The Atlantic Magazine has come out with a special issue to commemorate the 150 Anniversary of the Civil War. TNC has been working on a piece for that issue and it is up online. It is excellent, honest and challenging. Here is a taste:
The Civil War marks the first great defense of democracy and the modern West. Its legacy lies in everything from women’s suffrage to the revolutions now sweeping the Middle East. It was during the Civil War that the heady principles of the Enlightenment were first, and most spectacularly, called fully to account.
In our present time, to express the view of the enslaved—to say that the Civil War was a significant battle in the long war against bondage and for government by the people—is to compromise the comfortable narrative. It is to remind us that some of our own forefathers once explicitly rejected the republic to which they’d pledged themselves, and dreamed up another country, with slavery not merely as a bug, but as its very premise. It is to point out that at this late hour, the totems of the empire of slavery—chief among them, its flag—still enjoy an honored place in the homes, and public spaces, of self-professed patriots and vulgar lovers of “freedom.” It is to understand what it means to live in a country that will never apologize for slavery, but will not stop apologizing for the Civil War.
The journey that Ta-Nehisi Coates has been on to explore the Civil War has produced some exceptional work. This piece is another on that journey. It is one of the best things I’ve ever read on the reasons for–and the meaning of–the Civil War. I encourage you to take a moment and read it.
Cheers
sb
So a friend calls and recommends this piece. We both read it, love it, and then he says, “they’re not going to use McArdle, right?”
I can see her arguing for property rights during that time and by property, I think you know what I’m saying. But seriously, wonderful article by TNC.
Lysana
I’m reminded of a recent discussion I had with some people about the Civil War. They insisted that if it hadn’t been slavery, the war would’ve happened over something else because it really was a states’ rights thing. I just couldn’t.
Calouste
Is TNC aware that there are parts of the world outside the US? Doesn’t sound like it. Parts of the world, most parts of the world, that abolished slavery long before the US did?
And the French Revolution was rather earlier than the American Civil War if we’re talking about applying the principles of Enlightenment.
American Exceptionalism is not just for the right, it is so thoroughly pervasive in American society that most people don’t recognize a lot of instances of it.
Threadkiller
I’ve been following and loving TNC’s evolving take on the War. I especially appreciate how many posts he has started with the headline:
“The Civil War Was Not Tragic”.
How easily some of us forget that an entire class of Americans was chattel prior to 1865. The bloodletting that led to abolition is only “tragic” if the blacks are excised from the narrative, which they all too often are, except as props.
TBogg
@sb: McArdle would lament the inability these days to be able to buy a $1500 slave just because you want one.
Do you know how much time having a slave in the kitchen can save you? Like… lots.
AT
@TBogg: don’t you mena $1.50? Oh whoops sorry my caluclator was broken, and i had a tummy bug
General Stuck
Mccardle would run up some stats on vet bills going up since the Civil War, as evidence it wasn’t all good.
Benjamin Franklin
Threadkiller?
WTF? Do you have an alternate realist on JOM?
I don’t believe in coincidence, btw.
Tom Levenson
@Calouste: I believe he was (a) talking from the perspective of an American wishing the Enlightenment would start here and (b) talking about what it takes to make the Enlightment actually do the work, as opposed to set the challenge.
It’s an ongoing project, still.
Calming Influence
Has TNC been a senior editor for a while, or did he just get promoted? Either way, well deserved. Some of the most thoughtful writing on race out there.
kb
good lord. just about every country that even had a vague claim to a civilized country had outlawed slavery by 1860.
Even the russian empire had freed its serfs by 1861.
Even portugal abolished slavery in it’s colonies before 1870(when the us abolished slavery in alaska)
Quaker in a Basement
Sweet music!
Benjamin Franklin
Quaker…..
i used to use the pseudonym ‘Semanticleo’.
Howzit?
Omnes Omnibus
@Calouste: And the American Revolution provided inspiration for the French. And the Philosophes provided inspiration to Thomas Jefferson….
TNC mentioned a defense of democracy and the modern West. The French Revolution, our Revolution, and things like the Revolutions of 1848 could easily be seen as being a part of establishing democracy and the modern West. If that is the case, the Civil War could reasonably be seen as an early, if not the first, defense of that world. All this without a huge amount of American Exceptionalism.
Quaker in a Basement
And in how many of those cases was the movement to outlaw slavery challenged through armed conflict? When TNC writes “the principles of the Enlightenment were called to account,” I think he’s talking about the opposition to ending slavery by the Confederacy.
Quaker in a Basement
@Benjamin Franklin: Good, leo…err, Ben. You?
Benjamin Franklin
@Quaker in a Basement:
Yeah. Been fighting the proxy wars for the duration.
Nice to see a familiar handle.
Slowbama
Way to take a stand against slavery and racism. True profile in courage. How insightful. Yawn.
We all know the Confederacy was formed to protect slavery. If we’re at all honest, we all should also know that the vast majority of white Southerners who fought in the Civil War enlisted not specifically to support slavery but to fight for what they considered to be their identity, culture, and homeland. I would argue that they were successful in the latter effort, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much michigas (sp?) about the South in certain quarters of the internet.
Yes, some Vietnamese fought to expand the cause of world communism; many many more fought for simple independence. There’s yer “enlightenment.”
Critical thinking skills allow us to accept that multiple motives might be in effect at various times among various people, rather than insist on another boring shallow “analysis” which always ends with the predictable trope that white South=all bad. A trope which is useful as a political bludgeon on the internet in the modern day but not for a nuanced understanding of American history.
Dennis G.
@Quaker in a Basement: Yep
Omnes Omnibus
@Slowbama: Some people from the North joined the the Union Army because the were psychopaths and wanted to kill. BFD. Read the secession documents; the overarching goal of the seceding governments was to protect slavery.
Calming Influence
@TBogg: Thermomix or slave, thermomix or slave…Hmmm: one I don’t have to feed, but it only cooks, the other I have to feed, but [thought-bubble] “Mandingo!”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks, same point I was about to make. The English (Glorious) Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and even the Russian Revolution, didn’t have a democracy to defend.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
oh bulshytt. the civil war has NOTHING to with the ISLAMIC Arab Spring, right Omnes?
The Indian Wars, yeah sure.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: WTF?
Benjamin Franklin
Yes. It is common knowledge that Liberty is the ‘Cause’. Unfortunately, the naive and poorly educated see the Status Quo as a bulwark against that egregious enemy, progress. Joe the Plumber votes against his best interest because he believes everyone can be rich. It is counter-intuitive to reason and sentience, but that is your position, and it is intransigent.
Seebach
@Slowbama: Then those white Southerners were fools. What pity should I give them?
Threadkiller
@Benjamin Franklin: No. . . just a lurker and occasional commenter. Yours truly has a certain gift, wherein any comment represents a “kiss of death” for a given thread. Purely anecdotal.
I know not this JOM of which you speak. Journal of Metals (TMS)?
middlewest
@Slowbama: Ah, the self-appointed Civil War historian, right on cue. Most have an elementary knowledge of the subject, but sometimes you are really lucky, and they can argue at the junior high level.
Benjamin Franklin
@Threadkiller:
You wouldn’t like it. JustOneMinute….of Tom Maguire fame. (Definately, not of the Molly Maguires.
Slowbama
@Omnes Omnibus: I have read the secession documents and, as I clearly stated, the express purpose of the Confederacy obviously was to protect slavery. No argument here. Your strange off the cuff analogy doesn’t work because the majority of Union soldiers — a group which by the way included many who were drafted against their will, some of whom lynched African Americans in response — were not psychopaths who wanted to kill. Your logic is faulty though I do understand that is what passes for deep Civil War analysis in these parts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: If you want me to respond, you are going to have to make your question more clear. Are you disagreeing with a claim I made? Extrapolating from what I said? Asking what I think of the TNC quote? What?
Slowbama
@middlewest: So what ya got? Let’s hear it. I should be easy to best.
Threadkiller
@Benjamin Franklin: This. The liberty to keep others as property is the Cause.
See Paul, Ron. His Libertarian position, once parsed, is that the Federal Gubmint has no right telling the states and municipalities whom they can and cannot oppress and disenfranchise.
Shelby Foote loved to cite how few Southern whites owned slaves. The counterpoint is your Joe the Plumber reference: Southern white poor men were led to believe they could be rich, and a slaveholder, any day now.
Slowbama
@Omnes Omnibus: One could just as easily make the case that the French Revolution formed the basis of modern totalitarianism, sometimes in a direct line.
Benjamin Franklin
@Threadkiller:
“Power to the Property” is the Libertarian clarion call, TK.
Threadkiller
@Benjamin Franklin: No, Nooo, Nooooooooooo. No. Bad link. Oh, fuck, I have to get a new handle. This one was working so well.
And god save the Molly Maguires.
Slowbama
@Seebach: I respect the fact that you are honest in your regional prejudice.
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
Please compare/contrast ‘Occupy’ with the Tea Party. i would be most grateful for your input.
Seebach
@Slowbama: I’m Southern. I don’t have any respect for a culture of owning other people. Why should I respect people who claim that for their culture?
Slowbama
@Seebach: I do not believe that word means what you think it means.
Slowbama
@Benjamin Franklin: I’m sure you would be.
Benjamin Franklin
@Threadkiller:
Keep it ‘Threadkiller’. I actually thought your alternate had a sense of humor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Slowbama: Okay, I missed the word “majority” in your statement. It makes my analogy less than completely apt. Nevertheless, the motivations of the individual soldiers in any conflict (Yes, m_c, I include the current unpleasantness in the Middle East) can only take one so far. In a war between nation-states or putative nation-states, the desires and motivations of most individuals tend not to be paramount.
@Slowbama:
Yes, one could easily make and support that argument as well. And?
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
So you will ‘cut-and-run?’
Slowbama
@Benjamin Franklin: I see what you did there. In response to your other, quasi-topical comment: “It is common knowledge that Liberty is the ‘Cause,” obviously I didn’t say that. You did. Is sarcasm all you have? It gets old for everyone quickly. As I said above, I do understand that is generally what passes for erudition here.
horatius
@kb: He’s talking only about the principles of Enlightenment specifically cited by the Founders. He wasn’t comparing America to the world. He’s talking strictly about American Enlightenment. And he is right, this was the first tIME those principles were first caleld to account.
Slowbama
@Omnes Omnibus: And… one could easily make and support that argument. That’s all. As Chairman Mao stated, it’s too early to tell.
horatius
@Slowbama: I know what passes for filth. Mostly stuff emanating from your piehole. Reading you kills braincells. So, off to the pie filter you go.
Omnes Omnibus
@Slowbama: Okay, fine. Thank you for offering that view.
ETA: I believe it was Zhou Enlai who made the remark about the French Revolution.
Scott P.
Fascinating that Coates writes a whole article on how the Civil War is seen only through the eyes of white Northerners and white Southerners — and all the criticism of said article comes from those who can only seem to talk about white Northerners and white Southerners.
Benjamin Franklin
” Is sarcasm all you have?”
Slowbama;
Sarcasm often reveals prevarication,,,,
What say you? How does the Tea Party compare with ‘occupy’?
Samnell
@Slowbama:
Their identity: as whites in a slaveholding society, where they were not slaves, whatever other privations they had to suffer and where they might aspire to once have the power of a slaveholder over his (or rarely, her) human property
Their culture: a slaveholding culture, where one’s personal worth could be reckoned chiefly in the color of one’s skin and the ability to own another human being
Their homeland: where slavery was chiefly and most extensively practiced
You can no more separate slavery from those things than you can separate it from the succession documents themselves. There is no recognizable Southerness independent of slavery and slavery’s long shadow. The South isn’t a credible region geographically, or California would be at least as Southern a state as Virginia. (And Hawaii would be more Southern than any of them!) It’s not unified culturally, as all the Catholics among the Baptists will be happy to remind you. It’s not unified politically, as the Civil War itself made manifestly clear. It was not the only agrarian portion of the nation in 1860. Rather most Americans lived and worked on farms or close enough to it, whatever side of Mason-Dixon they called home. Furthermore, in the respects that the South in 1860 did differ from the rest of the nation it differed chiefly because of the widespread use of slave labor.
No, the single tie that brings what we call the South together is slavery. But don’t take the word of an anonymous guy on the internet for it. Check with the pros:
Slowbama
@Omnes Omnibus: @Omnes Omnibus: Ah, you’re right. Internet, can’t trust it.
Calouste
@Quaker in a Basement:
Not many. I think the point that needs to be emphasized is, rather than that Americans were the only ones to defend outlawing slavery, that they were the only ones to fight outlawing slavery. The rest of the world outlawed slavery and didn’t see the need to fight a war over it, like the South did.
dadanarchist
This is a very good article, but I have to disagree with one major part of its premise.
Arguably, the first major historical moment that fulfilled the principles TNC lays out was not the US Civil War, but the events of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). There, the ideals of the Enlightenment and democratic ideals were extended – via a slave uprising and the Jacobin factions of the French Revolutionary movement – to first free blacks, then freed slaves. Not only were the slaves liberated but, in 1794, they were made citizens of the French Republic. Haiti eventually acceded to independence in 1804.
There are two excellent volumes out on the Haitian Revolution, Laurent Dubois’ Avengers of the World and Jeremy Popkin’s You are All Free, not to mention Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogy of novels about the Haitian Revolution (All Souls’ Rising, Master of the Crossroads, and The Stone that the Builder Refused).
Anyway, I teach Caribbean history, so I think the Haitian Revolution is really important.
Threadkiller
@Benjamin Franklin: Thanks. But the thread lives. It’s like a club having me as a member.
@horatius, kb et al: For the record, I think the “principles of the Enlightenment being called into account” has to do with the fact that the democratic republics across Europe were collapsing at the time. (The German republics were being crushed, plus the French experience, already alluded to) The USA was the longest-lived experiment in republican democracy at that time, and was threatening to self-immolate, and call the entire republican experiment into question.
That this self-immolation would come in the name of an already unfashionable “liberty” to own humans as livestock might have carried some nasty existential weight.
Slowbama
@Samnell: Well this is just remarkably poorly informed on a number of levels: “There is no recognizable Southerness independent of slavery and slavery’s long shadow. The South isn’t a credible region geographically, or California would be at least as Southern a state as Virginia. (And Hawaii would be more Southern than any of them!)”
Arguing with literalists is like arguing with children. Obviously the phrase “the South” is not a direct geographic reference, though there is a school of thought that says the entire Southern tier of the US is more conservative (SoCal being home of Reagan, Orange County, etc., Arizona’s various issues).
As for your callow remark about the South having no identity separate from slavery, this is like saying Jews have no identity separate from usury and is patently wrong and offensive.
Cacti
@Threadkiller:
I disagree…it was tragic that an entire section of the country was willing to launch an armed revolt rather than peacefully give up their human “property”.
Bostondreams
@Slowbama:
Except, no, ‘we’ don’t all know this. As someone who spent a decade teaching history in a rural Southern school, I have certainly dealt with my fair share of students and parents upset over my teaching that the Confederacy was formed to protect slavery. This is NOT a commonly accepted fact among many Americans. Anecdote, of course, is not data, so take it for what you will.
Slowbama
@Bostondreams: You’re right of course, and I’ve had plenty of arguments to that effect. Alexander Stephens was quite plain about the reason for the Confederacy’s forming and I take him at his word.
I meant “we” as in people who have studied the history in an objective fashion. I would add that rural Southern schools aren’t the only places where objectivity is scarce.
SBJules
I especially like TNC’s phrase, the flag of treason. No, it wasn’t in this piece, but why are people still flying it?
Cacti
@Calouste:
While that’s true in that precise scenario, Americans were not the only western people that fought to preserve plantation slavery.
In Haiti, the slaves took matters into their own hands, and fought a bloody revolution against the French planter class.
cokane
Thanks for this link.
I respect TNC for his clear thinking. But sometimes his writing is wanting. Is his writing edited? It seems full of a great deal of excess.
Benjamin Franklin
Cultural ‘diversity’, and LIBERTY ! lol
Dennis G.
@Scott P.: Strange and yet very predictable. The Lost Cause/White Reconciliation narrative is very strong and quite a few folks would rather cling to myths than challenge their rhetorical comfort zones.
This line: “It is to remind us that some of our own forefathers once explicitly rejected the republic to which they’d pledged themselves, and dreamed up another country, with slavery not merely as a bug, but as its very premise.” sums up the epic failure at the root of the Lost Cause.
Cheers
Samnell
@Slowbama:
So you agree then that the South is just a craven euphemism for the Slave Power bloc? I don’t know why you’re disagreeing then as you’ve conceded the entirety of my point. There is no Southerness apart from slavery and its legacy. In no other respect is the area generally called the South distinct from the rest of the nation.
If you are offended that I have insulted your apparent identification with Slave Power, I can say only this: Good.
Slowbama
@Cacti: Haiti did indeed take matters into their own hands, and light-skinned Haitians immediately instituted a caste system which discriminated against darker-skinned Haitians. Plus ca change.
Short Bus Bully
@Slowbama:
So then please define “Southerness” as you see it that does not have slavery as one of the major components of that definition either by proxy or flat out obvious connection.
dadanarchist
@Calouste:
Slavery persisted in both the Spanish and Portuguese empires – until the 1880s – long after the USA abolished slavery.
I had a longer comment on the Haitian Revolution that seems to be stuck in moderation hell.
Benjamin Franklin
Slowbama doesn’t answer questions. He’s just askin…..
Chris
@Calouste:
This times a million.
And it needs to be trumpeted every time someone like Ron Paul says something like “look, every other country abolished slavery peacefully, there was no need to fight a war for it.” Heh. Tell that to the people who started the war.
Slowbama
@Samnell: You say: So you agree then that the South is just a craven euphemism for the Slave Power bloc?
I say: No, I never said that. I never said that because I understand that conservatism and “Slave Power” are not synonyms.
You say: “In no other respect is the area generally called the South distinct from the rest of the nation.”
I say: You are remarkably shallow, ill-informed and ill-traveled.
Threadkiller
@cokane:
As much as I enjoy reading him. . . I think he lacks even a copy editor. His posts are full of basic grammatical and continuity errors that wouldn’t fly in other venues (“missing comma is missing”)
Slowbama
@Short Bus Bully: Really, most of Southerness these days involves going on blogs where you’re insulted for being from the South, seeing as everything we are is directly due to slavery and our continued craven support for the “Slave Power bloc,” as was most eloquently argued above.
Slowbama
@Benjamin Franklin: You know, that b*tch slap theory thingie only works well with politics. Shall I ask you non-sequitur questions as well, in order to distract and manipulate you? It will be pretty boring for both of us, as you can imagine from how things are currently going.
Cacti
@dadanarchist:
And of course, when the Brits passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, they also made a big fat exception for “Territories in the possession of the East India Company” and it wasn’t completely abolished in its empire until 1874.
Slowbama
@Cacti: Everyone knows all Brits are racists. They have no identity that is not related to their racism. I learned that at Balloon Juice.
Short Bus Bully
@Slowbama:
No. That is a bullshit answer. I was not talking about today, and neither was the other poster. They defined antebellum Southerness as being inextricibly linked to slavery in every way, shape, and form.
You disagreed.
Modern southerness? NOT what we’re talking about here.
MikeJ
@Slowbama:
Slavery was the single most important feature of antebellum southern culture. It decided your economic prospects, your social prospects, your marital prospects, your childbearing prospects, your continuing to breathe prospects. There was simply nothing that came close to being as all defining as slavery. Antebellum southern culture was defined by slavery.
cokane
also u can’t write that essay without talking about 1876. But oh well. Great insights nonetheless. I’m sure it must be strange to a black man to visit all these sites and almost never see another black visitor.
Schlemizel
@Slowbama:
eloquent proof you have not read TNC on the Civil War and admirable bravery that you would so proudly display your ignorance.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama: That’s no fucking answer, partner. The True Southerners I know aren’t frequenting blogs. Try again.
Slowbama
@MikeJ: There have been plenty of cultures which heavily relied on slavery as a prime economic driver. Here are a few:
Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, late Renaissance Spain and Portugal, post-Enlightenment Britain and France, Russia (do serfs count? if not, why not?), feudal Japan. That’s off the top of my head.
Can we now agree that ALL those cultures were also “defined by slavery” and they “have no identity apart from slavery?”
If not, why not?
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Short Bus Bully: No, it applies to modern Southern-ness, too. I’m looking to hear an Alexander Stephens admirer’s take on his Homeland. I was born, raised and worked for a long time in a Georgia county named after Alexander Stephens. It’s a shithole. Shame you don’t live there, Slowbama. They’d think you an intellectual.
Slowbama
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): No “True Southerner” would call himself an “Evolving Deep Southerner” either.
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
Answer the fuckin’ question..
Short Bus Bully
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy):
I think you’ve got it from here. Please continue. =)
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama: And who fucking calls himself “Slowbama?”
Back to the fucking discussion, please.
dadanarchist
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): I just moved to Memphis to teach and there’s a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in a park downtown.
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
There he goes, again…
Slowbama
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): Sounds like one of us had the good sense not to spend any time in Stephens County, doesn’t it “partner?”
Slowbama
@Benjamin Franklin: Well… if not why not? Sounds like you’re the one running from questions. At least mine are marginally on topic.
dadanarchist
Anyway, my comment on the Haitian Revolution still hasn’t emerged from moderation, so here’s the meat of it:
This is a very good article, but I have to disagree with one major part of its premise.
Arguably, the first major historical moment that fulfilled the principles TNC lays out was not the US Civil War, but the events of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). There, the ideals of the Enlightenment and democratic ideals were extended – via a slave uprising and the Jacobin factions of the French Revolutionary movement – to first free blacks, then freed slaves. Not only were the slaves liberated but, in 1794, they were made citizens of the French Republic. Haiti eventually acceded to independence in 1804.
smintheus
And what was the French Revolution about, the principles of the Cordon Bleu?
Threadkiller
@MikeJ: This. Land was plentiful. Monoculture ruled – a commodity-based economy, and the most valuable productive input was slave labor.
Slave labor was fungible and liquid, regularly traded (auctioned) based on age, strength, specialty, etc. The stock market was up north, along with the bond market and most of the banks. In the antebellum south, true wealth was largely measured in slaves.
It was intrinsic to the culture and economy, and most likely nothing short of war would have ended it.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
The good things about the South. Enumerate them, please. Climate doesn’t count. Defend what your Homeland has sunk to. Either that or blame it on mean bloggers.
Slowbama
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): Ah, the reference to the handle, right on cue. That’s when I can tell these things are starting to wind down…
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
You are as evasive as Scooter.
Give us your comparison/contrast on ‘Occupy’ and Tea Baggers…
Slowbama
@Benjamin Franklin: The same non-sequitur again? Aren’t you at least going to change it up a bit?
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama:Oh, my fellow Southerner, you would LOVE Stephens County! It has stood fast against all this revisionist bullshit about the Civil War. And, oh, how it has prospered. There may not be shit left, but they’ve got their Heritage.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama: Who went there first? You will say ANYTHING other than trying to articulate an answer to the question on the table, won’t you?
You, sir, are no true Southerner. I’m starting to think you may be one of the better spoof trolls I’ve ever seen here.
Benjamin Franklin
@Slowbama:
I like knowing who I’m talking to. Answer the fucking question.
Slowbama
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): Ah, the predictable segue which paints me into a small box in the corner in which I’m a totally unreconstructed racist who is too dumb to get your carefully-crafted online sarcasm. And…. scene.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama:
I had no better or worse “sense” to be born and raised there than the slaves born to be owned by the men you revere. Just lucky that way, I guess.
Bostondreams
@Threadkiller:
I think Matt Yglesias was his mentor for awhile. He learned from the worst.
Egg Berry
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy):
vinegar and tomato based barbecue sauces, gumbo, bluegrass music …
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Slowbama:
What does this mean? You’re the one defending the Civil War. The burden’s on you. I’m guessing if we’re this far down in the thread and you’re still dodging and weaving, you’ve got nothing.
Why don’t we flip the question on its head in a way that will allow you to fap off to the “good old days” properly. Had the South won – I’m not talking “risin’ again” won, we’ll save that for the truckstop t-shirt stands, I’m talking about won the first time around – how would this world be a better place? Hell, fuck the world, how would your Homeland be a better place?
Hint: “It couldn’t be any more fucked up than it is right now” is not an answer.
Give me your Confederate Utopia. Surely you have such a fantasy. If you don’t, then what the fuck are you talking about?
jefft452
@Threadkiller: “Shelby Foote loved to cite how few Southern whites owned slaves.”
yeah, Johnny Reb didnt own a single slave – they were owned by his dad
Benjamin Franklin
Slowbama is a cock-puppeting Tea-bagger.
’nuff said.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Calouste:
@kb:
Lots of countries had abolished slavery, it’s true, but we decided to have an entire war over the issue. Also, a number of countries you mention were not democracies. The French keep having revolutions over how they want to be governed.
AA+ Bonds
TNC! :D
AA+ Bonds
@Slowbama:
KKK troll, man, that’s a little . . . predictable . . . try “the Confederacy was a British conspiracy”, we don’t get enough of that one
Mnemosyne
@Slowbama:
Because none of them fought a war for the specific and stated purpose of continuing their slave system, which they felt was central to their identity as a people.
Not to mention that none of them had a race/caste-based slavery system where people were forbidden from purchasing their own freedom or that of their relatives and free people could be sold into slavery based solely on the color of their skin, but I think that’s quite a bit above your demonstrated knowledge level of American history.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@jefft452:
Not necessarily. Johnny Reb was almost as much a slave to Old Marse as the actual black slaves were. All they knew was what the landowners (and not much later, the mill owners) told them.
Just like today down here.
Right, Slowbama?
Omnes Omnibus
@smintheus: I think I sort of touched on that above.
AA+ Bonds
PROTIP: Ta-Nehisi Coates, the very model of an Internet writer who likes discussions and actively engages with his readers, also actively fuckin bans racists who try to derail conversations about the Civil War
Samnell
@Slowbama:
For a person complaining about being misconstrued, you sure were eager to do the same with me. But I’m used to it, whether dealing with the hardcore white supremacist neo-confederates or their enablers. I never said that conservatism and Slave Power are synonymous. (I suppose that in American politics I could make that argument if I wanted to, but it’s not my subject here.)
I could say more, but I’ve made my point. Perhaps if you stop being evasive and present the definition of the South you apparently want to use, I shall have more to say. But you are reticent. I would say that’s curious, but I’m not actually puzzled by the fact. People on the who don’t want to be clear about what they’re about are usually hiding it for a reason.
jefft452
@Slowbama: “As for your callow remark about the South having no identity separate from slavery, this is like saying Jews have no identity separate from usury and is patently wrong and offensive”
4 centuries since Jamestown was settled, yet when southerners defend their “Heritage” they only talk about the 4 years they committed treason in defense of slavery
In other words, I don’t care if you are offended
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Slowbama:
Bullshit. This is from the Texas declaration of secession, that the citizens voted on to decide if it would leave the Union to join the Confederacy:
The majority of the population voted for this; they knew exactly what they were doing.
(I keep a copy of this in my wallet just to show people who want to talk about how noble the South was, especially here in Texas.)
Frankensteinbeck
@Slowbama:
Yes, many of those cultures could not extricate their identity from slavery. This fact has no application to the discussion at all. Among other things, they were not in conflict with and sitting right next to cultures that should have been identical to them except for the warping influence of slavery. The South fought the North because of slavery. Ergo, people celebrating the Southern side of the revolution are celebrating a war started to defend (and indeed expand) slavery. The best you could say about such celebration is that it’s often celebrated by people who are completely willing to cheer for defending slavery if that means cheering for ‘their side’.
If you disagree with this, what is your counterargument? What are you trying to say?
Gus
Love me some TNC. He’s a damn fine writer, and it’s fun to get such personal insight into the mind of a brilliant autodidact.
Samnell
@jefft452:
I imagine Shelby Foote didn’t have much time for how many Southern men were expected to serve on and then went out and actually did serve on slave patrols.
The answer is most of them. Even if they owned no slaves of their own, rare would be the white southern male who had not spent some time chasing down runaways. It was, after all, their civil duty. When they successfully imposed that civil duty to the free states over the opposition to and in contradiction of numerous state laws in said free states, via the offices of the federal government, they discovered that northern whites just were not so enthused.
Svensker
@Slowbama:
Spain, Portugal, Britain and France were involved in slavery but their countrysides were not filled with “others” who were enslaved. Russia and Japan’s experience was with its own citizens in a feudal setting, which is different.
I don’t know about slaves in Egypt, but in Greece and Rome being a slave was much more fluid than in the American South. A person’s race or heritage did not determine their status as a slave (or not), and a slave could be freed or his/her children could be freed.
Your examples just aren’t analogous.
Little Boots
I introduced TNC to balloon juice.
that may be a complete lie, but I vaguely remember doing that. and if it is a lie, well, it wouldn’t be the first.
at any rate, he is awesome. so go read. constantly.
Dennis G.
@MikeJ: The key to the slave power and the old Confederacy was that the oligarchs of the day should have the right to steal the labor of others and have that right protected by the state. In this, the Confederacy continues in the modern Conservative movement. It has always been about the theft of labor. It was true before the war and though the century of Jim Crow that followed.
Protecting the right of oligarchs to steal labor is the foundation of the modern wingnut conservative movement. Articles like TNC’s point out the continuity of this scam from 1861 to now and that is why the trolls must respond.
Cheers
dead existentialist
Wasn’t the South controlled and owned by, like, 1% of its population?
handy
@Little Boots:
Aren’t you supposed to be pestering DougJ? C’mon now, get to it.
AA+ Bonds
@jefft452:
That’s not true, please retract your lies. :)
I mean, unless you think all the gay Jews down here are pro-Confederacy or something, I don’t know, maybe you just have no clue what you’re talking about?
Oh, oh, I think I get it: you think that only white racists get to call themselves Southerners. Well, that’s mighty white of you, Grand Wizard, I’m sure that warms Jesse Helms down to his dead-ass balls.
Little Boots
@handy:
occasionally I pester Dennis. And seriously, I think I told him about TNC.
honus
@Slowbama: Because those cultures were not defined by slavery. For instance, slavery doesn’t immediately come to mind when I think of ancient Greece.
Now, tell us about other defining characteristics of the Ante-Bellum South. The unique, defining aspects of the regional culture from Virginia to Texas.
Steve
Undoubtedly the majority of German soldiers were not evil caricatures from the depths of Mordor, but more or less regular people fighting for some vague concept of nationalism and preservation of German principles and honor as they understood it, and so on and so forth. But nobody sticks up for them, because we all understand that they served in an evil cause, full stop.
There’s nothing wrong with being proud of Southern culture. Being proud of Southern heritage, on the other hand, is pretty creepy.
Little Boots
@honus:
really? hellenistic greece was a slave society, pure and simple. did you think the South invented it?
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
Slowbama, I realize you’re either a spoof troll who’s tired of it and run out of material, or a coward who just simply signed out when confronted with actual, critical questions among a hostile audience, but you’d mentioned taking Alexander Stephens at his word.
From the very article we’re talking about:
I’m glad you took him at his word. Redneck cocksucker. Decent grammar is all you have going for your sorry fucking ass.
Little Boots
regardless, do not any of you let the annoying that is me keep you from the awesome that is TNC. really one of the best blogs out there.
Little Boots
I know you all hate when I do this,
BUT WAKE UP, YOU BASTARDS.
speak.
Chris
@Steve:
This. Well put.
Egg Berry
@Little Boots:
I let the fact that he works for the same outlet that employs Megan McArdle keep me from that.
honus
@Little Boots: No, but there are other things about ancient greece that define its culture, like philosophy, democracy, drama and architecture. When I ask about unique defining aspects of the old south other than slavery, I usually hear about condiments and banjos.
And I like the condiments. Hell, I was born and I’ve lived here my whole life.
dogwood
@Bostondreams:
I think this stuff is a bit petty. Coates is an interesting writer because he’s an interesting thinker and an interesting person. There’s plenty of well-edited idiocy to read daily. This Atlantic essay is terrific. And judging from Slowbama’s opening remark:
Coates hit a nerve. Good for him.
What’s interesting to me is that Civil War history and mythology is based on a abnormal model. Usually history is written by the victors, but in this case, the defeated wrote the story, and the rest of the nation acquiesced. Coates makes a compelling point about why this is the case. But this country has been in a cultural civil war since its inception. Whether they call themselves Democrats, Confederates, Dixiecrats or Republicans, the vast majority of Southern elected officials have stood against progress at every turn. Whether is be emancipation, segregation, voting rights, women’s rights, or gay rights, they have been stalwart antagonists. Eventually, they lose these battles, but the war goes on.
Little Boots
@honus:
scarlett had some lovely dresses.
Emma
@Scott P.: Thank you for saying that. One of the things about not being born here and not having arrived until I was old enough to miss the whole elementary school view of American history, is that it was easy to recognise how much, even among the supposedly enlightened, the argument is about white folks. The black people are palimpsests on which northern and southern whites write their own perceptions and biases.
Little Boots
@Emma:
where did you come from?
what were the racial issues in your home country?
jeff
My G-g-g Grandfather was the oldest commissioned officer of the Confederacy to die, in the 1930s. He was a professor at UNC and wrote a pamphlet at the turn of the century called “A Southern View” that lays out, clear as day, that the entire war was about slavery. Recent morons who claim otherwise are full of shit.
Groucho48
I think some folks are mis-interpreting this…
I don’t think he is saying that the Civil War was the first sighting of the Enlightenment. I also don’t think he was saying that the Civil War was the first stone thrown in the war against slavery.
I think he was merely re-stating the Gettysburg Address…
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”
or, as Union Major Sullivan Ballou wrote, in a letter to his wife…
“Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure—and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.
.
.
.
But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the brightest day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.”
He was killed by the Southern traitors. Later, “Ballou’s corpse was exhumed, decapitated, and desecrated by Confederate soldiers possibly belonging to the 21st Georgia regiment. Ballou’s body was never recovered.[1]”
Great Heritage those Southerners had!
Little Boots
@jeff:
seriously?
wow? did you read that pamphlet?
that is awesome.
jeff
@Little Boots:
Yeah, I tried to read it. I also have his enormous histories which are very hard to find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_A%27Court_Ashe
My grandmother learned from him at his feet in her childhood summers. The man was ancient. He was, predictably, an apologist for the South, but not for slavery. He saw slavery as what bound the South to an unsustainable and unethical economy. One thing I will say is that it’s very modern economics that they were discussing. This wasn’t Egypt and Pharaoh stuff. This was modern capitalist trading of humans.
(If you were being sarcastic, my apologies. It’s all but impossible to tell.)
kay
Thanks Dennis. I loved the piece.
It’s completely plausible to me that white southerners and white northerners would get together and come up with a cover story.
Because Southerners may have written black people out of the story, but northerners let them do that.
Both sides saw some benefit in that, I’ll bet.
The vanquished wrote the story, but the victors went along. Odd behavior, for victors, don’t you think?
Little Boots
@jeff:
that is really interesting.
from TNC (who I introduced to Dennis, maybe) I have to say that seems pretty unusual. you should find that pamphlet and post it if possible.
was not being sarcastic at all.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Groucho48: Good catch. You’re right. A further reread of what you block quoted seems to mean that the Civil War was a test of the principles of the enlightenment by the bullet and the sword. Would they survive?
Dee Loralei
@dadanarchist: Hi fellow Memphian! Welcome to the big M Town. They’ve talked about getting rid of Forrest for years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dee Loralei: It freaked me out when I visited Memphis a couple of years ago and saw it. Loved the Stax museum and Rendevous though.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
I want to see Memphis.
is that where that freaky new Parthenon is?
gwangung
@Egg Berry:
Your loss.
And I think it’s a very deep and crippling loss. No sarcasm here.
wilfred
Robert Penn Warren, who actually knew what he talking about, wrote:
“Let us leave in suspension such debates about the economic costs of the War and look at another kind of cost, a kind more subtle, pervasive, and continuing, a kind that conditions in a thousand ways the temper of American life today. This cost is psychological, and it is, of course, different for the winner and the loser. To give things labels, we may say that the War gave the South the Great Alibi and gave the North the Treasury of Virtue.”
That was from 1961, from the Meditations on the Centennial. Nothing has changed. Two of the most delightful feelings in the world are to feel wronged and to feel superior.
jeff
@wilfred:
Indeed. and you put it very well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: They have a big shiny pyramid. And Graceland.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
see they should be one and the same.
we just don’t get religion in this country.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: For places in Memphis to go on a pilgrimage, look no further than the aforementioned Stax museum (Aretha, Otis, Booker T., Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes….) and the National Civil Rights Museum. Both of these counter parks named after Lee and statutes of Forrest quite well.
Omnes Omnibus
Why am I being moderated? Halp!
opie jeanne
@jefft452: Funny you should say that. My great great grandfather died in the Civil War. He was 41 and left behind about 6 kids and 4 stepsons. He never owned a single slave but his father and father-in-law did.
He was a Union soldier.
opie jeanne
@Benjamin Franklin: Artistry of the Pe*nis takes a new direction.
jeff
@Little Boots:
The pamphlet is made up of various speeches by S. A. Ashe and was copied and stapled into a bizarre Frankenstein book that was disseminated by Southerners a long time ago. None of the publications were authorized, but there are a lot of them, and they are not valuable at all. It’s not worth reading at all unless one is an academic historian. It’s garbage, really, and wasn’t even intended to be published in the first place. I just brought it up because of what I had read upthread.
http://www.amazon.com/southern-invasion-Southern-states-1861-65/dp/B0006QS8NE/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323317052&sr=1-6
I will say that the same man’s books that he himself published intentionally are very well done.
OGLiberal
“Johnny Reb was almost as much a slave to Old Marse as the actual black slaves were. All they knew was what the landowners (and not much later, the mill owners) told them.
Just like today down here.”
This. Read Edmund Morgan. Goes back to Williamsburg. It’s why the teatards always vote against their interests. It’s because the landed gentry/Galtian Overlords have convinced them that their biggest problem/threat is brown people, even though they face almost the same problems as the great unwashed darkies. Distraction is the powerful peoples’ best defense.
Scamp Dog
@Lysana: Tell them to read some of the Declarations of Secession. All the offenses against states’ rights relate to slavery. Ideally, that will shut them up, but it probably won’t.
MikeJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
The big shiny pyramid was built to attract an NBA team. The NBA said it wasn’t good enough for them. Memphians had to pay to build a white elephant of an arena that wasn’t good enough for what it was supposed to do.
(I board op’ed the night they dropped the giant neon shovel for the groundbreaking. I also regularly board op’ed for Jack Eaton calling the Tiger High games.)
Xenos
@Samara Morgan: per wikipedia,
The loss of a captive servile population of labor in the southern states led the lords of capital to replace that labor elsewhere. This has plenty to do with the Arab Spring.
OGLiberal
@OGLiberal: Williamsburg s/b Jamestown….goes back that far.
Omnes Omnibus
I will email Cole’s mom about the moderation thing.
Linnaeus
Whenever I ask myself why I decided to become a historian, I need only look to 1) essays like Coates’ and 2) discussions like these.
MikeJ
@Slowbama:
The population of the CSA was ~9 million. Almost 4 million were slaves. that’s a much higher percentage than any of the other cultures you named.
If however you wish to say that when slavery was legal in England their culture was defined by slavery, I have no problem with that. It is a pervasive evil that isn’t painted over by any good that accrues to the upper classes. I know of nobody in England other than the BNP and UKIP that pine for those days. And both of those parties are widely accepted as racist parties.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@wilfred:
Really, what we need in this thread is a both-sides-do-it argument. Though, in truth, you just fell back into the Civil War being about whites.
wilfred
@Belafon:
Actually I’m a student of sorts of Southern literary projects, the writers of which have dealt with the Civil War endlessly and elegantly. Unlike the tripe that is taken seriously on this blog.
But sorry to spoil your circle jerk time. Re-oil and get back to the pumping.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@wilfred: Yes, and I’ve watched people reenact Civil War scenes. Also, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once.
dadanarchist
@Little Boots: The Parthenon is in Nashville – it features in the final scene of Robert Altman’s masterpiece.
We’ve got a giant pyramid that’s being turned into a Bass Pro Shops because the NBA didn’t want it. And Graceland, of course.
dadanarchist
@Dee Loralei: Thanks! I’m a California Yankee lost in Big Cotton’s court, but I’ve enjoyed myself so far down here.
dmbeaster
To add a wrinkle to this stew. Southern slavery was about both the economic evils of slavery and also the virulent racism used to justify it. The Civil War was fought to end slavery, but unfortunately not to end racism. Some energy was devoted to giving rights to blacks, but plenty of northerns were willing to fight to end slavery and preserve the Union, but not to establish equal rights for blacks. TNC needs to work that fact into his narrative.
smintheus
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I hadn’t read the thread.
As for the French Rev., it established a democracy. Then that democracy had to be defended against its European neighbors that wanted to snuff the democracy out. That defense of France in the 1790s surely qualifies as the first time the Enlightenment principles were put to a test…that is, if you deny that the American revolution after 1776 was in defense of those principles.
Joel
I’m late to the party, but @Slowbama
Did you read Coates’ piece?
Jebediah
@Dee Loralei:
What’s the impediment? Is there organized support for keeping it, or is it just inertia?
SiubhanDuinne
There’s probably nobody around this thread by now, but if anyone is, you might want to know that TNC is going to be interviewed about this piece tomorrow (well, this) morning on NPR Morning Edition.
Jebediah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Alack! As a night working schlub, I will be sleeping.
Groucho48
Sparta, at least, another culture with a high ratio of slaves, was certainly defined by slavery.
As to democracy having to defend itself, in France. Well, democracy lost, big time. Same with the reforms of 1848, though, the loss wasn’t as drastic.
You could argue that Great Britain’s slow movement towards democracy in the 19th Century was a success, but, only if you overlook that that success was built on the exploitation of the peoples of other countries.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@smintheus:
Yeeaah…Maybe not.
In order to withstand the reactions of their monarchical neighbors- most of whom had been France’s enemies previous to the Revolution- the French waived quite a few of their Enlightenment principles rather quickly. And once they’d defeated their neighbors, they became an empire.
That’s to say that the French paid an awful lot of lip service to the philosophes, but in practice…?
harlana
Thank you for sharing this! I have never read any of his stuff but this is fantastic. I’m ordering the whole damn thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@smintheus: That democracy did not last long. I will give it credit for this though; when the French, under Napoleon, conquered much of Europe, they educated people in the principles of the Revolution. This, in my belief, was a major factor in the liberal and democratic movements that developed throughout Europe leading eventually to the events of 1848.
jefft452
@smintheus: “…that is, if you deny that the American revolution after 1776 was in defense of those principles.”
I do, The AWI was more political then ideological. For example I don’t see how Enlightenment principles would require you to find the Quebec Act “Intolerable”
Cermet
Really great post – comments are strange. People are seriously arguing about a few trivial statements in the post? Who really cares when the ‘Enlightenment’ values were fully fought? Certainly they are still being fought for here and much of the world. The article is discussing a topic we are still terribly ignorant – refusal to see our very recent past for what it was. Is, and for how, still hidden, lied about, and falsified.
Lee was a butcher and mass murdering coward that made Bin Laden appear as a very minor killer of amerikans.
If you were black, over fifty, you’d have a very different take on this subject.
As for the South being a slave society – duth. Anyone arguing that pre-civil war “south’ wasn’t a fully formed completely integrated slave society that had all its economic structure dependent on that sick and evil practice is so far over the edge that trying to reason with them is like talking to a troll. Waste of time.
No society at the time (1860) had such a totally stratified society built fully on a slave-based economic model that differed from any other slave society then in existance. Haiti was the only real ‘other’ example but did differ in that whites were a far smaller portion of the population. In Africa that type of slave culture was not the case (the vast majority of people were not slaves nor controlled as slaves; may helped in the slave trade) nor in Russia since far from all peasants were serfs and they did have some economic rights compared to slaves.
Anyone that blames the South today for the civil war slavery is a nutcase and without merit. The fact that some schools (they did this in the North, too for many years) in the South that still ignore the overriding issue of slavery causing the civil war is either proof that ignorance is not the same as stupidity or just guided by truly evil and vile people. In today’s internet age, another claiming ignorance on this subject is just truly stupid since they are willfully ignore simple research that would show them the truth and their error. Many people who grew up in the South did bother to learn the truth so I really do not believe that people in the ‘North’ are any more knowledgeable on the subject.
jefft452
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): “the French waived quite a few of their Enlightenment principles rather quickly. And once they’d defeated their neighbors, they became an empire.
That’s to say that the French paid an awful lot of lip service to the philosophes, but in practice…?“
Disagree
With the fall of the great committee on 9 Thermidor, the French had their Enlightenment principles taken away from them, they didn’t give them up
And in practice, they kept spreading those principles until 1800
PS – yeah, I’m an unreconstructed Jacobin and a Sans-culottes lost causer
kay
@Cermet:
was the result of the country’s long search for a narrative that could reconcile white people with each other
That includes both southerners and northerners.
He doesn’t say “produced by southern design”. He says ” produced by American design”. I think that’s why it’s so challenging.
He’s suggesting that there’s a reason that the north went along with the south’s revisionist history, a reason that may not be as noble as “bringing the country together”.
Woodrowfan
for those that insist on “states rights” as the reason, look at the reasons that the southern states gave for leaving the Union.One of the biggest complaints that SC had was that the northern states passed laws to prevent their law enforcement from helping catch escaped slaves, and also that the northern states allowed their citizens to establish and join anti-slavery societies. In other words the southern states wanted states rights for themselves, but denied that right to the northern states.
Studies of soldiers’ letter and diaries from the war in fact show that many northern soldiers did indeed see the war as one against slavery, and many southerner soldiers, even those that didn’t own slaves, saw the war as protecting slavery. How many people now opposed the estate tax,even though they will never have to pay it? You need not own slaves to think slavery was right and want to preserve it.
Exurban Mom
@Samnell: THIS.
wilfred
I don’t see much in this essay, frankly. Coates’ theme seems to be that there can be no honor in an essentially dishonorable cause, thus any revisionism is that which neglects that idea. Thus:
“Honor is salvageable from a military defeat; much less so from an ideological defeat, and especially one so duly earned in defense of slavery in a country premised on liberty.”
Maybe so. But what of our own recent efforts in Iraq – clearly an ideological defeat in a war founded blatantly on a lie? Any honor there? What of our war in the Philippines? Shall we withdraw all honors previously paid for ideological efforts based on the innate inferiority of foreign races? How about today? As rhetoric, its stirring, but as posterior moral judgement its selective and silly.
And this:
“But I, standing on Brien’s property, standing where Mag Palmer lived, saw Pickett’s soldiers charging through history, in wild pursuit of their strange birthright—the license to beat and shackle women under the cover of night. That is all of what was “in the balance,” the nostalgic moment’s corrupt and unspeakable core.”
He writes this from a quote from Faulkner, a brilliant passage of American literature that, what?, should it be excised from schools because Faulkner’s fantasizing southern boy imagines glory where he only sees evil?
Coates lacks empathy. He can’t imagine how or why someone else, someone Other than him, can see, or feel, or think anything differently from what he sees, and thinks, and feels.
That’s the real legacy of the Civil War. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who almost died fighting in it, spent the rest of his life avoiding and discouraging strong, blind feelings – especially those of self-righteousness – because he saw what happened when people were so sure of themselves.
Yevgraf
I’ll repeat my oft-stated assertion for the benefit of those still on this thread.
The oligarchic slavers owned not only the slaves, but that smallish demographic of middle class folks that lived in the South. If you were a lawyer, a banker, a newspaper publisher, a parson, a middling sized tradesman, you utterly and completely depended on your local slaver chiefs for your continued economic success whether you liked it or not – and thus, you enthusiastically parroted and reinforced the party line. If you were a lower class white guy, the oligarchic slavers bought your loyalty with a few crumbs, and made sure you were inundated with the message. On top of that, the 3/5 compromise ensured that these oligarchs had more than enough representation in congress, so they owned the Congress, the Judiciary, and many critical executive branch posts (thus you saw a secession with what was a fully formed government, with administrators who were competent at their function). Competent as they were, however, the correlation of forces could not be balanced out due to their failure to conscript their male slave population into bearing arms. Frankly, had it not been for Lee running around VA-MD-PA, the war would have been over sooner, many, many tens of thousands of deaths can be laid at that bloodsucking traitor’s feet.
It was an evil, and there needed to be many, many hangings to erase the shitstain.
dmbeaster
wilfred: Faulkner’s passage, and your objection to TNC’s rewriting of it, is just wrong. Faulkner’s passage is like Wagner’s music. Great but nonetheless a work motivated by a deep prejudice. All that you have to do is recast Faulkner’s passage with Nazis poised to invade Russia in June, 1941, and make it the fantasy of frustrated Hitler youth. What truly matters is the ideology motivating the bloodletting, and there is zero honor in the Southern cause, and hence, Faulkner’s beautiful prose is still a sick tribute. That is TNC’s point, and he is right, as Faulkner is wrong is his vainglorious celebration of the moment before Pickett’s charge.
wilfred
@dm beaster:
That’s the intentional fallacy. Besides, if you read the whole passage you’d know Faulkner’s actually writing about several things, modernist notions of long memory included.
“What truly matters is the ideology motivating the bloodletting”:
And a ‘good’ ideology justifys bloodletting? Again, US soldiers participated in an ideological war that has left upwards of a million people dead, maimed and crippled. Do we honor them? If so, that gives them the right to what they perceived to be a right and honorable pursuit – something that Coates is intent on denying people.
Chris
@kay:
There’s a passing similarity to the post-Vietnam and post-Iraq narratives, which are all about what a terrible toll these wars took on this country, and how it’s time to move on for the sake of “healing the wounds” of the nation and all that. The Vietnamese and Iraqi sides of the equation are basically completely buried even though they were those most directly affected by what happened (by several orders of magnitude). And Vietnam, like the Civil War, spawned its own Lost Cause postwar narrative, personified by pop culture icons like Rambo.
Huh. Interesting, that parallel never occurred to me before. Obvious really.
Someguy
Where we screwed up is not applying eliminationism to the white Southerners. It’d be a better country if we’d shown the south the same level of mercy the south showed the slaves, or for that matter the level of mercy they showed blacks during a hundred plus years of Jim Crow. Instead we have to live with continued political insanity b/c the inbred morons and their privileged racist betters still dominate that region of the country and have an outsized influence on our politics.
wilfred
@Chris:
This is the point I’m trying to make. Whey you stand in front of the Vietnam War Memorial you are honoring the dead of a truly ideological war, one that left hundreds of thousands of yellow people dead for no other reason than they believed in something different. By Coates’ standard, there’s no honor in that. Maybe so, but to apply to one historical event doesn’t make sense.
@Someguy:
Hm. Maybe you’re right. But if the South offered a peaceful secession, should the current President and Congress accept the offer?
Barry
@wilfred: “Coates lacks empathy. He can’t imagine how or why someone else, someone Other than him, can see, or feel, or think anything differently from what he sees, and thinks, and feels.”
If you say this, then you haven’t read his blog posts.
Chris
@wilfred:
I wrote that right before I read your Vietnam-related point. A good point, too.
Put the shoe on the other foot, though. Are you okay with German and Japanese war memorials set up to honor their dead from World War Two? I’m asking genuinely, that’s not meant as a gotcha question.
Brachiator
@Steve:
@Chris:
Well, no. This is easily refuted nonsense. The huge rallies that were held, the PR show of the 1936 Olympics, and on and on, were not vague. What was sold and eagerly bought was the notion of Aryan supremacy, and the expansion of a thousand year Reich which had the right to subjugate all other peoples.
And yeah, you can tack on the well-nurtured grudge regarding Germany’s humiliation at the end of WWI.
@Slowbama:
You are mightily misinformed. The tragedy of Haiti is far more complicated. You should probably take dadanarchist’s class.
Svensker
@wilfred:
Are you American?
The thing about TNC’s “posterior moral judgment” is that it ISN’T posterior. That’s the whole point of his argument, really. That Americans, white Americans anyway, have never come to terms with what the Civil War meant and was about and that refusal to face that reality still has serious consequences…at the present time.
The reason I ask if you’re an American is that I don’t think people from other countries can really understand how potent this issue — of a war fought 150 years ago — still is here. Having recently moved to Canada I’m constantly surprised how little the neighbors to the north really get how racialized US culture is. I didn’t get it either until I’d moved away from it.
wilfred
“Are you okay with German and Japanese war memorials set up to honor their dead from World War Two?”
Yes. With the understanding that they are honoring those whom they believe to have made sacrifices for right and honorable reasons. At least that way the individual person is given the benefit of doubt as to his or her personal conscience.
To assert as Coates does that the cause trumps the individual’s belief in his or her own reasons and intentions (a baffling assertion but an accurate description of his comments) means dismantling any monument that honors participants in an ideological defeat – which Vietnam certainly was. Moreover, the rhetoric of that war was equal to that of the Civil War – we were ‘liberating’ the Vietnamese from the slavery of communism, or at least preventing it.
Someguy
@wilfred:
They did offer peaceful secession the first time. They declared war when the Union said “no.” It seems to me they don’t have a right to leave. And don’t get me wrong about the eliminationism. I’m not advocating we do that now. But the Union would have been within its rights to let much of the white south wither and die. Imposing a Carthaginian peace is a fair response to genocide, civil war and enslavement of a whole race.
Someguy
@wilfred:
They did offer peaceful secession the first time. They declared war when the Union said “no.” It seems to me they don’t have a right to leave. And don’t get me wrong about the eliminationism. I’m not advocating we do that now. But the Union would have been within its rights to let much of the white south wither and die. Imposing a Carthaginian peace is a fair response to genocide, civil war and enslavement of a whole race.
gwangung
This seems a bad misleading of Coates and not at all accurate.
wilfred
@Svensker:
I referred clearly to the posterior moral judgements he makes about the participation of people in the Civil War – see my comment at #203. He is ascribing intention to people 150 years after the fact.
Yes, I’m American. Millions of words have been written about the Civil War. In fact within reach of my hands I have three different books related to the subject. Coates is entitled to his opinions but some of them are specious at best.
He engages in the same Othering he protests against. Nobody seems to understand that given the same set of historical facts different people can come to different conclusions.
smintheus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): That’s true, the outside pressure managed to crush the democracy in France. Similar things have happened before and since. That doesn’t make it any less a case of putting Enlightenment principles to the test.
In general, less US-centrism in writing about US history would be welcome.
JGabriel
@SBJules:
Because they’re still traitors.
.
wilfred
“This seems a bad misleading of Coates and not at all accurate.”
How else to read this?
“But I, standing on Brien’s property, standing where Mag Palmer lived, saw Pickett’s soldiers charging through history, in wild pursuit of their strange birthright—the license to beat and shackle women under the cover of night.”
smintheus
@jefft452: Agree partly. The American revolution was political and ideological…as well as economic and cultural. Many of the stalwarts were motivated heavily by ideology…thus the ideological sloganeering on the American side.
Brachiator
@wilfred: RE: “Are you okay with German and Japanese war memorials set up to honor their dead from World War Two?”
Right. And of course, we have the little issue of many Japanese simply refusing to acknowledge the right and honorable atrocities they committed, like the Rape of Nanking, the despicable treatment of “comfort women,” mistreatment of prisoners in their camps, etc.
A point could be made that in the name of diplomacy and hard common sense, people and nations overlook the unsavory aspects of history. But this is not the same thing as the “right and honorable reasons” crap you talk about here.
smintheus
@kay: I’ve never met anybody who didn’t think the Civil War was about slavery. Maybe my acquaintances are not representative of popular opinion, though I suspect he is shadow boxing against Shelby Foote. Let’s agree that Foote’s version of the Civil War is ridiculous.
wilfred
@Brachiator:
To comment on this seems almost unfair at this point but…thus the Treasury of Virtue, following Penn Warren.
Ok – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresen, Hamburg, Cambodia, Agent Orange, My Lai.
Let’s start with the Vietnam War Memorial – do you honor them? See my comment at #203
Brachiator
@wilfred:
You invoked Penn Warren. Big Deal.
I could talk about the personal conversations I had with Cleanth Brooks on Faulkner and Penn Warren, but this does not make me an authority on Southern literature. Similarly, your invocation of Warren does is not the same thing as making an independent point of your own.
I’m still waiting for you to make the case that those who were responsible for the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities were just soldiers acting honorably.
wilfred
@Brachiator:
This was actually interesting until you showed up. I quoted Warren because his comment on the Treasury of Virtue was particularly appropriate, because that’s what people do, you know.
But you’re just too fucking stupid for me to waste my time on you. Sorry.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@smintheus:
They aren’t. Anecdote is not the equivalent of data, and I assure you there are vast sections of the US — including non-Southern states — where people think slavery was just a side-effect of the Civil War.
Brachiator
@wilfred: So, you don’t have anything more than tiresome evasions. Oh, well.
smintheus
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill: Any evidence for that? It’s one thing to point to a smattering of ideologues and the historically ignorant, another to prove that southern revisionism has swept the country. I’ve lived in quite a few states, and I think that the southern myth is still primarily a southern phenomenon.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@wilfred:
God damn, man! Read the title of the essay!
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@smintheus:
Well, you can think that. From a Pew article on polling on this topic:
—- Pew Research Center Publications, “Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive”
I was trying, very hard, to be generous in my expression. The truth is exactly as Coates notes; the Lost Cause is an All-American production. Worse, as the Pew Poll notes in the article I link to, younger people are more likely to state state’s rights as the cause.
Brachiator
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
I wonder if any of this dovetails with an attempt by some conservatives to sanitize state’s rights into a variety of small government libertarianism.
smintheus
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill: Well that is a depressing poll. Though, to be fair, every poll of Americans on history invariably is depressing. The fact that the younger people are the more misinformed they are suggests that TV is at least partly to blame, especially the infamous Ken Burns show.
I’m still not sure that I’d read any more into these results than that Americans are profoundly ignorant of history and equally susceptible to swallowing any damn nonsense they see on a screen. Colleagues who teach Civil War courses said right after the Burns documentary that the quality of their students went into the crapper because they were so enamored of his production. Same thing happens in my field, any time a movie or TV series comes out the amount of stupid in the students just explodes.
Dennis G.
@Barry: Word!
kay
Smitheus, for me it isn’t polling,although that poll is amazing.
What I liked about the piece is how unsentimental it is.
He says : “this is what happened to us. Stop talking and LOOK at it”.
I don’t need the poll.
I know we haven’t dealt with this honestly,as a country.