The Civil War, Slavery, and History
I have a uniquely American family tree.
One of my ancestors, a poor farmer named James Farren, joined the Illinois Calvary in 1862. He fought in every major battle in the western front for the Union Army, and remained enlisted until his company was disbanded in 1864.
Another one of my ancestors was a poor farmer from Greene County, Tennessee. His name was Thomas White. He was recruited into the Confederate Army in 1863. After very little training he was sent to the front at Vicksburg. He was captured in his first battle, sent to a horrible Civil War prison, got sick and died.
It is likely that my ancestors were on opposite sides of the same battle. I like to think that they met, but that's just idle thought.
Neither of my ancestors ever owned a slave. Based on the census records I've seen, I doubt either of them ever met more than a handful of black people in their entire lives.
I don't know why Thomas White or James Farren decided to go to war, but it's unlikely that slavery was a major motivation for either of them.
I bring this up because people today tend to simplify things to the point that they aren't very accurate.
Which brings me to Robert E. Lee and George Washington.
There are some people who want to tear down all the George Washington statues along with those of General Lee.
Those people are still a minority, but they are ideologically consistent (i.e. no more slaveowners).
Most people are against denouncing Washington (aka the Father Of The Nation), and the common distinction I most often hear is that the Civil War was primarily about slavery while the Revolution was about independence.
It sounds good.
However, there is a problem with this argument that Cassiodorus sort of touched on the other day - much of history is intentionally suppressed.
This goes double for the American Revolution. Because a case can be made that the American Revolution was also fought to preserve slavery.
The item in question for this essay is Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation.
This historic proclamation, dated November 7, 1775 and issued from on board a British warship lying off Norfolk, Virginia, by royal governor and Scottish aristocrat John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, offered the first large-scale emancipation of slave and servant labor in the history of colonial British America. It grew out of Dunmore’s efforts to counter an impending attack on his capital of Williamsburg by patriot militia in the spring of 1775, when he several times threatened to free and arm slaves to defend the cause of royal government. By the time he retreated offshore he was already gathering slaves seeking refuge; his November proclamation commanding Virginians to support the crown or be judged traitors now formally offered freedom to all slaves and indentured servants belonging to rebels and able to bear arms for the crown. Within weeks, several hundred slaves, many with their families, had joined him. They enlisted in what Dunmore christened his “Ethiopian Regiment” and formed the bulk of the royal troops that first defeated patriot forces but then fell victim to disease and attack, evacuating the Chesapeake Region for New York by August 1776.
Dunmore’s proclamation offered freedom only to those who would flee from rebel masters and serve the crown. Its purpose was strategic, to disable rebellion, rather than humanitarian, yet its effect was rather the reverse. White southerner colonists swung to oppose royal authority as it appeared that Dunmore and his “Damned, infernal, Diabolical” proclamation were inciting slave insurrection: nothing, it can be argued, so quickly lost the South for the crown.
Let's chew on that for a moment. "Nothing, it can be argued, so quickly lost the South for the crown."
Southern whites rallied to defend slavery against those who would free the black slaves.
Is that the story of the Civil War or the Revolutionary War?
Trick question! It's both.
It's true that most blacks that fought in the Revolutionary War fought for the rebels, with the promise that they would be set free after their service. This is how it has always been done throughout western history.
Not this time.
With very few exceptions, black slaves who fought for this nation's independence were promptly re-enslaved.
Rhode Island was an exception.
As for the black loyalists, many were left behind and re-enslaved. However, an honest effort was made to evacuate them at the end of the war, and thousands of former black slaves were transported to freedom in Canada and London.
Thomas Jefferson referred to them as "the fugitives from these States".
So if the measuring stick is limited to the fates of the black slaves, the bad guys won the Revolutionary War.
It's not how you were taught in school.
Now let's look specifically at Washington and Lee.
Both had reservations about slavery, but only Lee freed his slaves (in 1862).
He also famously illegally taught his slaves to read. Not to mention his efforts to liberate slaves and fund their move to Liberia.
Washington, OTOH, was known to ship slaves to the West Indies that he considered lazy (i.e. to their death). This included the pregnant, old, and crippled.
As for his slaves that ran away to fight for the British, Washington tried to "reclaim what he saw as his property". The British refused to honor Washington's demands because it would mean "delivering them up, some possibly to execution, and others to severe punishment."
There is no such thing as a good slaveowner, but Washington was a thousand times worse than Lee by any measure.
So who's up for tearing down the Washington Monument?
Comments
Here's a quote from Lincoln
that could probably motivate people to start tearing his statues down today:
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”
Lincoln was a product of his times, judging him or anyone else by today's metrics is foolish and extreme.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
An excuse of what?
That's a loaded statement.
The goal here is
free thought and free speech as long everyone stays civil. All are welcome here.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Britain ran the slave trade in the 1760s it was the major
trans Atlantic Slave trader. Slavery was found to be not covered by English law in 1772 on the UK mainland only. Britain banned the trade of slaves in 1807 [by imposing fines of up to £100 per slave about $10k today] the US acted the same year to forbid closing this trade. William Wilberforce started a campaign to abolish this trade in 1787 following on from Evangelical English Protestants and the Quakers objections.
There were no good guys in this trade.
Just to put the UK time-line in order.
@LaFeminista I agree. If the
I agree. If the Revolution is racist, would it have been better to stay with the British Empire and their glorious trajectory through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Because that sure was an institution that helped people of color worldwide.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Check your timeline
By the time of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation (Nov 7, 1775), Massachusetts, Virginia, and several colonies in between were already in open, active revolt. There had been actual bloodshed in Massachusetts (Lexington, Concord and Bunker/Breed's Hill), there was a rabble calling itself the "Continental Army" up in arms, and the city of Boston was under siege.
And, by the way, the British frontier fort of Ticonderoga had months ago been captured by a joint force of local backwoodsmen headed by Ethan Allen and Continentals from Boston headed by...Benedict Arnold (who did good for the Revolution until he didn't).
Dunmore was attempting to suppress an existing, active, and dangerous rebellion by any means at his hand. (500 of his "emancipated slaves" died of smallpox aboard crowded, pestilent refugee ships.)
Edit: As to ancestry, I've got the gamut. Jamestown colonists, slave owners, Quakers, abolitionists, soldiers for the North and South, Johnny-come-latelies just trying to make some room for themselves around the turn of the 20th century, etc. So yeah.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
@TheOtherMaven Go Ethan Allen!
Go Ethan Allen!
I love those guys. Got drunk and went and took the Fort, so I heard.
They were running a real revolution: No slavery, men able to vote no matter how poor they were (or whether white or Black)--really the only thing wrong with them was that they didn't get that chicks were people too.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
That's probably why I enjoyed
Reading Abigal Adams letters so much while I was in College. She was a vocal advocate for women in the only sphere allowed to women at the time. Through her husband.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
No argument over the timeline
I would back up my point in a different manner.
In 1778, after 3 years of war in the North, the war was a stalemate. The colonists were no closer to independence. New York and Philadelphia were occupied by the British.
Then the war shifted to the South.
After a couple of setbacks, the southerners kicked the British asses.
The war was decided in the South. So what motivated the South is what tipped the balance of the war.
Monmouth Courthouse, in NEW JERSEY, broke the stalemate
June 28, 1778. It was technically a drawn battle, but the Americans won on points because they held the field while the British managed a tactical withdrawal.
THE BRITISH HAD ALREADY EVACUATED PHILADELPHIA and were withdrawing to New York City.
Occupying Philadelphia in the first place (September 1777) had proven to be a tactical and strategic error, as well as totally wasted effort, because it tied up crack British troops that were needed in the far North to split up the Colonies. Without them, the Northern thrust ended in disaster at Saratoga (the last time Benedict Arnold took the field for the American cause, and it nearly was the end of him).
Edit: It can be argued, and has been, that the Saratoga campaign was the real turning point in the Revolutionary War, because after that victory the French felt it was okay to come in on the American side. But it doesn't get nearly as much attention as Yorktown, because, I suppose, Benedict Arnold....
The Southern colonies were in it up to the hilt, sending as much in men and supplies and leaders as they could afford. (One of the other leaders in the Saratoga campaign was Daniel Morgan, who had a farm near Winchester, VA.)
The Brits had tried as early as June 1776 to get a foothold in the South, but were repelled from Charleston (SC) with heavy losses (including, allegedly, the seat of Admiral Sir Peter Parker's britches). They were more successful at Savannah in December 1778 - but walked right into an early example of classic guerrilla warfare. Names like Marion, Pickens, Sumter figure largely here.
Eventually, and after a series of drawn battles and defeats (King's Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford, etc), British general Charles Cornwallis decided on a fighting retreat to Virginia, where he intended to wreak havoc on the state he regarded as most essential to the Colonial war effort (he wasn't far wrong). That didn't work out so well in the long run either, mainly thanks to a French fleet cutting off any British reinforcement by sea and the Brits letting themselves get penned up by land at Yorktown.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Ancestors of those who fought in the Vietnam war,
the Iraq war, the War OF Terror, etc., in the future will also support the keeping of statues of Westmoreland, Lemay, McCain, Petraeus, etc., because their ancestors didn't fight as "gangsters of capitalism", they really thought they were serving their country and fighting for freedom and democracy.
I agree
This mentality of celebrating war and the war pigs needs to end no matter what era.
What about that V-shaped wall memorial with names of the fallen?
If the reductionist approach is valid, why shouldn’t that have to go too?
After all, the Confederate monuments being removed are not confined to just statues of leaders and commanders. Like the Vietnam War memorial, some are dedicated to the ordinary soldiers (or even “the women of the Confederacy”) — yet the demand is, they all have to go.
I was comparing the narrative that most confederate
soldiers didn't fight for slavery but other reasons, much the same most who served in Vietnam didn't go there to fight for western capitalism but for other reasons. Wars are all the same and most those who actually fight them are just pawns fighting for lies.
Ya, I wouldn't agree with going after everyone like that. The leaders, presidents, generals that are being honored falsely I could deal with. But somehow we need a truth reconciliation in this country but there's too much hypocrisy and not enough open mindedness.
Your argument would be stronger
if it were accurate. The slaves Lee freed in 1862 were inherited by his wife from her father. Times being what they were, that made them Lee's property. But his wife's father's will stipulated that the slaves would be freed within 5 years of his death. Lee freed them at the last possible moment.
Many of the slaves insisted that in his last days the father said he wanted the slaves freed immediately upon his death. No white person could or would substantiate the claim and blacks had no standing before the court. Three slaves, two men and a woman, believing themselves to have been freed, tried to escape. They were apprehended. Lee ordered them stripped to the waist. He decreed that the men would receive 50 lashes and the woman 20. He specifically told the overseer he wanted solid lashes.
Robert E. Lee took an oath to the union the day he received his commission. He broke it. He kept his army in the field long after there was no doubt that the war was lost causing tens of thousands of additional, unnecessary, deaths and injuries. Generally countries don't build monuments to traitors.
Since his offer of emancipation was made in response to a rebellion already under way, your point about Murray's proclamation is irrelevant.
The government that Washington and Jefferson and Adams and others north and south built was founded on principals in which slavery could not endure. There were compromises that are sickening. It's not clear there was another way.
Education
is the key to this struggle, I think. The American people know so little about so much. I saw a video of the moments leading up to a violent attack on supposedly right wing demonstrators in California last year, and one of the right wing demonstrators was asked by a reporter why he was demonstrating, and he said he had questions about Affirmative Action. I may have conflated the violence I saw just after that, but I have a feeling the issue of our subject-matter-free educational system is at the heart of much of our sorrows. One of the perpetrators of violence on the demonstrators was a notorious leftist public school teacher. From my perspective, the attack on this demonstration was an effort to destroy people's right to even question our public school teaching methods, which I believe are a key cause of the Achievement Gap for low income children.
We've been having the Reading War and the Math War, but we should also be having a very serious History War. I think if the American people knew more about what our country has done, the meaning of statues would be more clear, more understood, and more peacefully dealt with.
I do agree with the war cemetery idea. That would be a very appropriate solution for the statues.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Culture
This 2011 book by Colin Woodard explores this and several other important ideas. Similarly as to whether you say soda, pop or Coke for a soft drink, the American Regions model can predict a lot about our attitudes. It is well referenced.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Culture
"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases."
Original Coke
Was juiced up with alcohol and cocaine!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/leonoraepstein/9-facts-about-coca-colas-history...
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I want to make the case
that in saying the North was not fighting to abolish slavery but to preserve the Union, we lately in this country avoid talking about the expansion of slavery that was the crisis looming for both North and South. Lincoln campaigned against the expansion of slavery.
In our discussion it has been asserted that northern laborers feared the end of slavery because it would create more competition as freed slaves moved to the North. But the argument raging before the War was over whether the new territories in the West should be free or slave. Missouri was already in a war over the issue. What free laborers feared was competition with slavery for any kind of work, agricultural, industrial, or other.
In his campaign in 1859 Lincoln expressed the vital difference of opinion and also advocated universal education:
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