What Ulysses S. Grant would tell Trump about Robert E. Lee

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Eireann

Another look at the current magnifying glass on Lee, this one citing the quote I most often go to when discussing the topic.

I do have one bone to pick with the author, though – Grant’s actions do indicate that he had an abolitionist streak. His father in law was a wealthy slaveowner, and gifted Grant and Julia a slave when they married. At his lowest point, when he was broke and unable to make ends meet, he manumitted the slave, when an adult male would have brought in enough money on the open market to make Grant’s money woes disappear. Yet another facet with which to compare and contrast Lee’s mistreatment of Arlington’s slave population!

We already have a better way to look at Robert E. Lee. Not an angry way, but a just one.

In his memoir, Ulysses S. Grant, a general greater than Lee, described his feelings upon meeting Lee in April 1865 at Appomattox, as Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia. Grant wrote, “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

In one sentence, Grant manages to distinguish between Lee’s qualities as a general and the terrible cause — the destruction of the United States for the benefit of slavery — to which Lee put his talents.

Source: What Ulysses S. Grant would tell Trump about Robert E. Lee – The Washington Post

Ben Butler Play

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Eireann

Milwaukee residents, take note! There’s a play running through April 28th about the wily Benjamin F Butler, Union general and all-around rapscallion.

What if General Butler was a bundle of contradictions: a military commander with no real experience, a brash and bellowing man who was also plagued with self-doubt and a lack of confidence? What if Butler’s decision to grant runaway slaves asylum was influenced heavily by conversations with one of the black petitioners, who was secretly taught to read and had an uncanny grasp on legal issues? What if the landmark decision to define slaves as contraband – property seized from the enemy during wartime – wasn’t the calculated wranglings of an experienced trial lawyer, but instead an accidental discovery in the midst of a heated argument? What if General Butler had serious misgivings about the impact his decision would have on his own military and political career, not to mention the rest of the war effort? What if Butler’s acts were heroic, in spite of himself?

Far from a Wikipedia entry bogged down with facts, and very far from a historical recreation of the moment, “Ben Butler” takes these questions and turns the story into a farce, pumping up the ridiculous personalities and foibles of all the participants, who are accidentally involved in an enormously important historical moment. The result is a sitcom in period costumes, re-imagining characters with exaggerated mannerisms but with dilemmas and speech patterns that sound very contemporary.

https://onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/ben-butler-review.html

Our Native Daughters

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Eireann

I noticed this story on the Smithsonian page today, and clicked kind of idly. A few seconds into the first linked video, I was hooked. Rhiannon Giddens and some of her fellow black women banjo players have created a moving and haunting CD of music inspired by and based on slave tunes. It really is astonishing and worth a click. I encourage you to take a listen!

Giddens—a native of North Carolina and the lead singer and a founding member of the GRAMMY award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops—researched the songs and haunting narratives of enslaved Africans. Native Daughters is a collaboration with three other African-American songwriters whose work interrogates history and, as Giddens writes in the album notes, shines “new light” on stories of “struggle, resistence and hope.”

“Rhiannon had brought in this handwritten music from the 1700s, the first slave melody ever annotated in the New World, and we started working on it, adding chords to it,” Powell says. “She was very close to the mic, and her voice was so unselfconscious and unassuming, her intention so pure, and things got very intense emotionally. We just had to keep it.”

Hidden History

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Eireann

A brief, but interesting, history of Fort Monroe. Landing site for the first black slaves in America, and site of the “Doctrine” that started Emancipation down its track.

Ellis Island, New York, was the gateway to freedom for millions of European immigrants. They fled poverty and oppression, for a chance to achieve the American Dream.

Well, one noted historian says there was another Ellis Island, for African Americans.

Source: Hidden History: Army Post Played Major Role in Civil War, Offered Freedom to Slaves

Testimony of Wesley Norris

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Eireann

There was a Reddit discussion about Robert E. Lee, whose birthday was celebrated by some yesterday. While I have the utmost respect for Lee as a military commander, and I have no doubt he’d have been an admirable man to work with or for, I cringe when I see people defending his choice to go with Virginia.

There’s a lot of mythology about the fact that Lee “didn’t like slavery” and that his entire motive lay in “defending his country”, but I finid those arguments as specious as the ones used to defend Thomas Jefferson. In short, both men were well heeled Virginians who made full use of their slaves to better their own lives while at best doing nothing to help their “property”, and at worst doing some pretty horrific things to another human being.

Here’s a first-person account by one of Lee’s slaves over the punishment Lee administered to him after he tried to run away.

We were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.

Source: Testimony of Wesley Norris. In NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD (1866-04-14)

Utah’s state constitution bans slavery — mostly

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Eireann

So it turns out Utah’s constitution still allows for slavery, “Except as a punishment for a crime.” This legal loophole was explored in great depth in the excellent Douglas Blackmon book, Slavery By Another Name. (The book was the basis of a PBS documentary, too.) A hundred and fifty plus years after the war ended, it’s amazing to note how slavery’s tendrils are still wound around American laws.

After the Civil War, former slave states leapt to take advantage of the exception carved out by the 13th Amendment, the ACLU of Colorado explained last year in its case for amending the state constitution. African Americans were imprisoned and forced to labor in convict leasing programs that pumped money into the state coffers; more than 70 percent of Alabama’s revenue came from the practice in 1898, the ACLU reported.

Source: Utah’s state constitution bans slavery — mostly. And Rep. Sandra Hollins says mostly isn’t good enough. – The Salt Lake Tribune

Nat Turner’s Skull

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Eireann

Nat Turner’s skull has been found, and with it comes a series of articles about the history of human body part smuggling and preservation. It’s all a bit gruesome, but particularly when you consider this fact:

Amrita Myers, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, said the story of Turner’s skull is peculiar because there isn’t historical precedent of African-American body parts being passed down during slavery.

“Black men and women being used in that fashion was a very common phenomenon after the (Civil) War during the rise of lynching, but I’ve been a slavery scholar for the better part of two decades, and I’ve never heard of black men and women body parts under slavery being used for sale or for relics,” Myers said.

The implication being that the keeping of black body parts as trophies has emerged since Reconstruction. Says a lot about the post-bellum society.
Source: Skull thought to be Nat Turner’s, now in possession of former Gary mayor, to be returned to descendants – Post-Tribune

Slavery by Another Name

Posted on August 8, 2015 by Eireann

A few updates while I have Internet access!

While coming well into the post-war era, this documentary (based on the book
by Douglas Blackman) shows how poor people – mainly blacks – in the South were reenslaved by means of sneaky laws and sneakier lawmakers. Heartbreaking, but an important piece of history.

Watch The Film | Slavery by Another Name | PBS.

The Atlantic slave trade

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Eireann

A 5 minute TED Talk that looks at the Atlantic slave trade from the African side of things. Interesting both in why it developed and its lasting consequences.

The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you – Anthony Hazard | TED-Ed.

When the South Wasn’t a Fan of States’ Rights

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Eireann

The more I read about the war’s origins, the more I dislike the slaveocrats. The Lost Cause tradition has swathed the discussion in the States’ Rights argument, but even a scratch on its surface reveals the ugly truth beneath. Eric Foner agrees in this article for Politico.

Whenever I lecture to non-academic audiences about the Civil War era, someone is bound to insist that the South fought for states’ rights rather than the long-term survival of slavery. In an extreme version of this view, Abraham Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator but a tyrant, the creator of the leviathan national state that essentially enslaved white Americans. This reading of the conflict is why a remarkable number of libertarians, self-proclaimed defenders of individual freedom, sympathize with the Old South, and why some even make excuses for slavery.

But this history omits one important part of antebellum history: When it came to enforcing and maintaining the peculiar institution against an increasingly anti-slavery North, the Old South was all too happy to forget its fear of federal power—a little-remembered fact in our modern retellings of the conflict.

When the South Wasn’t a Fan of States’ Rights – Eric Foner – POLITICO Magazine.

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