2. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:00 AM PT
Irv, I have another question, one related to the war happening.
How does a nation slide into a civil way? How does the political process or system fail, and groups of people find it acceptable to resort to war, in this case, against their own kind?
The seeds of the war were planted when the Constitutional Convention dealt with the slavery issue by allowing slaves as property. At the time, that was considered one of the costs of getting the Constitution ratified.
By the 1850 Compromise, the nation started down the path of confrontation and civil war. Old Jackson Unionists died out. Was there ever a political way out of war?
3. CalGal - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:06 AM PT
"How does a nation slide into a civil way? "
It realizes that rudeness is unproductive and embarks on a search for alternatives?
4. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:27 AM PT
Cal,
As May West might have said, "rudeness had nothing to do with it." (g)
Are you saying that the South chose war because it got tired of arguing about slavery?
5. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:29 AM PT
Surely a nation slides into civil war because some great part of it is at desperate odds with the other, and the differences cannot be reconciled by compromise or mitigated in time. So, that part decides to divorce against the wish of the other part.
6. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:30 AM PT
It's Mae West, no?
7. CalGal - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:30 AM PT
GJ,
No. I was making fun of your typo. Dreadful of me. I shall now be serious.
8. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:33 AM PT
RE: Reconstruction
Southern historians dominated reconstruction history, and told it almost exclusively as a negative experience fostered by the cruel north.
Eric Foner (Columbia University?) and others have been re-evaluating and revising that earlier description.
9. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:39 AM PT
I don't have time to Fray today, but I wondered who has read C. Vann Woodward and their thoughts on his analysis of Reconstruction.
10. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:39 AM PT
Oops, sorry about that Mae. Cal, you know I'm deadly earnest.
Scott,
These differences, while great politically, were made by people who spoke the same language, shared the same national heroes, worshipped the same God. Many of the military leaders trained and fought together prior to 1860.
Was it weak presidents in the 1850s, the death of the Whig Party, or something else that gave birth to those who saw division and war as the answer?
Given your answer, can you see such an event happening again in this country?
11. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:40 AM PT
In some of my readings of the Civil War, I was struck by the obstructionism of the South right after the war, when the North was being more magnanimous. There were attempts to reinstitute slavery through other means, refusals to free slaves, etc. Radical Reconstruction was portrayed as a reaction to this. I have Foner's book. I might want to read through it again.
12. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:42 AM PT
Was this divorce inevitable? Were there viable political choices that could have stopped it or changed it?
13. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:46 AM PT
I'm not sure how it could have been stopped short of allowing slavery to expand into an equal number of states as there were free states. Some of the best compromisers in the country worked to solve the issue of the expansion of slavery in the territories, and things still fell apart.
I suppose if we had had better leadership in the 50's, and had built a stronger federal government, with higher northern representation in the military, the south maybe wouldn't have thought they had a chance of getting away with it.
14. CalGal - Dec. 23, 1998 - 11:34 AM PT
Whenever a new thread opens up, I usually do an online search to see if I can come up with any interesting info. For those of you who are experts, feel free to comment on the sites that are lousy or just plain wrong. I just thought they were interesting reading.
The absolute equality of all men before the law, the only true basis of reconstructionAn address by William M. Dickson, delivered at Oberlin, Ohio, October 3, 1865 (includes correspondence with John Stuart Mill)
The Voice of the carpet bagger .
The other phase of reconstruction. : Speech of Hon. John Mercer Langston, delivered New Jersey, April 17, 1877.
A Hard Shove for a "Nation On the Brink": The Impact of Dred Scott from the website From Revolution to Reconstruction
Politics and Sectionalism in the 1850s, From Revolution to Reconstruction
A Brief History of Central Banking in the United States (just so Pseudo can squawk at its inaccuracies)
Report of the Joint Comittee on Reconstruction, June 20, 1866
Harper's Weekly Site on the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, including the editorials and journalism from the time.
15. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:35 PM PT
re Message #10: Your comments on the US Civil War concerning same language, same God, same heroes, could apply to many other nations' civil war, such as the civil war in England which deposed Charles I, that in Japan by which the Meiji was established, the Spanish civil war of the 30's, and on and on. Of course civil war could again happen in this country, or any other country for that matter, thus my definition at the very onset of this thread.
16. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:45 PM PT
I have no doubt that the very genesis of the US civil war was the institution of slavery, a common practice throughout the colonies and early federal US but gradually abolished in the North but not in the South creating a house divided. The issue of entering states being free or slave further proves so. This is the issue around which the politics of those several decades before Ft. Sumter revolve.
17. 109109 - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:50 PM PT
The Civil War is the greatest testament to the maturity of this nation. Only in one of the United States could you have Martin Luther King/Robert E. Lee/Stonewall Jackson day - on the same day. Brother fought brother, but we managed to keep the struggle from spilling over into the next generation. This, despite the moral schism that characterized the war, the assassination of Lincoln, and the gruesome brutality of the conflict.
18. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:54 PM PT
well, I still remember an anecdote a friend of mine told me. He jhad just enlisted in the army and was ent down to Biloxi for basic training. He gets off the bus and someone yells "Yankee go home!" His response was "I can go anywhere I want, this is conquered territory". Some wounds take a loooooong time to heal.
19. 109109 - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:56 PM PT
Rask
The mere fact that he didn't get shot is a tribute to national resilience and understanding. 100 years after a bloody civil war, and the worst you get is a time-worn holler in twang? "Taint half bad.
20. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 12:59 PM PT
well, the guy came at him swinging, but was restrained by some friends. I suppose the restraint itself is a measure of some progress, as does the fact that in many ways, I hear the south is now more integrated than the north.
21. CalGal - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:03 PM PT
Rask,
I can't imagine anyone thinking like that--on either side. Were someone to say "Yankee go home!" I would have assumed I had wandered onto a different reality plane.
Niner,
England had three civil wars in about 500 years---one of which lasted 100 years. But then, they are a civil country.
22. davidtudor - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:19 PM PT
109109. Reconciliation after wars isn't unique. After all, it was only a matter of a few years after WWII before we began treating both Germany and Japan as valued allies.
Granted, not a context like our Civil War where indeed you had some (a few?) brothers or at least cousins fighting one another. But, as gruesome as the Civil War turned out to be in terms of the carnage and the physical devastation of much of the South, I suspect that this was more or less localized in terms of impact. For much of the country, the War seemed romanticized, almost like a game. (The idea of Washingtonians going out in their buggies for the day, picnic lunches in place, to watch one or another battle has always seemed to me to be a heighth of surrealism.) Communications were still relatively primative or benign (no tv pictures showing the wounded or dead that resulted from those picturebook battles) and I suspect that the degree of detachment from the War that many had indeed had a lot to do with the fact that in some ways the reconciliation was relatively easy.
BTW - your example of the King/Lee/Jackson day doesn't seem particulary persuasive. Only took about 135 years for that one to come about.
23. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:29 PM PT
Rural Southerners see Yankees differently still, even those who've lived in their midst for years. I feel it myself, having had a Bostonian sister-in-law and several Yankee friends(that's unusual in rural Arkansas). There are still significant cultural differences between the South and the rest of the nation, imo, and subtleties of manner in the South which many Yankees just don't seem to appreciate in the view of some Southerners.
"I hear the south is now more integrated than the north."
That very much depends on where you live. In large portions of northwestern and eastern Arkansas there is little to no integration, and that's where the worst racial attitudes are, for the most part.
Where I am it's as integrated as any place I've seen(which is not saying a lot, since I'm not well travelled), but prejudice is still alive and well, though not overt and not pervasive.
The King/Lee/Jackson is a testament to the fact that the South still can't let go of the fact that it lost the war, not a testament to reconciliation.
And David, the war had a devastating effect on the entire South economically, socially, and politically. In addition, battles were fought all over the South and the Union army was entrenched here well after the war was over. Most of the rest of the nation which did not feel the impact of the Civil War.
24. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:35 PM PT
The most fascinating aspect of Reconstruction is its end with the Compromise of 1877. After all the bloodshed and the Civil War Amendments and the Reconstruction governments and the efforts at bringing former slaves into the political, social, and economic arenas, everything was just dropped. The North left segregation enforced by Jim Crow, the KKK, and the sharecropping system to take hold in the South and blacks received no further assistance or protection of their rights for ninety years. Really, things weren't that different for the wealthiest classes in the South than they had been before the war. They still controlled the politics and economy of the South and there continued to be very little in the way of development of industry in their economy or growth of a significant middle class.
25. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:41 PM PT
But Scarlett had to eat a freshly picked potato, and had to sew a dress out of curtains!
26. davidtudor - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:41 PM PT
Arky - of course, you are correct that in terms of relative impact the South had much the short end of the stick and the War indeed left the South more or less paralyzed in many respects, physically, emotionally and politically. Numbed is a word that comes to mind. I should have articulated that, in my view, it was the absence of such impact or destroyed feelings in much of the North - the generalized sense of detachment and that Life had more or less just gone on, only with many people more prosperous than before - that left the concept of revenge out of much of the reconciliation efforts. In no way am I trying to say that the policies were well-thought out or generous or not without their elements of stupid avarice or quasi-revenge. But, not the witchhunts and even greater carnage or devastation that could have occurred had there been more of an eye for an eye mentality engendered in the North due to the impact of the War.
27. davidtudor - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:42 PM PT
and a very fetching dress it was, too.
28. Raskolnikov - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:47 PM PT
In all seriousness, I wonder how many people have had their views of the Reconstruction colored by Gone with the Wind. I used to date a firebrand of a liberal whose views on matters of race and social morality were remarkably similar to someone like Elliot. I once had the displeasure of having to deal with her reading Gone with the Wind, where this usually bleeding heart would suddenly get indignant about the ravages done to the south, the incompetence of the predominantly black legislatures elected, and the loss of the romantic "old south", symbolized by Tara. I couldn't believe my freaking ears.
29. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:53 PM PT
David,
Had the conflict been more balanced, that might have been the case. As it was, the anger remained in the South as the North moved on, and the scapegoats were the former slaves, for the most part. I guess my main point was that while I agree with your #26, there was no real reconciliation, just a removal of each back to their own corners to live and let live, and the North was essentially unaware of the seething resentment that continued in the South after Reconstruction ended. In fact, I think they were blind to that resentment until the federal govt challenged the South's de facto segregation by attempting to enforce Brown vs Board.
30. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 1:54 PM PT
Talk of the dress reminded me of Carol Burnett's version, with the curtain rod still in it.
31. CalGal - Dec. 23, 1998 - 2:13 PM PT
"Went with the Wind".
32. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 2:27 PM PT
"The North was essentially unaware of the seething resentment that continued in the South after Reconstruction ended." The North (as if it's some huge geopolitical block) failed to see southern states enacting segregation laws, failed to see southern states voting straight democratic for generations, failed to mollify Southern sensibilities by appointing Southerners to chief federal and military positions, failed to see from the census the differences in population and economics that stagnated parts of the South like Virginia for decades? And Northerners failed to note Southern attitudes in politics, in the military, in the editorials of their major newspapers? Christ, was there any sentient being in these United States before the Great Depression who could fail to understand that the Civil War had made the most profound impression on the course of the US and its state at the moment?
33. glendajean - Dec. 23, 1998 - 2:42 PM PT
David, I may be mistaken, but Washingtonians only went out in their buggies and picnic lunches once to watch the war, for the first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas).
They thought the war would be over by afternoon and it would be a lark to watch it. When the undisciplined and green Union soldiers ran back towards Washington, there became a huge mix-up with the day tourists (in a area that today is constantly backed up in traffic).
Some of the bloodiest battles of the war took place fairly close to Washington (by our standards of distance). But I don't remember ever reading about tourists for those.
34. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 2:43 PM PT
It wasn't important in the North after Reconstruction. And to many Southerners the North was a "huge geopolitical block." The people of the North in general weren't aware or interested in Southern conditions after Reconstruction. Politicians essentially ignored it, and throwing an occasional bone in the form of an appointment doesn't count.
Who gave a shit whether the South voted straight Democratic? Just as before the war with issues like tariffs, their impact on national elections and in congress was not enough to block legislation important to the rest of the nation. The Republicans found they could do well without black votes, so why bother to go to much federal effort to enforce the 15th Amendment? Are you saying that between 1877 and 1964 the South was a significant focus of national interest? If so, how? If your argument is with my saying they were unaware, then for me to say they ignored it would be better.
35. LadyChaos - Dec. 23, 1998 - 3:49 PM PT
109,
"Brother fought brother, but we managed to keep the struggle from spilling over into the next generation. This, despite the moral schism that characterized the war, the assassination of Lincoln, and the gruesome brutality of the conflict."
Sometimes, you really do expose yourself as a Californian. Growing up in the South in the late sixties and early seventies, it seemed to me that the war was still being fought. Before I understood what it all meant, I was taught that I was a Confederate, a Rebel, because I was born in the South, and that Yankees were people who were born up North and were not be trusted.
36. ChristinO - Dec. 23, 1998 - 4:15 PM PT
(Psst! LadyC, Niner's not a Californian)
Californian's tend to think that everyone in the South is married to a sibling and burns crosses in the front yard of his African American neighbors on Sunday.
37. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 4:40 PM PT
Jesus, you bitch that the North was "unaware of the seething resentment of the South" to which I counter with actions and attitudes showing that, no, the North and the Nation were very much aware of Southern attitudes just as all still are aware. To answer you, who gave a shit whether the South voted straight Democratic? Every national politician, that's who, and the Republicans found they could not get black votes no matter what they did, a situation which lasts more or less intact throughout the US to this day. But the very core of your message is that once defeated the "North" let the South lay prostrate in its poverty and backwardness and moved on to bigger and better things. It's true that the national interest moved from the Civil War, to the Indian Wars and settlement in the West, to America's entry onto the world scene with the defeat of Spain then entry in WWI but, as I said, until the advent of the Great Depression none misunderstood that the Civil War was the most momentous cataclysm to hit these United States.
38. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 4:45 PM PT
Did not John F. Kennedy as President of these United States personally call to advise the governor of your very own state of Arkansas that he well understood the prerogatives of state's rights and the obligations of officials to the majority constituency that elected them, but as President he himself was sworn to uphold the Constitution above all else? Such content doesn't sound like callous indifference or studied disregard of the South to me no matter how much you want to wave a bleeding banner protesting indifference or disregard.
39. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 4:48 PM PT
Is there anyone since the Civil War having worked or lived or extensively travelled with Southerners who has not been reminded by Southerners themselves that they are different, proud, and resist interference in local affairs?
40. ChristinO - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:00 PM PT
The Constitutional argument was not sound. 13 sovereign states entered into mutual agreement. Constitutionally the South was within its rights to secede from that agreement. The only way to impact soveriegnty is though debate or force. Debate didn't work. Force did.
This is not to say that the South was right to maintain slavery only that "upholding the Constitution" was not what the North was doing. Only after the South lost that point of debate did state sovereignty finally and possibly irrevocably bow to the Federal government.
41. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:06 PM PT
I do not and did not "bitch"(and do not ask my husband for confirmation of that--he has trouble with the definition). I was making the observation that after four years of civil war and over a decade of Reconstruction the matter as a national issue was dropped.
"until the advent of the Great Depression none misunderstood that the Civil War was the most momentous cataclysm to hit these United States."
I didn't think my observation was in dispute of that. Maybe they did feel their hands were tied, but the fact remains that they suddenly found themselves able to enforce the amendments they passed a hundred years earlier when Johnson signed the Civil Rights legislation into law.
"Such content doesn't sound like callous indifference or studied disregard of the South to me no matter how much you want to wave a bleeding banner protesting indifference or disregard."
I don't believe much courage was exercised by the federal government in their handling of the South after Reconstruction. Eisenhower couldn't accept outright defiance by Faubus and the Supreme Court had spoken, overturning its post-Reconstruction support of segregation in Plessy. It was the president's job to carry out that decision.
#39 is correct to a degree, mostly among white Southerners. But again, the fact that the Southerners didn't wish to comply with the Civil War Amendments doesn't relieve the rest of the nation and its presidents from their responsibility to enforce them.
42. Ptoben - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:25 PM PT
It's just a great example of how to set, then maintain a way of life. If you have your very own slave you kinda get used to it. Remember these people did this for quite awhile. It was only when the blacks began to get strong enough in numbers that they could afford to think about saying "stuffit" instead of yass a boss.
43. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:30 PM PT
WRT ScottLoar's #16:
"I have no doubt that the very genesis of the US civil war was the institution of slavery, a common practice throughout the colonies and early federal US but gradually abolished in the North but not in the South creating a house divided."
I would add that divisive forces had always existed within the United States, but they were always counterbalanced by unifying forces. By the start of the 1860's those unifying forces were no longer in effect.
- The almost mystical veneration of the Constitution and its framers was no longer working.
- The Romantic vision of America's great national destiny had ceased to be a unifying force; the two sections defined that destiny in two different and irreconcilable terms.
- The stable two-party system could not dampen sectional conflict any longer; that system had collapsed in the 1850's.
-Above all, the federall government was no longer a remote, unthreatening presence it had once been; the need to resolve the staus status of the territories had made it necessary for Washington to deal with sectional issues in a direct and forceful way.
wrt glendajean's #12:
"Was this divorce inevitable? Were there viable political choices that could have stopped it or changed it?"
The divorce was not inevitable only if certain things had not happened, e.g., if the nation had not aquired new territory in the 1840s, if Douglas had not presented the Kansas -Nebraska Act to Congress in 1854, if the Supreme Court had chosen not to rule on the Dred Scott case, if John Brown had not raided Harper's Ferry, etc, etc.
But in actual circumstance, there was a preponderance of forces acting to divide tha nation. By 1861, sectional antagonisms had risen to such a point that the existing terms of uni
44. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:38 PM PT
ChristinO,
"Constitutionally the South was within its rights to secede from that agreement."
Where does it say that in the Constituion? The Constituion does not, of course, specify a method by which a state can secede.
The concept of seccession was rooted in a political philosophy the South itself had developed over several decades to protect its minority status.
45. Ptoben - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:50 PM PT
I don't think there is much of a ? that then as well as now, the south had more set in their ways not very bright lights.
46. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 5:57 PM PT
Raskolnikov,
"In all seriousness, I wonder how many people have had their views of the Reconstruction colored by Gone with the Wind."
For many, many years a uniform and highly critical view of Reconstruction prevailed among historians. This view is now known as the "Dunning school" (William A. Dunning _Reconstruction, Political and Economic [1907]). This basically gave the Gone With the Wind view -- the legacy of Reconstruction was corruption, ruinous taxation, and astronomical increases in public debt. Reconstruction was a corrupt public outrage, a "bayonet rule", perpretrated by vindictive Northeners.
WEB DuBois was the first to challenge this interpretation in 1910, and again in a 1935 book _Black Reconstruction_. Ever since then, most historians have offered up views quite different than Dunning's. Somebody already mentioned Eric Foner, who is an example of the one who puts forth an interpretation stressing how far former slaves moved toward freeedom in such a short period of time. (_Nothing but Freedom_ [1983] and _Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution_ [1988]).
The Dunning, or Gone With the Wind view is the one in the popular consciousness. I know that is what Southern members of my own family and their neighbors think of when they think of Reconstruction. College educated history majors and people who read history for fun will have a different view.
47. Hanspragma - Dec. 23, 1998 - 6:26 PM PT
Hello, PhillipDavid, and thanks for the bibliography. There is a fine new book you may not yet have encountered, The Reconstruction Presidents by Brooks D. Simpson, (1998). I found the most interesting portion to be the discussion of the impeachment trial of President Johnson. It resonated a bit with current headlines (I wonder how I got that feeling?) But more important, it contradicted the "Profile in Courage" view of Senator Ross' decisive vote, keeping Johnson in office. Ross was not a hero/martyr rising above politics and doing his dispassionate juridical duty whatever the cost, which is how Kennedy portrayed him. Simpson gives plausible political reasons for Ross' decision.
48. cigarlaw - Dec. 23, 1998 - 6:45 PM PT
I'm a good ol' rebel, and that's just what I am.
and for your yankee nation I do not give a damn.
I'm glad I fought a agin her, I only wish we'd won,
and I don't need no pardon for anything I done.
I hates the yankee nation and everything they do,
I hates the Declaration of Independence too.
I hates the glorious union, 'tis drippin' with our blood,
I hates the striped banner, I fit it all I could.
I fought for Robert E. Lee for three years thereabouts.
Got wounded in four places and starved at Point Lookout.
I catched the rumatism, a campin' in the snow
but I killed a chance o' yankess, and I'd like to kill some mo.
300,000 yankees lie dead in Southern dust.
we got 300,000 before the conquered us.
they died of southern fever and southern steel and shot.
I wish there was 3,000,000 instead of what we got.
I can't take up my musket and fight 'em now no mo'
but I ain't gonna love 'em, and that's for certain, sho'
and I ain't asked no pardon for what I was and am,
for I'm a good ol' rebel, and I do not give a damn.
49. Ptoben - Dec. 23, 1998 - 6:55 PM PT
CIGARLAW proves my point
50. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 7:04 PM PT
Underneath the slavery issue was something which reached into the depths of America even more than the moral outrage or moral apology regarding slavery. Economics and the proper structure of society.
From day one, the North and South had different visions. Massacheussetts, for example, sprang into being out of the ideology of a "commonwealth". The agricultural South was diametrically opposed to this view from day one -- society existed to serve the interests of its betters, not everybody, in the southern POV.
By the mid 1800s, the ever present ideology dating back to the Puritans beacme articulated in the "free soil" ideology in the North. Northeners came to believe that at the heart of American democracy was the right of all citizens to own property, to control their own labor, and to have access to opportunities for advancement. The ideal society, in other words, was one of small scale capiatalism, with everyone entitled to a stake and with the chance of upward mobility available to all. This is, essentially, still our common heritage today, imo.
According to this vision, the South was the antithesis of democracy. It was a closed, static society that preserved the entrenched aristocracy and allowed the common whites almost no opportunity to advance or improve themselves.
This understanding is what really galvanized Northern feelings toward the South -- more so than the moral outrage generated by the abolitionist movement. The Northeners gradually came to believe that the existence of slavery was dangerous not because of what it did to blacks, but the because of what it threatened to do to whites. They began to fear an economic nightmare -- that the extension of slavery throughout the nation would destroy the openess of Northern capitalism and thus threaten the future of every white laborer and property owner in the North.
This ideology is what lay at the heart of the new Republican Party. There were those who
51. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 7:05 PM PT
cared about the rights of blacks to freedom and citizenship, but far more important to them was the threat slavery posed to white labor and opportunity.
In the final analysis, I think, the Civil War was really about who was going to determine the structure of society for the whole nation -- the openess of Northern capitalism that allowed opportunities for all, or the closed system of the South which kept the arisocratic privileges of a few. A common theme in American history.
52. Wombat - Dec. 23, 1998 - 7:18 PM PT
The Confederate system was one of the reasons the South lost. Central government was too weak to bring about the "national" mobilization and the centralized military and logistic structure needed to conduct one of the first "modern" wars. It is ironic, given that the South seceded and was fighting for its freedom against the "tyrannical" North, how few southern men actually fought for any amount of time. State governors resisted attempts to track deserters. It was accepted that men could go home to harvest their crops, and would rarely return.
It amazes me that in a land of abundance, Southern soldiers were almost always hungry and ill-clothed. Much of this had to do with the fact that Confederate generals did not concern themselves much with these "minor" details. But there was also an unwillingness among the Confederate states to allow the government to requisition food. States were more concerned with making sure their citizens were not too affected by the war, than with providing for the national army. There is a lesson here for the Jeffersonians in this thread.
53. phillipdavid - Dec. 23, 1998 - 7:20 PM PT
Hanspragma,
Hello to you. I would very much like to hear what Simpson said were the plausible political reasons for Ross' vote.
I just read a short article in TIME magazine that accentuated the "profile in courage" viewpoint you spoke of regarding Ross' vote.
54. arkymalarky - Dec. 23, 1998 - 7:38 PM PT
Good posts, PD. The attitudes of poor Southern whites during and after the Civil War are curious to me. No one responded about Woodward, but he contended that an alliance of working class blacks and whites could have been formed and actually made some progress up to the Compromise of 1877.
The difference in North/South political ideology stemmed in large part from Jefferson's position on States' Rights, which was presented as a way to deal with the Sedition Act in individual states by nullifying it. It was threatened in South Carolina over the Tariff of Abominations, but they were challenged by Andrew Jackson and the dispute was more or less resolved. The question was the role of the states in the interpretation of the Constitution. Marbury vs Madison was a loss for Jefferson's States' Rights argument, because instead of simply resolving the case, its decision conflicted with the idea that the Constitution was a voluntary contract between two governments, state and federal, and its ruling set a precedent which left the judicial branch of the federal government in sole charge of determining constitutionality. The South held more and more to Jefferson's view as the rest of the nation grew and became more seriously opposed to slavery.
It seems apparent to me that nullification is not constitutional, but of course Jefferson's argument was that if the law in question was unconstitutional that it was up to the states to nullify that law and they had a right and responsibility to do so.
Nice little jab at the Jeffersonians, Wombat. If Diogenes was "Socrates gone mad," then the Southern leadership in the Civil War Era was Jeffersoninism gone mad.
55. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 8:30 PM PT
Phillipdavid re Message #50: I maintain that the institution of slavery was the very genesis of the Civil War and no, not only for aborrhence of the inhumanity which abhorrence arguably came late to some and too little for many more, but also for the economic reasons and differences between Northern and Southern societies as you recounted (my Message #5 defines the reason for any civil war). Still, we should not lightly discount the revulsion slavery aroused amongst outsiders: a French visitor commented that not the lowest or poorest in France lived as meanly as Gen. Washington kept his slaves, and the savagery visited upon plantations by the mechanics, apprentices, farmers and tradesmen that comprised the bulk of the Union forces is understandable in noting the differences between the splendor of the great house and the wretched conditions of the enslaved serving and working. Looking at the escutcheon on the family tomb at Drayton Hall scarred by bullet and bayonets, or the pile of rubble yet surrounding the sole wing of Middleton Place yet standing I can imagine how these men must have felt when they came across such splendor built upon and surrounded by such squalor. This is more than the search for plunder, or the mindless destruction that accompanies war; this is a bile that rises in the gorge and just makes one hate those who would preserve such inhumanity. Memoirs of the time are full of such scenes and emotion.
56. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 8:39 PM PT
Trying to understand the times (yet not fully understanding for we cannot understand a time outside our own experience) and knowing that sensitivities and sensibilities are different than our own still one today cannot visit a well-preserved plantation like Sommerset in the lowlands of North Carolina and fail to be surprised by the conditions of master and slave, and dismayed that these masters were educated, sensitive, even enlightened men and women who would not, who could not, admit the basic humanity of their slaves. An outsider, I think, a person not born to the station of master and mistress or to that community, cannot easily accept that situation.
57. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 8:45 PM PT
The American Civil War is the fight over slavery, and whether "that peculiar institution" and the society that maintained it would endure. Lincoln wanted to avoid war, knew that it would be a hard fight with no sure victory despite his faith in the rightness of the cause, and fought to preserve the Union. But there could be no Union with slavery occupying half the country.
58. Wombat - Dec. 23, 1998 - 8:50 PM PT
Scott:
If one reads the letters or memoirs of northern soldiers in the various collections that are available, two things jump out. Some soldiers who joined up to free the slaves took on horrendously antiblack attitudes when encountering the real thing. Conversely, a number of soldiers who joined up to restore the Union were horrified by the conditions of slavery, and ended up justifying their participation as being in order to free the slaves. (Not in the least bit empirical, but interesting.)
59. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 8:57 PM PT
And some who were not abolitionists and thought less of blacks were yet moved by the inequities.
60. LadyChaos - Dec. 23, 1998 - 9:49 PM PT
ScottLoar,
I have read a number of books detailing the letters and comments of everyday soldiers, yet I have found little to suggest that Union soldiers were at all "moved" by the impoverished conditions of slaves. From what I have read, I would more describe the typical Union soldier's reaction to the poverty of southern slaves and "white trash" as something like "amused revulsion." They were simply stunned that this was the enemy. Which brings one to the more interesting broad question: What was it that drove the soldiers to fight? In reading these letters and memoirs, I am struck by how "foreign" the people of other states seemed to the average soldier on both sides of the conflict. Confederate soldiers marching through Pennsylvania are stunned by the orderliness and prosperous appearance of northern farms; Union soldiers marching in the south are taken aback by the maddeningly directionless southern roads and the abject poverty of southern "white trash," which the northerners took to be a sure sign of shiftlessness and a general lack of industry brought on by their backward dependence on slave labor.
Do you have any books to recommend on the subject?
61. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:01 PM PT
"The Blue and the Grey" (The Story of the Civil War as Told by Participants), edited by Henry Steele Commager, 1973, Mentor Books.
62. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:10 PM PT
What drives soldiers to fight? Fear of shame and showing cowardice among those they live or letting down those who depend on them. S. Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" illustrates this, and it was especially true in the Civil War when companies were commonly composed of men and boys from the same town.
63. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:19 PM PT
For specific readings refer to "Incidents of Army Life: Eastern Front", "Blue and Grey Fraternize on the Picket Line: Alexander Hunter" pp.329-331, vol. 1, ibid.; and "A Badger Boy Meets the Originals of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin': Chauncey H. Cooke", pp. 468-470, vol. 1, ibid.
64. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:24 PM PT
Although not especially germane to the attitude of Union soldiers to slavery I can also recommend two works compiled from a WPA project which interviewed those slaves above the age of 20 by the end of the Civil War and recorded their stories for posterity.
65. ScottLoar - Dec. 23, 1998 - 10:27 PM PT
I confess that this issue of slavery in America does occupy me somewhat, for in my opinion I don't see how the plantation owners of the mid-19th century profited from slaves other than by selling them.
66. gravel - Dec. 24, 1998 - 6:18 AM PT
Pardon me, but are you folks talking about something that happened in America, or are you musing about old movies and, without knowing it, attempting to create a better one? Discussing the ideal state of being is one thing, discussing various battle strategies is another; there are tons of ways to look at the American Civil War. But if you begin by talking about how ignorant the majority of individual soldiers on each side were about the other side, you might wish to consider these lives of ignorance--without immediately condemning them. Most of the people who fought in the Civil War, as was true of those who fought in Vietnam, were not wealthy or particularly well-educated or capable of wielding political clout. They were working people, not intellectuals. They had responsibilities.
That slavery existed was probably deplorable to many. That its existence was cause for one to endanger his life and leave his family without means of support was probably as foreign an idea then as is the idea today that each individual reading this post should drop everything and go to, say, Somalia to help those people. Perhaps the wisdom of a Civil War was as hotly contested over meals as is the present situation with Iraq.
con't
67. gravel - Dec. 24, 1998 - 6:28 AM PT
continuing #66
If a person really doesn't have knowledge of something, he can be said to be ignorant of a fact; but can you automatically from that attribute to him anything more? It might be the case that letters compiled after a war are chosen because they address points the author of a book wishes to see addresed. A book on the illiteracy or lack of sophistication of fighting men may the not speak to the author's point. A fair author would present two sides to an argument; he may wish the reader to see both sides of the issue. This is the point at which the reader, not the author, must become creative.
ScottLoar: You are hoping to inspire response with Message #65, I assume. Here goes. I don't see how the owner of a restaurant in 1998 can pay his employes $4/hr., no benefits, and expect do well.
68. 109109 - Dec. 24, 1998 - 8:11 AM PT
tudor
"Reconciliation after wars isn't unique. After all, it was only a matter of a few years after WWII before we began treating both Germany and Japan as valued allies."
Can you find similar parallels in the context of a civil war?
"For much of the country, the War seemed romanticized, almost like a game. (The idea of Washingtonians going out in their buggies for the day, picnic lunches in place, to watch one or another battle has always seemed to me to be a heighth of surrealism.) Communications were still relatively primative or benign (no tv pictures showing the wounded or dead that resulted from those picturebook battles) and I suspect that the degree of detachment from the War that many had indeed had a lot to do with the fact that in some ways the reconciliation was relatively easy."
I think the romanticism ended with folks high-tailing out of Bull Run I when they realized that actual killing was going on.
"BTW - your example of the King/Lee/Jackson day doesn't seem particulary persuasive. Only took about 135 years for that one to come about."
You miss my point. That a state could celebrate these figures on the same day without major fraction suggests a supreme ability to heal, and let by-gones be by-gones. That an entire region of the country could honor the dead of a lost cause (even a cause espousing slavery) suggests a maturity that often gets lost in the re-telling. A parallel might be Diem day in Vietnam, which, I don't believe is celebrated.
69. Wombat - Dec. 24, 1998 - 8:55 AM PT
Niner:
Lee/Jackson/King day does not represent a reconciliation. The only way to make MLK day palatable to those who still believe that the South won the Civil War, was to link it with great southern stalwarts. It is a farce.
Do you remember the uproar in VA when Governor Gilmore, in his remarks on that day last year, suggested that slavery was not a good thing? You'd have thought he burned the flag, or something. What he should have done is dug up what Robert E. Lee had to say about slavery (and secession, for that matter) and quoted it verbatim without attribution. The after a few days of insane hysteria, reveal that the sainted Marse Robert had in fact said that slavery was an evil that should soon die out, and that secession would be a tragedy for the US.
The sheer ignorance of today's wannabe cornfeds is sometimes astonishing. (Note, niner, that was in passing and not referring to you.)
70. Wombat - Dec. 24, 1998 - 8:56 AM PT
In answer to your question about reconciliation after a civil war, the one example that comes to mind is in Nigeria, after the Biafran War.
71. phillipdavid - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:21 AM PT
ScottLoar,
"I confess that this issue of slavery in America does occupy me somewhat, for in my opinion I don't see how the plantation owners of the mid-19th century profited from slaves other than by selling them."
After the Cotton Gin was invented, slavery once again became agriculturally profitable, I believe.
But slavery also served to placate poor whites who might otherwise rise up against the unjust social order. Any dirt poor white was mollified somewhat by the fact that he was not on the bottom of the food chain, and his anger and spiteful feelings could be directed downwards, rather than upwards. It also held out a slim promise to poor whites that they too might one day own a slave or two and thus "rise up" in the world.
So, slavery served to buttress the old fashioned aristocratic social order.
72. arkymalarky - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:24 AM PT
WRT the Southern antebellum economy, cotton led all US manufactures at the time of the Civil War. A strong field hand could sell for anywhere from $800 to well over $1000. The plantation economy really only supported a relatively small portion of the Southern population. I remember reading somewhere that ten percent of the population controlled ninety percent of the cotton farming. Since slaves were sustained at bare subsistence levels and many grew their own gardens and got mostly the leavings from what whites ate, the expense of keeping slaves was not that great.
Point taken on the soldiers, Gravel, but it's interesting that poor white Southerners continued to support a system that kept them from economic opportunity, even after the war, when a Northern middle class was beginning to grow as immigrants moved in to work in the new industries, and this trend continued even into very recent times. Southern blue-collar workers still get paid less than those in other parts of the nation overall and there are more of them proportional to the population in many parts of the South. The economic stagnation in the South continued, imo, because of the unchallenged control of the economy by relatively few people, just as before the war.
109,
I agree with Wombat. If the South would ever accept that it lost the war we wouldn't be celebrating Lee's birthday at all. Southern states elect to celebrate his birthday for reasons other than a feeling of brotherhood in having the same day set aside for both him and King. Just because there's not an open fight over it doesn't signify it's an act of reconciliation at all.
73. arkymalarky - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:35 AM PT
#71 is very true, PD, and it has continued to be into recent history. Many of the supporters of the white supremacy movement come from that class of people.
74. gravel - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:38 AM PT
Message #60
It strikes you as being strange that people who'd never been to the South didn't understand the topography ("...maddeningly directionless Southern roads")? You're struck by how an enemy is "foreign"?
Someone not a soldier may feel "amused revulsion"; someone on his way to fight may feel "amused revulsion." I really doubt that, after the bullets have flown, anyone feels "amused revulsion." I don't understand the point you're trying to make. You're studying books full of statements by ignorant people? Hmmm.
75. phillipdavid - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:43 AM PT
"Communications were still relatively primative or benign (no tv pictures showing the wounded or dead that resulted from those picturebook battles)"
There were actually a plethora of photographs or daguerotypes (sp?) that made it into the public consciousness during the Civil War. Matthew Brady is a well known photographer who made a real name for himself taking Civil War photos. One Brady biography site I just visited says:
"In August 1862, Brady shocked America by displaying his photographs of battlefield corpses from Antietam, posting a sign on the door of his New York gallery that read, "The Dead of Antietam." This exhibition marked the first time most people witnessed the carnage of war. The New Yor Times said that Brady had brought "home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war." "
A photo of a dead Confederate soldiers at Antietam
76. Wombat - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:45 AM PT
"Ignorant people" who were actually doing the fighting, gravel. One of the delights of studying the Civil War is that many of the participants were literate and were not shy about writing their impressions down. I wouldn't trust first-person accounts of a given battle, but I would give their perceptions of the South considerable value in determining their attitudes.
77. phillipdavid - Dec. 24, 1998 - 9:57 AM PT
Another photo of dead Confederate soldiers in a ditch at Antietam, Md.
I believe the public was very aware of the carnage of war, and that many had actually seen pictures, or prints made from wood carvings,in their local newspapers.
A nice collection from the Library of Congress can be seen here. It leads to a search page that allows you to search through many different catagories. ScottLoar, you may find the collection of architectural drawings worth perusing.
78. gravel - Dec. 24, 1998 - 10:20 AM PT
Wombat:
My position is that I give all the credit in the world to the people who served for the North. I don't want their efforts sullied (unless I see overwhelming proof of the necessity for it) by what seemed an effort, in message #60, to make much of their initial ignorance of the South. See, I have no way of knowing whether it was the books read by LadyChaos or whether it is LadyChaos who attributes those attitudes to all Northerners. I didn't want the thread to go there. Sorry I wasn't very articulate.
79. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 11:13 AM PT
Considering that standard first aid battle treatment at the time was to hack off the injured limb, I strongly suspect that the public could observe the physical effects of the war by looking at the survivors.
80. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 11:19 AM PT
Gravel, no, I'm not musing about old movies; no, I'm not trying to inspire response - just thinking out loud about the profitability of slave labor - but welcome comment by knowledgable people. Your minimum-wage-for-restaurant-workers analogy is foolish.
Is there anyone who has studied or looked at slavery in Jamaican sugar plantations? There the slaves were literally worked to death in a short while (1-3 years) but as sugar cane in the 18th century was improbably profitable the system could sustain such high expenditure and loss because it was offset by even higher returns. I compare this with plantations in Virginia and the Carolinas where cash crops like indigo, cotton, and tobacco quickly depleted soil or rice which was immensely labour intensive and required semi-skilled labour to boot, and they show a host of activities to gain extra income such as renting slaves out for roadwork or canal building, felling timber, draining marshlands, and not much of it seems economically productive, as the plantation owners' records and notes reveal as well. Or so it seems to me.
Others, literacy was highly prized in the 19th century and people expressed themselves well in writing and speech, probably more so than today given the confusion that reigns over supposedly straightforward statements; the most casual glance at the notes and letters of that day reveals so.
Of course people North and South were well aware of the carnage of battle - they read the casualty lists, they saw their husbands, sons, uncles and fathers legless, armless, sightless and wasted, the casualties drove men like Lincoln and Grant to melancholy and drink. It was to end the carnage that Lincoln and Grant pressed forward by any means - even frontal attacks against fortified positions - to defeat the South by battlefield attrition if necessary.
81. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 11:23 AM PT
Phillipdavid, yes, thank you for the link to architectural drawings - utilitarian art in brick, wood, glass and stone.
82. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 11:28 AM PT
The economics of slavery. I confess I would welcome for the first time Pseudoerasmus' comments on that economy.
83. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 11:37 AM PT
Some dude won the Nobel Prize in Econ a few years back (93?) for looking at the economics of slavery. I know I discussed it briefly with Pseudo a few months ago. Pseudo said, as I recall, that he was sure that slavery was profitable, or the plantation owners wouldn't have been doing it.
84. 109109 - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:14 PM PT
Wombat, Arky
You miss my point, but in the process, make it. One of you notes that Lee-Jackson-King day is a contretempts in modern Southern politics, the other expresses that the confluence represents a Southern inability to grasp that they lost the war. I accept both premises, but it still leaves as a munument to national resilience that Confederate and African-American culture grows side-by-side without strife or violence in many parts of the country. Sure, some minor political pissing contests, whether it be the celebrations of the birthdates or the stars and bars on a Capitol dome, but, in the scheme of the conflagration, big deal?
Now, I am back to another mall. Merry Christmas all.
85. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:22 PM PT
"(S)lavery was profitable, or the plantation owners wouldn't have been doing it", which statement seems so self-evident that questioning otherwise seems stupid (is stupid?), just like all seemingly logical assertions. By the mid-19th century the coastal plantations understood that by selling their slaves to the newly expanding hinterlands of Louisiana, Georgia and Texas they reaped larger profits than by keeping those same hands to maintain their coastal plantations and so selling of slaves became bigger business than planting.
86. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:26 PM PT
Despite Pseudoerasmus' alleged assertions I would defer to the authority of "the dude (who) won the Nobel Prize in Econ a few years back...for looking at the economics of slavery". No, I haven't read the work but welcome any advice in that direction.
87. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:28 PM PT
On a baser level, who assumes people always act in their own best interests? I don't find that to be true.
88. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:29 PM PT
Scott: That sounds completely plausible, but evidently the people they were selling the slaves to regarded the purchase of slaves as more profitable than hiring farm hands.
I do remember hearing an argument, many years ago, that slaveholders were being idiots holding on to their slaves, as they would have been better off hiring the poor whites surrounding them, rather than dealing with slaves that have to be clothed, fed, guarded, and chased when they escaped. I had thought you were making a variation on this argument.
89. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:39 PM PT
That assumes there was enough labour available to clear the hinterlands (massed labour) then seed, hoe, water and cut the crops (skilled labour), all the while supporting those who attended to the myriad needs of a large, a very large, household. How many poor whites are needed? 20? 50? 100? and that assumes there are so many idle hands around just waiting for employment, employment that cannot be paid in cash but in some share of the crops.
I note as well that social status in the South was determined by the slave-holding gentry.
90. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:42 PM PT
Scott: "On a baser level, who assumes people always act in their own best interests? I don't find that to be true."
They certainly don't, but I think you would agree that in the period between the invention of the cotton gin and the civil war, that it is quite unlikely that every slaveowning plantation owner in the south was stubbornly incompetent for decades on end.
The guy's name is Robert Fogel, and he won in 1993. The Nobel Prize site has some good links to his works. It can be found at:
http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/economics/1993a.html
The cite has one link to a Boston Globe article, which states:
"In a second, far more controversial book, "Time on the Cross," written with Stanley Engerman and published in 1974, Fogel argued that the institution of slavery had been more profitable than previously thought. His conclusion gave rise to a decade of controversy, and he was attacked as somehow endorsing slavery. Fogel later published a four-volume study called "Without Consent or Contract," in which he argued forcefully that slavery ended not because it was economically inefficient, but because it was morally repugnant."
91. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:47 PM PT
I recall reading that a dangerous cut was needed and so Irish workers were used as the local slaveholders would not risk their property. A slave after the abolition of importation in the US represented a high investment which highest value was realized at resale, or so it seems to me.
92. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:51 PM PT
No, Rask, I would not assume every slaveholder was stupidly incompetent for decades on end; that's silly, and I did not intend my remarks to be so construed.
I'll read Fogel and leave this place to those who see most clearly.
93. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:52 PM PT
"That assumes there was enough labour available to clear the hinterlands (massed labour) then seed, hoe, water and cut the crops (skilled labour), all the while supporting those who attended to the myriad needs of a large, a very large, household. How many poor whites are needed? 20? 50? 100? and that assumes there are so many idle hands around just waiting for employment, employment that cannot be paid in cash but in some share of the crops."
Scott: this is exactly what I mean by profitability. You could certainly have hired poor whites, or even immigrants, to do this work, it just might have cost you a fortune to get them to come out that far in the boondocks. Hence, slavery was likely the more profitable option.
The social status argument is possible, since people frequently do dumb things in the pursuit of status. I just suspect some enterprising northerner would have come down, bought some land, hired a buch of unemployment whites, and undersold the slaveowners at the market, if indeed it was more profitable option.
94. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:53 PM PT
Scott: sorry if I sounded more harsh than I intended to. I have quite enjoyed your posts in this thread, and the discussions that ensued.
95. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 12:55 PM PT
Not that slavery was a more profitable option, it may have been the only option.
96. Raskolnikov - Dec. 24, 1998 - 1:02 PM PT
yeesh: I just looked up reviews of Fogel's "Time on the Cross" at Amazon. I didn't think these sort of racists really new how to read. The book may be good, but it certainly seems to have attracted a following of the wrong element.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393312186/ref=sim_books/002-4584512-2392260
97. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 1:09 PM PT
I don't know how to immediately prove so, but I think slavery in the South unlike Jamaica was much more than an institution directed by profit and loss. I submit slavery was a social necessity in the South, defining the status of the landed gentry and the "buckarah" (poor whites), hosting a point of view the South used to differentiate and justify their social system (the "cavaliers" of the South as compared to the "roundheads" of the North), and excused their own inhumanity by claiming an attitude of parental concern for their black "charges". Again and again I see a noble house gone destitute (indeed, a major theme of Faulkner's works) but will not relinquish the slave, much like the French knight immediately before the Revolution who tills the field with himself in the ox-yoke but still with that rust sword at his waist.
98. ScottLoar - Dec. 24, 1998 - 1:10 PM PT
Corrigendum: rusted sword
99. Hanspragma - Dec. 24, 1998 - 2:13 PM PT
Hello to Phillipdavid, and Merry Christmas (or whatever seasonal holiday may be your preference!)
Simpson says that the moderate Republicans of the time were concerned about Ben Wade, who was president pro tem of the Senate at the time of the impeachment trial, and who would have occupied the White House had Johnson been convicted. Wade advocated both inflation and high protective tariffs -- Ross opposed both, and feared a Wade presidency would lead to an anti-Republican backlash. Also, in 1868 the next presidential campaign was underway and it was clear to most that Grant would win. Grant was silent about his own views on tariffs etc., so all factions could tell themselves they would win him over. Why complicate matters with a brief transitional Wade presidency? Why not just leave Johnson in office, in weakened form, for the intervening months? These were crucial factors for Ross, acc. to the book I mentioned.
Simpson's view of Reconstruction in broader terms is quite unsympathetic to Johnson. Simpson thinks Johnson's main concern was to help the old plantation aristocracy regain control, and to this end he opposed "universal suffrage" (i.e. the fifteenth amendment).
100. gravel - Dec. 24, 1998 - 2:17 PM PT
ScottLoar:
Please don't abandon this thread. I apologize. I really didn't think you were serious when you asked why people kept slaves if they weren't profitable. I assumed you were joking, or that you were saying the profit wasn't great enough. I was then only somewhat serious myself, and didn't think I had to give you examples of the job duties, when I suggested that today employers pay workers as little as possible in order to make a greater profit. It just seems easier to see something if that something can be applied to one's own life.
Anyway, I'm sorry.