I have had similar experiences at places like Mount Vernon, where until quite recently enslaved people were referred to as "servants." I have also experienced this in Ireland, where huge estates acquired by Anglo-Irish "nabobs" are displayed as part of the National Trust in N. Ireland and as part of Irish Heritage in the Republic. These were built from the blood money of the British East and West India Companies. And yes: until it became illegal to keep enslaved people in one's household--technically the 1830s but actually later, since people brought from the British colonies who had been enslaved remained enslaved--there were Black people who were treated as enslaved in those same estates. And yet, those were the same families who railed against their oppression by the British and fought a war of independence in order to free themselves from British rule.
Yep: history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme.
I’ve been struck by other parallel lies as well: enslaved people who were lied to for 2 1/2 years because they didn’t know they had been emancipated, and the people who believe the Big Lie.
An interesting contrast between then and now is that *then* word often traveled slowly and erratically. (There are stories of emissaries carrying news of emancipation not reaching their destinations due to foul play.) Now accurate information is out there, though often camouflaged by or buried under dreck, and people still embrace the lies.
I lived in Oxford, MS as a teen and participated in one (only one) so-called "Pilgrimage" - a fund raising event in which plantation homes and their counterparts in cities were open to the public for admiration and a whitewashed version of history. Shortly after this experience, I became a volunteer in the first Head Start program there, and worked with the great grandchildren (maybe another "great") of the slaves who had built and maintained those edifices. Remembering the hypocrisy is stomach curdling to this day. I liken those gorgeous homes and the tours to an early Southern version of Disneyland...nothing but fantasy, fakery, and falsehoods. And yet, to this very day, I know many who continue living in this "lost cause world" as if nothing has changed. Many of them have hired "help" and of course, those souls are Black for the most part. So, the myth of "happy workers" is kept alive in the South, if not by actual SLAVES doing the work for the rich white folk, but because those "helpers" in actuality live in poverty, barely above a level of slavery, doing the same loathsome work their own ancestors did. And just when they began to get a break, state governors and legislators jerk back the safety nets which keep them from dying. It never seems to end. I haven't been back to that state in three years and have no intention of ever returning. The memories are too much to bear.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Ellen. "Fantasy land" living is so damaging in so many ways. Another piece of the puzzle of why so many choose to live in an "alternate reality" and why they fight so hard to hide the truth of history.
Well written and reasoned. The battle at Franklin resulted in helping to shorten the war. Trump 's War needs to be shortened. Maybe he will surrender? haha
We ought to consider arresting and deporting the Murdoch family for violating their oaths when they became naturalized citizens. That oath of allegiance is patterned on the official Oath of Office that all government officials, appointees, and civil service employees take and swear to uphold. The notion that broadcast media must be owned and controlled by United States citizens is intended to assume some measure of loyalty to the Constitution and the United States Government. The promised loyalty was never forthcoming, and the benefits of American citizenship ought to be revoked accordingly. Trumps lies couldn't have been propagated without the assistance of the Murdochs.
Thank you, Lucian. Maybe I’m just weirdly pacifist or out-of-touch, but I cannot fathom becoming a soldier to fight for slavery and racism. Or even to fight with violence against it.
The Vow of the Confederate Soldier:
“I believe so strongly in our right to enslave humans and force them, under threat of injury and death, to do our bidding, that I will join an army and use weapons to hideously injure and kill people, the opponents to slavery, in order to protect this inhuman, wicked practice.”
That is the vow of a Confederate soldier. “I will kill you in order to protect my society’s right to kidnap people from their rightful life in Africa, ship them like cattle (who were likely treated even better in those days than slaves on slave ships) to another continent, where they will be treated like oxen, with all the rights of oxen, so that our European-ancestry families and society can eat and have a roof over our heads and live in comfort.”
It’s just incredible, as in “not credible,“ “impossible to believe,“ that people would choose to injure and kill others in support of slavery. Or even that they would threaten and coerce other human beings, under pain of injury and death, to work for them.
Sure, if I put my mind to it, I can come up with more wicked, more pernicious evils. But anything I can come up with will not be as integral and widespread and ingrained a part of our actual history, of actual reality in the United States, as slavery and The Southern War To Keep Slavery Alive, Healthy and Strong.
People who are white-racist-to-the-core use words like “honor“ to dignify this sociopathology. Where I used the word “practice“ in my fictional soldier’s vow, a to-the-core white racist would use the word “tradition.“
Is it any wonder that I repeatedly, here and on HCR, draw parallels between NSDAP Germany and TrumpWorld, the MAGAverse? No. My German heritage has come in terribly handy at this time in US history, sadly. It is with grief that I write the words in this message. What a horrible malpractice of society, what a hideous malfeasance, that American society would engage in such a horrific practice.
And still we have these humans who glorify themselves and their social tradition of placing their sorry white asses higher than non-whites, and their sorry males asses higher than women, and their sorry rich asses higher than people with less money, and straights over non-straights, and invaders over native Americans and all the rest of it I am not specifying.
Homework assignment:
Write a brief, simple description of slavery and/or another variant of human oppression in America (cowboys killing Indians, gay-bashing, lynching, whatever). Then notice the segment of our society that supports this oppression.
Awesome commentary on such a despicable history. The whole time I was reading your comment, I kept thinking of the parallels between what the white slaveholders did and what the nazi's did. They both made the object of their oppression into "non-humans". They convinced their co-conspirators that this group of people were not really people and therefore, they could treat them any way they wanted to. Now they a trying to do that to other groups of people (lgbtq, people of color, women, different religions, etc..) in the name of tradition.
Yes, Roland, horrific. But... the confederate soldier in "Co. Aytch" saw himself fighting for "State's Rights." The wealthy plantation owners also enslaved the minds of poor southern white folk. And the wealthy cons continue that dirty trick ("The Big Lie") to this day. We must win the minds and hearts of the south this time.
Don't forget, Hitler ran long and hard until his suicide after a 20 year reign of terror....Former is about 10 years in if you go back to the Birther nonsense.
On Twitter yesterday historian Thomas Zimmer tweeted an excellent thread comparing conservative uproar over Juneteenth to West Germany's long refusal to acknowledge May 8 (known to us as V-E Day) as a good thing. Willy Brandt and others helped turn that around in 1970 and the years following, putting the Holocaust at the center of what Nazi Germany was about, instead of German "honor." The analogies to both the Trumpers' delusions and the long-running myth of the Lost Cause are striking. The stakes in this "culture war" are very, very high. Here's Zimmer's highly recommended thread: https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1405954984949305354
Goldwater Rule be damned—this description nails him: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” That would be the OSS psychological profile of Adolf Hitler. From the defeated slave-holding Confederate secessionists to Trump, practitioners of the Big Lie never change.
They should have hung the traitors…or divided the country. Instead, we’re facing a problem that will continue to fester so long as people sweep treason and insurrection under the rug.
Now what? Action. To begin, call out the Trumpers as such, people part of and supporting a criminal cult working by any means to overthrow our democracy. They are traitors and anarchists who should be called out in every forum. They are not "Republicans".
You. Are. So. Right. In the past 6 months I have been introduced to the Civil War by 3 books: "Co. Aytch" the diary of confederate soldier Sam R Watkins, ""Widow of the South" a romantization of the Franklin battle, hosptal and aftermath, and "Grant Takes Command" a factual account of battles during and after Franklin by Bruce Catton. The Big Lie is as effective as The Lost Cause. We must win Civil War II.
Every time a contemporary Republican claims to belong to the "party of Lincoln," I gag. But you can't bring up the election of 1876 with these people, or much of anything else to do with history.
I have had similar experiences at places like Mount Vernon, where until quite recently enslaved people were referred to as "servants." I have also experienced this in Ireland, where huge estates acquired by Anglo-Irish "nabobs" are displayed as part of the National Trust in N. Ireland and as part of Irish Heritage in the Republic. These were built from the blood money of the British East and West India Companies. And yes: until it became illegal to keep enslaved people in one's household--technically the 1830s but actually later, since people brought from the British colonies who had been enslaved remained enslaved--there were Black people who were treated as enslaved in those same estates. And yet, those were the same families who railed against their oppression by the British and fought a war of independence in order to free themselves from British rule.
Yep: history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme.
I’ve been struck by other parallel lies as well: enslaved people who were lied to for 2 1/2 years because they didn’t know they had been emancipated, and the people who believe the Big Lie.
An interesting contrast between then and now is that *then* word often traveled slowly and erratically. (There are stories of emissaries carrying news of emancipation not reaching their destinations due to foul play.) Now accurate information is out there, though often camouflaged by or buried under dreck, and people still embrace the lies.
I lived in Oxford, MS as a teen and participated in one (only one) so-called "Pilgrimage" - a fund raising event in which plantation homes and their counterparts in cities were open to the public for admiration and a whitewashed version of history. Shortly after this experience, I became a volunteer in the first Head Start program there, and worked with the great grandchildren (maybe another "great") of the slaves who had built and maintained those edifices. Remembering the hypocrisy is stomach curdling to this day. I liken those gorgeous homes and the tours to an early Southern version of Disneyland...nothing but fantasy, fakery, and falsehoods. And yet, to this very day, I know many who continue living in this "lost cause world" as if nothing has changed. Many of them have hired "help" and of course, those souls are Black for the most part. So, the myth of "happy workers" is kept alive in the South, if not by actual SLAVES doing the work for the rich white folk, but because those "helpers" in actuality live in poverty, barely above a level of slavery, doing the same loathsome work their own ancestors did. And just when they began to get a break, state governors and legislators jerk back the safety nets which keep them from dying. It never seems to end. I haven't been back to that state in three years and have no intention of ever returning. The memories are too much to bear.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Ellen. "Fantasy land" living is so damaging in so many ways. Another piece of the puzzle of why so many choose to live in an "alternate reality" and why they fight so hard to hide the truth of history.
Well written and reasoned. The battle at Franklin resulted in helping to shorten the war. Trump 's War needs to be shortened. Maybe he will surrender? haha
I’m hoping incapacitating stroke so he can watch his moron kids ruin the business even more.
We ought to consider arresting and deporting the Murdoch family for violating their oaths when they became naturalized citizens. That oath of allegiance is patterned on the official Oath of Office that all government officials, appointees, and civil service employees take and swear to uphold. The notion that broadcast media must be owned and controlled by United States citizens is intended to assume some measure of loyalty to the Constitution and the United States Government. The promised loyalty was never forthcoming, and the benefits of American citizenship ought to be revoked accordingly. Trumps lies couldn't have been propagated without the assistance of the Murdochs.
Thank you, Lucian. Maybe I’m just weirdly pacifist or out-of-touch, but I cannot fathom becoming a soldier to fight for slavery and racism. Or even to fight with violence against it.
The Vow of the Confederate Soldier:
“I believe so strongly in our right to enslave humans and force them, under threat of injury and death, to do our bidding, that I will join an army and use weapons to hideously injure and kill people, the opponents to slavery, in order to protect this inhuman, wicked practice.”
That is the vow of a Confederate soldier. “I will kill you in order to protect my society’s right to kidnap people from their rightful life in Africa, ship them like cattle (who were likely treated even better in those days than slaves on slave ships) to another continent, where they will be treated like oxen, with all the rights of oxen, so that our European-ancestry families and society can eat and have a roof over our heads and live in comfort.”
It’s just incredible, as in “not credible,“ “impossible to believe,“ that people would choose to injure and kill others in support of slavery. Or even that they would threaten and coerce other human beings, under pain of injury and death, to work for them.
Sure, if I put my mind to it, I can come up with more wicked, more pernicious evils. But anything I can come up with will not be as integral and widespread and ingrained a part of our actual history, of actual reality in the United States, as slavery and The Southern War To Keep Slavery Alive, Healthy and Strong.
People who are white-racist-to-the-core use words like “honor“ to dignify this sociopathology. Where I used the word “practice“ in my fictional soldier’s vow, a to-the-core white racist would use the word “tradition.“
Is it any wonder that I repeatedly, here and on HCR, draw parallels between NSDAP Germany and TrumpWorld, the MAGAverse? No. My German heritage has come in terribly handy at this time in US history, sadly. It is with grief that I write the words in this message. What a horrible malpractice of society, what a hideous malfeasance, that American society would engage in such a horrific practice.
And still we have these humans who glorify themselves and their social tradition of placing their sorry white asses higher than non-whites, and their sorry males asses higher than women, and their sorry rich asses higher than people with less money, and straights over non-straights, and invaders over native Americans and all the rest of it I am not specifying.
Homework assignment:
Write a brief, simple description of slavery and/or another variant of human oppression in America (cowboys killing Indians, gay-bashing, lynching, whatever). Then notice the segment of our society that supports this oppression.
Quite revealing.
Awesome commentary on such a despicable history. The whole time I was reading your comment, I kept thinking of the parallels between what the white slaveholders did and what the nazi's did. They both made the object of their oppression into "non-humans". They convinced their co-conspirators that this group of people were not really people and therefore, they could treat them any way they wanted to. Now they a trying to do that to other groups of people (lgbtq, people of color, women, different religions, etc..) in the name of tradition.
This fact did not make my day. I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised.
Yes, Roland, horrific. But... the confederate soldier in "Co. Aytch" saw himself fighting for "State's Rights." The wealthy plantation owners also enslaved the minds of poor southern white folk. And the wealthy cons continue that dirty trick ("The Big Lie") to this day. We must win the minds and hearts of the south this time.
Don't forget, Hitler ran long and hard until his suicide after a 20 year reign of terror....Former is about 10 years in if you go back to the Birther nonsense.
One of your very best essays, Lucian. Your compare/contrast argument is solid.
On Twitter yesterday historian Thomas Zimmer tweeted an excellent thread comparing conservative uproar over Juneteenth to West Germany's long refusal to acknowledge May 8 (known to us as V-E Day) as a good thing. Willy Brandt and others helped turn that around in 1970 and the years following, putting the Holocaust at the center of what Nazi Germany was about, instead of German "honor." The analogies to both the Trumpers' delusions and the long-running myth of the Lost Cause are striking. The stakes in this "culture war" are very, very high. Here's Zimmer's highly recommended thread: https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1405954984949305354
Goldwater Rule be damned—this description nails him: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” That would be the OSS psychological profile of Adolf Hitler. From the defeated slave-holding Confederate secessionists to Trump, practitioners of the Big Lie never change.
They should have hung the traitors…or divided the country. Instead, we’re facing a problem that will continue to fester so long as people sweep treason and insurrection under the rug.
Great bleak, clear summary of where we are.
Now what? Action. To begin, call out the Trumpers as such, people part of and supporting a criminal cult working by any means to overthrow our democracy. They are traitors and anarchists who should be called out in every forum. They are not "Republicans".
You. Are. So. Right. In the past 6 months I have been introduced to the Civil War by 3 books: "Co. Aytch" the diary of confederate soldier Sam R Watkins, ""Widow of the South" a romantization of the Franklin battle, hosptal and aftermath, and "Grant Takes Command" a factual account of battles during and after Franklin by Bruce Catton. The Big Lie is as effective as The Lost Cause. We must win Civil War II.
Ron Chernow's?
Thanks for the recommendation, TC. Will do as soon as I finish reading your "Tidal Wave"!
Every time a contemporary Republican claims to belong to the "party of Lincoln," I gag. But you can't bring up the election of 1876 with these people, or much of anything else to do with history.