Ship of Fools: Welcome to Plantation America

Thread: Welcome to Plantation America Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=023320

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

The premise of this article, in brief, is that the current Culture Wars in America are simply the continuation of the Civil War, which ended but was never really resolved. It is a dispute between Yankee Puritanism, which had one view of liberty and one idea of how society ought to be ordered, and the Southern plantation mentality, which had a different view of liberty and a different view of how society ought to be ordered.

I'm a Southerner born and bred, but there's a lot in this article that resonates for me. I'm not entirely sure it's a Northern/Southern difference; if it once was, surely it isn't any longer. If it were, you'd have to say that Mitt Romney and George W. Bush are Southern, and George Romney and George H. W. Bush are Northern.

That doesn't make much sense to me. It makes more sense to think that there are, among the rich and powerful, some who see themselves as neighbors to other people, and some who see themselves as above other people. And those ideas affect not only the rich and the powerful, but also those who are influenced by them. (Which is to say, just about all of the rest of us.)

So, do you accept the model in the article? If you do, do you think that the Southern Plantation version of society has won? Or that it's winning? If you don't like that version of society (and I don't), what can be done to strengthen other views?

Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :

The North™ and The South™ are no longer meaningful terms. The southern Atlantic coast (banking, education, white collar work) of the south has more in common with the northeast now, and in a way the interior south has more in common with the midwest (manufacturing, blue collar work). Alabama now produces as many cars as Michigan, and Charlotte has the second biggest concentration of banks in the country next to New York.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

Puritans were powerless by the time of the great Depression. As a northern, Im less expert on suthern aristocracy but I think it was not in power 50 years after the Late Unpleasantness.

Immigrants and the rise of the industrial aristocracy did them both in.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

Hmm. I think I tend to agree with you Josephine, that there's truth here in terms of there being different ideologies as to what the wealthy/elite are expected to do with their power.

The author does tend to suggest that the 'Northern' and 'Southern' divide is no longer directly geographical, but I think the idea is that it can still be traced back to those roots, either via patterns of expansion (to the west) or by patterns of education (being educated in 'Northern' institutions).

The Bushes might be an interesting study for whether that holds up, because it basically proposes that Bush Sr was 'Northern' and Bush Jr was 'Southern'. Is there enough difference in their personal histories to back this up, despite them being father and son? If Bush Sr was 'Northern' in outlook, how exactly did he allow his son to be raised 'Southern'?

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
It makes more sense to think that there are, among the rich and powerful, some who see themselves as neighbors to other people, and some who see themselves as above other people. And those ideas affect not only the rich and the powerful, but also those who are influenced by them.

And thus it always was (and, I suspect, always will be)

This isn't just a US thing - it's a human and world wide thing. Look in every society and you will see groups and individuals who feel entitled to rule over others. You will also see real care, concern, empathy and great neighbours.

Sometimes the people go against the grain and good thing happen.
Here is an example - happening in my home town.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

I accept that this is not my country or culture, but the article strikes me as inflated crap. There are prominent people who have a sense of their accountability. There are others who are in it for themselves. Dressing this up by projecting a specious historical parallel into the present is determinist nonsense.

It also provides an extra excuse, if one were needed for something that seems to be embedded in human nature, to think 'us good - them, socio-genetically, irreversibly bad'.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Second post

It's much the same as a clever, clever, columnist who who attributed the Icelandic financial crash to their being ethically the children of Viking rebels.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Second post

It's much the same as a clever, clever, columnist who who attributed the Icelandic financial crash to their being ethically the children of Viking rebels.

Yeah, or those columns you used to read about the Ceausescu dictatorship, where the writer thought he was adding a lot of historical context by mentioning that Dracula was from Romania.

Or when someone points out that Germans have a word that means "joy in the misery of others". Like, this is supposed to explain Nazism.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
The Bushes might be an interesting study for whether that holds up, because it basically proposes that Bush Sr was 'Northern' and Bush Jr was 'Southern'. Is there enough difference in their personal histories to back this up, despite them being father and son? If Bush Sr was 'Northern' in outlook, how exactly did he allow his son to be raised 'Southern'?

I'm not sure how historical this is, but in the Oliver Stone movie W., there is a scene from the 1988 election, where a group of Moral Majority types ask the elder Bush to make a statement in public to the effect that he'd been "born again"(I'm assuming because for an Episcopalisn, saying you were "born again" could be viewed as implying your original baptism was insufficient). He refuses to do so, and says something to the effect of "Talk to my son, he's the born again one here".

As for how the elder Bush could have "allowed" his son to be raised this way, I think Bush converted to his preferred brand of Christianity as an adult, via 12-Steps programs. So the old man might not have had much to do with it. And W.'s conversion came at a time when the Religious Right was ascendant in American politics, so it probably dovetailed nicely with his career interests.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Sorry, the statement in parentheses in my first paragraph above should be at the end of the paragraph.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

Ah yes, the Democratic cliche of the Good Republican President. Somewhere in history, there was a Good Republican President, and if only the GOP would get back to that model, we would all be so much better off. Never mind that when that Good Republican President was running for office, we said that he was a dangerous shift to the extreme as compared to the last Good Republican President.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The Bushes might be an interesting study for whether that holds up, because it basically proposes that Bush Sr was 'Northern' and Bush Jr was 'Southern'. Is there enough difference in their personal histories to back this up, despite them being father and son? If Bush Sr was 'Northern' in outlook, how exactly did he allow his son to be raised 'Southern'?

W attended Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard. Not that the author thought that was worth mentioning. Hardly allowing your son to be raised "Southern".

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Og wrote:

quote:
Never mind that when that Good Republican President was running for office, we said that he was a dangerous shift to the extreme as compared to the last Good Republican President.

I'm glad someone else has noticed that trend among liberals to romanticize the last generation of conservatives, but only in retrospect.

It's not confined to the US either. I've heard liberals(small and big-L) in Canada talk about Stephen Harper as being a slap in the face to the "Red Tory" values represented by Brian Mulroney. But I remember the Mulroney era, and almost nobody on the left was praising Mulroney as progressive in any way. He was the guy selling us out to the Yanks, via his free-trade agreement, which was the repudiation of everything John Diefenbaker(the last Tory PM of any significance) had supposedly stood for. (In fariness, Dief did actually stand up to the Americans on some key issues, so there were a few real differences in policy between him and Mulroney).

From the UK, I've heard the same sort of praise heaped upon Harold MacMillan and, to a lesser extent, Ted Heath. I've actually heard people interpret Mac's "Never had it so good speech" as somehow left-wing, but I always thought it sounded like something a right-winger would say, along the lines of "Quit your bellyaching you spoiled brats, the government'a already doing a helluva lot for you, so don't ask for more". Apparently, in that speech, he also launched into a direct attack on socialism.

[ 20. July 2012, 18:41: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
W attended Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard. Not that the author thought that was worth mentioning. Hardly allowing your son to be raised "Southern".

I've often thought that if Bush II had spent more time in Massachusetts and less in Texas, but still gone on to be president, instead of being stereotyped as a redneck cowboy idiot, he'd be stereotyped as a New England fop idiot. Sorta like Ted Kennedy, minus the social conscience(or at least the way Ted Kennedy was viewed by people who disliked him).

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

I think there's something to it, though the regional divide was never as pronounced as the article implies--those Yankee industrialists were just as brutal in suppressing unions as their Southern plantation counterparts were in suppressing slave revolts. They didn't put on the same degree of aristocratic pretension though, and at least paid lip service to their responsibility to improve society as a whole (as contrasted with private charity to individuals, which is really just another assertion of privilege that strips the beneficiaries of their dignity while enhancing the status of the giver).

Posted by JSwift (# 5502) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I've often thought that if Bush II had spent more time in Massachusetts and less in Texas, but still gone on to be president, instead of being stereotyped as a redneck cowboy idiot, he'd be stereotyped as a New England fop idiot. Sorta like Ted Kennedy, minus the social conscience(or at least the way Ted Kennedy was viewed by people who disliked him).

I would think someone whose blood was more of a blue hue, such as Kerry, would have been a more appropriate comparison. Although I don't think Kerry was an alcoholic like Bush and Kennedy.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

The article tiptoes around Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Maryland, all slave states but with diverse histories. Kentucky and Maryland were Union states, but it was a close thing to keep them in.

Virginia is a swing state now, the one that Obama needs and Romney needs even more. Both campaigns, I understand, are flooding Virginia with money and ads like it was a swing state. Where's Moo on this?

Romney, though, epitomizes the difference between "Noblesse Oblige" and "Zero-Sum Liberty". His signature achievement as Governor of Massachusetts was Romneycare, which he justified himself with the Puritan view of "Ordered Liberty". He didn't just sign on to the idea, he helped shape it more deeply than that. He was a leader in that case and he had a good record to stand on. There is much about Romneycare/Obamacare that will greatly enhance the freedom of a many people, particularly the poor.

Romney can do Yankee Puritan Noblesse Oblige very well. I'd like to think he even believes it. And he turned his back on that. Coward. Not just a hypocrite, a coward. He's running away from his own legacy and courting the Planter Class in a bid for power. It'd been a long time since a politician was this blatant in public about selling his soul to the devil.

Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
[qb] Both campaigns, I understand, are flooding Virginia with money and ads like it was a swing state.

And how! I'm already sick of it and the conventions haven't even started.

North Carolina is sort of a swing state now, too. And Florida always has been, if you still want to count that as "South".

[ 20. July 2012, 19:45: Message edited by: Unreformed ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by JSwift:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I've often thought that if Bush II had spent more time in Massachusetts and less in Texas, but still gone on to be president, instead of being stereotyped as a redneck cowboy idiot, he'd be stereotyped as a New England fop idiot. Sorta like Ted Kennedy, minus the social conscience(or at least the way Ted Kennedy was viewed by people who disliked him).
I would think someone whose blood was more of a blue hue, such as Kerry, would have been a more appropriate comparison. Although I don't think Kerry was an alcoholic like Bush and Kennedy.

Yeah, I was thinking of Kennedy's rep as a drunk, dissolute womanizing playboy, with a bad driving record to boot. With Kerry, I believe the worst thing anyone was able to pin on him, as far as being a spoiled-brat scion goes, was that he married money.

But yes. Ted's generation of Kennedys weren't really blue-blooded, in the way that the term is generally understood. Still, probably about as close to being that as you can be while still qualifying as nouveau riche.

Timothy wrote:

quote:
I think there's something to it, though the regional divide was never as pronounced as the article implies--those Yankee industrialists were just as brutal in suppressing unions as their Southern plantation counterparts were in suppressing slave revolts.

And since the article is focussed, at least nominally, on the culture wars, it wasn't southern planters who got the phrase Banned In Boston entered into the political lexicon.

Posted by Mere Nick (# 11827) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

So, do you accept the model in the article?

Not really.

quote:
do you think that the Southern Plantation version of society has won? Or that it's winning?

I certainly thought it had won when we had the Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate. They certainly appear to look at us as field hands with DC being the Big House.

quote:
If you don't like that version of society (and I don't), what can be done to strengthen other views?

It seems the best one can do is to actually live that other view in your relationship with others.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I'm glad someone else has noticed that trend among liberals to romanticize the last generation of conservatives, but only in retrospect.

You're absolutely right -- conservatives have always been a carbuncle on the ass of history, and it's good of you to point that out.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Unreformed:

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
[qb] Both campaigns, I understand, are flooding Virginia with money and ads like it was a swing state.
And how! I'm already sick of it and the conventions haven't even started.

North Carolina is sort of a swing state now, too. And Florida always has been, if you still want to count that as "South".

I thought that was the case, and it was mentioned in several articles on US politics I have seen. I imagine you have to look out the window before heading outdoors to see if there are any canvassers about and carry an umbrella for the rain of election funds. A Tivo would be pretty handy at this time too.

I don't count Floria as "Southern" anymore and I don't think any serious political analyst of any stripe does either. It's Ohio with alligators.

Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:

quote:
Originally posted by Unreformed:

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
[qb] Both campaigns, I understand, are flooding Virginia with money and ads like it was a swing state.
And how! I'm already sick of it and the conventions haven't even started.

North Carolina is sort of a swing state now, too. And Florida always has been, if you still want to count that as "South".
I thought that was the case, and it was mentioned in several articles on US politics I have seen. I imagine you have to look out the window before heading outdoors to see if there are any canvassers about and carry an umbrella for the rain of election funds. A Tivo would be pretty handy at this time too.

I don't count Floria as "Southern" anymore and I don't think any serious political analyst of any stripe does either. It's Ohio with alligators.

The strange thing is, I actually don't watch that much TV and I'm STILL sick of it. Even getting rid of the TV in my apartment, something I've long considered, might not help that much. See, because of my IP address which says I'm in a swing area of a swing state, every other ad online is political, too, and 80% of the advertisements that play on YouTube videos are election ads now.

As to Florida, it depends on which part you're talking about. The northern part is like Alabama, the middle is like New Jersey, and the southern part is essentially a Caribbean country that happens to be attached to the United States. That's why it's such a swing state.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

ISTM that the voting patterns for President in 2004 mirrored the equivalent patterns of 1860 almost exactly, except for those states that weren't defined clearly in 1860.

I did see a map that showed this, but I seem to have lost the link.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

That would be impossible, because the 1860 Election featured a four way race, and each candidate won at least one state.

Election Article & Map

There is a North/South divide, then as now, but Florida no longer votes with the "Solid South". The biggest upset of the last election cycle and the present one is that Virginia, with 14 Electoral College votes, has moved from being a solid Republican lock to being a contestable swing state. As I understand it, it's a mix between Virginia becoming more urban and moderate and the entire group of issues that bear the heading "Race".

Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
That would be impossible, because the 1860 Election featured a four way race, and each candidate won at least one state.

Election Article & Map

There is a North/South divide, then as now, but Florida no longer votes with the "Solid South". The biggest upset of the last election cycle and the present one is that Virginia, with 14 Electoral College votes, has moved from being a solid Republican lock to being a contestable swing state. As I understand it, it's a mix between Virginia becoming more urban and moderate and the entire group of issues that bear the heading "Race".

Virginia also has an excellent economy compared to the rest of the country so we're much less likely to have bad feelings towards Obama because of economic issues.

If James Madison hadn't persuaded Hamilton to accept a permanent capital on the Potomac River in exchange for a deal on the federal debt, Virginia would be Kentucky with a coastline.

[ 21. July 2012, 01:52: Message edited by: Unreformed ]

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I'm glad someone else has noticed that trend among liberals to romanticize the last generation of conservatives, but only in retrospect.
You're absolutely right -- conservatives have always been a carbuncle on the ass of history, and it's good of you to point that out.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

quote:
The premise of this article, in brief, is that the current Culture Wars in America are simply the continuation of the Civil War, which ended but was never really resolved.

Hmmm. I can't comment on current political positioning, but it seems to me that the article cited tips right over into lurid stereotyping. No doubt there is (was) some basis for those assertions, but if you take the worst of one side and contrast it with the best of the other, then there is only one possible outcome. But putting that aside for one minute -

The main problem with the thesis, I guess, is the observation that the earliest manifestations of the culture wars were long before the civil war, and they were in the north. The historian James Morone points out that the puritan heritage of America (as opposed to anywhere else) involved the desire to pursue not just the pure church but also a pure society based on that church. And it rapidly came unstitched. Whilst it would be anachronistic to label the sides as conservative and liberal, they certainly divided along the social vs. doctrinal lines and the old dividing lines seem to be very persistent.

Perhaps if you wanted to include the south, you might say that the south had to realign its thoughts into the regnant framework already provided by the north, and that took years. But positing a crude vision of an Augustinian Pastor Snow-White as typical of a far more complex and conflicted history of American puritanism seems highly prejudicial.

Indeed, Morone's magnum opus on this is entitled "Hellfire Nation - The Politics of Sin in American History", and that article is nothing if not an attempt to paint one side in the blackest of sinful terms. And it is precisely this sort of bipolar, black and white rhetoric that simply keeps the whole culture war on the road. Both sides do it. The natural human reaction to it is to become defensive and return fire. As I've said before, the net result is a sort of perpetual mutually-reinforcing moral panic.

And like all such stereotyping, it fails to address the writer's own part in perpetuating the very mindset that stokes the fires of other culture warriors of every stripe.

The classic interpretation of explanations that harp on and on about the wickedness of the other is to ask if they might not be more than a little bit an exercise in projection.

Posted by Grammatica (# 13248) on :

The article to which the OP makes reference reads like an oversimplified version of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, which postulates four,, not two, basic divisions. So I think there's something to it, but it's a little too schematic and binary.

Hackett Fischer would see the article's notion of "zero-sum liberty" as characteristic of the "Borderers," the "Scotch-Irish" who settled Appalachia in the days when it was the West.

They, however, are only one of two Southern cultural groups. The other, the planter class of Virginia, his "Cavaliers," tended to cultivate a form of intensive Stoical self-discipline that awed onlookers, as George Washington was said to do. However, their ethical self-culture was based on the presumption of a hierarchical society whose upper levels lived by an honor code foreign to middle-class, artisan-oriented New England. The planter class thought it was earning the deference it expected from others by living up to the intense demands of its own honor code.

The two Southern cultures in Hackett-Fisher are thus quite different. "Borderers" believe liberty consists in being able to act without any restrictions on one's own conduct. They imagine these restrictions as always proceeding from others; they don't discipline themselves. They are impatient of any restraint whatever on their liberty. The "Cavaliers" are intensely self-disciplined but expect deference, not interference, from those below them in the social scale.

Their are two "Northern" groups, also, according to Hackett-Fischer, though his Pennsylvania group strikes me as something of a hodgepodge, a convenient place to locate the origins of the Marlo Thomas strain of nice, Fair-Trading, Montessori-attending, ethnic-stole-wearing liberalism, "free to be you and me."

New Englanders, on the other hand, may be communitarians, but they aren't nice about it, in Hackett-Fischer's view. They know what is best for your and generally have no problems telling you exactly what it is. The New England influence runs through a certain strain of American Progressivism, the one we prefer not to think about, that gave us Prohibition, and eugenics, and "Banned in Boston" style censorship, and had no problems with displacing the poor people of midtown Manhattan to build Central Park.

I'm pretty fond of Hackett Fisher's book, though I think there are probably more divisions than his four. He also entirely ignores later immigration, deriving his folkways entirely from America before 1800. Surely Hispanic immigration has had an impact on Florida and the West? And Central European immigration had an enormous impact on the industrial southern Great Lakes, as Nordic immigration did on Minnesota, North Dakota, and parts of Wisconsin.

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
... It's not confined to the US either. I've heard liberals(small and big-L) in Canada talk about Stephen Harper as being a slap in the face to the "Red Tory" values represented by Brian Mulroney. But I remember the Mulroney era, and almost nobody on the left was praising Mulroney as progressive in any way. He was the guy selling us out to the Yanks, via his free-trade agreement, which was the repudiation of everything John Diefenbaker(the last Tory PM of any significance) had supposedly stood for. (In fariness, Dief did actually stand up to the Americans on some key issues, so there were a few real differences in policy between him and Mulroney). ....

You're remembering correctly. The Red Tories were the Joe Clark Tories, not the Mulroney Tories. The Harper Tories are Preston Manning's Reform / Alliance TINOs. OliviaG

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

I'm still not particularly enamoured of MUlroney, but TBF I would like to point out his role in dealing with apartheid in SA, and his apology to the Japanese interned during WW2, which included a formal compensation package and various other efforts to deal with the problem.

Harper isn't even brave enough to say "Of course I'm not going to deal with the natives, even if I did apaologise to them. My base vote is too racist to stand for that"

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

I think Grammatica has laid it out pretty well--though there's always room for more nuance. Mark Twain said that the problem with the Southern upper class was that they'd spent too much time reading Sir Walter Scott. The problem with the Northern upper class may be that they spent too much time reading Jonathan Edwards.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
I'm still not particularly enamoured of MUlroney, but TBF I would like to point out his role in dealing with apartheid in SA, and his apology to the Japanese interned during WW2, which included a formal compensation package and various other efforts to deal with the problem.

Very true. Though I should say that I rarely if ever heard progressives praising Mulroney for any of that stuff when he was in office.

So, maybe it's the case that previous generations of Tories were relatively enlightened, but nobody was noticing it at the time.

Olivia wrote:

quote:
You're remembering correctly. The Red Tories were the Joe Clark Tories, not the Mulroney Tories.

The strange thing is, I used to hear the phrase "Red Tory" applied to the people who ousted Diefenbaker(Dalton Camp, Robert Stanfield etc) in such a way as to make it sound as if they were ideologically distinct from him. But then later on, I heard the term applied to Dief himself.

re: Clark/Mulroney. Of course, Clark did serve with Mulroney, and we can assume, supported most of the policies, left, right, or otherwise, that Mulroney did. But you're right, as far as the period from about the mid-70s to the late 90s is concerned, Joe Clark was the definitive Red Tory.

All this was played out again in the recent Alberta election, with Clark-protege Alison Redford supposedly hoisting the Red flag against the Manningites in Wildrose. Some have talked about her election as a leftward shift in Alberta politics, when actually, she is probably to the right of Peter Lougheed.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

Morris Berman would probably respond that the author was correct in perceiving a long-standing clash between Southern and Northern cultures, but that he got things backwards from there. In Why America Failed, The villain is the Yankee obsession with commercializing everything (his word: hustling); and this mind-set is now virtually unchallenged.

Tto quote from an Amazon comment)"Berman writes 'In contrast to the zeal for money that characterized the North, the South was guided by ideals of honor, courage, amiability, and courtesy.' This of course is recognizable everywhere in America today, right?"

Although Berman was careful to distance himself from sympathy with slavery, he has been derided by critics who have no patience with ambiguities: for them, a society with slaveowners has no redeeming features. End of discussion. Ms. Robinson strikes me as characteristic.

She forgot to mention Jay Gould et al., or the Gatling guns mounted on rooftops and fired by union busters. Is anything Southern about them?
Or that Jimmy Carter is a southerner, as well as the last President to make the correct social diagnosis and attempt forlornly to steer the nation towards a better course.

Morris Berman may be a sourpuss sometimes, but he is a far more consummate historian.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

From Grammatica:

"Their are two "Northern" groups, also, according to Hackett-Fischer, though his Pennsylvania group strikes me as something of a hodgepodge, a convenient place to locate the origins of the Marlo Thomas strain of nice, Fair-Trading, Montessori-attending, ethnic-stole-wearing liberalism, "free to be you and me."

New Englanders, on the other hand, may be communitarians, but they aren't nice about it, in Hackett-Fischer's view. They know what is best for your and generally have no problems telling you exactly what it is. The New England influence runs through a certain strain of American Progressivism, the one we prefer not to think about, that gave us Prohibition, and eugenics, and "Banned in Boston" style censorship, and had no problems with displacing the poor people of midtown Manhattan to build Central Park."

All too often, those in the first group, while espousing the values set out, then take the approach that they know what is best for you, and tell you what that is.

Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :

Well, considering I learned within the past week of the Neo-Confederacy movement in the United States-- that is, people who want to bring back slavery in an organized fashion-- I'm going to go with no.

(Of course the gentlemen, and I'm using the term in the loosest possible sense, wouldn't be the *slaves* in their proposed system, nope. Oh, and they're based in Idaho.)

Warning: the following link opens up with a photo of a man's scarred back. The link.

[ 24. July 2012, 04:45: Message edited by: Spiffy ]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Morris Berman would probably respond that the author was correct in perceiving a long-standing clash between Southern and Northern cultures, but that he got things backwards from there. In Why America Failed, The villain is the Yankee obsession with commercializing everything (his word: hustling); and this mind-set is now virtually unchallenged.
...
Morris Berman may be a sourpuss sometimes, but he is a far more consummate historian.

No, he's an idiot. Given that virtually every slave who could do so escaped to the North and virtually none of the Northerners "escaped" to the South, Berman's thesis is bogus on its face. The huge difference is that the Northern workers had within their means the ability to change the injustices that they were subjected to (however difficult it might have been), while the slaves had no such possibility. This really isn't a difficult point to grasp if you try.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Bean Sidhe (# 11823) on :

There was recently a BBC documentary making a similar argument about the legacy of the English civil war in the 17th century, between Cavaliers (royalist, keen on aristocracy and the divine right of kings, often flamboyant and hedonistic) and Roundheads (parliamentarians, anti-monarchist, puritan, keen on state control). The premiss of that programme was that this division is alive and active today, in politics but also in most areas of life.

I think that's probably true, and the division probably long preceded the civil war. That's just when it became sufficiently intense to erupt into conflict.

Posted by Grokesx (# 17221) on :

@Bean

1066 And All That put it best:

Roundheads - Right but repulsive.
Cavaliers - Wrong but romantic.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
none of the Northerners "escaped" to the South,

Were the carpetbaggers just a myth, then?

quote:
Berman's thesis is bogus on its face.

Have you read it?

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
none of the Northerners "escaped" to the South,
Were the carpetbaggers just a myth, then?

You can't seriously be equating predator and victim.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

Of course not. The predators were worse. From the North they came to do what Northerners were so good at.

[ 25. July 2012, 22:51: Message edited by: Alogon ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

This article seems to fit into the broad contours of the thread topic, so I'll post it here.

Pomney aide says Obama not pro-British enough

The quoted remarks sound so outrageous, on any number of levels, I'm half-wondering if the anonymous aide in question is actually an Obama plant.

I'm not an expert on US public opinion, but these comments don't sound calculated to appeal to American patriotism. I mean, the guy complains that Obama wouldn't like singing Land Of Hope And Glory?? What next?

"And lemme tell ya, this guy Obama would probably have been cheering for George Washington in the Revolutionary War!"

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

Do you think that Romney & Co., being on such good terms with British officials as he claims or hopes, will relax enough with them to share some of his favorite music? That could be a telling revelation of character, especially with someone who could easily afford anything he might choose his entire life. Competent diplomats are extremely observant and will miss no clues.

When the G.W. Bush crowd first showed up in London, their hosts were absolutely appalled by the crassness they observed. They quickly yearned for an encore from the saxophonist.

Posted by Olde Sea Dog (# 13061) on :

The article is interesting, but it fails to show how planter elitism and control transitioned to the current grassroots conservativism that lower and middle class Southerners are embracing with whole-hearted abandon. It's not being imposed on them by an elite, rather Bubba and Cletus are voting against their own interests enthusiastically, as documented by the book Deer Hunting With Jesus a few years ago. If you wander into a Southern bar and praise the unions that brought healthcare, safe working conditions, and a decent wage - you risk getting run out of town.

Propaganda yes (such as Rush Limbaugh), but they can't get enough of it.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Bob Dylan explained it in 1963:

quote:
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

Some things haven't changed that much.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
Ah yes, the Democratic cliche of the Good Republican President. Somewhere in history, there was a Good Republican President, and if only the GOP would get back to that model, we would all be so much better off. Never mind that when that Good Republican President was running for office, we said that he was a dangerous shift to the extreme as compared to the last Good Republican President.

I don't know. I've heard good things about Teddy Roseveldt. And Lincoln was the right man for an impossible job. I can't, of course, name any good Republican presidents before Lincoln and he was in a way a bit of an extremist.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
I can't, of course, name any good Republican presidents before Lincoln...

There's a very good reason for that...

--Tom Clune

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Morris Berman would probably respond that the author was correct in perceiving a long-standing clash between Southern and Northern cultures, but that he got things backwards from there. In Why America Failed, The villain is the Yankee obsession with commercializing everything (his word: hustling); and this mind-set is now virtually unchallenged.

Tto quote from an Amazon comment)"Berman writes 'In contrast to the zeal for money that characterized the North, the South was guided by ideals of honor, courage, amiability, and courtesy.' This of course is recognizable everywhere in America today, right?"

...he applied the virtues of courtesy, amiability, and honour to a bunch of slave owners. This is risible. The virtues he is praising are that the Southern Aristocracy was polite to people they considered as equals. And even turned condescension into a virtue.

If you were a slave owner you were de facto absolutely discourteous to the people you owned. You were so discourteous that it is impossible to cite courteousness as one of your virtues. If you would own people and literally force them to work (as slaveowners did) you were so lacking in amiability as to render the amiability towards the small group you considered your own kind moot.

This doesn't mean you can't have virtues while owning slaves. Bravery is entirely possible. So, arguably, is honour. But to talk about courtesy and amiability as being virtues of people who literally treated other people as animals is simply sick and twisted.

quote:
She forgot to mention Jay Gould et al., or the Gatling guns mounted on rooftops and fired by union busters. Is anything Southern about them?

No idea. I don't think anyone ever said that any group of aristocrats was angels - if you behave like angels you don't remain in the aristocracy. Merely that the sort of scum who would lead an armed rebellion and four year long civil war in an attempt to preserve their "right" to treat human beings as livestock really aren't good people.

You are pointing to incidents. Not the way of life of the entire aristocracy, that they were literally willing to go to war for.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
This article seems to fit into the broad contours of the thread topic, so I'll post it here.

Pomney aide says Obama not pro-British enough

The quoted remarks sound so outrageous, on any number of levels, I'm half-wondering if the anonymous aide in question is actually an Obama plant.

I'm not an expert on US public opinion, but these comments don't sound calculated to appeal to American patriotism. I mean, the guy complains that Obama wouldn't like singing Land Of Hope And Glory?? What next?

"And lemme tell ya, this guy Obama would probably have been cheering for George Washington in the Revolutionary War!"

This isn't at all what that quote means. Saying Obama doesn't understand "Anglo-Saxon heritage" means "Obama is black and therefore not one of us." It's meant to appeal to American racism just as much as George H. W. Bush's Willy Horton ads did.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
This isn't at all what that quote means. Saying Obama doesn't understand "Anglo-Saxon heritage" means "Obama is black and therefore not one of us."

Well, as a dog-whistle, that's what the quote would mean. But, taken literally, he does seem to have been referring to Obama's affestion, or lack thereof, for the UK.

And I guess I wasn't sure if it was meant as a dog-whistle or not. There is a faction within American conservatism who do sincerely worship the Anglo-Saxon heritage, and in such a way that doesn't really seem to be marketted at hoi poloi as a code(I doubt too many people outside of elite media and their audience are gonna read that book, for example).

And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone? With Obama, I'd think the more useful code words would be "not Christian" or "affirmative action baby" or the tried-and-true "Where's the birth certificate?"

My own take on the quote was that the aide probably was the kind of from-afar anglophile who thinks that British people all walk around in bowler hats and brollies humming Land Of Hope And Glory, and that reporters for a conservative British paper would be appalled to hear that Obama isn't like that.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
he applied the virtues of courtesy, amiability, and honour to a bunch of slave owners.

As if everyone in the South were either a slave or a slave owner.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
“[Obama] doesn’t value the NATO alliance as much. He’s very comfortable with American decline and the traditional alliances don’t mean as much to him. He wouldn’t like singing ’Land of Hope and Glory.’”

I hereby challenge Mitt Romney to audition for my vote by singing Land of Hope and Glory himself. How much musicianship has he cultivated in his aristocratic upbringing?

Posted by testbear (# 4602) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?

In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.

[ 26. July 2012, 15:00: Message edited by: testbear ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by testbear:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?
In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.

In the US, it's just odd. I can't recall anyone ever saying that about someone else in any context. It sort of aligns with the odd characteristic we've seen in Romney himself-- a tendency to use peculiar idioms that are technically correct but just sound... off. Like saying he traveled on an "aircraft" rather than "airplane". Doesn't really say anything much about him as presidential material but does, ironically, make him seem even more "not like us".

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
he applied the virtues of courtesy, amiability, and honour to a bunch of slave owners.

As if everyone in the South were either a slave or a slave owner.

Come back with those goalposts.

The initial article wasn't about the average person. It was about the rich and influential. It was about the values guiding the culture. And the Rich in the South were almost all slaveowners and made their money on the back of slaves. In the Deep South, between 30% and 57% of the population by state were slaves according to the 1860 Census. Ignore Texas (which had its own issues) and not one state in the Deep South had fewer than 43.7% of the population enslaved.

Yes, there were poor people in the South who neither were slaves nor owned slaves. But they weren't the elites. The elites openly and proudly launched an armed rebellion with a cause they themselves explicitely identified with slavery.

Now take your Confederate apologist bullshit elsewhere before I break out the primary sources.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.

quote:
Originally posted by Grammatica:
The article to which the OP makes reference reads like an oversimplified version of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, which postulates four,, not two, basic divisions. So I think there's something to it, but it's a little too schematic and binary.

Not to mention its reference to Colin Woodard's American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, which I hadn't heard of but am now interested in reading. It seems to me that if one group's values are ascendant, we're only going to know why if we look into why all the other groups are either going along with this or not able to promote their own values.

Posted by Pre-cambrian (# 2055) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
“[Obama] doesn’t value the NATO alliance as much. He’s very comfortable with American decline and the traditional alliances don’t mean as much to him. He wouldn’t like singing ’Land of Hope and Glory.’”
I hereby challenge Mitt Romney to audition for my vote by singing Land of Hope and Glory himself. How much musicianship has he cultivated in his aristocratic upbringing?

If he sings 'Land of Hope and Glory' with any musicianship at all he is clearly not sufficiently identifying himself with his Anglo-Saxon roots. What we would be looking out for is straightforward volume and how vigorously he swings his Union Jack backwards and forwards in time to the music.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by testbear:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?
In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.
In the US, it's just odd. I can't recall anyone ever saying that about someone else in any context. It sort of aligns with the odd characteristic we've seen in Romney himself-- a tendency to use peculiar idioms that are technically correct but just sound... off. Like saying he traveled on an "aircraft" rather than "airplane". Doesn't really say anything much about him as presidential material but does, ironically, make him seem even more "not like us".

I would think that any American who knows what the term "Anglo-Saxon" means would know that it's not synonymous with white, and that by disparaging Obama for not being Anglo-Saxon, you're also be disparaging a huge chunk of the white population, including a lot of GOP voters.

Especially with the reference to Land Of Hope And Glory thrown in, it just strikes me as the least economical type of a dog-whistle you could possibly use.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.

Absolutely, and you can read all about it thanks to the late Joe Bageant This is especially recommended for Justinian, who sees slavery under every Southern stone. Come back and tell us about any apology for slavery you've found in this book.

The author happens to be from Appalachia, but I can just as easily hear the voices of my own ancestors on their Wisconsin dairy farms (most of which, of course, no longer exist). The issue is not Southern values so much as rural.

The article in the O.P. goes on as though a return to the out-and-out slavery of the South were a credible threat today. This is a fantasy, a distraction, a house with no plumbing. The real threats are more subtle: wage slavery and swindling, maintained under the illusion of freedom. It's been done very effectively before. Just look on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.

Honestly, I think that most of those who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy did so because there was an enemy army threatening their people, for peer pressure, for warm meals and pay, or because they were told to do it. Same as any other war, really.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Absolutely, and you can read all about it thanks to the late Joe Bageant This is especially recommended for Justinian, who sees slavery under every Southern stone. Come back and tell us about any apology for slavery you've found in this book.

I'm not accusing him of being an apologist for a bunch of evil fucks willing to go to war to defend the institution of slavery.

But I'd be delighted to hear your answer to three questions.

1: Can a group of people willing to launch a major war to defend the institution of slavery or even accepting the enslavement of a major proportion of their neighbours be described accurately as being guided by ideals of "amiability and courtesy"?

2: Did the Confederacy try to secede with a position openly identified with slavery, and then launch an armed attack on the United States of America? (Hint: The answer to the second part is that the Confederacy attacked at Fort Sumter).

3: Is commercialising things worse than going to war to keep the right to quite literally commercialise people, as you seem to be claiming?

The values of the antebellum South are obviously seen in what they were prepared to both kill and die for. Slavery being the notable one.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

Appalachia isn't exactly the south.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Appalachia isn't exactly the south.

Indeed. And West Virginia demonstrated that about as thoroughly as they could have. But when did Appalachia get brought up?

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

Justinian,

I'm at a loss as to why you wish to take this conversation further and further into irrelevancies in order to pursue the satisfaction of having me by the balls over one phrase. Joe Bageant wrote a book. Please read it. Morris Berman wrote another book, studded with footnotes: it hardly ignores primary sources. Please at least skim it before echoing someone else who probably never heard of it before that it is absurd on its face.

People who insist on boiling a complex web of historical issues down to one issue are frankly frightening, and I don't trust them. Or maybe you are the frightened one. I forget where you are on the political map, but for all the world you sound like New Yorker, asking us to fight a 150-year-old war all over again in order that we might not notice what's happening today.

complex issues

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Justinian,

I'm at a loss as to why you wish to take this conversation further and further into irrelevancies in order to pursue the satisfaction of having me by the balls over one phrase. Joe Bageant wrote a book. Please read it. Morris Berman wrote another book, studded with footnotes: it hardly ignores primary sources. Please at least skim it before echoing someone else who probably never heard of it before that it is absurd on its face.

People who insist on boiling a complex web of historical issues down to one issue are frankly frightening, and I don't trust them. Or maybe you are the frightened one. I forget where you are on the political map, but for all the world you sound like New Yorker, asking us to fight a 150-year-old war all over again in order that we might not notice what's happening today.

complex issues

Alogon,

It's not just the one phrase. It's your entire confederate apologism that is evident throughout this thread. It's the courtesy. It's the accusations of carpetbagging. It's the accusations that the real predators were the carpetbaggers rather than the people who thought they should literally own other people.

As for your attempt to deflect attention from slavery, it's not me who claimed the position of the rebels was "thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery". It was the people who decided that the Confederacy should secede in the first place who did that. Read the stated causes of secession then come back to me.

And then tell me on what ground you think that the carpetbaggers were the real predators. On what ground you think that those that valued slavery were somehow more courteous than those that valued getting ahead.

You're simultaneously trying to whitewash the Confederacy on two counts, complete with double standards. Either stop it and apologise or stand by your words.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

I'm not defending slavery. I am defending Berman's book vis-a-vis the facile alternative of the article cited in the O.P. Berman does not defend slavery, either. If you would like me to provide details of how he has made such distinctions, that is fair enough. My copy is a mile or two away at the moment, but I trust that in a few hours I can get to it.

I did not claim that the carpetbaggers were "the real" predators, but they certainly were predators, as you admitted. I brought them up (although Berman didn't make much a point of them if he mentioned them at all) because their conduct epitomized values already well under development in northern cities. Within the next fifty years the type would reign all but supreme-- they even bought a Presidential election-- and their spiritual descendents have the upper hand now. You don't really want to dismiss them as only "getting ahead", do you? That would be to swallow their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Getting ahead of whom? How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I'm not defending slavery. I am defending Berman's book vis-a-vis the facile alternative of the article cited in the O.P.

You are not defending slavery. You are defending the South that "was guided by ideals of honor, courage, amiability, and courtesy.'" And not coincidently the South whose expression of those supposed ideals involved first enslaving their fellow man and then disenfranchising him as soon as the Army was withdrawn and Reconstruction ended.

quote:
How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?

Did you really mean what you just wrote? [Eek!]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

Yes. It was a question. Would you like to attempt an answer, while I flee back to my copy of Berman?

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I did not claim that the carpetbaggers were "the real" predators, but they certainly were predators, as you admitted. I brought them up (although Berman didn't make much a point of them if he mentioned them at all) because their conduct epitomized values already well under development in northern cities. Within the next fifty years the type would reign all but supreme-- they even bought a Presidential election-- and their spiritual descendents have the upper hand now. You don't really want to dismiss them as only "getting ahead", do you? That would be to swallow their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Getting ahead of whom? How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?

Connect the dots for me. How are the folks that have the upper hand today the spiritual descendants of the carpetbaggers?

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
the sort of scum who would lead an armed rebellion and four year long civil war in an attempt to preserve their "right" to treat human beings as livestock really aren't good people.

Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"

[p.123] Quoting Lincoln's response in 1862 to newspaperman Horace Greeley's criticism that he didn't take a strong enough stand:

quote:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

quote:
Justinian:
You are pointing to incidents. Not the way of life of the entire aristocracy, that they were literally willing to go to war for.

In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "All the evidence suggests that that the North's 'nobility' in fighting slavery was a long-after-the-fact justification... It is a thesis that gets people all worked up, but it finally doesn't wash." [Berman pp.123-124]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Justinian:
the sort of scum who would lead an armed rebellion and four year long civil war in an attempt to preserve their "right" to treat human beings as livestock really aren't good people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"

The fact that northerners weren't fighting to per se abolish slavery doesn't mean that the south wasn't fighting to maintain it.

Lincoln was trying to preserve the Union. But the reason the Union was threatened in the first place was because the south tried to secede, based on their fears that northern policy under Lincoln was going to endanger the institution of slavery(And yes, I realize that Lincoln pre-war wasn't proposing absolute abolition of slavery.)

quote:
In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "

Well, sure. And in the eyes of the British during World War II, the Germans were just another backwards race to be broken in the same way as the Zulus and the Boers(look at Dresden). That still doesn't create a moral equivalency between Nazi Germany and Churchill's England.

[ 26. July 2012, 23:18: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

Abolishing slavery was the Great Unspoken in the pre-Civil War US. Nobody admitted it, but everybody acted on it.

That was the essential conclusion on slavery of an online Civil War course from Yale that I watched. Along with you can find Abraham Lincoln quotes on both sides of the slavery issue.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

Alogon:

quote:
How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?

quote:
Yes. It was a question. Would you like to attempt an answer, while I flee back to my copy of Berman?

That's open slavery aplogetics.

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"

[p.123] Quoting Lincoln's response in 1862 to newspaperman Horace Greeley's criticism that he didn't take a strong enough stand:

quote:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

quote:
Justinian:
You are pointing to incidents. Not the way of life of the entire aristocracy, that they were literally willing to go to war for.
In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "All the evidence suggests that that the North's 'nobility' in fighting slavery was a long-after-the-fact justification... It is a thesis that gets people all worked up, but it finally doesn't wash." [Berman pp.123-124]

And that's open Confederacy apologetics based on an attempt to deflect the conversation from the motivations of the Confederacy to those of the United States.

Come donw and defend yourself, your "peculiar institution", and your slaveowner's revolt in hell. If you can.

And @SPK, no you can't. What you can find when you look at Lincoln is a moderate abolitionist. He's consistent about wanting to end slavery and finding it a vile institution, but he wasn't a radical who thought it must be abolished at that second.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.

And this goes double for a society that then launches an armed insurrection based on chattel slavery.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.

Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?

I do. Of course Ancient Athens is backward by modern standards. The word "Ancient" should be a clue.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?

Morally speaking, sure. At the very least, if someone at the time had been agitating for policies that would restrict slavery, and the Athenians had gone to war to preserve it, I certainly wouldn't cut them any slack. Even if I could still recognize that they produced a lot of nice poetry and whatnot.

I mean, does anyone think that Spartan militarism and infanticide are redeemed because Plato wrote a beuatifully-crafted book celebrating their virtues?

[ 27. July 2012, 00:45: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
The fact that northerners weren't fighting to per se abolish slavery doesn't mean that the south wasn't fighting to maintain it.

Precisely.

And there is another thing. The South - well, at any rate the more sensible of their strategists and politicians, I think certainly including Lee and Davis - knew perfectly well they could never beat the North, because of the overwhelming difference in numbers and industrial production. What they had to do was to hurt the North hard enough to turn public opinion against the war, to convince people that the inevitable death and destruction was a price not worth paying to keep the South in the Union. They got near that a couple of times but they never quite got there. Really they last their last genuine hope after the fall of New Orleans, very near the begining of the war. After that it was slow strangulation.

And the perception that the war was against slavery is one of the things that made that defeat more certain. Even if it is true that the war was not "about" slavery, there was a large enough minority of abolitionists in the North to stiffen their resistance to the South. Of course not all northerners thought that they were fighting a moral crusade against a great evil, probably not even most of them, but enough of them did to make a difference.

The perception that the war was a war against slavery hurt the South in all sorts of other ways. The North also got significant numbers of volunteers from outside the USA who turned up to fight against slavery.

No foreign country supported or even recognised the South. Political and business elites in Britain and France and Prussia had some sympathy for the South, and certainly had a huge interest in trading with the South - those countries had no need for Pennsylvanian steel or New England ships but a huge demand for Southern cotton and tobacco (and they quite liked selling arms to the the South as well) but it would have been politically impossible for any of them to come out in favour of the South because of popular opinion about slavery. Their governments would have preferred a quick end to the war and the resumption of business as usual, with or without a divided America, but they could do little to bring it about. Intervention by either Britain or France would almost certainly have broken the Union blockade at sea very quickly, possibly even blockaded Union ports. Also of course if Britain and France had sided with the South then Canada and Mexico would have followed, a huge change in the strategic situation on land. But it couldn't happen because of the perception that the war was about slavery.

And the South could have done something about that perception. They could have done what Lincoln did - they could have freed slaves who volunteered for the Army. It was discussed, at least some Confederate generals were in favour (possibly including Lee), but nothing was done about it till 1865 - four years too late, when their whole game was up. So yes, there are good reasons for thinking it really was about slavery.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

38,000 British North Americans - Canada as we know it didn't exist yet - served in the Union Army. The number that served in the Confederate Army was minuscule.

BTW what Britain did went for us, we weren't independent at the time and had no say in the matter.

But Upper Canada had passed the Act Against Slavery in 1797 and had been a destination for slaves since the 1838 decision by Lt. Gov. Sir John Colborne in the case of Thornton Blackburn that "A man cannot steal himself". We didn't love the Yanks, but we detested slavery even more.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
38,000 British North Americans - Canada as we know it didn't exist yet - served in the Union Army. The number that served in the Confederate Army was minuscule.

BTW what Britain did went for us, we weren't independent at the time and had no say in the matter.

But Upper Canada had passed the Act Against Slavery in 1797 and had been a destination for slaves since the 1838 decision by Lt. Gov. Sir John Colborne in the case of Thornton Blackburn that "A man cannot steal himself". We didn't love the Yanks, but we detested slavery even more.

According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Canadian opinion was generally anti-Northern". The article also details several incidents in which Britain and/or its Canadian proxy took actions that were essentially pro-Confederate.

I've also read somewhere that when the St. Albans raiders were jailed in Montreal, they were regarded as heroes by much of the population. But yes, I've also heard the stats about Canadians fighting for the Union.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Interestingly enough, wikipedia, despite using The Canadian Encyclopedia as a source, says that economic and cultural ties along the border "encouraged Canadian sympathy towards the Union". They also say that the Catholic press in East Canada was pro-Confederate.

I wonder how many of the Canadian Unionist volunteers were either transplanted Americans, or people with recent American ancestry. I believe such types had played a major role in the Upper Canada Rebellion of the 1830s.

Canada In The American Civil War

[ 27. July 2012, 01:19: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And that's open Confederacy apologetics based on an attempt to deflect the conversation from the motivations of the Confederacy to those of the United States.

Of which the South was totally unaware? No, you don't get away with talking about the motive of only one party in a dispute, especially those on the defensive. 1858, Cincinnati Gazette: the South had to be regenerated by introducing the Northern way of life into it. 1856, New York Tribune: Let "Northern capitalists, manufacturers, and merchants" flood into Virginia. Lincoln to an official of the Interior Department in 1862: "The character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation.. The South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and new ideas." Thaddeus Stevens speaking in 1865: "Northernizing the South" required "the desolation of the South." Southern institutions "must be broken up and relaid... This can only be done by treating and holding them as a conquered people." In his march through Georgia, how much thought do you suppose Sherman was giving to the freed slaves who had to live there, too?

Can any society be expected to commit suicide?

Self-defense to preserve slavery is admittedly deplorable. But insisting that self-defense under these conditions was only to preserve slavery, and refusing to look at any other factor, looks suspiciously like a desperate faith in the kind of imperialism that triumphed. Now that the American South is out of the way, on to the world.

Are you still thinking, by the way, of defending the article in the O.P., to the effect that the plantation model is our threat today?

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Back to Canadians in the Union army for a sec..

Here is a rather ironic bit of history.

In my experience, not a lot of Canadians know this. I actually only found out about it myself a week or so ago. Apparently, he married a Yank and died in Boston.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
In his march through Georgia, how much thought do you suppose Sherman was giving to the freed slaves who had to live there, too?

Possibly not much. In fact, I've heard(albeit from pro-southern sources) that there were quite a few atrocities commited against the ex-slaves by the Union army.

Now, that being said:

After Sherman had finished his march through Georgia, let's say, five years on, if you had polled the ex-slaves and asked them "Are you happy or unhappy that Sherman's side won?", what do you think most of them would have said?

And, for that matter, if you were to poll the slaves' descendants today, and ask them "Do you feel the same way when you see a Condeferate Flag as when you see the Stars And Stripes?", how do you think most of them would answer?

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
]Of which the South was totally unaware? No, you don't get away with talking about the motive of only one party in a dispute, especially those on the defensive.

You mean that the side that rammed through the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dredd Scott decision was on the defensive? The one that preemptively first seceeded and then declared war?

quote:
1858, Cincinnati Gazette: the South had to be regenerated by introducing the Northern way of life into it. 1856, New York Tribune: Let "Northern capitalists, manufacturers, and merchants" flood into Virginia.

W00t! You have a couple of magazine op-eds showing there was a culture clash. I bet I could find worse from Rush Limbaugh and you don't see California launching an armed rebellion because of it.

quote:
Lincoln to an official of the Interior Department in 1862:
...
Thaddeus Stevens speaking in 1865:

And now your argument requires a time machine. In 1860, the Southern states were part of the United States of America and should have been treated accordingly. In 1862 they were in armed rebellion and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. You don't think that statements made after 1861 about what to do with Southern states might have something to do with the Confederacy declaring war on the United States of America and being treated accordingly?

quote:
Can any society be expected to commit suicide?

I don't know. But in 1861, despite the United States of America bending over backwards and even ratifying the Corwin Amendment to preserve slavery on the table, the Confederacy insisted on committing suicide by first seceding then attacking against a more industrial nation.

Whether a society can be expected to commit suicide is an irrelevant question. The South did by attacking the United States of America.

quote:
Self-defense to preserve slavery is admittedly deplorable. But insisting that self-defense under these conditions was only to preserve slavery, and refusing to look at any other factor, looks suspiciously like a desperate faith in the kind of imperialism that triumphed. Now that the American South is out of the way, on to the world.

I have quoted the source documents in the Hell thread you very much deserve. When people talk about their own causes they normally paint them in the best light possible.

The Confederates were explicitely saying that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery" and "Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."

If that is what they were saying in public when presenting their own case, what real reason did they have that was so amoral they had to hide it behind the smokescreen of slavery?

quote:
Are you still thinking, by the way, of defending the article in the O.P., to the effect that the plantation model is our threat today?

Honestly, after the Greenland news, I don't think our threat today is either model. It's fucking up the atmosphere and the environment.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And, for that matter, if you were to poll the slaves' descendants today, and ask them "Do you feel the same way when you see a Condeferate Flag as when you see the Stars And Stripes?", how do you think most of them would answer?

They'd rather take the Stars and Strips and not being slaves, of course.

But let's try this thought experiment: ask them whether they feel that, even after 150 years of American capitalist social structure, they've gotten altogether a fair break, and few would say yes. And ask yourself, ask me, and ask those communitarian, socially conscientious Yankees whether the decendents of the slaves have gotten altogether a fair break, and I suspect that an even lower percentage would say yes.

I am in total sympathy with this author's moral outrage, and even agree that today's elite think privately as she describes. (Oh, a few details are off, such as the suggestion that they would rather hire 150 unskilled minions than invest in technology that would do the same work. Not in this country, they don't. On the contrary, they practically worship technology-- just as we are all invited to do.) My problem is that she ignores the grand narrative that they still dangle in front of us. Is there anything of the plantation in it? It is essentially the same outlook as dominated the Gilded Age 120 years ago.

In this respect, I think that she is actually understating her case.

[ 27. July 2012, 02:12: Message edited by: Alogon ]

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Interestingly enough, wikipedia, despite using The Canadian Encyclopedia as a source, says that economic and cultural ties along the border "encouraged Canadian sympathy towards the Union". They also say that the Catholic press in East Canada was pro-Confederate.

I wonder how many of the Canadian Unionist volunteers were either transplanted Americans, or people with recent American ancestry. I believe such types had played a major role in the Upper Canada Rebellion of the 1830s.

Canada In The American Civil War

No, it was a combination of the Civil War being the big exciting thing for a young farm lad from Canada and the fact that you could avoid conscription into the Union Army if you provided a substitute or paid a $300 fee to the government. There was a lively market in "bounties" for men willing to volunteer in place of unwilling conscripts. The South didn't have that system, you had to serve personally, and besides was too far away.

33-55 thousands Canadians served in the Union Army, only a few hundred served the Confederacy.

Entire battalions of New York regiments were from Ontario. Buffalo was a thriving recruitment depot, as was Detroit.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
They'd rather take the Stars and Strips and not being slaves, of course.

But let's try this thought experiment: ask them whether they feel that, even after 150 years of American capitalist social structure, they've gotten altogether a fair break, and few would say yes. And ask yourself, ask me, and ask those communitarian, socially conscientious Yankees whether the decendents of the slaves have gotten altogether a fair break, and I suspect that an even lower percentage would say yes.

Indeed. They haven't got a fair break. A big part of that is that despite Thaddeus Stephens' and Abraham Lincoln's goals of reforming the South, Reconstruction was abandoned. And this paved the way for Jim Crow. Not, of course, that the North were angels (see Sundown Towns for details). The oh-so-amiable Southern Elites were able to take back control through the same courtesy they had always used on people they didn't like - open terrorism first through political violence and then through the Klan.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it. America does not hold patent on people bamboozled into voting against themselves, though.

To extend this, they saw/see it as preserving the possibility of achieving slave-holding/becoming rich.

quote:
Originally posted by Unreformed:
And Florida always has been, if you still want to count that as "South".

The Northern part of Florida seems very much the South, still.

ETA: I've seen no evidence Lincoln was ever pro-slavery, merely that he was willing to delay abolishment in preference of avoiding civil war.

[ 27. July 2012, 16:52: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
A big part of that is that despite Thaddeus Stephens' and Abraham Lincoln's goals of reforming the South, Reconstruction was abandoned.

Interestingly, in the infamously racist(to put it mildly) movie Birth Of A Nation, Lincoln is portrayed as the ally of southerners, against the supposed extremism of the Radical Republicans.

That movie had an agenda of uniting north and south in a common sense of nationhood(hence the title), so I guess the point of the Lincoln revisionism was that southerners should love old Abe as much as Yankees do.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
I've seen no evidence Lincoln was ever pro-slavery

This essay by Gary Wills makes a fairly convincing argument that Lincoln was, by any possible measure, a white supremacist. And one not entirely redeemed by pointing out that he lived in a racist time, since there were genuine abolitionists who were to the left of him on the question of racial equality.

However, he does seem to have had a sincere moral objection to the ownership of human beings, contrary to the wilder excesses of anti-hagiography, which portrays him as opposing slavery simply because he thought it was bad for capitalism.

Karl Marx, by the way, absolutely worshipped the man.

[ 27. July 2012, 19:59: Message edited by: Stetson ]

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0