In fact the more I think about it the less apt the emphasis on treason becomes. The whole argument for removing the statues is that treason is not really the point.
The "traditional" post-Civil-War "settlement" is based on the idea that treason is the primary crime here, that the North has magnanimously agreed to largely pardon this because they understand how Southerners could have seen this differently, fighting mistakenly but honourably for what they saw as their rights. And if the North is prepared to do this, then why should they not?
Whereas the argument is now no, the primary problem is not and never has been treason but slavery and racial oppression, and that this is a historical and ongoing crime for which the North has no right to pardon the South, and that Lee's statue as a symbol of this must be removed. Dragging treason into it would appear to muddy the waters.
Thank you, with your posts you've nailed my problem with Croesos' line of argument.
Meanwhile, if you want to hear how monuments can go really horribly wrong, you could spend your day doing what I'm doing: learning about Spain's Valley of the Fallen.
Russ: The need in the aftermath is for reconciliation, for the winners to be magnanimous to the losers in order to go forward as a united country.
Isn't that the problem? The North and South were reconciled by calling a halt to reconstruction and the institution of segregation.
The business of turning a defeated foe into an ally isn't easy. Whether it's the de-Nazification of Germany, rebuilding Iraq post-Sadaam, or transitioning the Southern US from a slave economy. I don't know how much better these could have been done. But I know the attempt is worthwhile. And that it is an act of separating the sin from the sinner. And that Croesus' attitude isn't the way to do it.
Russ: The business of turning a defeated foe into an ally isn't easy. Whether it's the de-Nazification of Germany, rebuilding Iraq post-Sadaam, or transitioning the Southern US from a slave economy. I don't know how much better these could have been done. But I know the attempt is worthwhile. And that it is an act of separating the sin from the sinner. And that Croesus' attitude isn't the way to do it.
Russ, I very much welcome your contributions to Purgatory because you challenge what are frequently lazy liberal contributions from those like myself, and persist against almost unanimous opposition. Your most recent contribution, quoted above, however, really is a load of tripe. Reconstruction bore no relationship to the De-Nazification of Germany, post-1945, when there was a root and branch reorganisation of the German political system, not to mention the division of the state between East and West, in which there was no attempt to prevaricate with the structures and racism of the Hitler regime. Similarly, there was no temporising with the remnants of Sadaam Hussein's regime, which many considered a mistake, and replaced Sunni with pro-Iranian Shiite rulers. (Incidentally, Hussein had been one of 'our' sonsovbitches against the Iranians before messing up over Kuwait). The aftermath of the US civil war was hardly an example of turning a defeated foe into an ally, but of the defeated foe ensuring by violence that black emancipation was narrowly restricted to the ending of slavery, nothing more. Rather the defeated foe turned its northern nemesis into a complicit ally, assuming it required conversion respecting race. Had the allies told the German Nazis post-1945 they could continue to rule and discriminate against Jews provided they agreed not to invade their neighbours you might have had a point.
Well Cromwell is a good example of someone whose reputation has gone up and down several times according to the spirit of the age. I believe at the Restoration they dug his dead body up just so that they could hang him as a traitor and regicide, which makes current proposals about statuary seem rather pale in comparison.
Russ: The business of turning a defeated foe into an ally isn't easy. Whether it's the de-Nazification of Germany, rebuilding Iraq post-Sadaam, or transitioning the Southern US from a slave economy. I don't know how much better these could have been done. But I know the attempt is worthwhile. And that it is an act of separating the sin from the sinner. And that Croesus' attitude isn't the way to do it.
Russ, I very much welcome your contributions to Purgatory because you challenge what are frequently lazy liberal contributions from those like myself, and persist against almost unanimous opposition. Your most recent contribution, quoted above, however, really is a load of tripe. Reconstruction bore no relationship to the De-Nazification of Germany, post-1945, when there was a root and branch reorganisation of the German political system, not to mention the division of the state between East and West, in which there was no attempt to prevaricate with the structures and racism of the Hitler regime. Similarly, there was no temporising with the remnants of Sadaam Hussein's regime, which many considered a mistake, and replaced Sunni with pro-Iranian Shiite rulers. (Incidentally, Hussein had been one of 'our' sonsovbitches against the Iranians before messing up over Kuwait). The aftermath of the US civil war was hardly an example of turning a defeated foe into an ally, but of the defeated foe ensuring by violence that black emancipation was narrowly restricted to the ending of slavery, nothing more. Rather the defeated foe turned its northern nemesis into a complicit ally, assuming it required conversion respecting race. Had the allies told the German Nazis post-1945 they could continue to rule and discriminate against Jews provided they agreed not to invade their neighbours you might have had a point.
For once, and this is unusual - I'm not usually - I'm with @Russ's on this. He/she has got a point. They're nothing like identical but there are similarities. At the end of a war, it's the winner's choice. The loser is in no position to do anything other than lose. You can squash your enemy as hard as you can - in which case either they're all dead or those that aren't will remain your enemy for ever. They'll be waiting for the chance for revenge. When they get it, they will take it. That is what happened in 1918. Or, you can try to make some sort of peace where you can still live alongside and work with the losers. That will require magnanimity, compromise and allowing them to retrieve some sort of self-respect. It's also almost bound to involve making concessions that other people will castigate generations later.
Some element of the latter is just about essential with a civil war. Unless you've exterminated the losers (i.e. genocide, not well thought of these days), you're going to have to live with them alongside you.
Post 1945 Germany is different from the post Civil War US in that there were two Germanys. Both were under some sort of foreign supervision initially. The two bits dealt with this differently, both leaving behind an undertow though a different one, that's still to be addressed. I don't agree with everything she has said. I think she's too indulgent towards the former East Germany. But Susan Neiman has written very interestingly on this.
We're now 165 years from the end of the US Civil War but only 75 years from 1945. What I think @Kwesi you're probably accusing the US record of is less what happened in the immediate aftermath of the war and more what the several generations since have failed to do. With all the other things happening in US history, the drive west, industrialisation, two World Wars, becoming a Great Power, collectively from the late nineteenth century the country took its eye off the ball.
Reconstruction lasted just 12 years, and then the Northern states abandoned the project of bringing formerly enslaved people into the body politic. They allowed the South to enact Jim Crow laws that made Black people all but enslaved all over again. The US didn't take its eye off the ball - the US collectively didn't give a shit about Black people.
In fact the more I think about it the less apt the emphasis on treason becomes. The whole argument for removing the statues is that treason is not really the point.
The "traditional" post-Civil-War "settlement" is based on the idea that treason is the primary crime here, that the North has magnanimously agreed to largely pardon this because they understand how Southerners could have seen this differently, fighting mistakenly but honourably for what they saw as their rights. And if the North is prepared to do this, then why should they not?
Whereas the argument is now no, the primary problem is not and never has been treason but slavery and racial oppression, and that this is a historical and ongoing crime for which the North has no right to pardon the South, and that Lee's statue as a symbol of this must be removed. Dragging treason into it would appear to muddy the waters.
No ... Taking up arms against The United States was a central part of the picture ... "Slavery" was firmly ensconced in The Constitution and was part of the reason for the treason ... And "Federal-ism" was and remains to this day a political tension in the USA ... But The American Civil War was not a moral crusade initiated by "The North" to "free the slaves" ...
Reconstruction lasted just 12 years, and then the Northern states abandoned the project of bringing formerly enslaved people into the body politic. They allowed the South to enact Jim Crow laws that made Black people all but enslaved all over again. The US didn't take its eye off the ball - the US collectively didn't give a shit about Black people.
I would have phrased it differently. The fate and fortunes of Black people were deemed as something worthy of addressing, but not if it interfered with really important stuff, such
as tidying up an untidy election. It was a subject considered appropriate for slightly eccentric do-gooders (such as the funders of the historically Black colleges or people like Saint Katharine Drexel) but never really important enough for serious political work.. When it came to civic and civil service reform, it was always interesting how Blacks and their ability to have influence seemed to become the losers. And when it comes to the funding of schools, how the future of Black Americans became a secondary issue. There's always something more important/ sexy/ useful for one's career (don't worry-- Canadians have their own version of this).
From the beginning there's been a disconnect between the opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the reality on the ground; some people liked it that way, and some people (admirable, in my view) didn't. Most don't seem too bothered about it either way, or at least not to take steps to increase education funding, supervise police effectively, etc etc.
Like the Canadian othering and marginalizing of the First Peoples, on poorly-lit days I sometimes wonder if the marginalization of Black futures is not integral to how the US operates.
Reconstruction lasted just 12 years, and then the Northern states abandoned the project of bringing formerly enslaved people into the body politic. They allowed the South to enact Jim Crow laws that made Black people all but enslaved all over again. The US didn't take its eye off the ball - the US collectively didn't give a shit about Black people.
I would have phrased it differently. The fate and fortunes of Black people were deemed as something worthy of addressing, but not if it interfered with really important stuff, such
as tidying up an untidy election. It was a subject considered appropriate for slightly eccentric do-gooders (such as the funders of the historically Black colleges or people like Saint Katharine Drexel) but never really important enough for serious political work.. When it came to civic and civil service reform, it was always interesting how Blacks and their ability to have influence seemed to become the losers. And when it comes to the funding of schools, how the future of Black Americans became a secondary issue. There's always something more important/ sexy/ useful for one's career (don't worry-- Canadians have their own version of this).
From the beginning there's been a disconnect between the opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the reality on the ground; some people liked it that way, and some people (admirable, in my view) didn't. Most don't seem too bothered about it either way, or at least not to take steps to increase education funding, supervise police effectively, etc etc.
Like the Canadian othering and marginalizing of the First Peoples, on poorly-lit days I sometimes wonder if the marginalization of Black futures is not integral to how the US operates.
Meanwhile ... on the ground ... Minnesota is a very ethnically diverse state -- lots of recent immigrants from Latin America, Africa (Liberia, Somalia, Nigeria), and Asia ... and at the same time (Liberal, Democrat) Minneapolis, Minnesota is one of the most racially segregated major cities in America (despite being the home territory of Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone, et al.) ...
The @Russ / @Enoch position reminds me a lot of the various religious institutions* that have recently been caught harboring sex criminals. They all love pushing reconciliation and redemption, and why not? Everyone loves reconciliation and redemption. They love it so much that they're willing to pass right over any kind efforts at repentance by the wrongdoers or reparations for the victims. Those things are hard work and can make people uncomfortable, so it's easier to just skip over those and get to the happy, feel-good stuff. This leads to a lot of uncomfortable scenes, like the public shaming and shunning of victims if they don't feel like going along with the program and forgiving their abusers.
I should note that in the wake of the Confederate Rebellion the only person the U.S. executed for his connection to the Confederacy was Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant who was the commandant of Camp Sumter, sometimes better known as "Andersonville". This bears a marked contrast to de-Nazification. I just think it's a little precious to argue that the better alternative to giving Hermann Göring a death sentence was putting up a statue to him in the German Parliament.
The American Civil War was not a moral crusade initiated by "The North" to "free the slaves" ...
Indeed not. It was an immoral crusade initiated by the southern states to preserve slavery in perpetuity. A lot of subsequent trouble in the U.S. has its root in trying to elide or conceal this fact.
*A lot of non-religious institutions have also been caught harboring predators, but they're less interested in the redemption of the offenders and more interested in getting rid of them and pretending the whole thing never happened.
We're now 165 years from the end of the US Civil War
Interesting fact (albeit one that adds nothing to the discussion): the last person to draw an American Civil War-related pension died in June this year.
The fate and fortunes of Black people were deemed as something worthy of addressing, but not if it interfered with really important stuff, such
as tidying up an untidy election. It was a subject considered appropriate for slightly eccentric do-gooders (such as the funders of the historically Black colleges or people like Saint Katharine Drexel) but never really important enough for serious political work..
This bears no resemblance to the Reconstruction that I've read about, in which the Constitution was amended, state legislatures were dissolved, the Civil Rights Act was passed over a presidential veto, and the first Klan was put down. In the end it failed, but it was certainly serious political work.
My understanding is that for the next thirty years Democratic Presidents, starting with Andrew Johnson, did nothing about it, while Republican Presidents did generally make an attempt.
My understanding is that for the next thirty years Democratic Presidents, starting with Andrew Johnson, did nothing about it, while Republican Presidents did generally make an attempt.
Technically speaking Andrew Johnson was a member of the "National Union" party when elected vice president in 1864. This party was an attempt to bring Democratic loyalists into the Republican coalition. It was only marginally successful.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
The fate and fortunes of Black people were deemed as something worthy of addressing, but not if it interfered with really important stuff, such
as tidying up an untidy election. It was a subject considered appropriate for slightly eccentric do-gooders (such as the funders of the historically Black colleges or people like Saint Katharine Drexel) but never really important enough for serious political work..
This bears no resemblance to the Reconstruction that I've read about, in which the Constitution was amended, state legislatures were dissolved, the Civil Rights Act was passed over a presidential veto, and the first Klan was put down. In the end it failed, but it was certainly serious political work.
I should have been much clearer--- I was primarily thinking of the post-Reconstruction period.
That's the the thing about Reconstruction, it showed so much promise, but failed. What it needed to accomplish required total unity among its backers and anything less that that would see it fail. The Redeemers knew this and duly took advantage of the first ripe opportunity that presented itself, that being the Election of 1876.
The other thing is that the rise of Jim Crow wasn't immediate. Tge Redeemers didn't complete their usurpation of the South's political system until 1908. The swan song of Reconstruction was the North Carolina Populist/Fusion Party of 1896.
The paradox of Recobstruction was that it lasted long enough to show how the United States could act if it wanted to, but was short enough to have failed and left so many broken promises.
It wasn't complete in a legal sense until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964/65, which actually re-enacted parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to a significant extent.
Ruth: Reconstruction didn't fail. It was abandoned.
Yup.
I've recently read Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant which describes the unwillingness of the Congress, particularly, to sustain reconstruction, especially when there was a white pushback of intimidation and murder. Grant is presented as one of the few politicians to back the policy.
That was its failure. It failed to achieve its goals and its political base dissipated or was disenfranchised. Ut failed to maintain its coherence and unity.
I define failure as a failure to achieve the movements stated political goals, which includes protecting promising legislation (the Civil Rights Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Amendments) from legislative rollbacks and judicial undermining.
I'm not neutral here. I can drive you around to a number of British Methodist Episcopal churches in Ontario, all of which were founded by refugee slaves. 15000-30000 Canadians served in the US Civil War.
Including the guy who wrote the music for Oh Canada. He basically lived in the US for the rest of his life following the war, including during the period when he penned our anthem.
Little known fact: Canadians were the largest group of immigrants in the USA until the 1960's. There was so much out-migration in the 19th century that Canads was considered nearly a failure. Had we retained that population we'd now be pushing 55 million.
Little known fact: Canadians were the largest group of immigrants in the USA until the 1960's.
Makes sense. For language, culture, and geographical proximity, the USA would be the easiest fit(*), and I believe that prior to the mid-1960s, US immigration law was heavily weighted toward western countries.
(*) Well, the French in New England might have had some challenge with the language bit, but even a lot of them probably had at least a working-knowledge of English before migrating. I know my French Canadian relatives who moved to the west-coast in the 1950s were fully bilingual.
The aftermath of the US civil war was hardly an example of turning a defeated foe into an ally, but of the defeated foe ensuring by violence that black emancipation was narrowly restricted to the ending of slavery, nothing more.
The point is that having won the war it is possible to lose the peace in two opposite ways. Success is a balance between ensuring that the aims of the war are carried through and treating the defeated with the respect that permits reconciliation.
Allowing the South their heroes, and more generally allowing the defeated to see themselves as good people who fought for a good cause (and not for the evil that it was wrapped up with) is part of the process. Whilst making every effort to root out that evil.
The American Civil War was not a moral crusade initiated by "The North" to "free the slaves" ...
I suspect that at the time it was about both freeing the slaves and maintaining the Union, with different individuals giving different weight to those two aims.
What it was not about was racism in the early-twenty-first-century sense. Because they did not see things in those terms.
Painting it in that light is a revisionism which prevents the understanding of history.
The ACW was fought by the North to preserve the Union. Not to free slaves.
However, the reason that the South was trying to leave in the first place was because of the election of Lincoln, who was planning to curtail the westward expansion of slavery.
The revisionists often make it sound as if the Union simply wanted to crush the southern states because of some cold-hearted capitalist animosity to their agrarian culture, and just happened to latch onto slavery as a convenient propaganda motif to justify their actions. But that's an oversimplification: opposition to slavery was the reason Lincoln was elected, and support for it was the reason the Confederacy was formed.
And yes, there was certainly a mixture of economic and moral opposition to slavery. But that's true with almost anything. If something is inimicable to your economic interests, it's usually much easier to perceive the moral wrongness of it.
What it was not about was racism in the early-twenty-first-century sense. Because they did not see things in those terms.
John Brown and Thad Stevens seem to have been 19th Century abolitionists who regarded Blacks as fully equal to whites. And of course, on the other end, there were irredeemable racists who wanted to end slavery only because it interfered with their economic interests.
Lincoln seems to have been an example of a man who did NOT regard Blacks as equal to whites, but still had what we might call humanitarian objections to slavery, eg. his rhetoric about "the bondsman's lash" seems to focus on the violent horrors associated the slave-labour.
And that position was probably not an uncommon one in the 19th Century. Even today, most of us can probably think of categories of people(eg. convicted criminals) whom we don't think should have full equality, but whom we would not want to see tortured or enslaved.
Russ: Allowing the South their heroes, and more generally allowing the defeated to see themselves as good people who fought for a good cause (and not for the evil that it was wrapped up with) is part of the process. Whilst making every effort to root out that evil.
The problem, Russ, is that this thesis is a-historical and bears no relationship to the political circumstances in which reconstruction was frustrated. Rather it fits into a racist interpretation of the civil war and its aftermath, in which the conflict was an unfortunate misunderstanding between a society benignly nurtured by cultured southern gentlemen and their more independently minded brothers to the north, exacerbated by morally and intellectually inferior niggers acting above their natural station. It's all there in the immensely popular film Birth of a Nation. "Allowing the South their heroes, and more generally allowing the defeated to see themselves as good people who fought for a good cause," was a tragedy confirmed by the "strange fruit" by which we know it. The reconciliation of which you write was premised on avoiding any not "every effort to root out that evil:" a house built on sand.
For my part, I'm attracted by the balanced approach of stetson:
The ACW was fought by the North to preserve the Union. Not to free slaves.
However, the reason that the South was trying to leave in the first place was because of the election of Lincoln, who was planning to curtail the westward expansion of slavery.
The revisionists often make it sound as if the Union simply wanted to crush the southern states because of some cold-hearted capitalist animosity to their agrarian culture, and just happened to latch onto slavery as a convenient propaganda motif to justify their actions. But that's an oversimplification: opposition to slavery was the reason Lincoln was elected, and support for it was the reason the Confederacy was formed.
And yes, there was certainly a mixture of economic and moral opposition to slavery. But that's true with almost anything. If something is inimicable to your economic interests, it's usually much easier to perceive the moral wrongness of it.
Little known fact: Canadians were the largest group of immigrants in the USA until the 1960's.
That would include my great-great-grandfather, of United Empire Loyalist descent, who came to North Carolina from New Brunswick in the 1880s. One of his brothers moved to New York City, while another left for Australia.
The ACW was fought by the North to preserve the Union. Not to free slaves.
However, the reason that the South was trying to leave in the first place was because of the election of Lincoln, who was planning to curtail the westward expansion of slavery.
The revisionists often make it sound as if the Union simply wanted to crush the southern states because of some cold-hearted capitalist animosity to their agrarian culture, and just happened to latch onto slavery as a convenient propaganda motif to justify their actions. But that's an oversimplification: opposition to slavery was the reason Lincoln was elected, and support for it was the reason the Confederacy was formed.
And yes, there was certainly a mixture of economic and moral opposition to slavery. But that's true with almost anything. If something is inimicable to your economic interests, it's usually much easier to perceive the moral wrongness of it.
In the lead up to our Revolutionary War there was also transmigration of New England families to Canada. By the time of the RW there were three main branches of my family in NE. One of the branches remained loyal to the crown and was forced to move into Canada after some of its members had been tarred and feathered. That branch became involved in the Hudson Bay Trading Company and traded in British Columbia and Alberta. Every so often I will meet a Canadian First Nations member who will tell me my last name is very common in his/her particular nation.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted twice.
However, the reason that the South was trying to leave in the first place was because of the election of Lincoln, who was planning to curtail the westward expansion of slavery.
Southern whites knew that the Confederate Rebellion was about slavery. It's why they started the war in the first place. Black Americans in both the North and the South also understood that the war was being fought for slavery. The only group that didn't really understand this was white Northerners, who took until 1863 or so to catch on.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted .
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
But @Kwesi has it as I see it. A war against racism that the Union/North didn't want to fight even after winning the Civil War, leading to a century more of legal segregation in northern states as well as in the former Confederacy.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted .
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
Separate administrations, sure. But the question was about how many presidents, not how many administrations. Barring alien abductions or something like that, he was the same person both times.
A few years ago I realized that back in 1775-76 I probably would have been a Loyalist rather than a Rebel ...
Of course at that time in history my ancestors were subjects of His Majesty Gustav III ... So ..
Southern whites knew that the Confederate Rebellion was about slavery. It's why they started the war in the first place. Black Americans in both the North and the South also understood that the war was being fought for slavery. The only group that didn't really understand this was white Northerners, who took until 1863 or so to catch on.
If there had been no rebellion, there would have been no war. There would not have been no slavery in the western territories but it would have continued in the south till who knows when.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted .
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
Separate administrations, sure. But the question was about how many presidents, not how many administrations. Barring alien abductions or something like that, he was the same person both times.
So will you count Joe Biden as the 45th or 46th President? If the latter, surely you have to count Cleveland as two presidents, even if they were the same person?
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted .
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
Separate administrations, sure. But the question was about how many presidents, not how many administrations. Barring alien abductions or something like that, he was the same person both times.
So will you count Joe Biden as the 45th or 46th President? If the latter, surely you have to count Cleveland as two presidents, even if they were the same person?
I’d count him as one president who served two non-consecutive presidencies—the 22nd and the 24th—making him the 22nd and the 24th President.
But the statement was that Cleveland was “the only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912.” That statement is true regardless of whether he was elected once or twice, and regardless of whether his two terms were consecutive or non-consecutive. Only one Democrat was elected president between 1860 and 1912. That one Democrat was elected president twice.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
Doesn't he count as two?
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted .
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
Separate administrations, sure. But the question was about how many presidents, not how many administrations. Barring alien abductions or something like that, he was the same person both times.
So will you count Joe Biden as the 45th or 46th President? If the latter, surely you have to count Cleveland as two presidents, even if they were the same person?
Context. "The only democrat to be elected" surely means we're talking about number of people, not number of presidencies. Note the noun. We're not counting presidencies. Hell, we're not even counting presidents. We're counting democrats. And there was only one.
A few years ago I realized that back in 1775-76 I probably would have been a Loyalist rather than a Rebel ...
Of course at that time in history my ancestors were subjects of His Majesty Gustav III ... So ..
Lord Haw Haw, perhaps - not a general, but indisputably a British supporter of the Nazis.
A New Yorker, like Johnson.
Not really. I don't think the Mad Mophead has any principles, let alone ones he'd be prepared to die for. The only point of similarity is that Lord Haw Haw considered himself to be British (at least, until he took German citizenship), despite having been born in New York.
Comments
Thank you, with your posts you've nailed my problem with Croesos' line of argument.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/valley-of-the-fallen/
The business of turning a defeated foe into an ally isn't easy. Whether it's the de-Nazification of Germany, rebuilding Iraq post-Sadaam, or transitioning the Southern US from a slave economy. I don't know how much better these could have been done. But I know the attempt is worthwhile. And that it is an act of separating the sin from the sinner. And that Croesus' attitude isn't the way to do it.
Russ, I very much welcome your contributions to Purgatory because you challenge what are frequently lazy liberal contributions from those like myself, and persist against almost unanimous opposition. Your most recent contribution, quoted above, however, really is a load of tripe. Reconstruction bore no relationship to the De-Nazification of Germany, post-1945, when there was a root and branch reorganisation of the German political system, not to mention the division of the state between East and West, in which there was no attempt to prevaricate with the structures and racism of the Hitler regime. Similarly, there was no temporising with the remnants of Sadaam Hussein's regime, which many considered a mistake, and replaced Sunni with pro-Iranian Shiite rulers. (Incidentally, Hussein had been one of 'our' sonsovbitches against the Iranians before messing up over Kuwait). The aftermath of the US civil war was hardly an example of turning a defeated foe into an ally, but of the defeated foe ensuring by violence that black emancipation was narrowly restricted to the ending of slavery, nothing more. Rather the defeated foe turned its northern nemesis into a complicit ally, assuming it required conversion respecting race. Had the allies told the German Nazis post-1945 they could continue to rule and discriminate against Jews provided they agreed not to invade their neighbours you might have had a point.
Dunno about Bonnie Prince Charlie, but there's a massive statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament ...
Some element of the latter is just about essential with a civil war. Unless you've exterminated the losers (i.e. genocide, not well thought of these days), you're going to have to live with them alongside you.
Post 1945 Germany is different from the post Civil War US in that there were two Germanys. Both were under some sort of foreign supervision initially. The two bits dealt with this differently, both leaving behind an undertow though a different one, that's still to be addressed. I don't agree with everything she has said. I think she's too indulgent towards the former East Germany. But Susan Neiman has written very interestingly on this.
We're now 165 years from the end of the US Civil War but only 75 years from 1945. What I think @Kwesi you're probably accusing the US record of is less what happened in the immediate aftermath of the war and more what the several generations since have failed to do. With all the other things happening in US history, the drive west, industrialisation, two World Wars, becoming a Great Power, collectively from the late nineteenth century the country took its eye off the ball.
No ... Taking up arms against The United States was a central part of the picture ... "Slavery" was firmly ensconced in The Constitution and was part of the reason for the treason ... And "Federal-ism" was and remains to this day a political tension in the USA ... But The American Civil War was not a moral crusade initiated by "The North" to "free the slaves" ...
I would have phrased it differently. The fate and fortunes of Black people were deemed as something worthy of addressing, but not if it interfered with really important stuff, such
as tidying up an untidy election. It was a subject considered appropriate for slightly eccentric do-gooders (such as the funders of the historically Black colleges or people like Saint Katharine Drexel) but never really important enough for serious political work.. When it came to civic and civil service reform, it was always interesting how Blacks and their ability to have influence seemed to become the losers. And when it comes to the funding of schools, how the future of Black Americans became a secondary issue. There's always something more important/ sexy/ useful for one's career (don't worry-- Canadians have their own version of this).
From the beginning there's been a disconnect between the opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the reality on the ground; some people liked it that way, and some people (admirable, in my view) didn't. Most don't seem too bothered about it either way, or at least not to take steps to increase education funding, supervise police effectively, etc etc.
Like the Canadian othering and marginalizing of the First Peoples, on poorly-lit days I sometimes wonder if the marginalization of Black futures is not integral to how the US operates.
Meanwhile ... on the ground ... Minnesota is a very ethnically diverse state -- lots of recent immigrants from Latin America, Africa (Liberia, Somalia, Nigeria), and Asia ... and at the same time (Liberal, Democrat) Minneapolis, Minnesota is one of the most racially segregated major cities in America (despite being the home territory of Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone, et al.) ...
Succinctly, elegantly, and accurately put!
I should note that in the wake of the Confederate Rebellion the only person the U.S. executed for his connection to the Confederacy was Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant who was the commandant of Camp Sumter, sometimes better known as "Andersonville". This bears a marked contrast to de-Nazification. I just think it's a little precious to argue that the better alternative to giving Hermann Göring a death sentence was putting up a statue to him in the German Parliament.
Indeed not. It was an immoral crusade initiated by the southern states to preserve slavery in perpetuity. A lot of subsequent trouble in the U.S. has its root in trying to elide or conceal this fact.
*A lot of non-religious institutions have also been caught harboring predators, but they're less interested in the redemption of the offenders and more interested in getting rid of them and pretending the whole thing never happened.
Interesting fact (albeit one that adds nothing to the discussion): the last person to draw an American Civil War-related pension died in June this year.
Technically speaking Andrew Johnson was a member of the "National Union" party when elected vice president in 1864. This party was an attempt to bring Democratic loyalists into the Republican coalition. It was only marginally successful.
And I don't think you should use the plural when referring to post-Confederate Rebellion Democratic presidents. The only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
I should have been much clearer--- I was primarily thinking of the post-Reconstruction period.
The other thing is that the rise of Jim Crow wasn't immediate. Tge Redeemers didn't complete their usurpation of the South's political system until 1908. The swan song of Reconstruction was the North Carolina Populist/Fusion Party of 1896.
The paradox of Recobstruction was that it lasted long enough to show how the United States could act if it wanted to, but was short enough to have failed and left so many broken promises.
It wasn't complete in a legal sense until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964/65, which actually re-enacted parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to a significant extent.
A New Yorker, like Johnson.
Yup.
I've recently read Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant which describes the unwillingness of the Congress, particularly, to sustain reconstruction, especially when there was a white pushback of intimidation and murder. Grant is presented as one of the few politicians to back the policy.
And Tidings of Comfort and Joy to you all!
History takes time ... and Americans tend to be very impatient ...
It was deliberately sabotaged.
That was its failure. It failed to achieve its goals and its political base dissipated or was disenfranchised. Ut failed to maintain its coherence and unity.
I define failure as a failure to achieve the movements stated political goals, which includes protecting promising legislation (the Civil Rights Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Amendments) from legislative rollbacks and judicial undermining.
I'm not neutral here. I can drive you around to a number of British Methodist Episcopal churches in Ontario, all of which were founded by refugee slaves. 15000-30000 Canadians served in the US Civil War.
Including the guy who wrote the music for Oh Canada. He basically lived in the US for the rest of his life following the war, including during the period when he penned our anthem.
Makes sense. For language, culture, and geographical proximity, the USA would be the easiest fit(*), and I believe that prior to the mid-1960s, US immigration law was heavily weighted toward western countries.
(*) Well, the French in New England might have had some challenge with the language bit, but even a lot of them probably had at least a working-knowledge of English before migrating. I know my French Canadian relatives who moved to the west-coast in the 1950s were fully bilingual.
The point is that having won the war it is possible to lose the peace in two opposite ways. Success is a balance between ensuring that the aims of the war are carried through and treating the defeated with the respect that permits reconciliation.
Allowing the South their heroes, and more generally allowing the defeated to see themselves as good people who fought for a good cause (and not for the evil that it was wrapped up with) is part of the process. Whilst making every effort to root out that evil.
I suspect that at the time it was about both freeing the slaves and maintaining the Union, with different individuals giving different weight to those two aims.
What it was not about was racism in the early-twenty-first-century sense. Because they did not see things in those terms.
Painting it in that light is a revisionism which prevents the understanding of history.
However, the reason that the South was trying to leave in the first place was because of the election of Lincoln, who was planning to curtail the westward expansion of slavery.
The revisionists often make it sound as if the Union simply wanted to crush the southern states because of some cold-hearted capitalist animosity to their agrarian culture, and just happened to latch onto slavery as a convenient propaganda motif to justify their actions. But that's an oversimplification: opposition to slavery was the reason Lincoln was elected, and support for it was the reason the Confederacy was formed.
And yes, there was certainly a mixture of economic and moral opposition to slavery. But that's true with almost anything. If something is inimicable to your economic interests, it's usually much easier to perceive the moral wrongness of it.
John Brown and Thad Stevens seem to have been 19th Century abolitionists who regarded Blacks as fully equal to whites. And of course, on the other end, there were irredeemable racists who wanted to end slavery only because it interfered with their economic interests.
Lincoln seems to have been an example of a man who did NOT regard Blacks as equal to whites, but still had what we might call humanitarian objections to slavery, eg. his rhetoric about "the bondsman's lash" seems to focus on the violent horrors associated the slave-labour.
And that position was probably not an uncommon one in the 19th Century. Even today, most of us can probably think of categories of people(eg. convicted criminals) whom we don't think should have full equality, but whom we would not want to see tortured or enslaved.
The problem, Russ, is that this thesis is a-historical and bears no relationship to the political circumstances in which reconstruction was frustrated. Rather it fits into a racist interpretation of the civil war and its aftermath, in which the conflict was an unfortunate misunderstanding between a society benignly nurtured by cultured southern gentlemen and their more independently minded brothers to the north, exacerbated by morally and intellectually inferior niggers acting above their natural station. It's all there in the immensely popular film Birth of a Nation. "Allowing the South their heroes, and more generally allowing the defeated to see themselves as good people who fought for a good cause," was a tragedy confirmed by the "strange fruit" by which we know it. The reconciliation of which you write was premised on avoiding any not "every effort to root out that evil:" a house built on sand.
For my part, I'm attracted by the balanced approach of stetson:
Yes
The Grover administration and the Cleveland administration? Other presidents who have served two terms don't get counted twice.
Southern whites knew that the Confederate Rebellion was about slavery. It's why they started the war in the first place. Black Americans in both the North and the South also understood that the war was being fought for slavery. The only group that didn't really understand this was white Northerners, who took until 1863 or so to catch on.
But even the White House describes Cleveland as both the 22nd and the 24th President, so there is a case for counting his presidencies as separate administrations.
But @Kwesi has it as I see it. A war against racism that the Union/North didn't want to fight even after winning the Civil War, leading to a century more of legal segregation in northern states as well as in the former Confederacy.
Separate administrations, sure. But the question was about how many presidents, not how many administrations. Barring alien abductions or something like that, he was the same person both times.
Of course at that time in history my ancestors were subjects of His Majesty Gustav III ... So ..
If there had been no rebellion, there would have been no war. There would not have been no slavery in the western territories but it would have continued in the south till who knows when.
So will you count Joe Biden as the 45th or 46th President? If the latter, surely you have to count Cleveland as two presidents, even if they were the same person?
But the statement was that Cleveland was “the only Democrat to be elected president from 1860 to 1912.” That statement is true regardless of whether he was elected once or twice, and regardless of whether his two terms were consecutive or non-consecutive. Only one Democrat was elected president between 1860 and 1912. That one Democrat was elected president twice.
Context. "The only democrat to be elected" surely means we're talking about number of people, not number of presidencies. Note the noun. We're not counting presidencies. Hell, we're not even counting presidents. We're counting democrats. And there was only one.
Himself a victim of sedition.
Not really. I don't think the Mad Mophead has any principles, let alone ones he'd be prepared to die for. The only point of similarity is that Lord Haw Haw considered himself to be British (at least, until he took German citizenship), despite having been born in New York.