I love talking about inevitabilities, b/c usually from a historical standpoint, everything looks like it had been destined to happen. 

Looking back at the pivotal years that you were just tested upon, 1860-61, think about a few of the key turning points and discuss whether or not you think the Civil War was inevitable. 

• Did the compromises have to fail?  
• Once Lincoln was elected, did several of the Southern states have to secede?  
• Once the Confederacy was formed, did the attack on Fort Sumter have to happen?  And once that occurred, was war inevitable? 
• What if Lincoln had focused predominantly on ending slavery as the main reason for war instead of saving the Union during the first two years of the war? 
• How would the war have changed if McClellan had LOST the battle of Antietam?   There were several swings of “fate” that went into this battle and the days leading up to it (finding Special Orders No. 191 wrapped in 3 cigars; the Confederate sympathizer warning Lee of the order being found; McClellan waiting many hours to pounce on Lee which gave the ol’ grey fox time to regroup at Sharpsburg; Union General Mansfield of XII Corps being killed as soon as his attack began; McClellan holding back the middle reserve V Corps and ineffectively using VI Corps; Confederate General A.P. Hill’s in-the-nick-of -time rescue of the CSA’s right flank after Burnside’s men finally got across the bridge).  (General Mansfield).

Afterwards, it looks as if Antietam, and not Gettysburg, could be the most important battle of the war.  This isn’t because of the staggering losses or b/c it stopped a Confederate invasion (there will be another one at Gettysburg) or because it swung momentum back to the Union side temporarily (b/c it will most definitely swing back to Lee’s side again and again).  Antietam was key b/c Lincoln released the Emancipation Proclamation four days later and changed the entire scope of the war from not only being about saving the Union but also fulfilling the promise the Founders made in the Declaration – “all men are created equal.” 

  Burnside’s bridge today.

So, pick one of the following bullets above and explain why you think a particular point might not have been so inevitable or fated to happen.  Please use specifics from video or notes or discussion or reading (all of the above is fine) and complete by Thursday, May 14.  Thanks.

 150 words minimum. 

Odd tidbit: Firefighter from Connecticut thinks he’s a reincarnation of Confederate General John B. “Shot-5X” Gordon.  http://www.psychicsahar.com/artman/publish/article_258.shtml  Excerpt below:

“Not only are the pictures of both Keene and Gordon incredibly and uncannily striking, but the fact that they both share the same six placement of scars on their bodies just adds that much more credibility to the entire story. Keene presents such compelling evidence, that one comes away with wonderment. Even parallels with their writing styles are pretty incredible!”

  Apparently it’s not only Keene that thinks he’s the reincarnation of a Civil War general; the article states that a couple other members of the same firehouse feel that they are reincarnated members of Gordon’s same unit.   Here’s Keene’s website: http://www.confederateyankee.net/  He’s been on TV a lot. 

Editor’s note: I will not criticize reincarnation, nor will I judge by the guy’s picture whether he was Gordon in a past life, but I guess the saying goes that if you believe in something hard enough…

This idea has been floating around in my head since last summer ever since I watched the HBO miniseries about John Adams John Adams (highly recommended – check it out at the link to the right!).  I had wondered how we would see/view something like the Boston Tea Party in a modern context.

Would these modern-day Sons of Liberty be seen as attractive rebels to emulate like those of the past?  Or would they be viewed as subversive radicals bent on destroying the foundation of American society?  Might it depend upon what they do?  If they killed people in their protest instead of just destroying property, then that might be a line that cannot be crossed. 

 During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s association with a former fugitive and radical student leader, William Ayers was called into question.  Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (as was his wife, another fugitive from the same radical student group called the Weather Underground), but had been a fugitive on the run for 10 years after being implicated in several bombing plots.  Ayers and his Weathermen cohorts felt that the student radicals weren’t doing enough to stop the Vietnam War, so more radical action was needed like the bombings of statues and buildings in 1969 and 1970.  After April 1970, the FBI issued a warrant for the Weathermen’s arrest, so Ayers and his future wife disappeared until 1980 when they turned themselves in.  Their cases were tossed out of court for insufficient evidence. 

 Today, Ayers teaches college students how to be teachers.  In fact, a documentary on the Weather Underground examined the lives of 6 of them and 1/2 of them are college professors.  But his connection to Barack Obama was that the president began his political career by having an informal fundraiser at the Ayers’ household.  Also, Obama and Ayers sat on a board of directors together for the Annenburg Foundation, a prestigious organization dedicated to education that also included several Republicans. 

To quote the Chicago Sun-Times:

In the mid-1990s, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted.

In addition, Ayers and Obama interacted occasionally in their roles with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a not-for-profit group charged with spending tens of millions of dollars it obtained through its affiliation with a school-improvement foundation created by late Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg. Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s board of directors. Ayers served on the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which made recommendations to the board on which organizations should get grants. The groups worked on school-reform efforts between 1995 and 2000.

Democrats first used this information about Ayers in the primaries and then the other side used it once Obama had the nomination wrapped up last summer.  They’ve used it to call Obama a “terrorist” and a Communist – it’s a typical guilt-by-association tactic.   Does it mean Obama supports the radical poitics of the Weathermen?  No.  The same goes for McCain – you can’t judge him by some of his racist supporters either. 

My thoughts: Does yesterday’s rebel equal today’s nostalgic memory?   Is it “once a terrorist, always a terrorist”?   I don’t think we can even avoid using the word “terrorist” today even if the situations are different; after 1995 and the Oklahoma City bombing, it all changed.  The federal building there was blown apart by a home grown terrorist, not by a well-funded cell from a foreign land. 

So, what if John Brown had lived after the raid on Harpers Ferry?  What if the trial had been moved to a northern city or state instead of in Virginia where the raid took place?  He might have gotten a sympathetic jury; or, what if he had escaped?! What if he was on the run for six years like Ayers until the Civil War was over, slavery was outlawed, and the Republicans were in power?  Is it possible Brown would get a lighter sentence or none at all?  Might he be considered one of the heroes of the war alongside General Grant and President Lincoln? 

 Blog question: Should JB be considered a hero / martyr to the cause of slavery or a traitor to the nation for attempting to incite a slave rebellion?  Why?  Does it make a difference that he was hoping to get slaves to fight in this rebellion to fight what he considered to be an unjust and immoral law? 

Due Thursday.  200 words minimum.

Recently, we talked about the myths surrounding the founding of slavery in America.  My questions for you are:

1. Which of these myths seem (to you) to be the most plausible or believable? 

2. Which of these myths seem to be the least plausible to you? 

Due date will be moved to Wednesday, March 25, to give you another day. 

150 words minimum.  Thanks.

P.S. – As an aside, the book I was talking about in class on Tuesday was A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner.  Here’s a link to Amazon if you’re interested.  It just came out in paperback yesterday.  http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Monstrous-Face-Face-Modern-Day/dp/0743290089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237988822&sr=1-1 

One of the things I try to do as a history teacher is to give you both sides of the issue and not just present it from one side only.  I believe that does a disservice to you and to the subject matter, and by examining both sides can push you to think more critically about that subject. 

As if you haven’t figured out, our central theme this semester is Abraham Lincoln.  He’s been called Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, and the Rail Splitter (in reference to his frontier days of chopping wood).  As Dr. Henry Louis Gates mentioned in the Today broadcast we watched yesterday, Lincoln’s picture was in almost every black American’s household along with a picture of Jesus. 

In this six minute interview, Dr. Gates gives a more human (and complex) side of Lincoln that few of us may know. Lincoln did not argue, initially, for full and equal rights for black Americans.   During the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Senator Douglas was race-baiting his opponent by calling him a “black Republican”  and asking the audience (knowing full well what the answer would be) if the men in the audience would like their daughters and wives to ride in a carriage with Frederick Douglas. 

So Lincoln had to respond to these charges and distance himself; otherwise he’d lose the race.   He said soon after this charge that he’d rather no sooner take a black woman for his wife than consider black people his equals.  Sounds racist to 21st Century ears, right?  Well, it is, no doubt.  But within the context of what was going on, America was a very white, racist nation at that time.  Dr. Gates even mentioned the Illinois law that disallowed any black people from settling in that state.        Betcha didn’t know he was a punk rocker!

Here’s Dr. Gates’ website for his documentary, Looking for Lincoln.  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/   Also, take the Myths and Misconceptions quiz and see if you can beat my score – 12/15. 

The fact that there even is a Republican Party, a group created after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which allowed for slavery to be voted on in the territories, founded on anti-slavery principles, was, in some ways, amazing.  And by 1858, the year of the debates, the anger over slavery had intensified even more after the Dred Scott decision (1857) by the Supreme Court that allowed slavery to spread from coast to coast.  Yet, still in Illinois, there was a sizable Democratic majority to elect a state senate that favored sending Stephen Douglas back to the U.S. Senate for another 6 years. 

My question is: when you learn new information about the person from history (like we are with Lincoln), warts and all, does this lessen your image of that person or does this new info give you a better picture of that historic icon?   Even if the picture isn’t a pretty one, taken within the context of the time period, the person can be better understood as to why he/she felt that way or said what they said. 

Here, visiting General McClellan in the field after the battle of Antietam, you can really get an idea of how tall he is. 

150 words minimum – Due Monday, March 16th – before class begins.

This question asks you to analyze why Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and also to consider if the abolition of slavery was inevitable. 

If you remember the 1860-61 unit, we talked about how the war was fought on either sides for reasons that, on the surface, have little to do with slavery.  The Union soldiers fought to keep the country together, for honor, for righteousness, and b/c they didn’t want to seem like cowards if they refused.  On the Confederate side, we heard Shelby Foote in the Civil War video say that one of the captured Confederates replying to the question, “why are you fighting?”  The soldier said, “because you’re down here”  which fits with what we’ve read about soldier motivation: to defend their land and their rights.  But how inevitable was the switch from fighting for the Union to ending slavery?  Do you think it would always change based upon the conflict?  Or did it change because of external pressure applied to Lincoln by radical abolitionists? 

Quote from Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” 

Some of the most radical abolitionists called for the confiscation of “enemy property.”  In fact, abolitionists were coming into favor for the first time in American history by late 1861.  Before the war, they were vilified and few could speak publicly w/o fear of being killed.  In March 1862, Wendell Phillips was given a formal introduction on the floor of the Senate.  The New York Tribune commented, “It is not often that history presents such violent contrasts in such rapid succession…The deference and respect now paid to [Phillips] by men in the highest places of the nation…” (McPherson 495).  By early 1862, many Republicans began seeing the fate of the nation intertwined w/ the fate of slavery – in essence, destroying slavery was pivotal if not downright required for the nation to fix itself.  In fact, radical Representative George Julian of Indiana stated in January 1862: “the mere suppression of the rebellion will be an empty mockery of our sufferings and sacrifices, if slavery shall be spared to canker the heart of the nation anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds” (McPherson 496) (my emphasis).

The most conservative Northerners who supported the war began to realize that their support of gradual, voluntary emancipation or colonization of Africa was becoming less and less popular. 

In the middle of the anti-slavery politicians stood those, like the President, who understood the need to deal w/ slavery but were unsure of how to deal with it.  Lincoln himself promised after the 1860 election not to touch slavery where it currently existed.  He felt that he had no power to do so as given to him by the Constitution.  However, in a very radical interpretation, he felt that under the War Powers clause of the Constitution he could abolish slavery in the Southern territories b/c slaves were necessary to help fight the Union.  By freeing slaves, one could imagine that the Confederate Army would need to find additional workers to dig ditches, chop down trees, rebuild bridges and rail lines, etc.  Freeing the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation would help end the war more quickly than if he didn’t free them, he reasoned.  He even gave the slaveowners a warning in March 1862: if they refused the gradual abolition of slaves, Lincoln stated that “it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin that may follow” if the war is continued (McPherson 498). 
Opposition to abolition was epitomized in the “copperheads” or Peace Democrats – groups opposed to the war in general and many were specifically against a draft to “fight to free the n****r” (McPherson 493).  Many of these men arrested in draft riots, like the horrible one in New York City (seen at the end of the film, Gangs of New York), were Democrats and also sometimes new immigrants to the country -German and Irish. 

Most Union soldiers fought to end treason and to keep the country together.  Some Union commanders freed the slaves under their control like Ben Butler in New Orleans.  Lincoln, hoping not to scare away the border states, ordered that these freedmen be re-enslaved (or countermanded the general’s orders – however you wish to interpret it).  However, those Unionists in the border states were aware of the changing sentiment throughout the North.  Congress passed a law in the spring of 1862 allowing captured slaves to be freed by the commanding general.  But, as the human toll in the war increased dramatically, more and more soldiers and their families at home began to question why we were fighting this war. 

After reading all of this, do you think emancipation was inevitable?  Or were there forces at work trying to keep slavery in place and just bring the nation back together?  Is it a given thing that slavery had to be eradicated?  Why or why not? 

Due Wednesday, May 14. 

Also, as an aside, check out http://www.askusnow.org/ - this is something new in Maryland that provides librarian assistance to anyone who asks for it.  It’s kinda like having a trained Google helper online to assist you w/ your research. 

Sources:

Frederick Douglass bumper sticker: http://rdr.zazzle.com/img/imt-prd/pd-128064875482487184/isz-m/tl-Frederick+Douglass+on+Rebellion.jpg

Frederick Douglass quote: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/frederick_douglass/3.html

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom.  Ballantine Books.  New York, NY: 1988.

Wendell Phillips monument picture: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1101/1363050600_4cda0db97d.jpg?v=0

This will be an issue that comes up now and again as we get farther and farther away from Jim Crow, but the issue of reparations (think $$ or some kind of compensation for damages done to an individual or group) for African Americans has been coming up again and again for the past ten years or so.   Here is an article from DiversityInc – http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3308.cfm?gclid=CICe-_jawZICFQLylgodLDD1cg about the recent decision by the state of Florida to apologize for slavery. 

“The Florida State Legislature passed a resolution Wednesday that expressed “profound regret” for the state’s role “in sanctioning and perpetuating involuntary servitude upon generations of African slaves,” prompting the state’s governor to say it might be time for reparations. Florida has paid reparations in the past when it allocated $2.1 million to the surviving victims of the Rosewood massacre of 1923, when white mobs attacked and killed many Black residents, reports The New York Times.   Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, following the resolution’s passage, said it might be time to investigate whether the state should pursue further reparations for slavery, a comment few politicians are willing to make.  Florida Governor Charlie Crist

“All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing,” Crist told the Times, quoting philosopher Edmund Burke. “I think we are reminded of that today because it takes courage to do the right thing, and it’s not always easy.” 

Black leaders in Florida said they hoped the state’s resolution would influence the U.S. Congress to offer an apology for the nation’s involvement in slavery. At the very least, Florida’s resolution is a great way for the state to begin to heal slavery’s wounds, said State Democratic sen. Tony Hill. “We’ve passed a lot of resolutions up here, a lot of powerful resolutions, but today it was done from a historian perspective,” Hill said to NBC 12, a local news station. “I think we took another step in Florida in the area of reconciliation. This is a great opportunity for the House and the Senate to say I’m sorry back in the 1800s.” The resolution was passed unanimously by Florida’s House and Senate. Florida becomes the sixth state to make a formal apology for slavery, following North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, which apologized for slavery in January. Florida has state slavery laws that date back to 1822. Florida, which became a state in 1845, seceded from the Union to join slave-holding states of the Confederacy in 1861. But The New York Times notes that the state’s slavery roots stretch further back to the settlement of St. Augustine in 1565 when Africans were used as slave labor on the state’s cattle ranches and sugar-cane plantations. 

“From 1845 to 1860, it was one of the fastest-growing slave states in the union,” author Larry E. Rivers, who wrote Slavery in Florida, told The New York Times. “When things were slowing down in Virginia and still going in South Carolina and North Carolina, slavery in Florida was growing in leaps and bounds.” Florida’s resolution admonishes the state for authorizing “African slavery in one of its most brutal and dehumanizing forms.” It also reveals the cruelty of the time, noting that laws then declared that a “slave duly convicted of robbery … or burglary shall suffer death or have his or her ears nailed to posts and there stand for one hour and receive 30 lashes on his or her bare back at the discretion of the court.” And it noted that freed slaves “were denied the right to vote and in later years were, by law, so repressed, restricted and harassed that by 1850 most had been driven from Florida,” reports CNN. “

150 years later, does an apology matter?  It seems that for millions of people, it does.  6 states already have apologized, when will the other slave holding states follow their lead?  I wonder if South Carolina will be the last former slave state to do so. 

My question for you is this: should America consider reparations for slavery?  If yes, what form should they take?  College and business loans, more funding for poor urban schools,  better housing, or straight-out cash?  If not, why shouldn’t reparations be considered?  How might we make America a more “perfect union” like Senator Obama said in his speech last month if we don’t address the wide economic gap between white and black instead of reparations?  How would we pay for reparations?  Who would get them? 

You’ve read the article, “The War that Won’t Go Away.”   People are fighting over what the war means – was it fought over slavery or states’ rights?   Many people see the rebel flag as a symbol of  oppression and resistantce to slavery.  Others see the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage and ancestry.  They defend the flag by saying that the rebel flag never flew over a slave ship. 

You’ve also seen Jefferson’s Blood and the different attitudes over race and identity.  The video brings up excellent questions about how do you know you’re white or black.  “Our society forces you to choose an identity and you have to align yourself with a culture.” 

We see the current mayor talking about a lynch mob mentality and dropping the “N-bomb” in an important speech.  Even at our own school, people are caught between “acting white” and “acting black”. 

My question for you: Do you think all of this racial confusion be traced back not only to the Civil War but to slavery itself and the founding of the country itself?  Why?  If not, why is America so obsessed with race while other countries don’t have a problem with it? 

Your answer should be a minimum of 200 words.  Due by Wednesday, 3/19/08. 

Something else to think about: excerpts from Senator Obama’s speech today on race and how it has divided not only the Democratic campaign but the country as well. 

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy.

Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. 

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States…

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.

And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.

But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination — where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments — meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.

That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families — a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened…

But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed.

Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news.

And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods — parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement — all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us…

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.

This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st Century economy. Not this time….

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/18/obama.transcript/index.html  – Full transcript available here.