The Atlantic - Latest Comments in History Through The Veil

Re: History Through The Veil

Lyle7 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:52:29 -0000

I like to add that Stonewall Jackson was opposed to slavery as well. He was a deeply religious man from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, which was not a heavily slaved area, and he actually though the Civil War was God's way of punishing the South for the South's transgressions against God, i.e., slavery. His understanding was that as a Virginian his role was to defend his State, which he saw as his role in God's plan.

Re: History Through The Veil

sv — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:35:33 -0000

This post upthread expresses this far, far better than I have.

Re: History Through The Veil

sv — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:28:34 -0000

Fantastic post, man. I used to feel the same way watching old movies sometimes, which is weird because I am the type to get completely absorbed into a flick. I feel like it's related to assimilation (I'm a brown immigrant) .. like, you're trying to empathize with and join this society or group, and you find yourself liking them, almost like a geek wanting to be part of a high school clique; but then you stop and wonder, how do they look at me really? do they not want me? like, for example, say hypothetically that i'm a kid who finds himself really diggin hip hop ('i see you bobbin your head') but then i wonder if the hip-hop kids and the artist would reject me. it comes up sometimes and not just in the context of race.

I may have rambled here.

Re: History Through The Veil

sv — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:27:20 -0000

I may have rambled here.

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:48:32 -0000

Ancient warfare was literally butchery on a large scale.

The horror of the modern age is that we can kill 50,000 at the push of a button, before breakfast, then congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority over coffee.

When you have ICBMs, your hostages can go about their every day lives up to the final second of slaughter.

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:08:41 -0000

I would suggest that the essence of 'white supremacy' becomes most clear in the fugitive slave laws (and the apparatus necessary to make those laws effective).

We aren't just talking about slaves and slaveholders, we are also talking about a society increasingly built around the need to keep slaves from seizing (or running to) freedom.

Harriet Tubman had a $40,000 price on her head -- not an insignificant sum in the Antebellum period. That price reflected Southern apprehension that she was a danger to society. It also represents a very small portion of the resources devoted to cultivating a police state.

.... Nb. Tubman certainly had a degree of "swagger."

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:50:55 -0000

"I reject the doctrine of original sin."

This is a common American response, interesting to me in part because I suspect it may be a reaction to the burden of American history.

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:46:49 -0000

IIRC Frederick Douglass mentioned his Antebellum travels in Ireland. He was well-received. David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, had a section on early antebellum black-Irish fraternization in the North. And then there's a book title I recall: "How the Irish became white"

Re: History Through The Veil

brucds — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:00:53 -0000

C I wrote, "one might objectively recognize that a person born in a particular time and place, to what was a common station in life, would likely have fought for either one. But in retrospect to affirm that - given benefit of hindsight and reflection - one would have fought for either regime is disgusting IMHO."

So the point isn't "who one might have been" in some past context where most people were "X", but "given the benefit of hindsight and reflection" to assert that one would make that choice is problematic, at best. I'm assuming some moral and philosophical distance. I would never make the statement, "I would have fought for the Nazis", because "I" am not a person caught in the maelstrome of Germany in the 1930s. There ARE, presumably, people who - "with benefit of hindsight and reflection" - would make the statement "I would have fought for the Nazis" - like, say, David Duke - and it means something beyond the banal - i.e. the unfortunate determinism of time and place and the fact that most people who fight a war don't really "choose" sides. When a contemporary historian like Foote makes such a statement, I take it as, indeed, a "statement", beyond stating of the obvious that most Southerners of their era were swept into the Confederate cause.

Re: History Through The Veil

gillian — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:31:19 -0000

The most revealing section on race in the book is this part where a Southerner is defending slavery and basically says that by giving the South a class of servants bound for life, all white people get to be aristocrats.

Ta-Nehisi,

V. S. Naipaul had a lot to say about this in his wonderful book "A Turn in the South."

Re: History Through The Veil

Eric L — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:40:35 -0000

Look up the Wilmington race coup of 1898. You'll never look at Wilmington the same after learning about it.

Re: History Through The Veil

Fax Paladin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:32:45 -0000

In fact, "Firefly" makes a repeated point of showing Mal Reynolds' distaste for slavery, and slowly the series reveals (and the movie drives home) that it is the "Feds" who are practicing slavery.

In other words, it's the Lost Cause minus the messier stuff.

Re: History Through The Veil

C. — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:57:18 -0000

Okay. Would you be willing to explain it more? You seem to be to be saying that, to acknowledge a thing is evil and admit that, had one been around at that time, and knowing what one's own personality is like, one would likely have participated in it, is disgusting.

To me, that seems like suggesting that acknowledging one's own capacity for evil is disgusting. I didn't know Foote myself. I haven't studied his works or his life. But from everything that's come up about him here, he seems to have been an intelligent man, one who admired the romance of valor, a lover of the South, and a racist. If that description is at all accurate, then it makes perfect sense to me that, had he been born 100 years before he was, he'd have been a Confederate.

Unless by hindsight you mean, "knowing that something was evil, and saying you'd be willing to do it anyway" --- a contemporary Foote, time-machined back to the war with contemporary knowledge, and volunteering for the gray. If that's what you meant then I yeah, sure, that's disgusting. But to say "if I'd have been alive then, I'd have been a Confederate," seems to me more the first case than the second. Am I misunderstanding you, still?

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:03:59 -0000

An interesting point on Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, by the way. It wasn't that the regiment 'swaggered' but rather, it seems, that it was lucky. It served on the fringes of Antietam, and -- it appears -- was under some form of quarantine due to smallpox for some period before Gettysburg.

As such, it was one of the few Union regiments that had 'seen the elephant' without being shattered and/or weakened by an influx of raw recruits.

Which raises one of the less romantic realities within the Civil War -- some significant portion of Southern small-unit battlefield effectiveness seems to have resulted from the Southern reluctance to replace casualties within a regiment, with the result that they tended to march to battle as small but cohesive units. Union units, by contrast, tended to retain paper strength, but, one suspects, their unit cohesion was damaged by the influx of replacements. (And here the 20th Maine would be an exception proving the rule.)

Re: History Through The Veil

Carrington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:42:43 -0000

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" -- John Ball, 1381 (Interestingly, he seems to have shared the fate of Nat Turner)

Ball's sermon got picked up again by Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers in the 1650s -- the sentiments have, evidently, a notable longevity.

Perhaps it is fair to say that abolitionism wasn't about race either, but about hierarchy and social structure -- with slavery so abhorrent because of its power to seduce the whole range of society from the second rung up.

@ Tom S.

I think the analogy is not coincidental, particularly given the uncanny longevity of roundhead ideology. Extending on Albion's Seed, and echoing Rediker's Many Headed Hydra, there's a fair argument that the American Civil War was a continuation of the European Civil Wars of two centuries before.

I'd venture that there's a pretty strong intellectual and theological connection between abolitionist and Leveling sentiment. This is perhaps easiest to see in the home country with Wilberforce and his Quaker allies -- not least because the British activists were led by hyper-articulate elites. But it is also significant in looking at the abolitionist tradition in the U.S.

It's interesting the Vermont had the highest per capita casualty rate amongst Northern states in the Civil War. It was also one of the "burned-over districts" of religious revival that helped fuel many of the antebellum reform movements. It's also notably that the remarkable Union commanders seem to have had a particularly high mortality rate -- Lyon and Reynolds come to mind immediately... and the fact that they shared a fate with "Stonewall" Jackson (a Southern shooter's "own goal") may be of some significance.

As to swagger, something about the belief that "by works a man is justified, and not by faith only" (James 2:24). It kind of takes the swagger out of you.

Re: History Through The Veil

Tom S. — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:37:09 -0000

Some Northern generals did have "swagger." In many cases, the swagger was not supported by military competence or success (think Hooker, Pope, McLellan, for example).

A somewhat facile--but not wholly inaccurate--analogy is with the English Civil War; the South represented the Cavaliers and the North the parliamentary "New Army" (aka roundheads). The latter did not stem from a long-standing military tradition, instead they created a disciplined, modern army that had uniform standards and equipment. The leadership did not live to fight, but instead took war seriously and ensured that they won.

The North did this. The most successful Northern commanders (Grant, Sherman, and Thomas) did not "swagger," they fought to win.

Re: History Through The Veil

witlesschum — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:29:31 -0000

Glad to see someone else loves that movie. Ang Lee got a good performance out of Skeet Ulrich (!!!) and a decent one out of Jewel. It like it because it's a.) a good movie and b.) about one of the corners of the Civil War that doesn't get talked about so much.

Re: History Through The Veil

cpr — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:14:52 -0000

Looking for something else this a.m., found this from 2005 about a push to re-name 3 parks in Memphis - Confederate Park, Forrest Park and Jefferson Davis Park - Al Sharpton even came to town and made some good points - why do we honor, in public spaces, people who were terrorists? (the parks' names haven't changed):

Monumental Battle

Answers to the Confederate parks controversy aren't inscribed in black and white.

http://www.memphisflyer.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A9940

Re: History Through The Veil

Jennifer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:34:17 -0000

I second the recommendation to watch Firefly and the movie Serenity - it is a must see for any Sci Fi Fan.

Re: History Through The Veil

kid bitzer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:27:35 -0000

on swagger:

it is worth remembering how thoroughly the north destroyed the south, as a matter of warfare.

the devastation to the south's military, economic, and agricultural basis was extensive. southern cities were starved out, made uninhabitable, partially reduced to rubble. the military superiority of the north, in the final year of the war, only continued to grow and grow. by the end, the military superiority of the northern forces to the southern forces was nearly as great as between a modern first-world army and third-world army.

my point is not to say "pity the poor slave-holders"--far from it.

my point is rather that swagger, on the part of the victorious north, would have been unseemly and inhumane. it would have been the opposite of magnanimous. it would look to us now, in retrospect, ugly and intolerable.

look: we northerners beat the crap out of them. not in the first years of the war--there they handed our asses to us several times. but towards the end of the war, we just beat the living snot out of the south. go blue! we were beating them, and victory felt unbelievably great. yess! gettysburg! yesss! vicksburg! woo-hoo, score! yes, marching through georgia, take that, suckers! and we could have kept beating them like a red-headed step-child, if one of our number had not stepped forward and said:

"with malice towards none. with charity for all."

and suddenly we sobered up. suddenly the fun of kicking someone's ass was replaced by the sad realization that these too were human beings, these were our compatriots, these were our fellow americans.

and we set the swagger aside, to do the hard work of binding up the wounds.

so when you see a lack of swagger in the north, remember how unbecoming it would have been, how inhumane. the starchy dignity, the restraint in victory, is largely a matter of decency on the part of people who were the overwhelming and undisputed victors.

and when you see swagger in the south, remember that's all they had left. the swagger of people who had been defeated in every serious respect, but were nevertheless allowed to keep some scraps of dignity.

Re: History Through The Veil

irishpirate — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:10:03 -0000

I believe Chamberlain was a Major General when he received the surrender. At least a "breveted" temporary Major General.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Chamberlain

In any case the man had style.

As for the quality of northern officers if you look at some of the photos of Philip Sheridan he has that same crazy quality some of the southerners had. So did Sherman to a lesser extent.

I preferred Sherman because right from the beginning he realized the war was going to be a long, bloody mess and that there was no glory in it.

It's unfortunate that GW Bush got that fake southern bravado thang going instead of looking to the past of his New England ancestors.

Re: History Through The Veil

mypinkadidas — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:41:22 -0000

BTW, TNC, have you read W.J. Cash, "The Mind of the South" (1941)? It's not academic history by any means -- it's sort of journalism-cum-history -- but for a brilliant, impressionistic survey of the white Southern sensibility it's never really been matched.

Re: History Through The Veil

mypinkadidas — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:36:37 -0000

The Confederate mythology is key not just to understanding the Civil War but also the racial battles of the 20th century -- because Southerners were steeped in that mythology through at least the late '60s. My father went to public high school in Baton Rouge and graduated in 1969. The school was called Robert E. Lee High School (it still is though I think the demographics have changed), and the mascot, of course, the Rebels. That's not so interesting, right? Lots of institutions in the South are named for Lee. But what I've always found interesting is that if you look at the high school yearbooks from those years -- this is 1969, post-"Summer of Love", the Freedom Rides, MLK and RFK have already been killed, etc. -- they don't have prom kings and queens. Instead the various members of the prom court are named after various Confederate generals and their wives, and all the girls are wearing hoop skirts.

Re: History Through The Veil

pollack — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:26:51 -0000

If anybody's looking for primary sources regarding that Southern "swagger" (or the tribes of Southern whiteness), one that might be worth reading is Lanterns on the Levee, which is the memoirs of William Alexander Percy—an image if ever there was one of genteel Southern aristocracy. And I think something like an uncle figure to the young Shelby Foote, who has been mentioned quite a bit in this thread.

Percy calls himself a "planter's son," and though living after the end of slavery, does so on his family's old land in the Mississippi Delta, and makes a defense of sharecropping. He is an exemplar of patronizing affection for blacks and vitriolic loathing of "white trash," at one point saying of the poor whites of the Mississippi hill country that they are inferior to the blacks, whom they loathe, and he blames them for the lynchings and the Klan activity that gave all the South such a bad name. (He in fact recounts the tale of his father and his aristocratic planter brethren running the Klan out of the Delta, and though reserving some exception for Forrest and some "original" Klan, clearly has nothing but contempt for his contemporary white trash Klan.)

Percy was a poet, and much of the book is beautifully written, especially as he waxes romantic about the South generally and about his own Mississippi Delta in particular. His profound condescension to blacks, and the way he sums up the cultures of other ethnic groups in the Delta in order to commend what he sees as their strengths and to criticize what he sees as their weaknesses, can be hard to take. (He says, for instance, that the Italians showed up with a healthy Mediterranean work-ethic, but that their children inherited none of it and instead adopted the degenerate mores of the poor whites.) He is not the stereotype of the hateful Southern racist—he says those people are the white trash—but he surely seems to be no believer in equality, either. But it does make for an interesting window into old Southern culture(s), and suggests a kind of complexity to it/them that I was mostly ignorant of until stumbling onto this book.

The only group he seems to have unqualified praise for is Jews, and apparently because he sees them as being cultured and refined in a manner similar to himself— making all other whites look "stodgy and unintellectual" by comparison, or something like that. In expressing this praise, he speaks of one old, unsuccessful Jewish merchant, who arrived from Russia with nothing, and who yet recommends a poet and speaks passionately of poetry. In fact it seems that much of Percy's sense of his own aristocracy, and of the (dying, as he sees it) Southern aristocracy, comes from such a sense of refinement of culture, or of a sort of poetic sensibility.

There is an additional nuance in the suggestion—steadfastly denied by some, and not obvious from the book—that there is a great deal of evidence, including many first-person accounts, that Percy was gay. And that some of the black men of whom he spoke with such patronizing affection were his lovers. This is discussed some in Rising Tide, John's Barry's excellent account of the Mississippi River flood of 1927, but the Percy book may be worth reading if the subject interests you.

Re: History Through The Veil

sporcupine — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:42:13 -0000

When you run out of giant historical narratives, there's a giant cultural analysis that sorts out a lot about differences in white southern and white northern cultures. Check out "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America" by David Hackett Fischer.

The swagger you're seeing is the same Cavalier culture that backed the Stuarts in the English Civil War, and loved horses and swords and hats with giant feathers and lace cuffs and the whole dashing style thing--and found large plantations a remarkably good way to pretend to own large estates in the mother country.

It's a different breed than all those stiff, starched New Englanders in solid plain fabrics from Thanksgiving pageants and the Scarlet Letter.

Both are different from the fiesty, ready-to-live-off-the-land, too-quick-to-grab-their-rifles borderers who filled in the eastern mountains.

Albion's Seed doesn't exactly make any of the early white settler traditions look like the good guys: it's more that it lets you notice that the rats arrived with different markings, and you can still see the difference at work.