Know Your Rights!

OK I know...it's the title of a Clash song. But it just sort of popped into my head during this morning's run. It got me to thinking about rights - and then state rights - and then the secession crisis and the war. Really...doesn't everything lead me to think about the Civil War era? (the answer is yes, of course).

So as you probably know, a lot of neo-Confederate and Sons of Confederate Veteran types like to talk about these so-called rights a lot. Indeed - they claim that these rights were what the war was all about. Forget about all that crazy slavery stuff. Slavery as the cause of the war was, I suppose, just the invention of a bunch of wimpy tree hugging college professors. (you know - those who practice the dreaded "revisionist" history).

Well, if you are in line with our Confederate sympathizing friends, you are probably just confused. Now I'm not saying that state rights were not important, they were. But the usurpation of any state right "principle" did not cause the Civil War.

Guess what did. Now brace yourself...it was slavery. Yep - you might want to write that down and refer to it if you are still confused. You see friends, the Republican party headed by Lincoln knew that they could not interfere with slavery where it already existed, but the territories were a different story. They wanted territories and any states formed from these territories to be reserved for free labor. That means - no slavery. Slave owners could not establish slavery or take their slaves there, no matter what.

Bummer for the slave holders. And they were pretty upset about it, too. They thought Lincoln and his crew were mad abolitionists (they weren't - but more on that later). Now the real problem was a little more complex - remember, all this carrying on about slavery had to do with places outside the South. But slave holders along with most of the rest of white southern society believed that if the Republicans could successfully go after slavery in one place, then it wouldn't be long before they went after it elsewhere. That means the glorious South - and the prospect of total abolition made white people very nervous.

Does secession make a little more sense now? Southern states seceded when the white citizenry perceived an eminent attack on the cornerstone of their society - slavery. That would mean the loss of enormous wealth and the upheaval of their social structure. Whether you believe it or not (you should believe it, because it's true), every white person in the South had a stake in the institution of slavery - and many supported secession to preserve it, no matter what stories the former Rebels came up with after they lost the war.

Now, if you ever run into one of these Johnnies who insist you have been brainwashed by a bunch of revisionists, just ask them to tell you exactly which rights the southern states seceded to protect. They can name any three. Be sure to give them a few minutes to think it over (I mean....come on, let's be fair).
Keith

 

Do Americans Lack a Historical Consciousness?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Do Americans lack a historical consciousness? Well, I am starting to think so anyway - at least some of them do. Lately, I have been going full throttle with reading, writing, and discussing American history. Why not right? I went to college for a million years, why not do what I was trained to do?

At any rate, I am especially interested in engaging the public - to find out what they know...what they want to know...what they think about US history.

Twitter has been absolutely wonderful for this. Real time conversations with real people! Imagine that!! Who knew just a few short years ago that this would be how we interact?

But here's what I have discovered - people say the darndest things. Oh sure I have had some great conversations with some very knowledgeable folks. But I have also run across a sort of alarming theme. Many Americans have no sense of their own history.

Case in point: I recently stumbled upon an Obama critic who claimed that the president was the "most divisive POTUS in American history."

REALLY??? Let's see, I can think of at least one time in our history when things got just a tad stickier. You know...when Abraham Lincoln was elected, eleven states seceded from the Union, war broke out, and 620,000 people died. I would say that the political climate of the mid-nineteenth century was just a hair more fractious than things today.

The Civil War Preservation Trust suggests that the war is the "central event in America's historical consciousness." Now, I love the CWPT but I think they have missed the mark - at least for those Americans whose historical consciousness extends only as far back as their own lifetime.

Well anyway - I called the Twitter guy out and he just got all angry and defensive. Whatever - choose your battles, right?

So - that's my observation for this morning...Off I go to engage the public. The good news? I am finding more and more forums that discuss history from an informed position. Maybe all is not lost. Huzzah!

Keith

PS - if you happen to read this and think I am full of it - let me know! I welcome all comments and criticism. I know....tell me on Twitter :)

A Word or Two about the Premiere of The Birth of a Nation

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

In February, 1915, The Clansman, later titled The Birth of a Nation premiered at the Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. I want to say just a few words about one: the public reaction and two: how we think about this film today.

Now, if you have been paying attention, you know that the film is as racist as it can be. For example, there are scenes depicting shoeless black people dancing, eating chicken, and leering at white women while serving in the South Carolina legislature during Reconstruction. If that's not enough - there are plenty of scenes of blacks lusting after white women (who have to kill themselves to avoid being raped).

By our standards, this film is an easy target. But the usual analysis by film historians is pretty flat. It goes something like this: Yes - the film is racist but innovative at the same time. Griffith set the bar for future film makers...blah blah blah. How much longer are film scholars going to keep blathering on about the same old stuff?

Scholars of Civil War history have looked at this film too. Some of them (myself NOT included) have noted that the film was met across the (white) nation with a sort of general acceptance. White people (North and South) in 1915 seemed to agree that Reconstruction was a bad deal for the South and that blacks should have been kept in their places. Thus these white people could relate to the "heroic" KKK in the film's climax.

One reviewer at the 1915 LA premiere made a note of it. The audience applauded at scenes of whites triumphing over blacks attempting to assert their rights.

As modern observers, we have a tendency to recognize the widespread racism existing in 1915 and believe that most white people would get on board with the film's message. After all - The Birth of a Nation was a tremendous success all over the country - not just in the South.

But that may not be exactly right. Sure, white northerners were certainly racists by our standards but that didn't mean they supported the Confederate cause or the white South after the fact. Only 50 years earlier loyal citizens of the United States had fought a war to suppress a rebellion and the degeneration of law and order that the Confederate cause had represented. A film about mob rule was not necessarily a welcome thing. And just to add fuel to the fire, some of these guys who had shouldered muskets for the Union were still around to vent their anger!

And their legacy was still around too. Members of Union veterans' organizations like the GAR made sure that US citizens knew what that war had been about. And they were not about to let a Confederate interpretation take hold that easily.

Stick around friends - I'll be back to talk more about this as my research progresses.
Keith

Party Schmarty - The National Union Party

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

The other day I was talking with a friend about the various political party systems in US history (by the way - the founders were not particularly fond of parties). I got to thinking...this party stuff can get confusing.

Let's have a look at the 1850s for example. You couldn't swing a dead cat around without hitting a political party. There were the Whigs - not much longer for the world but hanging around nevertheless. Then there were the Democrats - split along sectional lines into northern and southern contingents - over slavery of course. And let's not forget about the Free Soil Party - aka the Republicans...political newcomers in the 1850s but destined to make quite a splash. Even the Know Nothing Party and the Constitutional Unionists deserve a mention, despite their failure to ever really get anywhere.

So in the midst of all this partying the country sort of erupted into the greatest conflagration seen on this continent before or since. You guessed it kids - the Civil War.

Well, the Confederacy didn't really have political parties. You were either for Jeff Davis or you hated him. And there were plenty of both running around. One might imagine some sort of party system forming had the CSA lived to set one up.

Parties were alive and well in the Union. It boiled down to these basics: Republicans on one side and a kind of sketchy Democratic Party on the other, an uneasy coalition with some in favor of continuing the war and others vehemently opposed to it.

So, you might ask.....what was this National Union Party that formed in the middle of the war? The presidential election of 1864 saw the victory of a party that nobody even really talks about anymore...headed by none other than Abraham Lincoln himself.

BUT WAIT!! Wasn't honest Abe the poster child for the Republicans? Well, it turns out, the National Union Party was a clever idea cooked up by the GOP. Forming a new party without any clear association with either old party (not really - but it sounded good...) allowed for the construction of a much stronger coalition of those who favored carrying the war to Union victory. In a sense, it was tantamount to war Democrats joining forces with Republicans (Andrew Johnson, anyone?) and soundly defeating Democratic contender George McClellan.

Little Mac, former Army of the Potomac commander and arguably the most cautious man in the world, had other ideas about the war. Oh sure, he liked the Union well enough, but may very well have settled it on terms pretty much putting the Old Union right back in place.

Well I for one am glad things worked out the way they did (and so did about 3 million slaves).

So let's review. Lincoln and his crew put aside party for party's sake and actually worked with one-time political opponents to get something done - and what they got done helped a lot when it came to saving the Union.

Comments welcome,

Keith

Northerners and D. W. Griffith's 1915 film: The Birth of a Nation

The game is afoot! After a lot of secondary reading and a peek in to the historical record I am beginning to formulate some questions concerning D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation.

A few things are striking me as curiously glossed over in the literature on the film - things that I believe are worthy of further inquiry. Most scholars tend to reduce the controversy surrounding this film to racial conflict. In many ways, they are absolutely correct. The film's profoundly racist depiction of black people - whether they be boot-licking sycophants, buffoons, or lustful rapists - without question incited animosity among individual blacks, groups such as the NAACP, and progressive whites.

But connected to this racial conflict is the nagging problem of sectional animosities held over from the Civil War. Only 50 years removed from Appomattox, the war was still fresh in the memories of those who had lived through it. Further, the sons and daughters of the Civil War generation remained attached to sectional interpretations of the war's causes and consequences.

Many scholars would have you believe otherwise. Historians such as David Blight and others have insisted that the memory of the war had - by the twentieth century - been reduced to a mutual celebration of valor and fortitude.

Poppycock. It is becoming apparent to me that many white northern Americans in 1915 saw the Confederate cause as an traitorous abomination and a revolt against law and order. It seems quite logical that groups and individuals would condemn a film that celebrated Confederates as patriots and applauded extra-legal organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

In fact - Union veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic led the charge against the screening of The Birth of a Nation suggesting that is was "untrue to the facts of history, [did] gross injustice to prominent and patriotic men of Reconstruction times, [was] insulting to colored citizens, and [tended] to glorify mob law."

This is sectionalism pure and simple. Northerners had fought to suppress rebellion - celebrating it 50 years after the fact seemed distasteful at best. Of course, millions in the North flocked to see The Birth of a Nation - and many were surely amazed at the spectacle of this new medium. But they didn't necessarily agree with the film's message.

At any rate, being one who resolutely believes that sectionalism is a central component in the study of American conflict and American history writ large, I am going to pursue this line of reasoning and see where it takes me. My driving questions: to what degree did the contentions of the Civil War remain in the twentieth-century North? How did the war generation influence subsequent generations? In what ways did The Birth of a Nation fuel sectional fires? And finally, the real nugget...are racial conflicts and sectional conflicts interwoven in American history?

I guess we'll just have to see.
Keith

February 24th 1942 - a date which will live in obscurity: The Battle of Los Angeles

I am not featuring heavy-handed analysis today. You know...I spend a lot of time wading waist deep in academic nitwittery and today I feel like telling an interesting story - just because.

I sort of stumbled upon this story while looking into Los Angeles during WWII. So imagine this. You live on the west coast of the United States. It is February 1942 - on the heels of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The country is at war and excitement is sweeping across the land. Another attack seems eminent. The people of Los Angeles are bracing themselves for the next onslaught...

Did you ever see the 1979 Steven Spielberg film 1941? It starred John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy and other well-known comedic actors of the time. It is a fictional tale of a renegade Japanese submarine commander intent on attacking Hollywood and a group of Los Angeles residents running amok in the first days of war.

Well, 1941 is laden with disturbing racial stereotypes (Hooorrryyyywoooo!!!!!!) meant (I believe) to convey mid-century Americans' perception of Japanese people rather than vulgar racist jabs. But racial analysis aside I think Spielberg did a wonderful job capturing the hysteria that gripped the west coast in the early days of war. And as an added bonus, John Belushi is superb as fighter pilot Captain Wild Bill Kelso. You have to love the scene where he strafes Hollywood Blvd in his P-40! While the film received low marks from critics and audiences alike, I would recommend it nevertheless. It is a first-rate fictional tale and a well put together period piece.

But the truth is, the film wasn't really that much of a stretch. Something along these lines actually (kind of) happened way back on February 24th 1942. It seems that reports of a Japanese air raid sent the good citizens of LA into hysterics. That evening, radar picked up several unidentified objects closing in on the Los Angeles area. After a bit, an artillery colonel reported enemy planes (although the radar blips had vanished) flying 12,000 feet above LA. This prompted coastal defense teams to send up flares and open up with a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. Four enemy planes were reported shot down, including one that was supposed to have crash landed on Hollywood Blvd.

People watched the scene unfold from rooftops and as the excitement persisted...they freaked out. Cars crashed, shell fragments fell on the city, and at least one person had a heart attack and died. But there was no attack, no enemy planes shot down, and no explanation for why coastal defense crews opened fire. Just a couple of unexplained blips, some spotlights, and a whole lot of artillery fire. The next day the Washington Post referred to the "battle" as a "recipe for jitters" and the New York Times simply stated that the event was "expensive incompetence and jitters."

Well, call it what you want. At any rate...it is certainly a good story. I keep finding all kinds of little tidbits about LA during the war. Perhaps a short book is in order....
K

Union veterans, commemoration, and the suppression of treason.

Civil War historians who bother to look to the years beyond the war talk a whole lot about reconciliation. The consensus: veterans whitewashed the memory of the war (excising issues such as slavery and emancipation) for the sake of a peaceful reconciliation. Thanks to shared racism that reached across the borders of North and South, commemoration of the war was was pretty much free from controversy. What historian David Blight argues turned out to be a Civil War memory on "southern terms."

Poppycock. Even a cursory glance at the historical record illustrates beyond any doubt (to my mind) that veterans from both sides were still wedded to this particular divisive issue. But that's a story for another day. Trust me...I'll get to that in another post.

But with all the academic talk (and talk...and talk...and talk...) about race and reunion (granted, a profoundly important topic), something important often gets overlooked: soldiers of the Union enlisted, fought, and died for...let's see if I got this straight...UNION!!!!

Oh yeah, that little thing. And do you think they forgot about it during their peaceful reconciliatory commemorative events? Nope - not even a little. As a matter of fact - and I mean documented fact - veterans celebrated the suppression of TREASON (yes, our friends in the gentile South - you know Ashley Wilkes and the like - committed treason). They gave ex-Rebels a hard time for trying to destroy the country. Veterans suggested that the rebellion was the greatest conspiracy of all times and they were hell bent on preserving that single idea for posterity.





“The Rebellion,” argued Edward McPherson before a gathering of Michigan veterans in 1889, “had not a redeeming feature. It was wholly bad. It was organized as a conspiracy, by stealth. It had its origin in passion, not reason. It was based on a pretense, both false and fraudulent in fact. It was carried on in heat, not with the deliberation which befits a great movement for vindication of rights or redress of wrongs.”

How's that for an uncontested reconciliation? Have you ever wondered what those Union veterans were thinking as they awkwardly shook hands with former Rebels across Gettysburg's stone wall? Here's just a tiny little snippet from my upcoming book on the subject that might give you an idea:

 

'From the perspectives of many Union veterans, Confederate flag waving former Rebels, worshiping before the alter of secession and state rights and paying homage to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and the rest of the Confederate pantheon, were unwelcome additions to the national image. Union men found no places in which the celebratory contributions of their treasonous former enemies could enhance the national commemorative vision with any real validity. After all, according to Union veterans, the appearances of former Rebels, many of whom continued to don Confederate gray and parade in military style, resurrected the memories of a period where Americans had tried to destroy the United States – a cause hardly worth celebrating. The culture of reconciliation, while prevalent, did not dissuade Union army veterans from harsh critiques of their quondam enemies. How could northerners honor any vestiges of the Confederate cause, asked the National Tribune, commemorated by “organizations of the very men who did all in their power to destroy the Government, and whose only bond of Union is comradeship in that terrible disloyalty?”'

So if anybody tells you that Civil War commemorations were nothing but a bunch of grizzled old soldiers with nothing much to say - just remind them...for Union vets, TREASON was a very big deal.

K