US Civil War

So what can I / should I do with that information? Give everything I own to a black family and live in poverty? Vandalize the graves of my ancestors for being assholes?

You and I can't fix American history and its consequences.

I don't feel much more personal obligation than to not be a racist. Contributions to black scholarship funds are good too. If you have a better idea, I'm listening.

The Democratic Party seems to support racial equality about as much as it can, and I support that.

 

No - that's not what I said. So I shan't attempt to defend that position, because it is not the position I articulated.

 

Maybe I misunderstand you, but that's what you said. To me that seems to say that to place a value judgement is not the right response.

 

If you take parts of my post in isolation and ignore the rest, then you may indeed end up misunderstanding me. I also said this:

The historical enquiry may be necessary to ascertain the factual context out of which the moral question arises. But the question, and the discussion of it, will nevertheless be a moral question and a moral discussion, not a historial question or a historical discussion.

 

But the thing is with something like the CW there are moral questions implicit in the entire conflict. For example, you could say that the pre-war abolitionists were taking a definite moral position, and that fed the fears in the South that their beloved institution was under threat.

Obviously, before anyone can draw any kind of conclusion, the raw facts are necessary. That goes without saying.

Personally, I don't take any moral position on the CW, other than that I think slavery was a horrendous abuse. But I can see too that the South inherited slavery from the British, and that to the average southerner in the 19th c. what we today would consider to be abominable racist views, were quite normal in the context of that society. And since most people are controlled by the norms of the society in which they live, I find it hard to pass judgement.

The facts of the CW are well known. It must surely be one of the most studied wars in all history. So all that's left to us really is to try to come to some understanding of it, and those who were involved. That probably means making judgements, and having an opinion. Un-scientific as that may be.

 

I'm sure professional historians have given this a lot more thought than I have, but the opinion side of it seems more like concrete history to me, as opposed to conceptual or abstract history. Any historian who plays around with concrete facts is unethical. Debating their significance and importance is fair game for anyone.

I'll give you a simple and easy example. Let's say I'm researching where General Lee was on one particular night. I find some location clues in a local newspaper archive, go out in the woods, and dig around until I find some items left behind that night, including one with the engraved initials REL. Okay, I now know exactly where the tent was. That location is now an established fact. People can debate until the end of time what was the significance of what he did that night, but they can't debate where he was. That's concrete versus abstract.

Does anybody with a history degree know the exact terminology that is used for these two categories?

 

One more thing about ancestry, and ancestor loyalty…

I sometimes hear people say their ancestors from the Civil War period did this and that, they believed this, they supported that, etc. Do they really know what all their ancestors were up to?

Let’s say that the typical American family has reproduced a new generation about every 20 years, on average. I think that’s a reasonable guess. It might be a little low for generations born after 1950, but a little high for the nineteenth century. For someone born in 1965, they would be the fifth generation since 1860. Here are the numbers of direct ancestors they have in each generation, counting backwards:

1 - 1 (yourself)
2 - 2 people
3 - 4
4 - 8
5 - 16

But in 1860, most of that generation’s parents and grandparents were still alive, so that’s two more:

6 - 32
7 - 64

Add up generations 5 through 7, and that’s 112 people in your family tree who could have been alive during the CW, not counting anyone’s siblings, aunts, uncles, stepfathers, etc. And if your parents were born around 1965, you have to look back eight generations, so you could have as many as 224 direct ancestors who were alive then! I don’t think many people have done enough research to find out what all those people were up to, or where they were, or what their views might have been.

I know for sure I have some family from northern Virginia, so it’s possible some could have been living north of the Potomac River. Which side of the war were they on? Did they all truly believe in the cause of their side? I’ll never know, but it seems unlikely. A group of 112 people rarely agrees on anything. I can’t be loyal to all of them, if they had differing views.

Going back so far, how many of us can even be sure about the racial identities of all our ancestors? If I had one black ancestor out of 224 in my DNA line, my skin wouldn’t be any darker because of it.

Trace back to 1776, and you’re talking thousands of people.

Anyway, that’s why I think the whole “loyalty to ancestors” line of thinking is kind of bogus, for most Americans who aren’t recent immigrants.

 

You're right

Hmmm, I'm always skeptical about this kind of thing, what is drummed into people stays there and is immutable, especially when it involves money.

This:

Sounds a lot more like it. Buying a slave at the time, what percentage of the average wage did that represent?, how many would have even been able to afford it. Im sure there where a sizeable portion of the population barely survivng or just on the poverty line that saw those plantations, didnt see any of the mistreatment of the slaves, and in part resented those slaves for having it easier than they did. Not saying the slaves did, but from the outside might have looked so.

Or, sounds very clinical, but even if regarded as property, those not in that 1% out of fear wouldnt have thought to damage the property of that 1% with the wealth and power.

Money is going to come before racism, or every other rule twisted if it becomes about too much money

Anyway, congrads on one of the most interesting threads ever on HF

 

But each generation is taught different things, and has different experiences. I don't personally know any white people close to my age who are racists (openly), but most tell me that their grandparents were racists. In young children around here, especially the ones that go to public school, I see no signs of racist thinking at all. Maybe it will end with them.

Most slaves were seen as business assets, like a farm tractor. Their market value was determined by the amount of work they could do. The richest people could only afford a small number of household slaves who did not earn a profit for their business. A successful store owner in town might have two or three at home, usually older females, who had very low resale value, but still had to be housed and fed. At least 95% of all Southern slaves worked in the fields, in large groups. From a few dozen up to a little over a hundred were housed together in simple cabins, arranged in straight rows. The conditions were crowded and uncomfortable, like a prison camp. Very few of these slave cabins have been preserved.

Maybe. They definitely didn't personally witness a lot of mistreatment going on.

Due to the indoctrination they received, I've heard a lot more said about how they thought the plantation owners were doing a good, Christian thing by supervising a race of people who were mentally unable to care for themselves. They saw (erroneous) parallels to dogs and farm animals. You don't do a cow any favors by giving it "freedom". It can't live in the woods for long.

It's impossible for any group of illiterate prisoners to impress anyone with their intellect, so the lie lived on.

The world is so different now. The modern business world hates racism, because it costs them money whenever a job isn't filled with the most qualified individual, at the current market rate. They also want all potential customers to have equal access, for strictly financial reasons.

Thank you for saying that! I think the story is naturally interesting, and I truly believe that nobody can thoroughly understand America without knowing something about the Civil War, because it changed us and shaped us in ways that will last for hundreds of years, if not longer.

 

Yes, this is one of the best threads I've seen on here in many years. I have really enjoyed it, and learned quite a bit about a pet subject of mine. Also made one or two friends here.

And I think you're right - one can't arrive at any kind of understanding of America or American history without looking at the CW. In fact, as I've proposed in earlier posts, it's necessary to have some understanding of the war and it's consequences to arrive at an adequate view of the history of western civilization over the last 160 odd years. If things had turned out differently, the entire course of subsequent world history would have been quite different.

I'd just like to say that to be a slave must be one of the very worst stations in all of human life. But we have also to recognize that our sensibilities are very different from those of the 19th c. (Even the 20th c nowadays; thankfully so).

I argued earlier that the lot of the slave on a plantation was not that much worse than the lot of a Manchester mill worker during the same period. In some respects - eg. nutrition, life expectancy, it may have been better.
But of course I am not trying to excuse the gross abuse that was slavery. I just think it's important that we get it into context. Probably more so for Americans than we outsiders.

 

Surely one of the worst things for anyone to live without is hope for the future. If you're a slave for life, you know that nothing can ever get better for you.

 

What does that mean, exactly??

I'm a simple soul, and I try to understand things at a simple level.

Industry don't put no food on the table. Information technology don't put no food on the table. Agriculture does.

When industry, and information, sneers at agriculture, and tries to patronise it, and call it things like "first wave" as against the industrial "second wave" and the information "third wave" - with the implicit unstated assertion that industry is superior to agriculture, and information is superior to industry, then we're heading for trouble.

Industry is useless if nobody has any food. Information likewise. Agriculture is the foundation stone on which the rest of society depends, has always depended, and will always depend. When a society stops valuing the contribution of agriculture, it is heading for trouble.

 

Job security ... no fear of the workhouse.

I've been tracing my family roots recently; and whilst I do not seek in any way to defend the institution of slavery, I think that there is much in what you say. In the mid to late 19th century, the agrarian revolution compounded by the industrial revolution left vast numbers of labourers at the bottom of British society desperate for a means to earn a living and support their children. It wasn't a pretty sight, by any means.

 

Toffler wasn't speaking in terms of manufacturing vs agirculture, or technology vs agriculture. He was talking about how society is structured around the traditional farmers, landholders, and herders in a 1st Wave society. In a second wave society, the social structure---or socio-economic structures to be more exact----are centered around the machine and the factory. He includes examples of offices, schools, and even orchestras that are structured just as a machine is, around a central control, and each part providing its key contribution. Monsanto and its control over GMO crops is an example of how 2nd Wave socio-economic structures are shaping agriculture today. The problem between the Industrialized West and the traditional Group-centered cultures of the Middle East (and the jihad) is an example of a 1st Wave vs. 2nd Wave clash.

Socio-economic structures in the 3rd Wave will be heavily structured and influenced by the internet and modern technology. But agriculture is still the same key to our success because we all still have to eat.

 

I'm still not convinced that Northern industrialists cared much what the South was doing, or that they benefited in any significant financial way from fighting or winning a war with the South. No large defense contractors existed at that time. Northern factory owners didn't want any competition from the South, but wanted to sell manufactured products to them. A defeated and impoverished South could not buy anything from the North. Industrial production didn't expand in any significant way into the South until sometime around 1920, depending on location.

I also don't see any evidence that plantation owners cared what Northern industrialists were doing, as long as they were left alone to grow and export huge quantities of cotton at a profit. Everybody lost something in the war.

Probably, a national meeting of business leaders before the war could have formed a consensus to leave everything as it was.

A huge deal-breaker, when dealing with those who have a different view.

A clash between the first wave and the third wave, with the second wave no longer being relevant to the conversation. Interesting way to look at it. Maybe true.

 

While they may pine in some ways for an old agriculturalist zeitgeist---I wouldn't kid myself. Those Tea Party types, the GOP and even the religious right are 2nd Wave industrialists to the core. Or, to be more exact, they are led by 2nd wave industrialists. It all represents a clear reaction to shifts into a 3rd Wave society, even down to the anti-immigration sentiment which Toffler said would be an issue. They are trying to protect what they see as traditional, which is still a machine-based, or factory-based structure, with centralized control.

Even as they fight to dismantle the Fed and seek less government control, what it really boils down to is less control over those industrial leaders in power so that they may exercise their own power more freely.