Her name is Nikki Haley, and she has been featured in the news of late for the answer she gave at a political townhall in New Hampshire to this question: “What was the cause of the Civil War?”
For a year and a half I attended Southwestern at Memphis (now called Rhodes College.) I will never forget the vigorous argument I had with a history prof there. I am being nice by calling it "vigorous" and by not naming him. He was positing that the Civil War was all about economics and I was positing that it was about rich white people with slaves who not only didn't want to lose their "property" but believed their property to be subhuman. I guess I am lucky I didn't fail that course. Such is the continued sickness the south still calls "the Lost Cause." They have never conceded defeat. We seem to be re-fighting that hideous war.
It still shocks me that at my border-state university a new professor from (!) South Carolina was teaching the same party line garbage you describe, Ellen [so sorry! for my earlier carelessness]. All the U.S. history i'd been taught before was the history we know. I was too unformed to confront him but I fully understood that he was serving us propaganda. I was so gobsmacked I still remember clearly that lecture room and where my seat was. Although it had been a favorite subject, I never took another history course. Naive as I was, I knew that that history department couldn't be trusted. Oh. And btw. Even after Brown v Board, in college and before, I never sat in the same classroom w/ anyone who wasn't white.
It was Econ in that they wanted to earn more money by having slaves. I was born in Memphis. When I took American History at Memphis State, I took Kell Mitchell’s class. He was a communist. I got an A…..
The wealthy still want to 'keep the peasants in their place'. It's always about money, and if we are not careful with who we elect, the color of our skin will not be the only criteria needed to enslave people.
You mention Shelby Foote. If I recall right, even he, a true southerner, stated in that great tv doc series (saw it twice) that the main and proximate cause of the war was slavery. Burns or a narrator at the outset also flatly states it. But facks don’t mean nuthin’ to some fokes.
Yes on TV he said that, but when we were in college he was likely still claiming Econ. I may be wrong, but I have vague memories of him still being very southern.
Oh, for sure. A knowledgeable and reasonably impartial historian but a southerner through and through. One scene of many in the towering Ken Burns Civil War documentary that sticks in my mind is Foote’s recounting a conversation over a creek between a Rebel and a Union soldier one night. The Union guy asks, “Hey Reb, why are you fighting?” or words to that effect. The Confederate answers, “Because you’re here.” Foote said that with a broad, satisfied smile: one of his boys in The Lost Cause speaking the “Confederate truth.”
Ellen, I would have to disagree with you. He was 100% correct. Economics as in protecting the P and L of the planter class was at its core the reason for slavery in the first place and the descent to which it experienced in the mid 19th century when it led to human trafficking on a mass scale in the Old South. What you and I might not be able to accept , then and now, is that someone could actually equate humanity with "property" but that is exactly was the depravity of the institution of slaver they and the vapidity of anyone like Nikki Haley defending what happened then in the name of "freedom."
The economics of slavery is a tough one. It's like buying a mule for $1,000 then finding out that mule is free and can go munch grass wherever they want. If you want that mule to come back and work on your farm, you now have to pay it to do so.
I am not an expert of history. Was there ever any discussions, between the parties, to compensate the slave owner's? Or was it entirely a "You're wrong slave owners and you should have never bought slaves".
Economically, how bad were things in the US after the war, where the price of goods higher because of people who worked on those goods were now getting paid?
Mary Kay, Have no idea of there was any ever conversations with the slave owners about buying their work force but even if there had been the plantation owners would have then had to pay them or some poor whites to work the land and that cost would have made the cotton and rice crops even more expensive to those who purchased those goods. But, I am also betting that people in the North particularly the approximate quarter of a million whose sons and fathers had been killed in the War of Northern Aggression might not have been of a mind to pay more blood money. And as far as what the post war economy in the South was like to say it sucked was an understatement. More like destitution for all including a goodly number of former slaves who were now supposed to fend for themselves without any skills or land of their own. The North which was just on the brink of the Industrial Revolution on the other hand began to prosper particularly as the West was opened for farming and exploitation of natural resources.
I'm coming to this conversation late, but I can tell you that, throughout the war, Lincoln tried to persuade the border states -- the slave states that had not seceded, namely Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri -- to agree to federally compensated emancipation. He thought that, if they agreed to it, the Confederacy would see its days as numbered. Lincoln never said that slave owners were morally entitled to compensation, any more than kidnappers are entitled to ransom. But compensation would cost a lot less than continuing to fight the war and, Lincoln hoped, would free some slaves and help end the war. Of course, no one thought to compensate the slaves for their years of unrequited toil.
Henry (any Robert) thank you both for your replies....It's one of the reasons I read Lucian, the vast amount of learned knowledge and thoughtful opinions of the others that read.
Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters to an American" January 1 Substack entry talked about this very point.
Important piece -- Haley is a disgrace on many levels but this comment shows the depths of her mendacity.
There's a through line from the slavers of the Confederacy (including another odious pol from South Carolina, John Calhoun the Nullifier) straight to MAGA. It's the politics of white resentment, despising the federal government for attempting to balance the scales, protect the weak. The Union defeated a confederacy of traitors+passed the 13th, 14th+15th amendments to deter future treasonous thugs. Now they're knocking at the door.
And NYT worries that Haley may have "put a dent in her crossover appeal."
Well said---a straight line, although it has sunk into the weeds and gone underground some of the time; it is in full flower right now, being said outlaid.
"The Union defeated a confederacy of traitors+passed the 13th, 14th+15th amendments to deter future treasonous thugs. Now they're knocking at the door.:
Yet did little to nothing to the traitors for their betrayal, rebellion, insurrection, and war crimes. By failing to do so the acts and behavior were legitimized. And in the minds of many in the South justified to this very day.
Another absurd argument offered by southerners is my family didn't own any slaves. So what? Did that family support the traitors and did any family member(s) take up arms against the nation? Did they claim to have killed any Union soldiers and/or were prison guards?
The lack of court martials of former Union soldiers who fought for the CSA and treason against the entire leadership of the CSA birthed the Lost Cause, Jim Crow, the KKK as well as separate by [hardly] equal eras straight to this era's denialism and/or white washing of history. In a valid civilized society Nikki would drop out on her own or be told to do so.
The “Lost Cause” (see ‘Gone With the Wind’) is a pervasive political & cultural lie. It has poisoned United State’s politics 4 over 150 yrs. It’s time 2 drive stake thru the heart of this
Read Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz, for a look at the lingering and disastrous effects of the Lost Cause myth. I am descended from Virginia slaveholders and there are people in my family who still buy into the bullshit. I do not speak to them.
I suspect very many white people with Southern roots going back before Emancipation have slaveholders as some of their ancestors. I do, seven generations back, one that I know of, probably more. His house slaves were two unnamed people, according to census records, but 1000 acres of tobacco do not plant themselves. No mention of how many 3/5 persons it took.
I should have added that many Black people also have white slaveholders as ancestors. I encountered a Black distant cousin who wanted to know how we could be related, which led to my discovery of the ancestor we might have shared.
I am from the north, and there are those in my family who have that same mind set. I do not live near them anymore, nor do I have anything to do with them.
it's sort of ironic that the whole "Lost Cause" bullshit was championed in "modern times" (early twentieth century) by the "Dunnant School," named for a professor at Columbia. Columbia is the same school that has also produced a lot of the most important re-examinations of what REALLY happened during Reconstruction (Eric Foner, mostly). it was also the academic base of Richard Hofstadter, who was Foner's thesis advisor. I'd say Hofstadter is the historian who gets quoted most frequently in current examinations of what "our politics" has become.
as for Nikki Haley, who used to make me gag for obscure reasons (and now makes me gag for obvious ones), the thing I find most outrageous is her obvious panic. it seems to me that if she was going to a Town Hall in New Hampshire, it would hardly take a genius to prepare for exactly that question, given the current state of what is laughably called "public debate."
if we assume the guy who asked the question went there in order to ask that precise question, isn't that exactly the kind of thing people do in political campaigns?
a whole lot of folks are getting paid too much money to do nothing. but when it's happening on THEIR side, I encourage them to continue charging those high prices for a shit product.
if there's a positive side to all this, it might be that she's gone and fucked herself good and proper.
I really really hope the Democrats are strategizing how to deploy a video montage of Trump's most astounding dumbazz and openly fascist comments, word salad rants, and maybe with quick screenshots of his old Tweets and current Truth Social bilge.
I had a cousin from the South who was very enlightened. He called "Gone With the Wind" an experience akin to watching a love story between Hitler and Eva Braun.
Smart fella. There are lots of people in the 11(?) former States of the Confederacy who understand how the “Lost Cause” & “War of Northern Aggression” warp the history of our country. Good for your cousin.
For a real lesson in how (some) Palmetto State citizens view their storied history, I suggest you drop in and visit the Museum and Library of Confederate History in my current home town of Greenville, SC. It is “Operated by the 16th Regiment, SC Volunteers Sons of Confederate Veterans.” It’s not the artifacts, weapons, uniforms, and displays of historical minutiae that are problematic. I have no quibble with the ‘Museum’ aspect of the place at all. It’s a remarkable collection and well worth your time to visit and really scrutinize some of that stuff. I was particularly intrigued by the medical kits on display and learning about some of the procedures those 19th century “saw bones” were doing with that scary looking gear. The real problem is with the “Library” side of the facility. Here we wade deeply into Nikki Haley territory and if you are at all like me, you will have a tough time stomaching the absolute rubbish being disseminated about the “Noble cause of those gallant patriots…” and what an awful despot and illegitimate tyrant that Yankee feller was up in D.C. until John Wilkes Booth set things right, “Lawd rest his soul.” Also, those “Sons of the Confederacy” who run the place are a great source of info on the artifacts. Just don’t get into any discussion with them about the rightness of their cause. You may find yourself wanting to reach into a display case for a handy Derringer in case your hosts perceive your obvious disgust at the unambiguous racist b.s. that so effortlessly flows from those SoC lips, as in “…shucks, y’all jes don’ unnerstan’ it was states’ rahts an’ it haid nuthin to do with are nigras, which was allus treated well, ain’t that raht, Billy Bob?”
My first visit to Charleston, a guide in one of the homes, was asked about the Civil War. She replied that it was the “War of Northern Aggression and nothin’ civil about it.” It became my ONLY visit to South Carolina!
In fairness to South Carolina, which in addition to being the home of former Governor Nikki Haley, Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott — all three of them deeply flawed individuals who sacrificed personal integrity and honor to climb on board the Trump Train — the Palmetto state does have a lot going for it. I confess I’m not ready to just write off living some place because I’m not happy with its politics.
I have lived in Texas and Mississippi while in the USAF. The latter was segregated at the time. I have been a citizen of South Dakota and Arizona, before moving to South Carolina. Both have troublesome Republican politics. I have also visited 49 of the 50 states in my travels over the years, as well as many foreign countries along the way. None are perfect. Some are decidedly better than others, for a lot of reasons: climate; culture; food; governance; economics; natural splendor; etc.
I spent a year living and working in Jamaica 🇯🇲 for instance. At the end of that year Jamaica was gearing up for a historical clash between two diametrically opposed political parties. The country, already awash in guns thanks to the lucrative and lively trade in ‘Ganja’ was now seeing an inordinate number of gun related homicides. At Christmas 1975 I gave my sister, brother and mother RT air tickets to Jamaica. My mother was held up and robbed at gunpoint on her visit to the island a few months later, which was distressing enough. As the election loomed closer, my Jamaican friends said it might be a good idea to leave. I did. Bob Marley was himself shot, later that year (1976), along with his wife, Rita, and a couple of others. (Q. Who shot the Deputy? LOL!).
What can I say? In life we know there will be hardship, struggle, and a lot of work. We do what we can.
You are absolutely correct. There ARE some decent people in even the most difficult states. The reverse is also true. The Northeast has its share of luddites as well. I was being snarky. The docent’s words are true, but, it was not my last visit as my in-laws were there!
You have so accurately explained the ignorant, evil mindset of those who think it is acceptable to enslave human beings, and justify it to themselves over the generations.
Laughed out loud at your closing mock conversation in vintage Southernese. I’ve had conversations like that in the past until I learned “ ah ain’t gettin’ nowhar wit dese people.” A few nascent friendships ended on the rocks of this issue. It was slavery, pure and simple. Put lipstick on that pig of any shade you want, but it was SLAVERY. Free backbreaking labor for well-to-do white folks by human beings imported to this country AGAINST THEIR WILL.
Haley never fails to fail, as if ambition alone suffices to be a leader. The entire field of their candidates are self-humiliating characters in a play in the theater of the absurd.
These people, its just unbelievable. Now Rafael Cruz is trumpeting on Twitter that Repubs are the party who "fought against slavery" versus the slave-holding Dems. And DeSantis gleefully celebrating Nikki's gaffe, while still defending 'Florida's teaching that slavery was an overall benefit because the claim was based on respected "black scholars." Sadly, gullible sheep will be believing and repeating these claims to justify their white racism.
As my old public school history class has it, the”War Between the States “ was fought for “ states rights”.Too bad what wasn’t taught was it was fought for states rights to enslave captured Africans who had been brought here on cruel slave ships and sold as cattle.
Great article as usual. Ironic Nikki made no mention of the loss of freedom bestowed on all women in GOP controlled states in that they are not free to make choices about their physical health if they happen to be pregnant. Their doctors are not free to make certain medical decisions either and in some of these states face prosecution.
Lucian is the perfect example of someone who has put his money where his mouth is about slavery and its vileness and who committed it and how long that reach is. There are family ruptures even today for those sins of the past. One of the reasons I'm a subscriber is how he brought his slave descendants cousins and family members into the fold as full, free and entitled to be seen and equal, and acknowledged as family, to the point he has family from whom he's split, as many of us Southerners do. A lot of us from the deep South who remember well the civil rights fight have deep shame and sadness over all of this and the fact that the South still has the root of slavery twisting around and choking everything. But there are truly many, many of us who know how wrong and evil that is and we fight it and I believe that fight will go on for many more decades even though many have no idea what it's really about nor what it really was. An evil. I suppose I shall die still trying to make it right in my own way.
Episode aired Nov 12, 1998 TV-PG Oprah Winfrey in The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986)
Black and White descendants of Thomas Jefferson meet for the first time.
Stars
Oprah Winfrey Annette Gordon-Reed* Lucian Truscott IV
{{I have relations all over the place named "Reed," that's my grandfather Turnbull's middle name and also my late younger brother's, supposedly traceable back to Thomas Reade (multiple spellings) of Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1640's and then back to County Kent in England, not sure how close Ms. Gordon-Reed would be related, though}}
Thomas Jefferson's descendants come together despite troubled past
CBS Mornings
2.87M subscribers
1,377,355 views Feb 14, 2019
In our series, A More Perfect Union, we aim to show that what unites us as Americans is far greater than what divides us. In this installment, we're looking at Thomas Jefferson's legacy and the unbreakable connections of his descendants. Vladimir Duthiers reports.
For an extraordinary take on the years leading up to the Civil War and on the gag rule battle in the House of Representatives over discussion of slavery in Congress, read Arguing About Slavery by William Lee Miller. It's an eye opener, and is still in print.
Nikki Haley, from Sikh immigrants whose religion would not have tolerated slavery nor engaged in it, is nothing but one more hypocritical Republican of today. Anything to win and then nothing good if you do.
March of 1968 I return from Canada to NYC to reluctantly obey a draft notice. I was put on a plane(my first flight ever) to Columbia, SC(the state capital) to begin basic training at Fort Jackson. I vividly remember being very angry and depressed riding in a bus to the base. As we passed the state capital building I looked out the window and saw the Confederate flag flying from the building’s dome. I knew on that day my life would be changed forever.
If you leave out the idea of pandering, Haley would just sound ignorant. But pandering it was. A politician said if this fiasco, "Were she to win, you could count on her to do the wrong thing."
So that's the GOP today. Crooks, crazies, and the mediocre. And this used to be America.
Why can't they just admit it and that it was wrong...is that so difficult? Of course many are being re-poisoned by the Orange Julius Caesar and his boy genius, Steven Miller, who gives him all the best words!
Upvoted /liked but with the qualification that Gaius Julius Caesar was an authentic genius*, not a narcissistic goofball claiming to be a "very stable genius," but otherwise, exactly right, Miller is feeding Trump all the invective he can't already summon up from reading Hitler's speeches!
*The Twelve Caesars Hardcover – January 1, 1996
by Michael Grant (Author) { {The unabridged audiobook is also great stuff}}
Alexander L. Belikoff
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful all-around account of one of the most important periods in Roman History.
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2017
Clearly aimed at famous Suetonius’s work by the same title, Grant’s book supplements the former account with many more sources (from Tacitus and Dio Cassius to modern researchers in Roman History and new findings). Even more important, mere narration of the events is combined with an attempt to analyze and explain them.
Even for those familiar with the subject, there are many discoveries to be made. The Author does a great job demonstrating just what a tremendously back breaking duty the “job” of a Roman Emperor was and how it indeed broke even the strongest of people. Time and again we see how - without a well executed transition plan - a rule of a Caesar ended in a [often violent] disruption and a crisis - only Augustus and Vespasian were lucky enough to grow a fitting successor.
Thanks to the Author, we are able to see each of the Caesars not as a superficial one-dimensional collection of pop-history facts (“Caligula? Of course, he made his horse a Consul!”) but as complex multi-faceted characters. Everyone started with the best intentions, everyone got broken by the duty, sometimes in an ugly way. The Author quotes the famous Lord Acton’s maxim: “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and there is hardly a better book to drive that point home.
Still, it is amazing to witness how the “eternal” Republic rather quickly transitions into an absolute monarchy (while still loudly proclaiming the adherence to the Republican ideals). As uncomfortable as it might be, there are some lessons for all of us to learn: it is indeed a very short way from LIBERTAS POPVLI to LIBERTAS AVGVSTI.
I believe she blew it! If DT does obtain the nomination by some miracle, who will he choose for VP? I don't think Nikki Haley! Right now, our Freedoms are being taken away, Yes, Nikki, that is what your party believes! I guess you do too!
I don't think that he would have chosen her anyway, because she has criticized him, and he would view the very act of seeking the nomination as disloyalty. In addition, he's a misogynist. His choice will be a white male who is as sycophantic as Pence was before January 6. His unfathomable level of insecurity demands it.
That's going to be interesting and I'm not convinced he will not choose a woman. I believe Melania has urged him to choose a woman and we've all heard that MTG and Noem were under consideration, as well as "Kari" who overplayed her hand with too much ambition, which he won't accept from a male vp choice either. If he thinks it will turn enough voters to him, I believe he will choose a woman. We'll see. The big prayer is going to remain that he not win. And oh, by the way, have you heard? He smells bad. Pass the word.
For a long time now I've heard that he does consult her and does listen to her. You know they are not really very different in their ugly approach to the world. Yes, I do think at times she has tried to influence him and I think that she's been right enough he actually does listen to her more now. Who really knows. I do believe that he flies by his rotted gut most of the time if not all of the time.
You know better than I. I just assumed from that time that she wouldn't let him hold her hand that she's in it only for the money. It's sad if she shares his ugly approach to the world.
I really don't know better. I come to conclusions based on what I have read here and there. There was something really good abut her about midway through his term -- I can't bear to call it anything else -- when we were all feeling sorry for her and doing a kind of "free Melania" sort of thing. She didn't want to go to Washington. But she also didn't want to be "freed." She liked the life she had in New York but she was certainly not a top tier model. She was more like a kind of model out of the pot good time girls from Europe looking for maybe a rich American husband. And her background was in a toughish part of the world and she's every much an opportunist but apparently has him as her "business." And she has managed him well. And then you listen to the interviews of American women she's been friends with, Woolcott and some of her staffers while in Washington and they all say she is very very much like him. She pushed the whole birther thing also. Seems to me she's a very practical woman protecting her "business" which was anchored with a son whom she also has protected more than usual. She manages her business pretty darn well but you're close to the muck so you do get much on you. What do you think?
For a year and a half I attended Southwestern at Memphis (now called Rhodes College.) I will never forget the vigorous argument I had with a history prof there. I am being nice by calling it "vigorous" and by not naming him. He was positing that the Civil War was all about economics and I was positing that it was about rich white people with slaves who not only didn't want to lose their "property" but believed their property to be subhuman. I guess I am lucky I didn't fail that course. Such is the continued sickness the south still calls "the Lost Cause." They have never conceded defeat. We seem to be re-fighting that hideous war.
It still shocks me that at my border-state university a new professor from (!) South Carolina was teaching the same party line garbage you describe, Ellen [so sorry! for my earlier carelessness]. All the U.S. history i'd been taught before was the history we know. I was too unformed to confront him but I fully understood that he was serving us propaganda. I was so gobsmacked I still remember clearly that lecture room and where my seat was. Although it had been a favorite subject, I never took another history course. Naive as I was, I knew that that history department couldn't be trusted. Oh. And btw. Even after Brown v Board, in college and before, I never sat in the same classroom w/ anyone who wasn't white.
Shelby Foote?
It was Econ in that they wanted to earn more money by having slaves. I was born in Memphis. When I took American History at Memphis State, I took Kell Mitchell’s class. He was a communist. I got an A…..
The wealthy still want to 'keep the peasants in their place'. It's always about money, and if we are not careful with who we elect, the color of our skin will not be the only criteria needed to enslave people.
Be warned, and vote BLUE in November.
Amen….
You mention Shelby Foote. If I recall right, even he, a true southerner, stated in that great tv doc series (saw it twice) that the main and proximate cause of the war was slavery. Burns or a narrator at the outset also flatly states it. But facks don’t mean nuthin’ to some fokes.
Yes on TV he said that, but when we were in college he was likely still claiming Econ. I may be wrong, but I have vague memories of him still being very southern.
Oh, for sure. A knowledgeable and reasonably impartial historian but a southerner through and through. One scene of many in the towering Ken Burns Civil War documentary that sticks in my mind is Foote’s recounting a conversation over a creek between a Rebel and a Union soldier one night. The Union guy asks, “Hey Reb, why are you fighting?” or words to that effect. The Confederate answers, “Because you’re here.” Foote said that with a broad, satisfied smile: one of his boys in The Lost Cause speaking the “Confederate truth.”
Shhhhhhhhh…….shelby was an asshole……
That name does ring a bell, but not in connection with Southwestern.
He was part of the PBS series on the Civil War. You may remember him from that program if you watched it.
I don't think we've ever stopped fighting it...
Agree.
I have southern friends and an ex-wife was an Alabaman. For forty years I’ve said, and still say, that the South is a different country.
Ellen, I would have to disagree with you. He was 100% correct. Economics as in protecting the P and L of the planter class was at its core the reason for slavery in the first place and the descent to which it experienced in the mid 19th century when it led to human trafficking on a mass scale in the Old South. What you and I might not be able to accept , then and now, is that someone could actually equate humanity with "property" but that is exactly was the depravity of the institution of slaver they and the vapidity of anyone like Nikki Haley defending what happened then in the name of "freedom."
Always , in all things, follow the money.
I see your point.
The economics of slavery is a tough one. It's like buying a mule for $1,000 then finding out that mule is free and can go munch grass wherever they want. If you want that mule to come back and work on your farm, you now have to pay it to do so.
I am not an expert of history. Was there ever any discussions, between the parties, to compensate the slave owner's? Or was it entirely a "You're wrong slave owners and you should have never bought slaves".
Economically, how bad were things in the US after the war, where the price of goods higher because of people who worked on those goods were now getting paid?
Mary Kay, Have no idea of there was any ever conversations with the slave owners about buying their work force but even if there had been the plantation owners would have then had to pay them or some poor whites to work the land and that cost would have made the cotton and rice crops even more expensive to those who purchased those goods. But, I am also betting that people in the North particularly the approximate quarter of a million whose sons and fathers had been killed in the War of Northern Aggression might not have been of a mind to pay more blood money. And as far as what the post war economy in the South was like to say it sucked was an understatement. More like destitution for all including a goodly number of former slaves who were now supposed to fend for themselves without any skills or land of their own. The North which was just on the brink of the Industrial Revolution on the other hand began to prosper particularly as the West was opened for farming and exploitation of natural resources.
I'm coming to this conversation late, but I can tell you that, throughout the war, Lincoln tried to persuade the border states -- the slave states that had not seceded, namely Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri -- to agree to federally compensated emancipation. He thought that, if they agreed to it, the Confederacy would see its days as numbered. Lincoln never said that slave owners were morally entitled to compensation, any more than kidnappers are entitled to ransom. But compensation would cost a lot less than continuing to fight the war and, Lincoln hoped, would free some slaves and help end the war. Of course, no one thought to compensate the slaves for their years of unrequited toil.
Henry (any Robert) thank you both for your replies....It's one of the reasons I read Lucian, the vast amount of learned knowledge and thoughtful opinions of the others that read.
Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters to an American" January 1 Substack entry talked about this very point.
Nor am I an expert, but i'd guess that revulsion at people claiming to own other people rather canceled discussion of the economic merits.
Which the good people of this nation need to win...again.
Yep, and, these folks are quick to tell you Democrats started the KKK, failing to admit who took those sheets and wore them most recently!
Important piece -- Haley is a disgrace on many levels but this comment shows the depths of her mendacity.
There's a through line from the slavers of the Confederacy (including another odious pol from South Carolina, John Calhoun the Nullifier) straight to MAGA. It's the politics of white resentment, despising the federal government for attempting to balance the scales, protect the weak. The Union defeated a confederacy of traitors+passed the 13th, 14th+15th amendments to deter future treasonous thugs. Now they're knocking at the door.
And NYT worries that Haley may have "put a dent in her crossover appeal."
White resentment and white entitlement.
Well said---a straight line, although it has sunk into the weeds and gone underground some of the time; it is in full flower right now, being said outlaid.
Boo hoo...poor Nikkipoo. The NYT is a serious part of the olligharchy problem.
"The Union defeated a confederacy of traitors+passed the 13th, 14th+15th amendments to deter future treasonous thugs. Now they're knocking at the door.:
Yet did little to nothing to the traitors for their betrayal, rebellion, insurrection, and war crimes. By failing to do so the acts and behavior were legitimized. And in the minds of many in the South justified to this very day.
Another absurd argument offered by southerners is my family didn't own any slaves. So what? Did that family support the traitors and did any family member(s) take up arms against the nation? Did they claim to have killed any Union soldiers and/or were prison guards?
The lack of court martials of former Union soldiers who fought for the CSA and treason against the entire leadership of the CSA birthed the Lost Cause, Jim Crow, the KKK as well as separate by [hardly] equal eras straight to this era's denialism and/or white washing of history. In a valid civilized society Nikki would drop out on her own or be told to do so.
One can only hope
The “Lost Cause” (see ‘Gone With the Wind’) is a pervasive political & cultural lie. It has poisoned United State’s politics 4 over 150 yrs. It’s time 2 drive stake thru the heart of this
Read Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz, for a look at the lingering and disastrous effects of the Lost Cause myth. I am descended from Virginia slaveholders and there are people in my family who still buy into the bullshit. I do not speak to them.
I suspect very many white people with Southern roots going back before Emancipation have slaveholders as some of their ancestors. I do, seven generations back, one that I know of, probably more. His house slaves were two unnamed people, according to census records, but 1000 acres of tobacco do not plant themselves. No mention of how many 3/5 persons it took.
I should have added that many Black people also have white slaveholders as ancestors. I encountered a Black distant cousin who wanted to know how we could be related, which led to my discovery of the ancestor we might have shared.
I am from the north, and there are those in my family who have that same mind set. I do not live near them anymore, nor do I have anything to do with them.
it's sort of ironic that the whole "Lost Cause" bullshit was championed in "modern times" (early twentieth century) by the "Dunnant School," named for a professor at Columbia. Columbia is the same school that has also produced a lot of the most important re-examinations of what REALLY happened during Reconstruction (Eric Foner, mostly). it was also the academic base of Richard Hofstadter, who was Foner's thesis advisor. I'd say Hofstadter is the historian who gets quoted most frequently in current examinations of what "our politics" has become.
as for Nikki Haley, who used to make me gag for obscure reasons (and now makes me gag for obvious ones), the thing I find most outrageous is her obvious panic. it seems to me that if she was going to a Town Hall in New Hampshire, it would hardly take a genius to prepare for exactly that question, given the current state of what is laughably called "public debate."
if we assume the guy who asked the question went there in order to ask that precise question, isn't that exactly the kind of thing people do in political campaigns?
a whole lot of folks are getting paid too much money to do nothing. but when it's happening on THEIR side, I encourage them to continue charging those high prices for a shit product.
if there's a positive side to all this, it might be that she's gone and fucked herself good and proper.
The video will be around for historians as well!
I really really hope the Democrats are strategizing how to deploy a video montage of Trump's most astounding dumbazz and openly fascist comments, word salad rants, and maybe with quick screenshots of his old Tweets and current Truth Social bilge.
That Gone With the Wind is such a brilliant film in so many ways only makes it all the worse.
I had a cousin from the South who was very enlightened. He called "Gone With the Wind" an experience akin to watching a love story between Hitler and Eva Braun.
Smart fella. There are lots of people in the 11(?) former States of the Confederacy who understand how the “Lost Cause” & “War of Northern Aggression” warp the history of our country. Good for your cousin.
For a real lesson in how (some) Palmetto State citizens view their storied history, I suggest you drop in and visit the Museum and Library of Confederate History in my current home town of Greenville, SC. It is “Operated by the 16th Regiment, SC Volunteers Sons of Confederate Veterans.” It’s not the artifacts, weapons, uniforms, and displays of historical minutiae that are problematic. I have no quibble with the ‘Museum’ aspect of the place at all. It’s a remarkable collection and well worth your time to visit and really scrutinize some of that stuff. I was particularly intrigued by the medical kits on display and learning about some of the procedures those 19th century “saw bones” were doing with that scary looking gear. The real problem is with the “Library” side of the facility. Here we wade deeply into Nikki Haley territory and if you are at all like me, you will have a tough time stomaching the absolute rubbish being disseminated about the “Noble cause of those gallant patriots…” and what an awful despot and illegitimate tyrant that Yankee feller was up in D.C. until John Wilkes Booth set things right, “Lawd rest his soul.” Also, those “Sons of the Confederacy” who run the place are a great source of info on the artifacts. Just don’t get into any discussion with them about the rightness of their cause. You may find yourself wanting to reach into a display case for a handy Derringer in case your hosts perceive your obvious disgust at the unambiguous racist b.s. that so effortlessly flows from those SoC lips, as in “…shucks, y’all jes don’ unnerstan’ it was states’ rahts an’ it haid nuthin to do with are nigras, which was allus treated well, ain’t that raht, Billy Bob?”
My first visit to Charleston, a guide in one of the homes, was asked about the Civil War. She replied that it was the “War of Northern Aggression and nothin’ civil about it.” It became my ONLY visit to South Carolina!
BUT WHO FIRED THE FIRST SHOT????
In fairness to South Carolina, which in addition to being the home of former Governor Nikki Haley, Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott — all three of them deeply flawed individuals who sacrificed personal integrity and honor to climb on board the Trump Train — the Palmetto state does have a lot going for it. I confess I’m not ready to just write off living some place because I’m not happy with its politics.
I have lived in Texas and Mississippi while in the USAF. The latter was segregated at the time. I have been a citizen of South Dakota and Arizona, before moving to South Carolina. Both have troublesome Republican politics. I have also visited 49 of the 50 states in my travels over the years, as well as many foreign countries along the way. None are perfect. Some are decidedly better than others, for a lot of reasons: climate; culture; food; governance; economics; natural splendor; etc.
I spent a year living and working in Jamaica 🇯🇲 for instance. At the end of that year Jamaica was gearing up for a historical clash between two diametrically opposed political parties. The country, already awash in guns thanks to the lucrative and lively trade in ‘Ganja’ was now seeing an inordinate number of gun related homicides. At Christmas 1975 I gave my sister, brother and mother RT air tickets to Jamaica. My mother was held up and robbed at gunpoint on her visit to the island a few months later, which was distressing enough. As the election loomed closer, my Jamaican friends said it might be a good idea to leave. I did. Bob Marley was himself shot, later that year (1976), along with his wife, Rita, and a couple of others. (Q. Who shot the Deputy? LOL!).
What can I say? In life we know there will be hardship, struggle, and a lot of work. We do what we can.
You are absolutely correct. There ARE some decent people in even the most difficult states. The reverse is also true. The Northeast has its share of luddites as well. I was being snarky. The docent’s words are true, but, it was not my last visit as my in-laws were there!
Sickening!
You have so accurately explained the ignorant, evil mindset of those who think it is acceptable to enslave human beings, and justify it to themselves over the generations.
Laughed out loud at your closing mock conversation in vintage Southernese. I’ve had conversations like that in the past until I learned “ ah ain’t gettin’ nowhar wit dese people.” A few nascent friendships ended on the rocks of this issue. It was slavery, pure and simple. Put lipstick on that pig of any shade you want, but it was SLAVERY. Free backbreaking labor for well-to-do white folks by human beings imported to this country AGAINST THEIR WILL.
Haley never fails to fail, as if ambition alone suffices to be a leader. The entire field of their candidates are self-humiliating characters in a play in the theater of the absurd.
They want us to pay for the tickets with our lives.
These people, its just unbelievable. Now Rafael Cruz is trumpeting on Twitter that Repubs are the party who "fought against slavery" versus the slave-holding Dems. And DeSantis gleefully celebrating Nikki's gaffe, while still defending 'Florida's teaching that slavery was an overall benefit because the claim was based on respected "black scholars." Sadly, gullible sheep will be believing and repeating these claims to justify their white racism.
Maybe "re-bleating these claims" is a bit more on the mark when it comes to a Florida maga's "thought" process.
As my old public school history class has it, the”War Between the States “ was fought for “ states rights”.Too bad what wasn’t taught was it was fought for states rights to enslave captured Africans who had been brought here on cruel slave ships and sold as cattle.
Great article as usual. Ironic Nikki made no mention of the loss of freedom bestowed on all women in GOP controlled states in that they are not free to make choices about their physical health if they happen to be pregnant. Their doctors are not free to make certain medical decisions either and in some of these states face prosecution.
And let us not forget, P01135890's comment to Chris Matthews in 2016, 'women should be punished for getting abortions'
Pure ignorance, Janice. But that is the so-called "Grand" Old Party.
Yep. Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.
Thank you
Lucian is the perfect example of someone who has put his money where his mouth is about slavery and its vileness and who committed it and how long that reach is. There are family ruptures even today for those sins of the past. One of the reasons I'm a subscriber is how he brought his slave descendants cousins and family members into the fold as full, free and entitled to be seen and equal, and acknowledged as family, to the point he has family from whom he's split, as many of us Southerners do. A lot of us from the deep South who remember well the civil rights fight have deep shame and sadness over all of this and the fact that the South still has the root of slavery twisting around and choking everything. But there are truly many, many of us who know how wrong and evil that is and we fight it and I believe that fight will go on for many more decades even though many have no idea what it's really about nor what it really was. An evil. I suppose I shall die still trying to make it right in my own way.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2185157/
Episode dated 12 November 1998
Episode aired Nov 12, 1998 TV-PG Oprah Winfrey in The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986)
Black and White descendants of Thomas Jefferson meet for the first time.
Stars
Oprah Winfrey Annette Gordon-Reed* Lucian Truscott IV
{{I have relations all over the place named "Reed," that's my grandfather Turnbull's middle name and also my late younger brother's, supposedly traceable back to Thomas Reade (multiple spellings) of Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1640's and then back to County Kent in England, not sure how close Ms. Gordon-Reed would be related, though}}
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZPwxJpXuy8
0:00 / 6:08
Thomas Jefferson's descendants come together despite troubled past
CBS Mornings
2.87M subscribers
1,377,355 views Feb 14, 2019
In our series, A More Perfect Union, we aim to show that what unites us as Americans is far greater than what divides us. In this installment, we're looking at Thomas Jefferson's legacy and the unbreakable connections of his descendants. Vladimir Duthiers reports.
For an extraordinary take on the years leading up to the Civil War and on the gag rule battle in the House of Representatives over discussion of slavery in Congress, read Arguing About Slavery by William Lee Miller. It's an eye opener, and is still in print.
Lucien, you nailed it and Haley and fellow republicans in their place. This is one of their worst lies!
Cheryl Witty
Sad lies
Nikki Haley, from Sikh immigrants whose religion would not have tolerated slavery nor engaged in it, is nothing but one more hypocritical Republican of today. Anything to win and then nothing good if you do.
Well my fingers failed me:
It’s time & more than time 2 drive a stake thru the heart of this pernicious vampire ideology.
March of 1968 I return from Canada to NYC to reluctantly obey a draft notice. I was put on a plane(my first flight ever) to Columbia, SC(the state capital) to begin basic training at Fort Jackson. I vividly remember being very angry and depressed riding in a bus to the base. As we passed the state capital building I looked out the window and saw the Confederate flag flying from the building’s dome. I knew on that day my life would be changed forever.
If you leave out the idea of pandering, Haley would just sound ignorant. But pandering it was. A politician said if this fiasco, "Were she to win, you could count on her to do the wrong thing."
So that's the GOP today. Crooks, crazies, and the mediocre. And this used to be America.
Why can't they just admit it and that it was wrong...is that so difficult? Of course many are being re-poisoned by the Orange Julius Caesar and his boy genius, Steven Miller, who gives him all the best words!
Mainly because they don’t see it as wrong...and there’s the real sickness!
The trouble is, some people think there’s two kinds of people. Themselves and Others.
True dat!
Upvoted /liked but with the qualification that Gaius Julius Caesar was an authentic genius*, not a narcissistic goofball claiming to be a "very stable genius," but otherwise, exactly right, Miller is feeding Trump all the invective he can't already summon up from reading Hitler's speeches!
*The Twelve Caesars Hardcover – January 1, 1996
by Michael Grant (Author) { {The unabridged audiobook is also great stuff}}
Alexander L. Belikoff
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful all-around account of one of the most important periods in Roman History.
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2017
Clearly aimed at famous Suetonius’s work by the same title, Grant’s book supplements the former account with many more sources (from Tacitus and Dio Cassius to modern researchers in Roman History and new findings). Even more important, mere narration of the events is combined with an attempt to analyze and explain them.
Even for those familiar with the subject, there are many discoveries to be made. The Author does a great job demonstrating just what a tremendously back breaking duty the “job” of a Roman Emperor was and how it indeed broke even the strongest of people. Time and again we see how - without a well executed transition plan - a rule of a Caesar ended in a [often violent] disruption and a crisis - only Augustus and Vespasian were lucky enough to grow a fitting successor.
Thanks to the Author, we are able to see each of the Caesars not as a superficial one-dimensional collection of pop-history facts (“Caligula? Of course, he made his horse a Consul!”) but as complex multi-faceted characters. Everyone started with the best intentions, everyone got broken by the duty, sometimes in an ugly way. The Author quotes the famous Lord Acton’s maxim: “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and there is hardly a better book to drive that point home.
Still, it is amazing to witness how the “eternal” Republic rather quickly transitions into an absolute monarchy (while still loudly proclaiming the adherence to the Republican ideals). As uncomfortable as it might be, there are some lessons for all of us to learn: it is indeed a very short way from LIBERTAS POPVLI to LIBERTAS AVGVSTI.
I believe she blew it! If DT does obtain the nomination by some miracle, who will he choose for VP? I don't think Nikki Haley! Right now, our Freedoms are being taken away, Yes, Nikki, that is what your party believes! I guess you do too!
I don't think that he would have chosen her anyway, because she has criticized him, and he would view the very act of seeking the nomination as disloyalty. In addition, he's a misogynist. His choice will be a white male who is as sycophantic as Pence was before January 6. His unfathomable level of insecurity demands it.
That's going to be interesting and I'm not convinced he will not choose a woman. I believe Melania has urged him to choose a woman and we've all heard that MTG and Noem were under consideration, as well as "Kari" who overplayed her hand with too much ambition, which he won't accept from a male vp choice either. If he thinks it will turn enough voters to him, I believe he will choose a woman. We'll see. The big prayer is going to remain that he not win. And oh, by the way, have you heard? He smells bad. Pass the word.
And his mama dresses him funny…
The word from The Apprentice years ago was that his diapers if experienced downwind could make one faint.
LOLOLOLOL
He will probably choose his work-wife, Ivanka.
You're right about MTG and Noem, but do you really think that Melanie tries to influence him or that he'd listen to her if she did?
For a long time now I've heard that he does consult her and does listen to her. You know they are not really very different in their ugly approach to the world. Yes, I do think at times she has tried to influence him and I think that she's been right enough he actually does listen to her more now. Who really knows. I do believe that he flies by his rotted gut most of the time if not all of the time.
You know better than I. I just assumed from that time that she wouldn't let him hold her hand that she's in it only for the money. It's sad if she shares his ugly approach to the world.
I really don't know better. I come to conclusions based on what I have read here and there. There was something really good abut her about midway through his term -- I can't bear to call it anything else -- when we were all feeling sorry for her and doing a kind of "free Melania" sort of thing. She didn't want to go to Washington. But she also didn't want to be "freed." She liked the life she had in New York but she was certainly not a top tier model. She was more like a kind of model out of the pot good time girls from Europe looking for maybe a rich American husband. And her background was in a toughish part of the world and she's every much an opportunist but apparently has him as her "business." And she has managed him well. And then you listen to the interviews of American women she's been friends with, Woolcott and some of her staffers while in Washington and they all say she is very very much like him. She pushed the whole birther thing also. Seems to me she's a very practical woman protecting her "business" which was anchored with a son whom she also has protected more than usual. She manages her business pretty darn well but you're close to the muck so you do get much on you. What do you think?
BTW, where the hell IS Melania? She’s apparently disparu. Certainly not with feces-in-the-pants.
Absolutely true.