure..The War Office would have had the primary responsiblity, but I have no doubt that there was wider political considerations also meaning the Giovernment of the day may well have had a say..
IIRC, during the Boer War there were 5 or 6 times when this particular policy was waiverd before the policy was eventually overhauled completely.
Lots of ballistic gack and some very interesting early x-rays of high velocity bullet wounds.
This some great stuff. The kind of thing a historian lives for.
Thanks for the link.
I would imagine this has to be one of if not the first study of its type.
If I recall correctly, there was a paper produced by an American surgeon on treating bullet wounds in the Spanish-American war, but I don't believe he had access to an x-ray machine.
They were hell on extractors and firing pins. And don't stick the ammo belt tab in upside down to load!!!!
But four MG teams at Columbus NM were able to expend over 20,000 Rounds the morning of Villa's raid.
The coolest read on the raid were the AAR's from the kitchen/mess hall. Seems the cooks and etc. all had shotguns for foraging and meat axes and cleavers for butchering. Not a pretty sight. They went medieval. And for the life of me I cannot remember the publication those reports are in. But I bet they could be located pretty easy.
Another side note. Mexican Revolution related. All those Krag Cavalry carbines that didn't end up in some hollyweird whse were "sold" by prez Wilson to Carranza's forces! Keep Carranza happy so he wouldn't invade Texas. He was in agreement on the plan of San Diego. That is until the US recognized him as the official de facto prez of Mexico.
Casualty count is a hard one as Slocums gave Tompkins permissions on pursue the raiders. So there were actually several engagements
US losses were at 18. 8 soldiers, 10 civilians.
Raiders losses were between 175-200.
But who knows as to how many wounded died later in Mexico.
Tompkins and his 15 mile pursuit with a troop of his 13th Cav. Counted 100 dead in their action. Some put the count of bodies in Columbus proper at a total raider dead at 67.
Archie Frost, his wife, and 6 month old baby drove their Dodge touring car thru a hail of rifle fire and made it to Deming. He wife was hit and wounded by one bullet. They could see see smoke of the burning town in Deming but had no clue what was going on. When they found out the first relief force to arrive in Columbus was I company 1st regt NMNG. They arrive the next afternoon. I believe they got their in private vehicle. They were leg infantry unit. This was the local NG unit out of Deming.
The action was a textbook example of small unit leadership. Just about the entire officers cadre was in El Paso for a polo match (convient!), junior officers and NCO's answered the call and established a defensive position and successful counter attack with minimal losses.
Another side note. Mexican Revolution related. All those Krag Cavalry carbines that didn't end up in some hollyweird whse were "sold" by prez Wilson to Carranza's forces! Keep Carranza happy so he wouldn't invade Texas. He was in agreement on the plan of San Diego. That is until the US recognized him as the official de facto prez of Mexico.
To me the history of the southwest in the early 20th century is some of the coolest reads out there. I suppose it's because all my relative in south Texas were alive when this was all happening!!
In January of 1916 Villastas attacked a train near San Isabel. They executed 18 Americans. 15 worked for American Smelting and Refining company. One of those executed was the uncle of an old and dear friend of mine!
To me the history of the southwest in the early 20th century is some of the coolest reads out there. I suppose it's because all my relative in south Texas were alive when this was all happening!!
To me the history of the southwest in the early 20th century is some of the coolest reads out there. I suppose it's because all my relative in south Texas were alive when this was all happening!!
To me the history of the southwest in the early 20th century is some of the coolest reads out there. I suppose it's because all my relative in south Texas were alive when this was all happening!!
I have been following this thread from the start,and you fellas have, have expanded my reading list to the point I won't live long enough to read it all, the current subject being S.Tex. What ever was going on 100 years ago, is still going on now in Mexico, and S.Tex. only things that have changed are the names and weapons, we deal with it almost every day. Rio7
You can bet La Raza and others are working on a modern version of this including a Fifth Column component made up of American politicians.
Something different now than it was then is value of the contraband. Every high school kid in America has ready access to Mexican drugs, IIRC we collectively consume about 400 tons of just cocaine alone each year, as more than an estimated 30 billion US dollars per annum flows south across the Border. That sort of money could probably buy a lot of people.
Suddenly a Yaqui stood up waving his arms in surrender. Captain Ryder immediately blew long blasts on his whistle for the order to 'cease fire, ' and after some scattered shooting the fight was over. Then upon command the troopers moved forward cautiously and surrounded them. This was a bunch of ten Yaquis, who had slowed the Cavalry advance to enable most of their band to escape. It was a courageous stand by a brave group of Indians; and the Cavalrymen treated them with the respect due to fighting men.
I have been following this thread from the start,and you fellas have, have expanded my reading list to the point I won't live long enough to read it all, the current subject being S.Tex. What ever was going on 100 years ago, is still going on now in Mexico, and S.Tex. only things that have changed are the names and weapons, we deal with it almost every day. Rio7
Having lived in McAllen and Harlingen I have to agree with you on that.
I have been following this thread from the start,and you fellas have, have expanded my reading list to the point I won't live long enough to read it all, the current subject being S.Tex. What ever was going on 100 years ago, is still going on now in Mexico, and S.Tex. only things that have changed are the names and weapons, we deal with it almost every day. Rio7
Something different now than it was then is value of the contraband. Every high school kid in America has ready access to Mexican drugs, IIRC we collectively consume about 400 tons of just cocaine alone each year, as more than an estimated 30 billion US dollars per annum flows south across the Border. That sort of money could probably buy a lot of people.
Birdwatcher
It would probably be amazing to see the drug cartel's payroll sheet.
I guarantee there are a lot of US politicians and high ranking LEO's getting nice checks from them every month for their cooperation on "Border Security."
I guarantee there are a lot of US politicians and high ranking LEO's getting nice checks from them every month for their cooperation on "Border Security."
Yep. And they should face a firing squad for treason. miles
I was just given a copy of "The Great War In Africa", by Byron Farwell. Have not started it yet. But Ive read some in the past to know that Von Lettow-Vorbeck was one of the military geniuses of the 20th Century.
Another good book is "The Adventures of Mimi and Tou Tou! The story about the two patrol boats the Brits hauled from the Thames estuary to Lake Tanganika. Awesome read. Was the basis for the story "The African Queen". The RN officer in charg Spicer-Simpson was quite the eccentric.
There was another RN officer who drank Wochestershire sauce as an aperitif! By the case!
When the book was written the Graf Von Gotzen was still in service on Lake Tanganika. This was 2004. Dunno if she is still running now. Coal burners removed and Diesel engines installed at some point. This was the ship that was the inspiration for the Luisa in the African Queen.
When the book was written the Graf Von Gotzen was still in service on Lake Tanganika. This was 2004. Dunno if she is still running now. Coal burners removed and Diesel engines installed at some point. This was the ship that was the inspiration for the Luisa in the African Queen.
I wish that old boat could talk. Just imagine the stories.
Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck. The absolute MASTER of irregular warfare!! He earned the loyalty and respect of both his German and AFRICAN Troopers to a hitherto unknown degree!! AND he kicked the living dog piss out of the Brits,south Africans and Portuguese he fought against. The ONLY undefeated outfit in WWI!!!
Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck. The absolute MASTER of irregular warfare!! He earned the loyalty and respect of both his German and AFRICAN Troopers to a hitherto unknown degree!! AND he kicked the living dog piss out of the Brits,south Africans and Portuguese he fought against. The ONLY undefeated outfit in WWI!!!
Just imagine what he could have done had he been well supplied.
Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck. The absolute MASTER of irregular warfare!! He earned the loyalty and respect of both his German and AFRICAN Troopers to a hitherto unknown degree!! AND he kicked the living dog piss out of the Brits,south Africans and Portuguese he fought against. The ONLY undefeated outfit in WWI!!!
And,,,, one of the few people to tell Hitler to his face, GFY!!! And lived to tell about it!!!
Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck. The absolute MASTER of irregular warfare!! He earned the loyalty and respect of both his German and AFRICAN Troopers to a hitherto unknown degree!! AND he kicked the living dog piss out of the Brits,south Africans and Portuguese he fought against. The ONLY undefeated outfit in WWI!!!
And,,,, one of the few people to tell Hitler to his face, GFY!!! And lived to tell about it!!!
Von Lettow Vorbeck would have wrung Hitler's neck if the nasty little Corporal had persisted.
Posted this photo before. But it's such a cool pic I'm posting it again.
This is the grand dad of one of archaeologist son's school buddies. He was some kind of engineer in Mexico. Mining I think they said. Early 20's. This was on the balcony of the hacienda where they stayed!!!
Posted this photo before. But it's such a cool pic I'm posting it again.
This is the grand dad of one of archaeologist son's school buddies. He was some kind of engineer in Mexico. Mining I think they said. Early 20's. This was on the balcony of the hacienda where they stayed!!!
Is happiness really a warm Lewis gun???
The Lewis gun was just for for those special visitors wasn't it.
Posted this photo before. But it's such a cool pic I'm posting it again.
This is the grand dad of one of archaeologist son's school buddies. He was some kind of engineer in Mexico. Mining I think they said. Early 20's. This was on the balcony of the hacienda where they stayed!!!
Is happiness really a warm Lewis gun???
The Lewis gun was just for for those special visitors wasn't it.
Posted this photo before. But it's such a cool pic I'm posting it again.
This is the grand dad of one of archaeologist son's school buddies. He was some kind of engineer in Mexico. Mining I think they said. Early 20's. This was on the balcony of the hacienda where they stayed!!!
Is happiness really a warm Lewis gun???
The Lewis gun was just for for those special visitors wasn't it.
Reading Tindall and Shi's America here, in fits and starts in spare moments. The Rev. War is about to break out. Some inaccurate generalities about Indian adoption customs, but overall OK, I keep having flashbacks to Mr. Cohen's class in the 7th grade.
Anyways, on the topic of Border mining engineers; John Christopher Columbus Hill, the "Lion of Mier", who's bravery in the fight at Mier in 1842 so impressed his Mexican opponents that he was sent with a military escort to Santa Anna, who adopted the lad.....
John Christopher Columbus Hill, mining and civil engineer and physician, son of Elizabeth (Barksdale) and Asa Hill, was born on November 15, 1828, in Columbus, Georgia, the first white child born there. His father moved the family to Texas in 1835; John attended Rutersville College. He displayed such bravery and audacity at the age of fourteen in the battle of Mier that Gen. Pedro Ampudia befriended him and sent him with special military escort to President Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico.
Characterized as "a brave and handsome little fellow" by William Preston Stapp, veteran of the Mier expedition, and as "a very shrewd and handsome boy" by Waddy Thompson, United States Minister to Mexico, he so endeared himself to generals Santa Anna, Valentín Gómez Farías, and José María Tornel that they persuaded him to remain in Mexico. Although he was in no position to bargain, his agreement was based upon their promise to release his father and brother, Jeffrey, who were also prisoners of war.
While living in Tornel's home, Hill entered the Colegio de Minería, in which he won scholastic prizes and from which he graduated in 1851. While living in Mexico Hill adopted the name Juan Cristóbal Gil. When American soldiers were billeted in the college, even though not yet eighteen, Hill was instrumental in having them placed elsewhere. During the occupation of Mexico City by the United States Army in the Mexican War, he was helpful to both sides, probably as an interpreter.
In 1855 he married Agustina Sagredo of Real del Monte, who died in 1891; they were the parents of four children. As a mining engineer, he was engaged in mining enterprises, and as a civil engineer, he participated in laying out railway lines. In addition he was a practicing physician.
Throughout his life, he kept in close touch with his Texas relatives and sent his son, Carlos, to Swarthmore College. In 1867 he procured the release from prison of his old benefactor, General Ampudia, who was under sentence of death because of allegedly siding with Maximilian.
Hill's first return to the United States occurred in 1855, and in later years he made frequent and extensive trips to his native country. He moved to Austin in 1895 and served as Spanish translator for the General Land Office until October 1896, when he returned to Mexico to look after mining properties. He was made an honorary life member of the Texas State Historical Association in 1897. In 1898 he married the sweetheart of his youth, Mrs. Mary Ann Murray Masterson, a native of England. He died in Monterrey, Nuevo León, on February 16, 1904, and was buried there.
It is my understanding that Hill prospered during his Engineering career, tho scant mention of that is made above.
Santa Anna had also offered to adopt the infant Angelina Dickinson, daughter of Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson, in the aftermath of that siege. Angelina's troubled life might have gone differently had Susanna accepted.
Somehow moter and daughter did preserve Travis' signet ring for the next thirty years, hung around the infant Angelina's neck a few days before the end of the siege, and now on display at the Alamo.
When the book was written the Graf Von Gotzen was still in service on Lake Tanganika. This was 2004. Dunno if she is still running now. Coal burners removed and Diesel engines installed at some point. This was the ship that was the inspiration for the Luisa in the African Queen.
She is now called the MV Liemba and is still in service. In fact in spring of this year, she was apparently used by the UN during an evacuation of refugees.
When the book was written the Graf Von Gotzen was still in service on Lake Tanganika. This was 2004. Dunno if she is still running now. Coal burners removed and Diesel engines installed at some point. This was the ship that was the inspiration for the Luisa in the African Queen.
She is now called the MV Liemba and is still in service. In fact in spring of this year, she was apparently used by the UN during an evacuation of refugees.
That is some service life. I am glad she is still going strong.
Who was the British, Hunter, engineer, colonial official, war vet and officer that Hemingway used as his basis for his story, "The Short An Happy Life Of Francis Macomber"? Story was based on an incident that occurred where this individual was directly involved.
Hint there was a popular movie a few years ago about several of this mans achievements before the Great War.
Name three new technologies that affected the shaping of the battlefield and strategy in WWI.
I dunno if tanks were deployed in enough numbers and used in a way that meets your criteria, but the exploits of "Musical Box" (Whippet 344) are worth a look. Accounts say this one intrepid crew of three killed "hundreds" of Germans.
A Whippet.... three guys, four .303 machine guns, two double-decker bus engines, 8 mph wide open.
The crew of Whippet number 344 under the command of Lt. C. B. Arnold performed the greatest mechanical cavalry charge of the war. Moving off at zero hour on the 8th August with the rest of the troops across that sector, they passed the railway at Villiers-Bretonneux and somehow became detached from the main force. Arnold became aware of a force of Mark V tanks and Australian Infantry under fire from German artillery. Arnold attacked without hesitation, first passing in front of the German guns and then to the rear peppering the gun positions with machine gun fire. The timely attack by Arnold allowed the Australian infantry to move forward. For the next 9 hours Arnold and his crew attacked German rear positions, infantry, and wagons. They dispersed a whole battalion of infantry in a camp between Bayonvillers and Harbonnieres, destroyed an observation balloon and a transport column of the German 225.Division.
Following unremitting attack upon the Germans, the conditions inside Arnold's Whippet became so difficult that the crew used the mouthpieces of their gasmasks for breathing. The destruction of 'Musical Box' came when the Germans cornered Arnold's tank and set it ablaze with artillery fire. Baling out of the burning wreck, the driver was shot and Arnold and the remaining crewman were taken prisoner.
Here are a couple exam questions that drove my students nuts on exams:
Why were the casualty rates so horrific in WWI?
Name three new technologies that affected the shaping of the battlefield and strategy in WWI. Discuss each in detail.
Tanks, nerve gas and machine guns?
The casualty rates were so high because there weren't any effective countermeasures to these new technologies. Everyone literally dug in and kept flogging each other.
**The above answers are all just guesses............which is how I survived my freshman year in college when I forgot to study for an exams.
This was the first modern war that was fought between two highly industrialised nations (and their allies) where the geography of the Western Front permitted both sides to relatively easily pour all their resources into it at will.
The three technologies:
Modern communications ie the trench telephone system and the telegraph plus to a lesser extent, "wireless"
The Machine Gun
The Tank
Edited to add the U-Boat..perhaps not directly affecting the Western Front but in a wider sense it was a strategic weapon for the Germans that almost won them the war..
Here are a couple exam questions that drove my students nuts on exams:
Why were the casualty rates so horrific in WWI?
Name three new technologies that affected the shaping of the battlefield and strategy in WWI. Discuss each in detail.
Certainly the "new" technologies of Machineguns, tanks and aircraft affected the battlefield in a large way, but the lack of a strategic response to them was what caused the horrific casualty rates in WWI. Both sides insisted on the same strategies as had been used in olden times where these technologies either didn't exist or didn't exist in numbers large enough to be effectual. Specifically, charging an entrenched defensive position defended with machineguns is much worse than even charging one primarily defended with muskets-as was done at Gettysburg.
Certainly the "new" technologies of Machineguns, tanks and aircraft affected the battlefield in a large way, but the lack of a strategic response to them was what caused the horrific casualty rates in WWI. Both sides insisted on the same strategies as had been used in olden times where these technologies either didn't exist or didn't exist in numbers large enough to be effectual. Specifically, charging an entrenched defensive position defended with machineguns is much worse than even charging one primarily defended with muskets-as was done at Gettysburg.
Once the trench system down the Western Front was completed and fortified, there was no other strategic response available to either side until the advent of the tank..
Both sides tried various method to break the stalemate ie the introduction of gas, and even the bombing of the UK mainland by German Zeppelins but nothing was strategically decisive..
It wasn’t until the various Powers started to worry about the possibility of large scale mutiny/revolution, and the arrival of the Spanish flu to mainland Europe and the UK, that things started to change.
Here are a couple exam questions that drove my students nuts on exams:
Why were the casualty rates so horrific in WWI?
Name three new technologies that affected the shaping of the battlefield and strategy in WWI. Discuss each in detail.
Tanks, nerve gas and machine guns?
The casualty rates were so high because there weren't any effective countermeasures to these new technologies. Everyone literally dug in and kept flogging each other.
**The above answers are all just guesses............which is how I survived my freshman year in college when I forgot to study for an exams.
Machine guns, barbed wire and greatly improved artillery guns.
The heavy use of machine guns and improved artillery were the main culprits.
When coupled with the antiquated infantry tactics of mass frontal assault, etc. the effect of the machine guns and artillery was magnified exponentially.
The new technologies so far outstripped the prevailing tactical thinking it took until 1918 to see any real modification in approach and the incorporation of things such as combined arms assaults by infantry and air power and even then it was limited in scope.
The submarine also had a major impact on the war effort as Pete notes. The U-boat damned near drove Britain out of the war.
Since raiding the enemy trenches to take prisoners and obtain intelligence on enemy dispositions was a regular occurrence on the Western Front, what weapon became the most feared by the trench bound soldiers? Particularly, how did the Germans react to the use of this weapon?
Not until the USA got involved, but the Winchester Mod 97 Trench gun was so feared and hated by the Germans that they considered it to be a war crime for one to be used.
Not until the USA got involved, but the Winchester Mod 97 Trench gun was so feared and hated by the Germans that they considered it to be a war crime for one to be used.
Not until the USA got involved, but the Winchester Mod 97 Trench gun was so feared and hated by the Germans that they considered it to be a war crime for one to be used.
The Brits used the Browning A-5 with the barrel sawn off at the end of the forearm.
The shotgun is the answer. It was used by both the British and the Germans but really perfected by the US troops and the Model 97 Winchester "Trench Brooms."
By late in the war getting caught by the Germans with a shotgun meant a summary execution on the spot.
The machinegun and big guns get a lot of attention, but never forget the absolutely enormous number of men killed by plain old rifle fire. I would love to transpose a Korean War Chinese human wave attack and pit them against a German trench line. NO "assault rifles" involved. Bolt action Gew 98 and MG 08 and 08/15's. The Krauts would have a field day wiping out the chinks.
Overall, the Brits had the best combo of marksmanship and weapon in my opinion. Early on, the Germans thought they were up against automatic fire when they first engaged the Brits, thanks to the Lee Enfield's faster reloading rate and of course, the highly trained (albeit small) British professionals
Overall, the Brits had the best combo of marksmanship and weapon in my opinion. Early on, the Germans thought they were up against automatic fire when they first engaged the Brits, thanks to the Lee Enfield's faster reloading rate and of course, the highly trained (albeit small) British professionals
I have read several accounts of where the Germans ran into a British unit and thought they had machine guns when it was just the discipline, training, and marksmanship of the British troops.
Back to the Civil War. I'm reading "The Clansman"...the book that was the basis for "Birth of a Nation".
So, anyway, here is what Wiki says was the motivation of the author to write the story:
Dixon wrote The Clansman as a message to Northerners to maintain racial segregation, as the work claimed that blacks when free would turn savage and violent, committing crimes such as murder, rape and robbery far out of proportion to their percentage of the population.
Back to the Civil War. I'm reading "The Clansman"...the book that was the basis for "Birth of a Nation".
So, anyway, here is what Wiki says was the motivation of the author to write the story:
Dixon wrote The Clansman as a message to Northerners to maintain racial segregation, as the work claimed that blacks when free would turn savage and violent, committing crimes such as murder, rape and robbery far out of proportion to their percentage of the population.
Back to the Civil War. I'm reading "The Clansman"...the book that was the basis for "Birth of a Nation".
So, anyway, here is what Wiki says was the motivation of the author to write the story:
Dixon wrote The Clansman as a message to Northerners to maintain racial segregation, as the work claimed that blacks when free would turn savage and violent, committing crimes such as murder, rape and robbery far out of proportion to their percentage of the population.
Dixon wrote The Clansman as a message to Northerners to maintain racial segregation, as the work claimed that blacks when free would turn savage and violent, committing crimes such as murder, rape and robbery far out of proportion to their percentage of the population.
Hmmm...
Well hey, we really needed another thread around here devoted to the failings of the American Black community, thanks
But... on the topic, I'm trying to recall the name of a book I picked up years ago at the bookstore at the Chickamauga Battlefield Park, the book originally being one of those WPA-funded endeavors of the '30's, where people went around and interviewed folks born into slavery to get their testimonies while they were still alive. More than a few of these elderly people interviewed referenced the crime problems in their communities subsequent to emancipation.
Some even stated that the young male miscreants in their communities would have been better controlled under slavery.
Still chipping away at Tindall and Shi's textbook America: A Narrative History, thank you for the recommendation.
Like most prob'ly most guys here when it comes to history I'm most interested in blood and guts ie. wars,tactics and weaponry. This book ain't about that.
Another interest of mine has long been the spread of Euro technology to the Indian side of the Frontier and reciprocal effects (for example the folks at Americanlongrifles.com have it that our iconic American longrifle was developed specifically for the mid-18th Cent. Indian trade). Tindall and Shi leave off the Indians all in bark longhouses of course which was actually largely out of date pretty early, and certainly was by the Rev. War.
However, where Tindall and Shi really start firing on all cylinders IMHO and the book steps up is Chapter Six entitled Shaping a Federal Union., detailing the initial Confederation of States and then the composing of the American Constitution in 1787.
It is interesting that the formal US ban on slavery in new territories that would later so rile the collective South actually precedes the US Constitution. The authors do not elaborate upon how that came to be.
Anyways, Chapter Six, some quotes:
Ben Franklin's opinion on the Constitution....
On October 10, 1788, the Confederation Congress transacted its last business and passed into history. "Our constitution is in actual operation." the elderly Ben Franklin wrote to a friend."Everything seems to promise it will last, but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."
I dunno if that is the origin of that popular saying.
George Washington hisself, who had rather distantly presided over the oppressively hot and uncomfortable four-month process at Independence Hall was notably pessimistic....
"I do not expect the Constitution to last for more than twenty years."
...and lending credence to recent "Constitution as a living document" arguments from the Left the authors state in their closing paragraph of the chapter...
The Constitution has been neither a static abstraction nor a "a machine that would go of itself" as the poet James Russell Lowell would later assert. Instead it has provided a flexible system of government that presidents, legislators, judges, and the people have modified to accord with a fallible human nature and changing social, economic and political circumstances.....
And, specifically relevant to this thread; here is the very last sentence of this excellent chapter where the authors close with this....
But the framers of the Constitution failed in one significant respect. In skirting the issue of slavery so as to cement the new union, they unknowingly allowed tensions over the "peculiar institution" to reach the point where there would be no political solution - only civil war.
The Revolutionary generation of leaders was the first to confront the issue of slavery and to consider abolishing it....
In the northern states, which had fewer slaves than the southern, the doctrines of liberty led swiftly to emancipation for all either during the fighting or shortly afterward.
South of Pennsylvania the potential consequences of emancipation were so staggering - South Carolina had a black majority - that whites refused to extend the principle of liberty to their slaves.
The book goes on to state that at least the restrictions for manumission (freeing ones slaves) were relaxed in Virginia for one, as 10,000 were in that state alone during the 1780's (By way of contrast, the book states that 55,000 slaves had fled to the North and freedom during the American Revolution).
Worth noting that stricter manumission regulations were later applied in some locations, the presence of freed slaves coming to be regarded as a problem.
There is a quote from the Delaware legislature in the 1790s whereby they made it a crime for slave owners to manumit their slaves without legislative approval. The quote said something about freed slaves being "slothful and a burden upon their neighborhoods..."
This is why I almost puked when I was at the local premiere of "The Patriot". When Mel Gibson told the Brit Officer, that he owned no slaves. These were all free men who worked for him!!! Guffaws of laughter from peanut gallery.
I've got a book written in the 1920s by a man who was from my hometown. He was the state attorney general and it was a autobiography and stories from his youth.
Anyway, he grew up in the 1870s and 1880s and they were fairly well-to-do with both black and white hired hands. He said that as a boy white bums would come through from time to time asking for handouts and the like but that there never were any black bums who would wander through. He related that one day when they were out working and all taking a break, he asked the black hands why they never saw any black bums. He said one of them responded, "Well, sir, when a black man gets down on his luck, he jes goes to preachin."
The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.
During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, “A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.
On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S.
Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”
Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”
The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.
The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.
During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, “A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.
On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S.
Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”
Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”
The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.
Exactly. Figure, too, that the Federal Government indicted Jefferson Davis on charges of treason specifically related to the Southern secession. Davis demanded trial. The Federal government postponed and continued the case SEVEN TIMES, each time over the objection of Davis and his counsel as they were ready to proceed. After the final postponement and continuation, the Federal judge dismissed the charges against Davis.
If secession were unconstitutional and therefore clearly an act of treason, the Feds would have had the easiest case in history to make; not one that they ran from seven times.
Now, you all quit with the TRUTH. Birdy will get his knickers all in a twist.
No inconsiderable amount of irony in that statement considering the responses.
Sir, I am just quoting verbatim and entirely in-context from the text you recommended <"shrug">
Anyhoo... the fact of the Northern States freeing their slaves during or shortly after the Revolution was included because it seems most of you guys would like to write out any moral considerations at the time from the equation entirely.
At least all of you guys have been obliged to backpedal and now talk in terms of slavery not being an ONLY cause of secession (as opposed to NOT the cause) while repeatedly and falsely accusing me of stating the same
Probably other causes will be addressed later in the book I dunno.
Stay tuned and thanks again for the book reference.
I'm glad you finally admit your short-comings, as NO ONE but you has claimed the War of Northern Aggression was not complicated.
I did? Where? (ans: nowhere of course, in fact you yourself just got done ridiculing me for saying history is complicated)
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How many threads are you going to f'k up with your idiocy?
OK, I cite a recommended source verbatim and entirely in-context specifically addressing the original topic and I get this?...... geeze, where's an eye-roll emoticon when you need it?
Now, you all quit with the TRUTH. Birdy will get his knickers all in a twist.
No inconsiderable amount of irony in that statement considering the responses.
Sir, I am just quoting verbatim and entirely in-context from the text you recommended <"shrug">
Anyhoo... the fact of the Northern States freeing their slaves during or shortly after the Revolution was included because it seems most of you guys would like to write out any moral considerations at the time from the equation entirely.
At least all of you guys have been obliged to backpedal and now talk in terms of slavery not being an ONLY cause of secession (as opposed to NOT the cause) while repeatedly and falsely accusing me of stating the same
Probably other causes will be addressed later in the book I dunno.
Stay tuned and thanks again for the book reference.
Birdwatcher
The North didn't invade because of slavery; that's been a consistent position from those you refuse to grant any credit to at all throughout all of these threads for YEARS.
BTW - Texass seceded from Mexico, in part, because of slavery; something you refuse to admit.
Every single one of the points you've made in support of Texass secession from Mexico can be laid on top of Southern secession from the U.S., as well as the issue of slavery being a cause of Texass secession that you refuse to admit; yet, you support one while opposing the other, even in the face of your own arguments, logic, historical fact, and law.
You remain inconsistent, illogical, counterfactual, and intellectually dishonest.
The North didn't invade because of slavery; that's been a consistent position from those you refuse to grant any credit to at all throughout all of these threads for YEARS.
Nope. Never was my position at all.
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BTW - Texass seceded from Mexico, in part, because of slavery; something you refuse to admit.
I figure you repeatedly and willfully mispelling "Texas" that way is a miscalculation on your part. Honestly, to me it only makes you look foolish, and doubtless some other folks here find it offensive.
As for the rest, folks can see that other thread (insert eyeroll icon here).
The North didn't invade because of slavery; that's been a consistent position from those you refuse to grant any credit to at all throughout all of these threads for YEARS.
Nope. Never was my position at all.
Reading comprehension; add it to the list of things that you need to improve upon.
Those that continue to point out your shortcomings on this have been consistent that the North did not invade in order to "free the slaves"; ergo, slavery was not their motive for the war. In concert with that, the Southern states were well within their rights, as protected by the Constitution, to secede. Slavery was, whether you admit it or not, legal in the U.S. at the time and the U.S. had been a slave-nation for nearly a century. The words of Lincoln himself put his agenda on invasion on economics and on an unconstitutional edict to force states to remain in the Union when they had voted to leave.
You continue to state that slavery was the main driver; it could not have been if it were not the reason for the unconstitutional invasion and even more so if six of the eventual 13 Confederate states (and the second four to secede) did so because of the unconstitutional invasion of the original seven states.
Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
Originally Posted by 4ager
BTW - Texass seceded from Mexico, in part, because of slavery; something you refuse to admit.
I figure you repeatedly and willfully mispelling "Texas" that way is a miscalculation on your part. Honestly, to me it only makes you look foolish, and doubtless some other folks here find it offensive.
As for the rest, folks can see that other thread (insert eyeroll icon here).
Now, back to the topic please....
Birdwatcher
You can't stay on topic. The intentional misspelling counters your intentional obfuscation of fact. When you learn consistency and logic, I'll return the favor by spelling the slave-nation that seceded from Mexico in part due to slavery correctly.
Now, you all quit with the TRUTH. Birdy will get his knickers all in a twist.
No inconsiderable amount of irony in that statement considering the responses.
Sir, I am just quoting verbatim and entirely in-context from the text you recommended <"shrug">
Anyhoo... the fact of the Northern States freeing their slaves during or shortly after the Revolution was included because it seems most of you guys would like to write out any moral considerations at the time from the equation entirely.
At least all of you guys have been obliged to backpedal and now talk in terms of slavery not being an ONLY cause of secession (as opposed to NOT the cause) while repeatedly and falsely accusing me of stating the same
Probably other causes will be addressed later in the book I dunno.
Stay tuned and thanks again for the book reference.
Birdwatcher
The Tindall and Shi book is a good general US History book not a definitive History of or study of the Civil War and its causes.
Those that continue to point out your shortcomings on this have been consistent that the North did not invade in order to "free the slaves"; ergo, slavery was not their motive for the war.
I never said it was the main motive, I have always said for the vast majority of those half a million Union men (you guys always try to hang the whole thing on Lincoln, as if he was acting alone instead of with enormous popular support) the motive for war was to "Preserve the Union".
However it would be absurd to discount the effect of the Abolition movement on the politics of both sides.
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In concert with that, the Southern states were well within their rights, as protected by the Constitution, to secede.
IIRC an implied right, as in one of those things not specifically enumerated. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
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Slavery was, whether you admit it or not, legal in the U.S. at the time and the U.S. had been a slave-nation for nearly a century.
Slavery was an evil that blighted everything it touched, including unfortunately the Southern cause, to this very day. You wanna get rid of those Southern flags in public places? All you'd really have to do is publish the Southern Constitution and hang it next to 'em. Fortunately the collective Left ain't that literate.
As for the rest, threatening me about mispelling "Texas"..... (sorry)
Those that continue to point out your shortcomings on this have been consistent that the North did not invade in order to "free the slaves"; ergo, slavery was not their motive for the war.
I never said it was the main motive, I have always said for the vast majority of those half a million Union men (you guys always try to hang the whole thing on Lincoln, as if he was acting alone instead of with enormous popular support) the motive for war was to "Preserve the Union".
However it would be absurd to discount the effect of the Abolition movement on the politics of both sides.
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In concert with that, the Southern states were well within their rights, as protected by the Constitution, to secede.
IIRC an implied right, as in one of those things not specifically enumerated. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
Quote
Slavery was, whether you admit it or not, legal in the U.S. at the time and the U.S. had been a slave-nation for nearly a century.
Slavery was an evil that blighted everything it touched, including unfortunately the Southern cause, to this very day. You wanna get rid of those Southern flags in public places? All you'd really have to do is publish the Southern Constitution and hang it next to 'em. Fortunately the collective Left ain't that literate.
As for the rest, threatening me about mispelling "Texas"..... (sorry)
Birdwatcher
Yet, you continue to avoid the fact that slavery was Constitutional, it was legal, it was a factor in the Texass secession from Mexico, and there was NO Constitutional or legal authority for Lincoln to force states to remain in a Union. In fact, in support of the Texass secession, you have stated your support for EXACTLY what the Southern states did.
Wow I missed a lot today!!! But if I'm going to Quemado I have oodles of stuff to get done before I can leave. It's 95 out here. I just finished hanging a 16' gate. Gotta finish some fence now. Taking a breather and drinking a Hamm's!!! (:D).
I can honestly say Ive built a lot of fence; hand dug lots of holes ( they were out of post holes again today at Home Depot), and stretched a lot of wire w/o the assistance of slave or illegal labor! .
Bob, We just finished 15 miles of fence on the west side and 12 miles on the south side, but you know damn well I didn't do it alone, I am a sitter and pointer, I sit in my jeep and point my finger, had 15 guy's doing the job,and my jeep does not have A.C. it's a tough life. Rio7
Remember I have read the book before. In fact every book I have suggested on this entire thread I have read before some of them multiple times.
Isn't that a given for book recommendations?
Presumably Tindall and Shi labored long and hard to produce a tome with correct generalizations (if that ain't an oxymoron).
I'm curious why you guys keep trying to write away the 4 billion bale elephant standing in the corner.
If you wouldn't mind taking the time to state the ways in which the following is incorrect? The aforementioned closing sentence of Chapter Six, on the composition of the US Constitution....
But the framers of the Constitution failed in one significant respect. In skirting the issue of slavery so as to cement the new union, they unknowingly allowed tensions over the "peculiar institution" to reach the point where there would be no political solution - only civil war.
If you wouldn't mind taking the time to state the ways in which the following is incorrect? The aforementioned closing sentence of Chapter Six, on the composition of the US Constitution....
But the framers of the Constitution failed in one significant respect. In skirting the issue of slavery so as to cement the new union, they unknowingly allowed tensions over the "peculiar institution" to reach the point where there would be no political solution - only civil war.
Birdwatcher ____________
That is their opinion and the opinion of only two historians, neither experts on the Civil War, in a GENERAL PURPOSE overview of US History.
The reasons for this slavery only theme being wrong has been hashed out and disproven all over this thread by multiple people from multiple sources. Rehashing it yet again for a true slavery believer like you is a waste of time.
The terlet is one of the world's great reading rooms.
Years ago the Wife and I was over to a neighbors and a close friend of Her's house, playing some sort of game. Trivial pursuit or something like that. She was kinda rough talking anyway and after one game She threw every thing on the table and said, "how in hell are we supposed to beat a man that keeps encyclopedias by the [bleep]." I about busted a gut. Sadly She died a few years ago. miles
he reasons for this slavery only theme being wrong has been hashed out and disproven all over this thread by multiple people from multiple sources.
I haven't got there yet but I seriously doubt Tindall and Shi advance slavery as the only cause for secession, neither have I.
I would also guess that most every general history book used in every university in America has, since well before the 1980's, said pretty much the same thing.
Could it be your particular interpretations represent a minority view, even among Civil War Historians?
That four billion bale (US cotton exports ca. 1860) elephant in the corner of the room has got to be pretty hard to ignore.
he reasons for this slavery only theme being wrong has been hashed out and disproven all over this thread by multiple people from multiple sources.
I haven't got there yet but I seriously doubt Tindall and Shi advance slavery as the only cause for secession, neither have I.
I would also guess that most every general history book used in every university in America has, since well before the 1980's, said pretty much the same thing.
Could it be your particular interpretations represent a minority view, even among Civil War Historians?
That four billion bale (US cotton exports ca. 1860) elephant in the corner of the room has got to be pretty hard to ignore.
Birdwatcher
Why don't you just slink back off to your barrio and enjoy your leftist world view and leave everybody alone?
The shotgun is the answer. It was used by both the British and the Germans but really perfected by the US troops and the Model 97 Winchester "Trench Brooms."
By late in the war getting caught by the Germans with a shotgun meant a summary execution on the spot.
I knew that one! I forgot to check back with this thread, or I'd have answered your question. I think I learned this back when the History Channel actually taught history.
The shotgun is the answer. It was used by both the British and the Germans but really perfected by the US troops and the Model 97 Winchester "Trench Brooms."
By late in the war getting caught by the Germans with a shotgun meant a summary execution on the spot.
I knew that one! I forgot to check back with this thread, or I'd have answered your question. I think I learned this back when the History Channel actually taught history.
Yeah, back before it became the pawn shop channel.
The terlet is one of the world's great reading rooms.
Years ago the Wife and I was over to a neighbors and a close friend of Her's house, playing some sort of game. Trivial pursuit or something like that. She was kinda rough talking anyway and after one game She threw every thing on the table and said, "how in hell are we supposed to beat a man that keeps encyclopedias by the [bleep]." I about busted a gut. Sadly She died a few years ago. miles
I have actually done the encyclopedia in the bathroom thing.
What later important national leader first tried to petition France for better and equal treatment of its colonial citizens at the Versailles Peace Conference as a young man in 1919?
Why don't you just slink back off to your barrio and enjoy your leftist world view and leave everybody alone?
Nobody around here calls it a "barrio", the people are for the most part at least third and fourth-generation Americans. Neither do I have Leftist world views <shrug>
But your further resort to insults is noted, and I will take that as a affirmative that your particular interpretations do indeed represent a minority view.
Doesn't mean they are wrong of course, just in the minority, and which may account for your present unemployment in the field. No slam intended here, I am very much aware of the present intolerance among Academia in general.
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I weary of your continual drivel.
You might have a better case if you didn't repeatedly falsely represent my own statements, I can only suppose on purpose. Doesn't that qualify as "drivel"?
Anyways FWIW. some of the most vicious interchanges I have read have been in debates between published Civil War Historians, in particular surrounding Tom Carhart's book "Lost Triumph: Lee's real plan at Gettysburg and why it failed.", which book apparently ruffled some academic egos.
Of note up in 'Twin's neck of the woods, not far from the confluence of Schoharie Creek and the Mohawk River is the Old Stone Fort AKA "Lower Fort". During the American Revolution it was famously defended by Tim Murphy and others against Joseph Brant's mixed party of Mohawk and Tory raiders.
Eighty year later, during the War Between the States it was used as an armory, and needed to be kept under guard because of the conspicuous number of Confederate sympathizers among the area residents.
Why don't you just slink back off to your barrio and enjoy your leftist world view and leave everybody alone?
Nobody around here calls it a "barrio", the people are for the most part at least third and fourth-generation Americans. Neither do I have Leftist world views <shrug>
But your further resort to insults is noted, and I will take that as a affirmative that your particular interpretations do indeed represent a minority view.
Doesn't mean they are wrong of course, just in the minority, and which may account for your present unemployment in the field. No slam intended here, I am very much aware of the present intolerance among Academia in general.
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I weary of your continual drivel.
You might have a better case if you didn't repeatedly falsely represent my own statements, I can only suppose on purpose. Doesn't that qualify as "drivel"?
Anyways FWIW. some of the most vicious interchanges I have read have been in debates between published Civil War Historians, in particular surrounding Tom Carhart's book "Lost Triumph: Lee's real plan at Gettysburg and why it failed.", which book apparently ruffled some academic egos.
Birdwatcher
I don't care one way or another what you think or your opinion of me or anything else. You simply are not worth any consideration.
Just crawl back off to the HS echo chamber and be happy.
Oh, in case you wondered, I really enjoy reading about WWI aviation.
I have long sympathized with the plight of those young men recruited from the trenches to become Observers in the Royal Flying Corps, escaping the mud and horrors of trench warfare only to find they were in a position where their life expectancy was even less than that of a pilot. The more fortunate among those lost were killed outright by machine gun fire at the start.
A pretty good discussion of the same can be found here....
In reviewing the contribution of the RFC observer, it is perhaps best summarised by two quotations from Barker’s history of the Royal Flying Corps. He starts his consideration of the role of the observer by quoting Captain Leslie Horridge of No 7 Squadron who commented that ‘ the observers out here are very plucky chaps’ and ends with his own reflection that ‘what is remarkable is that so many of those who survived stuck it for so long’ . Little more needs to be said.
I don't care one way or another what you think or your opinion of me or anything else.
Your frequent resort to put-downs of various sorts suggests differently.
OTOH nowhere have I stated an opinion of you at all, especially not a derogatory one. I try to be careful of such things, knowing such opinions most often reflect upon our own selves.
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Just crawl back off to the HS echo chamber and be happy.
I have indeed been very happy with my path in life. When watching those kids walk the stage I often feel I have one of the very best jobs on earth
Best of all it ain't actually "working" as I understand the term. I tell the kids I ain't actually worked in near thirty years
It was interesting history, but frankly, I can't revel in Civil War history like I can other history. It is too near and dear to my heart. It literally makes me sad when I realize all that was lost, not then really, but now as a result.
What later important national leader first tried to petition France for better and equal treatment of its colonial citizens at the Versailles Peace Conference as a young man in 1919?
Without even trying the answer to the second question is Ho Chi Minh.
You got it. Uncle Ho was driven to the Marxist camp by the French rebuff at Versailles and after spending a few years in Lenin's Russia became a full blown Revolutionary.
Without even trying the answer to the second question is Ho Chi Minh.
You got it. Uncle Ho was driven to the Marxist camp by the French rebuff at Versailles and after spending a few years in Lenin's Russia became a full blown Revolutionary.
Here's another question off of this one: what did Uncle Ho do while in Paris and who did he work for?
World War I and America's entry into it were the most disastrous events of the last 500 years. I think there is a good chance that historians in 500 years will look back and say that World War I is what killed Western Civilization.
The war itself was bad enough. It destroyed the old order that had brought in an unprecedented and in many ways, still unequaled time of peace, prosperity, and freedom in Europe. In 1914, a traveler could board a train in London, and in a couple days, get off in Moscow. In a week, he could be at the Pacific Ocean, all without ever having shown a passport.
But our entry into the war was disastrous. Without our entry, the war might have ended in a stalemate, or at least a more equal armistice. But, with us in the war, Germany knew she was beaten if she could not free up more troops. So, they put Lenin on a train and sent him to Russia to ferment revolution and knock Russia out of the war. It worked, but it still wasn't enough.
The Revolution spread to Germany and that coupled with its defeats on the western front forced it to seek armistice. Of course, it was really defeat and our refusal to follow through with what Wilson had promised led to even more disillusioned Germany and eventually Hitler and the NAZIs and WW II.
It is not an exaggeration to say that almost EVERY problem on the world stage today has its beginnings in that ridiculous war and its aftermath.
Another Ho Chi Minh question. I have used this one on exams before and it confounded the students time and again.
Despite being a confirmed Marxist Revolutionary, Ho Chi Mihn had an affection for the United States and approached the US more than once for support in establishing a free Vietnam. What finally drove Ho to abandon this American affection and become a permanent Marxist ideologue?
Our betrayal after WW 2. We used Ho and his boys to fight the Japanese and made lots of promises to them. But after the war, we supported the French in their bid to reassert control over their Southeast Asian colonies and provided material and logistical support.
Our betrayal after WW 2. We used Ho and his boys to fight the Japanese and made lots of promises to them. But after the war, we supported the French in their bid to reassert control over their Southeast Asian colonies and provided material and logistical support.
Exactly. The Truman administration's outright rebuff of Ho's overtures drove him permanently to the Communist camp.
Another Ho Chi Minh question. I have used this one on exams before and it confounded the students time and again.
Despite being a confirmed Marxist Revolutionary, Ho Chi Mihn had an affection for the United States and approached the US more than once for support in establishing a free Vietnam. What finally drove Ho to abandon this American affection and become a permanent Marxist ideologue?
Was it our support of the French in Indo-China?
You haven't answered the who did he work for and what did he do question.
Another Ho Chi Minh question. I have used this one on exams before and it confounded the students time and again.
Despite being a confirmed Marxist Revolutionary, Ho Chi Mihn had an affection for the United States and approached the US more than once for support in establishing a free Vietnam. What finally drove Ho to abandon this American affection and become a permanent Marxist ideologue?
Was it our support of the French in Indo-China?
You haven't answered the who did he work for and what did he do question.
I have read several different things on Ho's work in France. I have seen both Chevrolet and Michelin.
I have also read that he even worked for the Roosevelt family as a cook during a stint in the United States.
York is the easy answer but apparently, it was some guy named Harry Murray.
You mean Lieutenant Colonel Murray VC, CMG, DSO & Bar, DCM of the Australian Army...He enlisted as a Private in 1914 and was promoted "in the field" a number of times until he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the wars end.
Not bad for a farm boy from rural Tasmania!
In WW2, although in his 60's, he served again as CO of a reserve Unit..
Another Ho Chi Minh question. I have used this one on exams before and it confounded the students time and again.
Despite being a confirmed Marxist Revolutionary, Ho Chi Mihn had an affection for the United States and approached the US more than once for support in establishing a free Vietnam. What finally drove Ho to abandon this American affection and become a permanent Marxist ideologue?
Was it our support of the French in Indo-China?
You haven't answered the who did he work for and what did he do question.
I have read several different things on Ho's work in France. I have seen both Chevrolet and Michelin.
I have also read that he even worked for the Roosevelt family as a cook during a stint in the United States.
He worked in the kitchens as a dishwasher for Auguste Escoffier. Yeah, that guy.
You got it. Uncle Ho was driven to the Marxist camp by the French rebuff at Versailles and after spending a few years in Lenin's Russia became a full blown Revolutionary.
Ho was a commie from the get go after WWI like you say, and that is why we backed France. After WWII the US embarked on an anti-empire crusade, pressuring all the colonial powers to divest themselves of empire, naively thinking all the colonies would turn into mini-USAs. Same schit happened with Castro, he was a commie all the way and we got suckered because Batista was a dictator. We reluctantly helped the French as a buffer against communism (China) , but we turned around and stabbed them at the Brits in the back in Suez and Iran. US Foreign policy post-WWII made no bones about their anti-colonial policies almost as fervently as anti-communism.
York is the easy answer but apparently, it was some guy named Harry Murray.
You mean Lieutenant Colonel Murray VC, CMG, DSO & Bar, DCM of the Australian Army...He enlisted as a Private in 1914 and was promoted "in the field" a number of times until he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the wars end.
Not bad for a farm boy from rural Tasmania!
In WW2, although in his 60's, he served again as CO of a reserve Unit..
You got it. Uncle Ho was driven to the Marxist camp by the French rebuff at Versailles and after spending a few years in Lenin's Russia became a full blown Revolutionary.
Ho was a commie from the get go after WWI like you say, and that is why we backed France. After WWII the US embarked on an anti-empire crusade, pressuring all the colonial powers to divest themselves of empire, naively thinking all the colonies would turn into mini-USAs. Same schit happened with Castro, he was a commie all the way and we got suckered because Batista was a dictator. We reluctantly helped the French as a buffer against communism (China) , but we turned around and stabbed them at the Brits in the back in Suez and Iran. US Foreign policy post-WWII made no bones about their anti-colonial policies almost as fervently as anti-communism.
You got it. Uncle Ho was driven to the Marxist camp by the French rebuff at Versailles and after spending a few years in Lenin's Russia became a full blown Revolutionary.
Ho was a commie from the get go after WWI like you say, and that is why we backed France. After WWII the US embarked on an anti-empire crusade, pressuring all the colonial powers to divest themselves of empire, naively thinking all the colonies would turn into mini-USAs. Same schit happened with Castro, he was a commie all the way and we got suckered because Batista was a dictator. We reluctantly helped the French as a buffer against communism (China) , but we turned around and stabbed them at the Brits in the back in Suez and Iran. US Foreign policy post-WWII made no bones about their anti-colonial policies almost as fervently as anti-communism.
Just like today, an ounce of prevention...but the kooks don't get it..
Yes, and the recent events in Korea still weighed a bit heavy on some.
It's interesting to the casual observer such as myself. Mention French Indochina and the only thing the average American can think of is Dien Bien Phu (if that). Even after 9 years of conflict. That's all they know.
Three tactical nukes wouldn't have done much to save a bankrupt colonial empire nor stop the communists. Hell, we killed something like 2 million of them. All it would have done is draw the condemnation of the world and get the Chinese more involved.
Three tactical nukes wouldn't have done much to save a bankrupt colonial empire nor stop the communists. Hell, we killed something like 2 million of them. All it would have done is draw the condemnation of the world and get the Chinese more involved.
Quite likely, and it certainly would have opened the doors to others more freely using nukes in conflict - perhaps, and likely, against the U.S.
It might, probably would have, but politically that would be a tough sell to an American public that had the horror of WWII fresh in everyone's mind plus having fought the Chinese to a draw only one year prior. IIRC the sitting president got his job partly on a campaign promise of "going to Korea" to end that war. Not a good idea to risk or even to be seen to risk starting another one a year later.
A show of American force in 1954 might have really slowed the march of especially the Chinese and Russian influence in Asia.
What Chinese and Russian influence in Asia? Far from the main tenet of the Domino Theory, the communist movements in East Asia are/were pretty independent and national in nature. They got nominal material support, but they definitely had their own characteristics. Today, even after we killed millions of their citizens, Vietnam would rather deal with us than China.
We had a hell of a "show of force operation" on Okinawa in 1961. We were told that it was for the benefit of some S.E. Asian leader that we were pressuring to join SEATO. If we were told the name of the country, I've forgotten it.
Most of us had joined the Corp thinking we would be going back to Korea to finish that deal.
But the domino theory promised a wider war which was in the interest of the "MIC" Ike had warned about a couple years earlier.
A show of American force in 1954 might have really slowed the march of especially the Chinese and Russian influence in Asia.
What Chinese and Russian influence in Asia? Far from the main tenet of the Domino Theory, the communist movements in East Asia are/were pretty independent and national in nature. They got nominal material support, but they definitely had their own characteristics. Today, even after we killed millions of their citizens, Vietnam would rather deal with us than China.
Agreed. One of our biggest mistakes was assuming that all Communists were the same and in league with one another. The Chinese and Russians hated each other; they only allied because of us. The Norks have always been batschit. The Vietnamese wanted nothing to do with the Chinese as they were and are age old enemies. NO ONE trusted the Khymer Rouge (for good reason). We could have - and should have - played divide and conquer instead of lumping them all together and trying to hash it out militarily.
Have you read Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln"? If so, what did you think of it?
I haven't read that one yet. What does he say about Dishonest Abe?
I've not read it - yet - either. Dr. Walter Williams of George Mason speaks highly of it, though. "In his recently published book, “The Real Lincoln,” Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time (1861) and earlier believed that states had a right of secession. ... DiLorenzo does a yeoman’s job in documenting Lincoln’s ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up."
Have you read Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln"? If so, what did you think of it?
I haven't read that one yet. What does he say about Dishonest Abe?
I've not read it - yet - either. Dr. Walter Williams of George Mason speaks highly of it, though. "In his recently published book, “The Real Lincoln,” Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time (1861) and earlier believed that states had a right of secession. ... DiLorenzo does a yeoman’s job in documenting Lincoln’s ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up."
This sounds like a must read. Dr. Williams is usually spot on with his assessments of things.
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
And Guderian didn't have anything to do with it??? As a matter of fact they both pulled ideas from a paper presented in the mid '20's at St. Cyr by an obscure French General by the name of Fontaine. Dealt with the whole germ of infantry/armor tactics. Another obscure French cavalry officer tried to get the French high command to listen to him when appropriations were finally approved for a revamp of the French military in 1935/36. All based on Fontaines paper. . This officer pushed for a professional army in Metropolitian France. But it all fell on deaf ears. Care to guess his name?
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
And Guderian didn't have anything to do with it??? As a matter of fact they both pulled ideas from a paper presented in the mid '20's at St. Cyr by an obscure French General by the name of Fontaine. Dealt with the whole germ of infantry/armor tactics. Another obscure French cavalry officer tried to get the French high command to listen to him when appropriations were finally approved for a revamp of the French military in 1935/36. All based on Fontaines paper. . This officer pushed for a professional army in Metropolitian France. But it all fell on deaf ears. Care to guess his name?
Ok! Here's a fun one!!! Name the American song writer and singer who spent time in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War before his transfer to the Ambulance Corps?
Ok! Here's a fun one!!! Name the American song writer and singer who spent time in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War before his transfer to the Ambulance Corps?
Ok! Here's a fun one!!! Name the American song writer and singer who spent time in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War before his transfer to the Ambulance Corps?
Ok! Here's a fun one!!! Name the American song writer and singer who spent time in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War before his transfer to the Ambulance Corps?
Ok! Here's a fun one!!! Name the American song writer and singer who spent time in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War before his transfer to the Ambulance Corps?
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
That is a good one. He had to be a Yankee with a fight record like that.
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
That is a good one. He had to be a Yankee with a fight record like that.
Nope, surprisingly. He was just rather thin framed and not overly muscular. He made up for it, though, and then some.
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
And Guderian didn't have anything to do with it??? As a matter of fact they both pulled ideas from a paper presented in the mid '20's at St. Cyr by an obscure French General by the name of Fontaine. Dealt with the whole germ of infantry/armor tactics. Another obscure French cavalry officer tried to get the French high command to listen to him when appropriations were finally approved for a revamp of the French military in 1935/36. All based on Fontaines paper. . This officer pushed for a professional army in Metropolitian France. But it all fell on deaf ears. Care to guess his name?
Don't forget Brusilov in all this too with his revolutionary for the time theory of combined arms assaults at enemy weak points.
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
That is a good one. He had to be a Yankee with a fight record like that.
Nope, surprisingly. He was just rather thin framed and not overly muscular. He made up for it, though, and then some.
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
And Guderian didn't have anything to do with it??? As a matter of fact they both pulled ideas from a paper presented in the mid '20's at St. Cyr by an obscure French General by the name of Fontaine. Dealt with the whole germ of infantry/armor tactics. Another obscure French cavalry officer tried to get the French high command to listen to him when appropriations were finally approved for a revamp of the French military in 1935/36. All based on Fontaines paper. . This officer pushed for a professional army in Metropolitian France. But it all fell on deaf ears. Care to guess his name?
Don't forget Brusilov in all this too with his revolutionary for the time theory of combined arms assaults at enemy weak points.
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
That is a good one. He had to be a Yankee with a fight record like that.
Nope, surprisingly. He was just rather thin framed and not overly muscular. He made up for it, though, and then some.
Mosby?
Yep. A distant relative of mine, too, in fact. That family lineage is ... interesting.
What famous Civil War commander only won one fight, though in many, prior to the War and that win via firearm use landed him in jail, where he then started the study of law - a profession he held prior to and after the war?
That is a good one. He had to be a Yankee with a fight record like that.
Nope, surprisingly. He was just rather thin framed and not overly muscular. He made up for it, though, and then some.
Mosby?
Yep. A distant relative of mine, too, in fact. That family lineage is ... interesting.
I wish Mosby could have gotten his hands on Custer.
Before we get too far ahead another WWI exam question:
Identify the highly decorated young German Lieutenant from the Italian Front who later became one of the key generals in WWII.
How did he impact the events of WWII and how did his WWI experience influence his thinking and decision making?
Erwin Rommel.
His experiences in Italy in WWI lead him to rewrite German doctrine on infantry maneuvers and tactics; leading to the highly advanced use of small units, fire-and-maneuver, assault, and basically everything else the Germans did that was groundbreaking in WWII in terms of infantry and armor.
And Guderian didn't have anything to do with it??? As a matter of fact they both pulled ideas from a paper presented in the mid '20's at St. Cyr by an obscure French General by the name of Fontaine. Dealt with the whole germ of infantry/armor tactics. Another obscure French cavalry officer tried to get the French high command to listen to him when appropriations were finally approved for a revamp of the French military in 1935/36. All based on Fontaines paper. . This officer pushed for a professional army in Metropolitian France. But it all fell on deaf ears. Care to guess his name?
Don't forget Brusilov in all this too with his revolutionary for the time theory of combined arms assaults at enemy weak points.
Expound upon Brusilov; unfamiliar with him.
Russian general who mounted the only saliently effective Russian attacks on the Eastern Front after early 1914. Most famous for the Brusilov Offensive in 1916
He would mass forces and launch surprise attacks where least expected and would use infantry, artillery, and Russia's limited air forces in a cohesive manner.
Think progenitor/precursor to the concept of blitzkreig.
Mosby or Forrest would have cut Custer's balls off.
JEB Stuart had his chance, with four to one odds in his favor....
But, Custer was just the right lunatic in just the right place at the just right time, until his luck famously ran out. He wasn't the strategist and consummate warrior and judge of men that Forrest was. I dunno enough about Mosby to have an opinion.
Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time (1861) and earlier believed that states had a right of secession.
Walter Williams in his review of DiLorenzo's work quotes Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis of '32....
Nobody around here for some reason b&tches about Andy Jackson, the Southern President who actually got Congress to pass A LAW allowing him to send Federal Troops to South Carolina to enforce Federal Law. In that case the collection of a tariff on imports.
....On such expositions and reasonings, the [SC nullification] ordinance grounds not only an assertion of the right to annul the laws of which it complains, but to enforce it by a threat of seceding from the Union if any attempt is made to execute them.
This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which they say is a compact between sovereign States who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and therefore are subject to no superior; that because they made the compact, they can break it when in their opinion it has been departed from by the other States. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which it rests.
The people of the United States formed the Constitution, acting through the State legislatures, in making the compact, to meet and discuss its provisions, and acting in separate conventions when they ratified those provisions; but the terms used in its construction show it to be a government in which the people of all the States collectively are represented. We are ONE PEOPLE in the choice of the President and Vice President. Here the States have no other agency than to direct the mode in which the vote shall be given. The candidates having the majority of all the votes are chosen. The electors of a majority of States may have given their votes for one candidate, and yet another may be chosen. The people, then, and not the States, are represented in the executive branch.
In the House of Representatives there is this difference, that the people of one State do not, as in the case of President and Vice President, all vote for all the members, each State electing only its own representatives. But this creates no material distinction. When chosen, they are all representatives of the United States, not representatives of the particular State from which they come. They are paid by the United States, not by the State; nor are they accountable to it for any act done in performance of their legislative functions; and however they may in practice, as it is their duty to do, consult and prefer the interests of their particular constituents when they come in conflict with any other partial or local interest, yet it is their first and highest duty, as representatives of the United States, to promote the general good.
The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league, and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which ale the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States; they retained all the power they did not grant. But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation, and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation
because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure.
Because the Union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they cannot. A compact is an agreement or binding obligation. It may by its terms have a sanction or penalty for its breach, or it may not. If it contains no sanction, it may be broken with no other consequence than moral guilt; if it have a sanction, then the breach incurs the designated or implied penalty. A league between independent nations, generally, has no sanction other than a moral one; or if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior, it cannot be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied; and, in our case, it is both necessarily implied and expressly given. An attempt by force of arms to destroy a government is an offense, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such government has the right, by the law of self-defense, to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act. In our system, although it is modified in the case of treason, yet authority is expressly given to pass all laws necessary to carry its powers into effect, and under this grant provision has been made for punishing acts which obstruct the due administration of the laws.
It would seem superfluous to add anything to show the nature of that union which connects us; but as erroneous opinions on this subject are the foundation of doctrines the most destructive to our peace, I must give some further development to my views on this subject. No one, fellow-citizens, has a higher reverence for the reserved rights of the States than the magistrate who now addresses you. No one would make greater personal sacrifices, or official exertions, to defend them from violation; but equal care must be taken to prevent, on their part, an improper interference with, or resumption of, the rights they have vested in the nation.
The line has not been so distinctly drawn as to avoid doubts in some cases of the exercise of power. Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution, but there are others on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt. Of this nature appears to be the assumed right of secession. It rests, as we have seen, on the alleged undivided sovereignty of the States, and on their having formed in this sovereign capacity a compact which is called the Constitution, from which, because they made it, they have the right to secede. Both of these positions are erroneous, and some of the arguments to prove them so have been anticipated.
The States severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown that in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. The States, then, for all these important purposes, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of their citizens was transferred in the first instance to the government of the United States; they became American citizens, and owed obedience to the Constitution of the United States, and to laws made in conformity with the powers vested in Congress. This last position has not been, and cannot be, denied. How then, can that State be said to be sovereign and independent whose citizens owe obedience to laws not made by it, and whose magistrates are sworn to disregard those laws, when they come in conflict with those passed by another? What shows conclusively that the States cannot be said to have reserved an undivided sovereignty, is that they expressly ceded the right to punish treason-not treason against their separate power, but treason against the United States. Treason is an offense against sovereignty, and sovereignty must reside with the power to punish it. But the reserved rights of the States are not less sacred because they have for their common interest made the general government the depository of these powers. The unity of our political character (as has been shown for another purpose) commenced with its very existence. Under the royal government we had no separate character; our opposition to its oppression began as UNITED COLONIES. We were the UNITED STATES under the Confederation, and the name was perpetuated and the Union rendered more perfect by the federal Constitution. In none of these stages did we consider ourselves in any other light than as forming one nation. Treaties and alliances were made in the name of all. Troops were raised for the joint defense. How, then, with all these proofs, that under all changes of our position we had, for designated purposes and with defined powers, created national governments-how is it that the most perfect of these several modes of union should now be considered as a mere league that may be dissolved at pleasure ? It is from an abuse of terms. Compact is used as synonymous with league, although the true term is not employed, because it would at once show the fallacy of the reasoning. It would not do to say that our Constitution was only a league, but it is labored to prove it a compact (which, in one sense, it is), and then to argue that as a league is a compact, every compact between nations must, of course, be a league, and that from such an engagement every sovereign power has a right to recede. But it has been shown that in this sense the States are not sovereign, and that even if they were, and the national Constitution had been formed by compact, there would be no right in any one State to exonerate itself from the obligation.
So obvious are the reasons which forbid this secession, that it is necessary only to allude to them. The Union was formed for the benefit of all. It was produced by mutual sacrifice of interest and opinions. Can those sacrifices be recalled? Can the States, who magnanimously surrendered their title to the territories of the West, recall the grant? Will the inhabitants of the inland States agree to pay the duties that may be imposed without their assent by those on the Atlantic or the Gulf, for their own benefit? Shall there be a free port in one State, and enormous duties in another? No one believes that any right exists in a single State to involve all the others in these and countless other evils, contrary to engagements solemnly made. Everyone must see that the other States, in self-defense, must oppose it at all hazards.
These are the alternatives that are presented by the convention: A repeal of all the acts for raising revenue, leaving the government without the means of support; or an acquiescence in the dissolution of our Union by the secession of one of its members. When the first was proposed, it was known that it could not be listened to for a moment. It was known if force was applied to oppose the execution of the laws, that it must be repelled by force-that Congress could not, without involving itself in disgrace and the country in ruin, accede to the proposition; and yet if this is not done in a given day, or if any attempt is made to execute the laws, the State is, by the ordinance, declared to be out of the Union. The majority of a convention assembled for the purpose have dictated these terms, or rather this rejection of all terms, in the name of the people of South Carolina. It is true that the governor of the State speaks of the submission of their grievances to a convention of all the States; which, he says, they ''sincerely and anxiously seek and desire." Yet this obvious and constitutional mode of obtaining the sense of the other States on the construction of the federal compact, and amending it, if necessary, has never been attempted by those who have urged the State on to this destructive measure. The State might have proposed a call for a general convention to the other States, and Congress, if a sufficient number of them concurred, must have called it. But the first magistrate of South Carolina, when he expressed a hope that "on a review by Congress and the functionaries of the general government of the merits of the controversy,' such a convention will be accorded to them, must have known that neither Congress, nor any functionary in the general government, has authority to call such a convention, unless it be demanded by two-thirds of the States. This suggestion, then, is another instance of the reckless inattention to the provisions of the Constitution with which this crisis has been madly hurried on; or of the attempt to persuade the people that a constitutional remedy has been sought and refused. If the legislature of South Carolina "anxiously desire" a general convention to consider their complaints, why have they not made application for it in the way the Constitution points out? The assertion that they "earnestly seek" is completely negatived by the omission.
This, then, is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State convention; that convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the Union. The governor of that State has recommended to the legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended, and it is the intent of this instrument to PROCLAIM, not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution, '` to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law or of such others as the wisdom of Congress shall devise and Entrust to me for that purpose; but to warn the citizens of South Carolina, who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the convention-to exhort those who have refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold the Constitution and laws of their country, and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of that State have been led, and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to support.
Fellow-citizens of my native State ! let me not only admonish you, as the first magistrate of our common country, not to incur the penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a father would over his children whom he saw rushing to a certain ruin. In that paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves or wish to deceive you. Mark under what pretenses you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and treason on which you stand! First a diminution of the value of our staple commodity, lowered by over-production in other quarters and the consequent diminution in the value of your lands, were the sole effect of the tariff laws. The effect of those laws was confessedly injurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to believe, that its burdens were in proportion to your exports, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your pride was aroused by the assertions that a submission to these laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, in patriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition might be peaceably-might be constitutionally made-that you might enjoy all the advantages of the Union and bear none of its burdens. Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask which concealed the hideous features of DISUNION should be taken off. It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects which not long since you would have regarded with horror. Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state-look forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive-it was added that the right to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy! This character which was given to it, made you receive with too much confidence the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionality of the law and its oppressive effects. Mark, my fellow-citizens, that by the admission of your leaders the unconstitutionality must be palpable, or it will not justify either resistance or nullification ! What is the meaning of the word palpable in the sense in which it is here used? that which is apparent to everyone, that which no man of ordinary intellect will fail to perceive. Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of that description? Let those among your leaders who once approved and advocated the principles of protective duties, answer the question; and let them choose whether they will be considered as incapable, then, of perceiving that which must have been apparent to every man of common understanding, or as imposing upon your confidence and endeavoring to mislead you now. In either case, they are unsafe guides in the perilous path they urge you to tread. Ponder well on this circumstance, and you will know how to appreciate the exaggerated language they address to you. They are not champions of liberty emulating the fame of our Revolutionary fathers, nor are you an oppressed people, contending, as they repeat to you, against worse than colonial vassalage. You are free members of a flourishing and happy Union. There is no settled design to oppress you. You have, indeed, felt the unequal operation of laws which may have been unwisely, not unconstitutionally passed; but that inequality must necessarily be removed. At the very moment when you were madly urged on to the unfortunate course you have begun, a change in public opinion has commenced. The nearly approaching payment of the public debt, and the consequent necessity of a diminution of duties, had already caused a considerable reduction, and that, too, on some articles of general consumption in your State. The importance of this change was underrated, and you were authoritatively told that no further alleviation of your burdens was to be expected, at the very time when the condition of the country imperiously demanded such a modification of the duties as should reduce them to a just and equitable scale. But as apprehensive of the effect of this change in allaying your discontents, you were precipitated into the fearful state in which you now find yourselves.
I have urged you to look back to the means that were used to burly you on to the position you have now assumed, and forward to the consequences they will produce. Something more is necessary. Contemplate the condition of that country of which you still form an important part; consider its government uniting in one bond of common interest and general protection so many different States-giving to all their inhabitants the proud title of AMERICAN CITIZEN-protecting their commerce-securing their literature and arts-facilitating their intercommunication--defending their frontiers-and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth! Consider the extent of its territory its increasing and happy population, its advance in arts, which render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the mind! See education spreading the lights of religion, morality, and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of our Territories and States! Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support! Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say, WE TOO, ARE CITIZENS OF AMERICA--Carolina is one of these proud States her arms have defended-her best blood has cemented this happy Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse this happy Union we will dissolve-this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface-this free intercourse we will interrupt- these fertile fields we will deluge with blood-the protection of that glorious flag we renounce-the very name of Americans we discard. And for what, mistaken men! For what do you throw away these inestimable blessings-for what would you exchange your share in the advantages and honor of the Union? For the dream of a separate independence-a dream interrupted by bloody conflicts with your neighbors, and a vile dependence on a foreign power. If your leaders could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be your situation? Are you united at home-are you free from the apprehension of civil discord, with all its fearful consequences? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering some new revolution or contending with some new insurrection- do they excite your envy? But the dictates of a high duty oblige me solemnly to announce that you cannot succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject-my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you-they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, hut be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the head of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences-on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment-on your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims-its first magistrate cannot, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty-the consequence must be fearful for you, distressing to your fellow-citizens here, and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal--it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your Revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union to support which so many of them fought and bled and died. I adjure you, as you honor their memory--as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives--as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its convention-hid its members to re-assemble and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor-tell them that compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all-declare that you will never take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you--that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Constitution of your country!-its destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace-you may interrupt the course of its prosperity-you may cloud its reputation for stability- but its tranquillity will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transferred and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder.
Fellow-citizens of the United States! the threat of unhallowed disunion-the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. The conjuncture demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my intentions, but of my principles of action, and as the claim was asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws of the Union, and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our government, and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties which has been expressed, I rely with equal confidence on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws-to preserve the Union by all constitutional means-to arrest, if possible, by moderate but firm measures, the necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of Heaven that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.
Fellow-citizens! the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed, will he such as to inspire new confidence in republican institutions, and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to their defense, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children.
May the Great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which he has favored ours may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost, and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly, before they feel the misery, of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate his designs, he has chosen, as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.
Interesting stuff....
...and I dunno that anyone would accuse Andrew Jackson of being a stooge for the railroad or whatever...
I've had Indian friends talk of going to the Hermitage and peeing on President Jackson's grave, but now I'm thinking the onery cuss weren't that bad after all.
Somehow, the American people gave up the right of secession in Birdwatcher's mind - because Andrew f'kin' Jackson said so - whilst in the same era those in Tejas had that right fully vested to them and others around the world held that same right then and now.
Illogical, counter factual, Constitutionally and historically inaccurate, and otherwise just flat-ass wrong.
DiLorenzo does a yeoman’s job in documenting Lincoln’s ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up."
I ain't read it yet either, but even his supporters allow that DiLorenzo dropped the ball big time on his footnotes and attributions, I can only assume in his haste to get the book out.
One of his more damaging quotes attributed to Lincoln actually being a newspaper column that Lincoln cited as something he specifically opposed.
I personally don't put much store in titles, but folks here have made an issue of it.
As such it might be significant that while Prof. Krannawitter is apparently a professional Civil War Historian, Profs. DiLorenzo and Williams, though properly esteemed, are both Economists
Anyways Krannawitter has a Lincoln book out too....
Anybody who wrote as long on one subject as Jackson did right there is just like a feller who talks all the time........
he's bound to lie some.
Jackson had no basis in fact, had no Founder's support for his "argument", and was simply trying to justify his imperial tendencies. His history shows clearly that he was no friend of the Constitution, freedom, or the people. Citing him as a means of supporting a position opposed to Jefferson and other Founders, as well as the Constitution, says a hell of a lot about the person making the argument. It'd be akin to citing Obama on a Constitutional issue, only Hussein has not (yet) sent Federal troops into states to march people off to concentration campsreservations, or to enforce a Federal law that the states opposed. Yet...
Constitutionally and historically inaccurate, and otherwise just flat-ass wrong.
Actually no, those are Jackson's own words on secession, quoted exactly in context.
What's interesting about the votes on the Force Act of 1832 was that Virginia was split, North Carolina through Mississippi voted as a block against it, but IIRC Louisiana and Missouri voted FOR it. Again IIRC the North was pretty much unanimously for it.
A pity no one thought to run the Force Act of 1832 by the Supreme Court, but it included a clause that it would expire if not extended by Congress. No one seems to be sure if it was ever extended or not, in any event, with the passing of the crisis it seems to have become a non-issue.
What you SHOULD take me to task on is that this crisis was over tariffs, not slavery.
I've got "The Real Lincoln" although it has been at least five years since I've read it. The gist of it is that Lincoln was a lawyer who got rich working for railroads in his native Illinois. As such, he was a Whig guy who supported a mercantilist system and that he was bought and paid for by the railroads. He only fought the Civil War in order to keep the revenues coming.
As for the "Nullification crisis" none other than Jefferson Davis in his farewell address to the Senate in 1861 did a masterful job of differentiating between nullification and secession. Of course, most people don't know that because it isn't PC to study stuff said by Jefferson Davis.
Constitutionally and historically inaccurate, and otherwise just flat-ass wrong.
Actually no, those are Jackson's own words on secession, quoted exactly in context.
What's interesting about the votes on the Force Act of 1832 was that Virginia was split, North Carolina through Mississippi voted as a block against it, but IIRC Louisiana and Missouri voted FOR it. Again IIRC the North was pretty much unanimously for it.
A pity no one thought to run the Force Act of 1832 by the Supreme Court, but it included a clause that it would expire if not extended by Congress. No one seems to be sure if it was ever extended or not, in any event, with the passing of the crisis it seems to have become a non-issue.
What you SHOULD take me to task on is that this crisis was over tariffs, not slavery.
Birdwatcher
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
That never sinks in to an "ends justify the means" apparatchik like yourself.
Counter Jackson's tyrannical diatribe with Jefferson's first Inaugural Address.
Jefferson Davis never gets the due credit he deserves because of the PC view of History that is in vogue.
Same dude the Feds refused to prosecute on charges they brought against him; treason by secession. Seven times they ran from the charges they levied, until a Federal judge dismissed the case entirely.
If secession were unconstitutional, it was a slam dunk case.
Hmm.... Seems there's a thread on secession around here somewhere discussing this and other things.
As for the "Nullification crisis" none other than Jefferson Davis in his farewell address to the Senate in 1861 did a masterful job of differentiating between nullification and secession.
Basically what he said is the obvious argument; that foreign states like the new Confederacy weren't subject to the laws of the United States ergo nullification or lack thereof did not apply.
It is by this confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a great man, whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase "to execute the laws," was an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union.
That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case, which cites that expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from the Union.
I think that Jackson would have strenuously disagreed.
I'm also pretty sure that had Jackson been President when the War of Southern Independence occurred, there's a good chance he would have been our first and only President to lead troops in the field while yet in office
Somehow, the American people gave up the right of secession in Birdwatcher's mind - because Andrew f'kin' Jackson said so - whilst in the same era those in Tejas had that right fully vested to them and others around the world held that same right then and now.
Bump, so the inconsistent bitch can avoid it again.
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
I was taught in public school that determining Constitutionality was what the Supremes did for a living.
A timely ruling in this case might possibly have saved a lot of bloodshed later on. Tho' Jackson of course was famously no respecter of the Supreme Court.
As for the "Nullification crisis" none other than Jefferson Davis in his farewell address to the Senate in 1861 did a masterful job of differentiating between nullification and secession.
Basically what he said is the obvious argument; that foreign states like the new Confederacy weren't subject to the laws of the United States ergo nullification or lack thereof did not apply.
It is by this confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a great man, whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase "to execute the laws," was an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union.
That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case, which cites that expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from the Union.
I think that Jackson would have strenuously disagreed.
I'm also pretty sure that had Jackson been President when the War of Southern Independence occurred, there's a good chance he would have been our first and only President to lead troops in the field while yet in office
Birdwatcher
Actually, what he said was that if a state stayed in the Union, it was bound to follow the laws and federal laws where they were superior. But, once a state seceded, it was not bound to those laws any longer.
Of course, you would know that if you had actually read it as opposed to Google and Wiki.
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
I was taught in public school that determining Constitutionality was what the Supremes did for a living.
A timely ruling in this case might possibly have saved a lot of bloodshed later on. Tho' Jackson of course was famously no respecter of the Supreme Court.
Birdwatcher
Tyrants generally don't care for the rule of law. Thus the analogy between Jackson and Obama, and why you really should take better care who you cite to support your argument.
Keep betting on Jackson, whilst Jefferson lies there in counter, and your true colors become ever more apparent.
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
I was taught in public school that determining Constitutionality was what the Supremes did for a living.
A timely ruling in this case might possibly have saved a lot of bloodshed later on. Tho' Jackson of course was famously no respecter of the Supreme Court.
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
I was taught in public school that determining Constitutionality was what the Supremes did for a living.
A timely ruling in this case might possibly have saved a lot of bloodshed later on. Tho' Jackson of course was famously no respecter of the Supreme Court.
Birdwatcher
You were taught incorrectly.
If only obviously, and he clearly continues the malfeasance.
Somehow, the American people gave up the right of secession in Birdwatcher's mind - because Andrew f'kin' Jackson said so - whilst in the same era those in Tejas had that right fully vested to them and others around the world held that same right then and now.
Bump, so the inconsistent bitch can avoid it again.
"Inconsistent b&tch".... now there's a new one (needing that eyeroll icon again, Rick? Are you there?)
All I did was give ol' Andy's opinion. Doubtless many of those who opted to fight and die to preserve the Union thirty years later were familiar with his line of reasoning.
And I never made an issue of the Texians' "right" one way or another.
...anyways take a chill pill, I'm 'back in the Barrio' here in my public school 'echo chamber'.....
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution.
I'd be sincerely interested to know where this above is incorrect.
The rationale doesn't matter; Constitutionality does.
I was taught in public school that determining Constitutionality was what the Supremes did for a living.
A timely ruling in this case might possibly have saved a lot of bloodshed later on. Tho' Jackson of course was famously no respecter of the Supreme Court.
Birdwatcher
Yes the same Jackson that said and I paraphrase "does the Supreme Court have an army?? Hey I got an army!!!" Referencing the case of;
Somehow, the American people gave up the right of secession in Birdwatcher's mind - because Andrew f'kin' Jackson said so - whilst in the same era those in Tejas had that right fully vested to them and others around the world held that same right then and now.
Bump, so the inconsistent bitch can avoid it again.
"Inconsistent b&tch".... now there's a new one (needing that eyeroll icon again, Rick? Are you there?)
All I did was give ol' Andy's opinion. Doubtless many of those who opted to fight and die to preserve the Union thirty years later were familiar with his line of reasoning.
And I never made an issue of the Texians' "right" one way or another.
...anyways take a chill pill, I'm 'back in the Barrio' here in my public school 'echo chamber'.....
You've stated that Tejas had a right of secession for self-determination and self-governance.
But, please continue citing a tyrannical president; it serves your position so well. Feel free to cite Obama next, as the philosophical lineage is quite clear.
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution.
I'd be sincerely interested to know where this above is incorrect.
Birdwatcher
It was much less clear cut before the Civil War. Only twice before the war did the SC rule laws unconstitutional. Further, states exercised the authority to ignore the Court. I give you the Fugitive Slave Act as an example. Northern states practiced nullification and refused to enforce the law, with several states making it a crime for their officers to aid in its enforcement despite the fact that it was a law passed by Congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution.
I'd be sincerely interested to know where this above is incorrect.
Birdwatcher
It was much less clear cut before the Civil War. Only twice before the war did the SC rule laws unconstitutional. Further, states exercised the authority to ignore the Court. I give you the Fugitive Slave Act as an example. Northern states practiced nullification and refused to enforce the law, with several states making it a crime for their officers to aid in its enforcement despite the fact that it was a law passed by Congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
Keep going. He's not dense; he'll just deny whatever you say. Figure you're making the argument for everyone else, as Birdwatcher lacks the intellectual honesty to accept any facts other than those that support this agenda (rather fascist socialism when you boil it down).
You've stated that Tejas had a right of secession for self-determination and self-governance.
Same ol' question: Where did I do this?
Quote
But, please continue citing a tyrannical president; it serves your position so well.
My position has always been that I would have fought to preserve the Union. To me, the whole Union IS my country. If that strikes me off of your Christmas card list I cannot help that.
Jackson's position was, in part, that the threat and validity of a state seceding was substantively no different than a county seceding from a state.
How the Confederacy woulda handled secession from the Confederacy in turn is a moot point now I guess. I had no idea before this that the whole Northern Third of Alabama, an area about the size of Maryland voted against secession. Of course voting against secession and actually opting to fight to preserve the Union were two different things.
But still, the collective Confederacy was obliged to impose its will upon some unwilling folks within its borders. How was that not tyranny?
You've stated that Tejas had a right of secession for self-determination and self-governance.
Same ol' question: Where did I do this?
Quote
But, please continue citing a tyrannical president; it serves your position so well.
My position has always been that I would have fought to preserve the Union. To me, the whole Union IS my country. If that strikes me off of your Christmas card list I cannot help that.
Jackson's position was, in part, that the threat and validity of a state seceding was substantively no different than a county seceding from a state.
How the Confederacy woulda handled secession from the Confederacy in turn is a moot point now I guess. I had no idea before this that the whole Northern Third of Alabama, an area about the size of Maryland voted against secession. Of course voting against secession and actually opting to fight to preserve the Union were two different things.
But still, the collective Confederacy was obliged to impose its will upon some unwilling folks within its borders. How was that not tyranny?
Pay close attention to the summation on the next page, bitch.
WV voted against secession, too. VA let them go. Lincoln imprisoned the entire MD legislature and government to prevent a vote and turned cannons against Baltimore to terrorize civilians into staying in the Union.
"Ends justify the means"; Stalin would have loved you.
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution.
I'd be sincerely interested to know where this above is incorrect.
Birdwatcher
It was much less clear cut before the Civil War. Only twice before the war did the SC rule laws unconstitutional. Further, states exercised the authority to ignore the Court. I give you the Fugitive Slave Act as an example. Northern states practiced nullification and refused to enforce the law, with several states making it a crime for their officers to aid in its enforcement despite the fact that it was a law passed by Congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
..and South Carolina tried nullification in 1832.
Anyways, thank you Sir for that informative reply.
As soon as the well of my disposable funds rises a tad, I shall be ordering "Albion's Seed"as per your recommendation.
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution.
I'd be sincerely interested to know where this above is incorrect.
Birdwatcher
It was much less clear cut before the Civil War. Only twice before the war did the SC rule laws unconstitutional. Further, states exercised the authority to ignore the Court. I give you the Fugitive Slave Act as an example. Northern states practiced nullification and refused to enforce the law, with several states making it a crime for their officers to aid in its enforcement despite the fact that it was a law passed by Congress and validated by the Supreme Court.
..and South Carolina tried nullification in 1832.
Anyways, thank you Sir for that informative reply.
As soon as the well of my disposable funds rises a tad, I shall be ordering "Albion's Seed"as per your recommendation.
Birdwatcher
Do the world a favor and order some of Rommel's last medicine while you're at it. A double dose should help things along.
Pay close attention to the summation on the next page, bitch.
????
This? That thread?
You'll not find a declaration of the justice of the Texian cause there from me.
I wrote...
Ultimately the Alamo came down to this; a refusal to submit to a lone dictator in the person of Santa Anna, beyond that, it gets complicated.
THAT is the story I believe most of us regulars want to be told, as close to the truth as possible.
Birdwatcher
As I stated, a few inside the Alamo were fighting to restore the Constitution of '24, a few were fighting to separate Coahuila and Texas from Mexico (the Coahuila y Texas flag was flown over the Alamo by the defenders) and many, most just in from the US, were fighting for Texas Independence ie. to separate Texas from Mexico. Probab'ly some too were fighting just because they were there when it started.
They ALL were fighting Santa Anna at that particular moment in time.
If I were doing the War over Southern Independence, probab'ly like most every reenactor I know, I'd depict both sides at different time as budget and on-site necessity allowed.
When reenacting Confederate, I'd state the Confederate views as best I knew them. The same is true of the Second Texas War of Independence, actually, as an Irish settler, I could be on either side.
Agreed. One of our biggest mistakes was assuming that all Communists were the same and in league with one another. The Chinese and Russians hated each other; they only allied because of us. The Norks have always been batschit. The Vietnamese wanted nothing to do with the Chinese as they were and are age old enemies. NO ONE trusted the Khymer Rouge (for good reason). We could have - and should have - played divide and conquer instead of lumping them all together and trying to hash it out militarily.
To give you an idea on just how WRONG this war was fought, We have historical data (circa 1960s-70s) of Soviet merchant vessels loading up with sugar (and I'm sure cigars) in Cuba (Cuban commies). Proceeding through the Panama Canal on its way to North Korea (chinese communists), unloading its cargo, then loading up with Soviet hardware such as SAMs and AAA (Soviet/Chinese commies) proceeding through the S China Sea and under the noses of the 7th Fleet and unloading it's cargo in Haiphong (Vietnamese communists). Nominal material support? NONSENSE.
No Sean, while all communists might not be exactly the same, they were most definitively united in world domination. What we should have done (well, it depends how far you want to go, but let's stick Vietnam), is establish a complete Naval Blockade of N. Vietnam, destroyed all the main infrastructure leading in from China and with a two pronged strategy, INVADE the North from the land through and a landing in/near Haiphong. We had them on the run after Tet in 68.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
For my own part, I cannot say how much the interests of the military industrial complex has influenced our policy decisions since that time.
Eisenhower made an interesting statement on that. Paraphrasing, and hopefully not butchering it too badly:
Quote
Every time you see one of our bombers fly overhead, you ought to shed a tear. Every bomber that is built is a school that was not built, and the future of this country is in schools, not in bombers. In the final sense, every [warship? military rifle?] that is made represents a theft from those who are hungry and not fed.
He seemed to understand very well that humanity would be much better off if we could find a way to not divert scarce resources to implements of war.
Unfortunately, the sad state of our world forces this misallocation of resources.
Soviet merchant vessels loading up with sugar (and I'm sure cigars) in Cuba
Yes, and for a while we slipped a fungus in the hold so that when the cargo ship reached its destination, the hold was full of useless goo. They caught us at it, sued, the case was heard in secret, and they won.
Virginia had no choice, West Virginia, largely separated as it was by mountains from Virginia proper, was occupied early on by Union troops and Confederate attempts to retake it were unsuccessful....
As for the Constitutionality of the move, an interesting paradox. The US Constitution required that Virginia consent, but Virginia had already seceded, so a provisional government was formed from Unionist residents to give consent.
I seriously doubt that Virginia ever formally recognised the loss of West Virginia under the Confederacy.
Keep betting on Jackson, whilst Jefferson lies there in counter, and your true colors become ever more apparent.
Interesting thing about Jackson, he was otherwise as anti-Federalist as anyone. If money is really the root of politics and power, Jackson actually took apart and terminated the centralized government Bank of the US and handed the funds, hence control, over to the States.
Part of where Jackson screwed up is insisting on a return to silver and gold for real estate transactions, creating economic chaos for which his successor in office Van Buren took the fall.
Quite apart from politics, an interesting thing about Jefferson is that he took up with his mixed-blood slave mistress only after his wife's death when he was in his forties, the girl was fourteen at the time.
Very possibly she loved him, and he her. Being his mistress was probably the very best deal she could get in life in that time and place. Reportedly he had promised at the outset to free her and their children, which he eventually did.
The surreal thing is that some of their children were named according to the wishes of Jefferson's friends, which seems to indicate the relationship was not entirely hidden from Jefferson's social circle.
After being freed at least two of the Jefferson children moved north to Ohio, where one was able to live as a White and even IIRC marry a White woman.
Whatever his feeling on the issue, Jefferson never did free many of his 100+ slaves, he couldn't afford the catastrophic loss of capital that would represent. After his death some 130 slaves (??IIRC) were sold off to pay accmulated debts owed against his estate.
Several of those counties were drug into West Virginia without their consent. Many were sending troops to the South.
As were more than a few Southern counties, at least by ballot.
Quote
You are determined to get the last word on this subject and even if you succeed you will still be wrong.
No actually, Jackson was termed here as a dictatorialist tyrant and it was said that Virginia voluntarily let West Virginia secede.
Ironically in his day Jackson was seen very much as the President of the common man and in terms of finances anyway did more to advance the power of states relative to the Federal Government than almost anyone.
Despite being a wealthy member of the Southern Plantation class he was almost religiously pro-Union, perhaps in part because he had fought in both prior wars FOR the United States. He was also a great expansionist, had invaded Spanish Florida on our behalf and was actively involved in actively supporting (to the extent of sending troops) the independence of Texas.
Such was his prominence in his day that, twenty-five years after his death, pro-Union men from both North and South were avidly citing Jackson as their inspiration.
A Digest of the Military and Naval Laws of the Confederate States, From the Commencement of the Provisional Congress to the End of the First Congress Under the Permanent Constitution: Electronic Edition. Confederate States of America.
A Digest of the Military and Naval Laws of the Confederate States, From the Commencement of the Provisional Congress to the End of the First Congress Under the Permanent Constitution: Electronic Edition. Confederate States of America.
I had cause to be up in Missouri this past week, and stopped in at the Wilson's Creek Battlefield Park.
I found this quote of Lincoln's from 1855 to be interesting...
Actually I dunno that anyone has documented purposeful slave breeding per se, tho several have looked. Might be a woman, able to bear but one child a year but fertile all year round, had enough chances of conceiving already without needing to bring guys in to make it so.
Sorta related, noted Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut on the topic, a highly intelligent woman who moved in the highest Confederate circles....
Like the patriarchs of our old men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.
...and entirely unrelated, but a quote of Mrs. Chestnut's worthy of a sig line....
...it is the habit of all men to fancy that in some inscrutable way their wives are the cause of all evil in their lives."
Back to Lincoln, here he is explaining himself in 1855, the letter from which the above quote was drawn....
You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point -- I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist.
When I was in Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery.
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.
As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics."
When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.
FYI the Whigs were a major political party in the 1830's to 1850's favoring a US bank, tariffs and protectionism, formed in opposition to that OTHER staunch Unionist, the otherwise States-rights guy Andrew Jackson. The party ended over the question of allowing slavery into the territories.
... Like the patriarchs of our old men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think....
I just read that quoted in "Albions Seed" last night, as recommended by Joe Bob.
I'm thinking Mary Chestnut's wartime journals are a must-read, so vividly does that woman's personality spring off of the pages
Meanwhile, specific to Missouri, it was claimed around here that Missouri at first asserted a sort of armed neutrality, and later tipped her hand when invaded by Lincoln's armies.
Some truth in that, except that even before that the Governor's Missouri State Guard was early on drilling in preparation of joining the Confederacy, even having Jeff Davis covertly send a couple of 12 pounders to batter down the walls of the state armory to access the rifles therein. The Unionist Wide Awakes, who occupied the armory, then launching a pre-emptive strike to arrest 'em.
The real problem for the Confederates later on being that Missouri was on the whole a Union-majority state.
I got a lot of photos of the surprisingly pretty Wilson's Creek Battlefield, and I'll post 'em later. August 1861 General Nathaniel Lyon siezed the initiative and stole a march on even so august (in Texas) a luminary as General Ben McCulloch and surprised 12,000 Confederates with less than half that number of men.
Why a classic pincer movement failed, tho perfectly executed against the Confederates as it was, had much to do with the fact that the Iowa troops present were wearing grey, causing fatal confusion to the Union side at a critical turn in the battle.
Lyon, already wounded twice, died early-on while leading his men. That both sides kept at it for five hours on a hundred degree August Missouri day, is testimony to both.
Technical Confederate victory but a strategic loss, the hammer blow stalled out their momentum on this first year of the war,and they were unable to follow up against the retreating Federals.
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. Just second hand info.
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