Memorial Day thoughts

First, per past blogging, let's remember what war Memorial Day was about — and what the war was ultimately about from the start, namely, slavery. (Note that John A. Logan also called out treason; note also that Black Americans were shoved aside after not too many years.)

Second, also per past writing, let's remember that it was about war dead, as in killed in action, and as in, war dead, not "first responders."

In light of one and two, I would be fine if, like with the short-lived Veterans Day experience, we ended the Monday holiday and moved it to May 30.

Third, can we remember that, other than being less aggressive about the Klan, Knights of the Camellia, etc. than Lincoln presumably would have been, that Andy Johnson was largely following Lincoln's "rosewater" Reconstruction? Even more, can we remember that, just a week before his assassination, Lincoln was STILL interested in colonization of free Blacks, even if many modern historians lyingly deny that? And, contra them, Lincoln may never have spoken in public about colonization after Jan. 1, 1863, but he never publicly repudiated it, either.

To summarize? Here's your two most important links on Lincoln and colonization.

Phillip Magness, in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, talks in detail here, about the likely reality of Lincoln holding on to colonization ideas until the end of his life. MUCH more, about that April 1865 meeting between Lincoln and Butler, which did in fact happen. He also notes that Carl Schurz and George W. Julian both say that Lincoln continued to push colonization after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. 

 

Magness expands on some of these thoughts in an edited and condensed version of his Lincoln journal thoughts, at his own website, in 2015, seven years later. 

 

Now, Magness may need to be taken with a grain of salt. Teaches at James Mason, and while not a Lincoln-libertarian hater like Lerone Bennett, does teach at James Mason, and per his personal website, likes to throw elbows at libruls. He's the research director of the American Institute for Economic Research, located in (drumroll) Great Barrington, Massachusetts, of recent COVID herd immunity promoting fame and, per Wiki, even supported the Great Barrington Declaration. But, he cites Michael Lind, no wingnut, in addition to Bennett, as keeping the door open on this issue.

 

Congress' major part in winning the US Civil War

Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America by Fergus M. Bordewich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I like a history book that isn’t afraid to forcibly advance a thesis, even if I don’t totally agree with it, as long as it has at least a reasonable amount of factual backing. And, Bordewich’s does. It is that St. Abraham of Lincoln most certainly did not win the war single-handedly or even close to it. Rather, Congress had a significant role, and often took the lead, both in actions directly related to the war and ancillary ones.

Note: This is an expanded version, as is my wont here, of my Goodreads review, which was completed two weeks ago. This makes a perfect Memorial Day piece.

As Bordewich shows, one of the most important tools, beyond individual acts of legislation, was the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. This is directly parallel to the WWII US Senate committee, helmed by Harry Truman, that propelled him to the vice presidency nomination in 1944. Chaired by Ben Wade, it repeatedly investigated tactics and command by generals, starting with McClellan, as well as material and supplies, war profiteering and more. In 1864, it took testimony from the survivors of the Fort Pillow massacre. (Nathan Bedford Forrest being allowed to survive after the end of the Civil War is itself an indictment of Reconstruction.)

At its best on 1863-64. Noting the part-time nature of Congress and how the new one wouldn’t start until 1863, Bordewich notes how the Clerk of the House, Emerson Etheridge, a Tennessee Unionist who turned anti-administration after the Emancipation Proclamation, was going to use his powers as clerk to reject the credentials of as many Republicans as he could, in collusion with Vallandigham and Sunset Cox. But, Republicans sniffed it out, and reportedly, Lincoln was OK, in extremis, of using troops to oust Etheridge.

But part of the story is Smiler Colfax being elected as Speaker for that Congress, as Galusha Grow had lost re-election to his seat in the midterms. Lincoln reportedly wanted old Illinois friend Elihu Washburne, who wouldn’t have been bad, or the odious Frankie Blair, who would have been. This was all new to me.

Also new to me were details of Hannibal Hamlin being dumped for Veep, especially how much Lincoln was allegedly involved, even to the point of allowing a nominal pro-Hamlin vote on the first ballot. It’s arguable that, at the time, the concern to get a War Democrat as Veep was reasonable. But, it appears Lincoln wanted Hamlin gone anyway. I suspect it was because he suspected Hamlin would be more and more a Radical foot inside the White House as Reconstruction ramped up.

This, then, connects to Lincoln’s pocket veto of the Wade-Davis act. And, no, contra Wade’s modern chief biographer, even if the Wade-Davis Manifesto in the New York Times after the pocket veto was overblown, the act itself was NOT.

This, in turn, though little discussed by Bordewich, would seem to tie to Lincoln’s ongoing support for colonization — yes, even up to the week of his assassination. It definitely ties to Lincoln’s “rosewater” reconstruction plans, where Speaker Julian Ashley couldn’t get a deal to admit Louisiana’s congresscritters in exchange for Lincoln accepting something at least halfway like Wade-Davis for unreconstructed states. (I'll have an even more expanded review on my blog, and this will be part of it. (It should also be noted, per Bruce Levine, that Salmon Chase warned Lincoln at the start of his presidential reconstruction of Louisiana to net let it pass a black peonage law. Lincoln did anyway.)

Some historians, like James Oakes and David Reynolds, will give you the St. Abraham of Lincoln version of the story on colonization, claiming he never spoke about it in public after the Emancipation Proclamation. True, but a nothingburger. As the link in the previous paragraph shows, he DID talk about it with Butler two full years later. Before that, in early 1863, per email exchange I had with Oakes, Lincoln's Emigration Bureau continued to explore Belize as a colonization site — with his encouragement. Per that link, also, Lincoln asked Attorney General Edward Bates in October of 1864 — while worried about re-election, let us not forget! — if Emigration Commissioner James Mitchell could have his salary restored, though Congress had killed the commission's budget in July. (Mitchell himself, per that link, was apparently paid directly as an employee of the Department of the Interior.) Bates, as he prepared to resign as AG, did his best to dodge a formal legal opinion but informally admitted to Lincoln that the answer was yes.

Much more — Lincoln's whole pre-presidential and presidential history of support for colonization — is fascinating, if troubling, reading. Bureaucratic infighting between Mitchell, known to Lincoln since at least the late 1840s, and Interior Secretary Usher kneecapped the British Honduras and British Guiana possibilities. So did Seward's hatred of colonization, and, as Secretary of State, his willingness to say so in front of foreign envoys.

Back to the original review.

Per anti-Radical historians today who say that Ben Wade as president pro tem killed chances at impeaching Andy Johnson? He was freely elected. The GOP was going to stand by him. Recuse himself? Whoever was president pro tem wasn't going to recuse himself and besides, it was Chase (with a lot of horrible legal rulings, perhaps done with his own eye on the presidency) who was presiding over the impeachment trial.

That said, on some items, it was pushing at an open door in general. Lincoln, old railroad lawyer, certainly supported the Pacific Railway Act and its later emendations. Ditto, being from the Illinois prairie, on the Morrill Act, the Homestead Act and the creation of the eventual Department of Agriculture.

Possibly a stretch to claim the Civil War era sub-Treasury led directly to the Federal Reserve, although the National Banking Act was a step in that direction. And, Bordewich never ponders why Congress didn’t cut straight to the chase and create the third Bank of the United States.

Oh, Lincoln’s nationwide suspension of habeas corpus in fall of 1862 did NOT, in and of itself, create martial law. A journalist should know better than that. Not all people arrested and held without release went automatically to military commissions instead of civilian courts, though that was, yes, often the case, when Lincoln did go on to declare martial law. In any case, suspension of habeas corpus by itself does not create martial law. Ex parte Milligan makes this clear.

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Wrong on Gettysburg and Civil War importance

I get the drama of Gettysburg because it's had more military history books written about it, as well as countless historical novels, and been the crux of Chinese-food filling documentarian Ken Burns' miniseries.

But, contra a canned package page in my nearest formerly daily newspaper, noting the upcoming 160th anniversary of Gettysburg, it was NOT, NOT, NOT the most important battle of the Civil War.

Antietam was.

Without Antietam and its strategic minor victory for the Union, we don't get an Emancipation Proclamation. Now, it is almost certain that Great Britain wouldn't have entered the war without that. But, if Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia get a strategic as well as tactical draw with McClellan, and he uses that to maraude around Maryland and maybe southeastern Pennsylvania for another week or two, the UK surely grants belligerency status to the Confederacy, even if not full diplomatic recognition. (Arguably, by proclaiming a blockade of Southern ports rather than an enforced closure, in the early weeks of his administration, Lincoln himself, with Seward's help, granted some sort of belligerency status, but that's another story.)

Combine this with increased Northern war weariness from continued marauding by Lee, and Lincoln faces pressure to negotiate. And, he's not in a position to release a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. If he does so in, say, early September after an orderly, non-forced, non-retreating withdrawal by Lee, he's laughed at.

AND?

Had whatever orderly or adjutant for Harvey Hill not lost Lee's now-infamous Lost Order, a strategic draw against General The Slows would have been the minimum level of his likely success.

With all that in mind, plus taking the war out of Virginia for another month and replenishing his troops better, Gettysburg probably doesn't happen as it actually did.

Note that Meade wanted to withdraw after July 2. That's one of the reasons he called his council of war, or so it seems clear to me — he was looking for backup to make that call. And, he didn't get it.

Arguably, Gettysburg isn't even No. 2.

WHAT?

Shiloh is.

Shiloh was the first "real" major battle of the war. It showed the level of carnage that could and would be committed by rifled muskets in the hands of troops who by now had a certain degree of training. (This was a lesson that Lee didn't learn from Shiloh and didn't fully learn from his own defense at Antietam, to his own alleged everlasting grief at Gettysburg on July 3. The "oh what fine boys" type exclamations don't all appear to have been written down immediately and they strike me as hagiographic, hence the "alleged.")

Speaking of Lee in another way? While he had been calling for a CSA draft for months, it's quite arguable that Shiloh was the immediate provocation, as the first Confederate draft law was passed by the CSA Congress just a week later.

That, in turn triggered draft resistance acts, the biggest of which, as part of larger Unionism in the Red River counties of North Texas, was the resistance in Cooke County that led to the Great Hanging, the largest single mass lynching in American history; see my highly detailed blog post. The CSA draft also gave the US the room to start its own draft.

Without all of this, general publics North and South don't accept that this is a "total war," either, and with everything that followed for three years after Shiloh.

African-Americans invented Memorial Day? Not so fast, and definitely not on Southerners

It's a stretch, at least, and perhaps wrongful wokeness at worst, to claim a May 1, 1865 memorial to fallen black Union troopers by black Charleston, South Carolina, residents the first Memorial Day. And, yes, David Blight offers good scholarship in resurrecting this event, but not so good in his extrapolation.

First, looking forward past that date? Blight does note that John A. Logan's call in 1868, which included the specific date of May 30 for commemoration, is what stuck.

Second, looking at the event? White missionaries were involved, too. Per the story, it's not clear whether they or the black residents first came up with the idea, or whether it was jointly evolved. It's also not clear if they had some specific inspiration or not.

Southern Whites may have had some role, but this piece overstates that, IMO, and doesn't look at the question of whether or not Southern Whites decorated Black Union soldiers' graves, and I think you know the answer to that. Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware have co-authored a full book about that, and appear to have ignored the March 1, 1865 event entirely, even though it's in Wikipedia's article on Memorial Day. I call shenanigans. That said, contra Blight, Logan never cited the Charleston event, from what I can see, so maybe it's not shenanigans; it just didn't "take."

But, the pair ignore pre-1866 Northern events.

And so, versus Gardiner and Bellware perhaps having a small bit of Lost Cause, or a bigger bit of Steven Spielberg gauze in them, the larger ideas in Blight's book Race and Reunion should take precedence. I have not read this book, but I have read his fantastic Frederick Douglass bio, so I think he knows in general what he's talking about.

Third and looking further back? There was this special battlefield dedication on Nov. 19, 1863, where a guy named A. Lincoln spoke a few words that time has certainly NOT forgotten.

Fourth? Looking further back, I do NOT think Logan was influenced by pre-Civil War Appalachian Decoration Days.

Summary? I hadn't heard of this event before, unless Eric Foner mentioned it and I forgot. It's good to recall it. But, it shouldn't be put on this level of pedestal, either.

(Update, May 26, 2026: Some left hand of the duopoly Substack repeats the claim that Southern Blacks invented Memorial Day. As I said in a comment there, it's not "false," but it's definitely not 100 percent true.) 

Bigger summary? Blight is definitely more right on Gardiner and Bellware on the issue of gauzy heroic memories, especially if they have a hat tip toward the incipient Lost Cause, vs. African-Americans being quickly shoved aside from the remembrance of events. (Blacks fought at Gettysburg, but by the time of the 50th anniversary event in 1913, this was totally, and deliberately ignored.) What the Columbus State duo also ignore is that Logan spoke about "traitors" and other such in his call for Memorial Day, per the Veterans Administration. I quote:

General Logan was aware of these memorial efforts and their origin. In a speech given at an 1866 Independence Day celebration in Salem, IL, he spoke of the practice of floral tributes in the context of post-war Black civil rights, and compares "traitors in the south [that] have their gatherings day after day to strew garlands of flowers upon the graves of the Rebel soldiers" to a Black man "who has gained his liberty by the march and prowess of American arms, [who] shall come along with a basket of flowers to strew upon the grave of some poor loyal soldier that he shall have the right to do it."

So, while he may have been influenced by Southern practice, he was NOT influenced by any ideas behind said practice. So, IMO, it's a stretch to claim Columbus, Georgia, "conveniently" the home of Columbus State University, as the originator of Memorial Day. The "convenience" may also be an attempt to drum up tourism, as are other such claims.

And, if we're to honor Logan's spirit, even if he didn't know about it, we will give a hat tip to Charleston. Sadly, and why it's not on my blogroll anymore, Snopes is semi-dismissive of Blight's framing, and buys the Gardiner-Bellware claims whole and unskeptically. (Yet another reason Snopes shall remain deblogrolled.)

And thus, since Charleston, per Blight, did have the spirit of Logan, I stand by my piece on Memorial Day itself, wishing Happy Memorial Day to the traitors.

Final summary? Gardiner's piece has appeared in numerous places like the "Nebraska Examiner," rated by Media Bias Fact Check as "liberal." (Having looked at the Kansas version, I totally concur.) That was a surprise to me, as I expected wingnut sites to be his biggest touters.

Yet another case of Lincoln legend vs reality

The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South by Bruce Levine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Add this to your Civil War reading list. I'm going to give a long review, but one that nonetheless still just gives the backbone of the book.

Lincoln once said that “somehow” the war was about slavery, even though most the North, including him, denied it at the start.

Most of the 11 Confederate states’ ordinances of secession admitted it, though. So, too, did the Confederate Constitution.

So, Bruce Levine starts there, in “The Fall of the House of Dixie.” (You know this book is good, beyond that, when Eric Foner is among those named in the Acknowledgements.)

As in, starts right there on page 4, with states from the 1860 US Census. But, we're putting that at the end of this expanded and edited version of my Goodreads review to get the problematic Lincoln legend, of the likes of mainstream Civil War authors and auteurs like Steven Spielberg, versus the reality, up top.

Details of Census numbers on slave ownership will be at the bottom.

Of the many other things in this excellent book, one more needs to be cited. And, that's the one we're going to move up top.

And, that is Levine’s documentation of Lincoln’s war-long reticence over land redistribution. Reconstruction would of course have gone better with him still alive. He would have reacted to the Klan, Knights of the White Camelia etc. much more rapidly than Andy Johnson. Example? The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 gave him the formal right to seize not only slaves of disloyal owners, but their other property. However, and as Levine notes, AT LINCOLN’S INSISTENCE, on the death of said rebels, all property except their slaves would revert to their heirs. Rich Northern whites might pay to rent it under such terms; poor blacks couldn’t afford to touch it.

In a related matter, in the reconstruction of Louisiana’s beginnings, Lincoln ignored Salmon Chase’s cries not to allow its new state government to pass “as a temporary arrangement” special laws governing the newly freed slaves as a “laboring, landless and homeless class.”

Levine doesn’t tackle the colonization issue, but the two paragraphs above should refute the likes of David Reynolds and James Oakes about just how high-minded Lincoln was, or was not, about the future of freed slaves after Jan. 1, 1863. Was he continuing to evolve? Yes. Might have continued to evolve further, had he lived? Yes. Did he also, as I have noted to those two gentlemen, likely discuss the colonization issue with Spoons Butler the day before his assassination? Yes.

So, Lincoln's "rosewater," already being implemented in Louisiana (and West Virginia, and bits of remnant Virginia) before he died, if carried over into Reconstruction, probably would have left freed slaves almost as high and dry as did Andy Johnson.

Yes, Lincoln would have given them more physical protection. But, in all likelihood, he would have offered them little more satisfaction on land. After all, Grant didn't do anything after he succeeded Johnson. And, to the degree he faced the issue as president, or jokingly in a militia unit during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln never really showed an understanding — or rather, never really showed a willingness to look behind the white stance — on American Indian land issues, either.

Was Lincoln our nation's greatest president? Yes. Was he 5-star? Only if we're grading on a curve.

One lesser thing to note. Levine also shows how racist Sherman was, up to the end of the war. Grant, and many other non-McClellan Northern generals, had at least moderated racism they had in 1861. Not Unc' Billy.

And now, back to the other main part of the book's original, and where Levine started: The 1860 US Census and slave ownership.

In all 15 slave states, 1 in 4 whites were slaveowners. (Levine later notes that in the 11 seceding states it was 1 in 3, so adjust the below accordingly.)

The typical master owned 4-6 slaves, he says. But, that was just the bottom rung of the highly capitalistic slaveowning South.

One in eight Southern masters had 20 or more slaves, and thus officially counted as “planters” according to the Census. The math says that’s 3 percent of Southern whites. In the seceding states, about 5 percent.

Next tier? The “ten thousand families” that owned 50 or more slaves, and now it gets more fun because Levine starts naming names. Allegedly “good master” Robert E. Lee and his wife were here; he and Mary Fitzhugh Custis Lee inherited 60 slaves with their Arlington mansion from her father, George Washington Parke Custis. (And that name should remind you of Lee’s connections.) As for the truth on Lee's brutality level toward slaves, it's not just modern research that shows this; one of his own freed slaves "gave testimony" in 1866, information used by modern researchers. Edmund Ruffin is in this group. So are two couples cited extensively in this book.

Next tier? The 1 in 15 planter families who owned 100 or more slaves, or 3,000 families. Jeff Davis and Robert Toombs were among this small group.

The semifinal cut for Levine? Those owning 250 or more slaves. Davis’ brother Joseph is here. So is Howell Cobb. So is the vile James Henry Hammond and the incendiary Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr. As is James Chesnut Sr., father-in-law of noted Confederate diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut.

The final cut? 500. Here, the father of the wife of one couple in the 50-plus class is here.

Add in, on the photo plates pages, the 1860 Census map of slave ownership percentages by county, and we’re good to go with the basic story.

Levine, lumping 1861 and 1862 together, does a yearly overview of the North’s military progress combined with the South’s reaction, much of it from people named in the various levels of slave ownership above. “Poor whites,” whether slaveless or the 4-6 class are also cited in detail. So are the two most states-rightists governors, Joseph E. Brown and Zebulon Vance, along with others noting the Confederacy’s internal contradictions.

Those contradictions culminate when Davis pushes a version of Patrick Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for (limited) freedom. Besides the argument that this would shatter the Confederacy’s basic operating principle, Levine notes that some planters still rejected the idea that slaves could fight. Others, on the other hand, thought they would — and for the Union, as soon as you gave them a Southern gun.


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#BlackLivesMatter in Gainesville, Texas; so does Young Republicans PR

Just a typical Friday night last week in Gainesville, with the delayed kickoff of the Summer Sounds music series, and a few people at the corner of the courthouse square greeting attendees, amirite?

(Update, Aug. 17: The Cooke County Commissioners Court voted to keep its CSA/UDC statue. Blog post coming for later this week.)

What's that at the left hand edge, behind the "White Silence is Compliance" person?

Why, I think that's the base of one of those 100-year old United Daughters of the Confederacy statues.

And it says?

Note: Bobby Lee didn't write that, contra what some may say or have heard. It was actually written by an Oxford don, who'd just done a new translation of the Iliad. In the preface, he included a poem of his which likened the Confederacy to a new Troy. That's the lines you see there. That said, in 1868, he gave a copy of his Iliad, complete with poem, to Slave Marse Robert. (Picture that being said by Shelby Foote on Ken Burns semi-racist by silence Civil War series.)

That said, the lead speaker among young adults at a recent commissioners court meeting only referenced the issue of treason, indirectly, and not race. Also, Tucker Craft said he's a registered Republican and made sure to make that the very first thing he said. And, he pulled out the old BS about the "Democrat party being the party of Jim Crow." As salutatorian of Gainesville High and someone who interned at the county attorney's office, he knows that "DemocratIC" is the preferred usage. And, that most the Jim Crow Democrats went on to become Jim Crow Republicans before they died.

So, sorry I missed the first minute of the speechifying, Tucker, but having heard the whole thing now? Sounds like Cooke County Young Republicans PR first, and anything and everything else second.

Here's the county's video of the meeting. Listen for yourself. His comments start at about the 3:30 mark.



I don't know if the other two speakers were associated with him or the "Progressive Rights Organization" he claims to represent but that doesn't even have a Facebook page. Nor do I know if everybody in the pictures above is affiliated with him. Nor do I know — whether or not they are affiliated with him — they've heard things like what he told the commissioners court and, if they have, if they've parsed his words carefully.

Finally, Mr. Craft was not at the music event last Friday. The people he claims to represent may or may not be these people.

The Gainesville Register had a story about some of the protestors. In it, the group was now called "PRO Gainesville." They have a website and a Facebook group, of which Mr. Craft is NOT one of the admins. The group talks about systemic racism, something Mr. Craft didn't mention. They have a Facebook page, as well as a group. The page is public.

And, I waded through about two dozen posts and more than 200 comments and subcomments. Saw Tucker Craft's name there not once. I went back more than a week before he spoke to the commissioners court. Went back to the June 14 start date of the page. Didn't see a single comment by him. Didn't see a single photo of him, either.

Further update, July 8: I stopped by the courthouse square on the way to Tom Thumb, during this night's vigil. People on "both sides" videotaping each other and more. About 10 Gainesville cops, couple of sheriff's deputies and a couple of state troopers. About 20-30 activists. Half a dozen I'd identify as clearly anti-activist. Three-four pickups with (likely made in China) American flags in their beds. About 20-30 observers of the activists, perhaps half "antis" and half curious. A few were open carrying. The Dallas Observer has more on Gainesville and other exurban areas, including the involvement of Denton County NAACP head Jessica Luther Rummel. Interesting that Granbury, possibly has open-minded people. TOTALLY non-shocking that Waxahachie and Ellis County do not.)

Anyway, Tucker? I walked around the whole square. I don't personally know you, and the time you spoke in court was the first time I'd seen you. Nonetheless, with your hair wave up front, I'm fairly sure I'd recognize you even with a mask on. Especially if you had a PRO Gainesville shirt like others. I didn't see you.

So, Tucker Craft? You're either a huge slacktivist, a grifter for a bit of  local personal fame, or you're trying to derail or co-opt a movement you don't actually represent, and lying to do that, as far as I can tell with this level of searching. And, if you want to really care about justice, you can start at the local level, go to County Attorney Ed Zielinski under whom you interned, and tell him to stop prosecuting low-level pot cases.

I know that I've now hit the borderline between skepticism and cynicism. If I see any new information to modify that impression, I will. But, I'm not going out of my way for it. Using old Republican PR lines is clear evidence of where you come from. As for the PRO Facebook page, per the scientific bon mot, absence of evidence  isn't necessarily the same as evidence of absence. BUT ... under Bayesian-like probability adjustments, enough compilation of absence of evidence points more and more toward evidence of absence.

I mean, you stated in your speech to commissioners that this was their chance to be better than Democrats. You politicized this from the start.

(Update: He signed up for the July 13 public forum, but chose not to speak. In stories in the Gainesville paper, let alone beyond, like the Denton Record Chronicle, PRO founder Torrey Henderson has been interviewed. Michelle Angus has been interviewed. Craft? Not so much.)

The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas: A little-known Civil War mass lynching (updated)

The 2014, privately donated set of marker stones and memorial paver inserts, about 7 blocks west of the courthouse.

Very few non-Texans, and relatively few Texans, know about what is arguably the greatest mass lynching in American history, which happened right here in the Pointy Abandoned Object State.

Even more interesting for American history, though it indirectly involved black folk, white folk were the lynchees as well as the lynchers.

The original, faded state of Texas 1964
marker is a historical whitewash.

It’s the Great Hanging at Gainesville. And, it's been downplayed by the state of Texas and even more by the city of Gainesville.

Unionism in Texas ultimately led to 42 people being killed in Gainesville in October 1862 under a semblance of a cloak of law. The totality makes it the largest mass hanging in America, if not counting a one-day total of 38 Sioux also hanged in 1862.

The Red River area in general, and Cooke County in particular, was one of two hot spots of Unionism leading up to Texas’ secession in February 1861 and after. The lower, southern, part of the Hill Country was another.

In both cases, recent migrations of Germans was part of it. The lower Hill Country is of course known for places like New Braunfels and Boerne. Along the Red, while Muenster had yet to be founded, Germans had migrated to Gainesville already in its early years.

Also, in today’s Texoma land, the Butterfield stagecoach line came to North Texas in the late 1850s. Gainesville’s theater building is called the Butterfield Stage. The stage, crossing the Red River near Denison, connected the state with other parts of the country. Many passengers decided that they didn’t want to ride all the way to California, so they got off to settle in North Texas. Many of these people were from Northern or Southern border states, bringing attitudes on slavery that were intensifying like in Kansas. Some of these settled in and near Gainesville.

The final match for the Gainesville lynchings and other Civil War violence in Texas may have been literal, as the last domino.

The left of the two plaques above. The history of the hanging is backgrounded.

In the summer of 1860, starting in Dallas and spreading to other cities from Weatherford to Jefferson, fires broke out in many North Texas cities. Some people said that new railroad matches had unstable chemicals and were spontaneously combusting. But others, those prone to see conspiratorial actions from Northern sympathizers, claimed the fires were being deliberately set, either by them or by slaves encouraged by them.

Counties along the Red River voted against secession in Texas’ referendum in early 1861. 

With no quick end to the war, the South adopted a draft in 1862, shortly before the North did. It offered exemptions to slaveholders with 20 or more slaves, other special classes of people and men willing to pay $500 for a draft exemption.

A group of 30 Cooke County men signed a petition protesting the slaveholder exemption. Later, they and others began meeting in a peace society, which they called a Union League.

But that wasn’t the only new war hardship.

Feeding a larger army and building more weapons for it required additional taxes across the Confederacy. Those were no more popular than they are today.

And if that wasn’t enough, the Confederate government officially allowed impressment of supplies for the war effort.

That encouraged Unionists more resistant to the Confederacy and the Texas government to try to implement this. In Gainesville, they formed a “peace party.” Members helped hide each others’ supplies from impressment and tried to help young men avoid the draft.

At the end of September, 1862, a spy who had infiltrated some of the meetings claimed an uprising was about to happen. According to this person, the Unionists were going to seize arsenals in Gainesville and Sherman.

So the state declared martial law. James Bourland, who became the villain of the story, was named provost marshal. He asked Gov. Francis Lubbock for troops to help him suppress any possible disorder, but none were available.

So, Bourland created his own militia. Then, based on words of that informer, he created his own court. He started making arrests, charging people with treason.

Bourland appointed Col. William Young, like him a slaveholder, to take charge. Col. Young organized a special court and jury to hear the cases. One special attribute of the trials was that the jury could convict by a simple majority. The court, in case it’s not obvious, had no legal status.

The list of those lynched after various "trials" and "retrials."

After eight convictions, it decided to spit-polish things a little bit and require a two-thirds majority. One previous conviction was reversed, then the court sent those seven to be hanged, some within hours, on Oct. 12-13.

The jury then acquitted several, but faced mob pressure. The jury gave them 14 names of people on their list who had not yet been tried; those men were taken from the jail in Gainesville and lynched them immediately.

Young was killed on Oct. 16, pursuing a group who had killed a man on a creek. Supposedly somewhat of a moderator, Young’s death led to more howls for blood.

The jury reversed the acquittals of 19 people without any new testimony, let alone new charges, a further illegality. They were then hanged. Two others were shot fatally while allegedly trying to escape.

Some time later, five others were lynched in Decatur. And, German-Americans in the lower Hill Country, after being intercepted trying to flee to Mexico and losing a battle to Confederate troops, had several of their wounded shot after surrender.

Other lynching hangings happened in today’s Delta County, not a separate county at that time. The thickets it had between the North and South Sulphur rivers made it a hideout spot. It led to desertions from the Confederate Army, which led to ever more intrusive searches for deserters across North Texas with some animosities continuing after the end of the war, again, in today’s Delta County.

The Cooke County Courthouse
and Civil War memorial, where
the Great Hanging memorial
should also be placed.

Gainesville has shied away from openly acknowledging the Great Hanging. The state erected a pink granite marker in 1964. But the city did nothing at that time or for years after.

“Up until six or seven years ago, people in Gainesville didn’t want others to know about this,” according to Paris Junior College professor Kent Hanushek at a presentation in Sulphur Springs in 2018. “But since 2012, the leaders of Gainesville have tried to recognize their past.”

However, such recognition, on the official level, has been halting.

Gainesville’s then-mayor pushed to have a 150^th-anniversary commemoration day killed. Gainesville, by this time, had built its Medal of Honor park, and started holding a weekend event for Medal of Honor winners. Rand McNally had named it that year as the most patriotic small town in America.

Larger, much more detailed and historically complete markers were erected in 2014. But, they were private efforts. And, while the new markers are part of what is purportedly a city park, they’re on totally undeveloped land. The land was dedicated to the city after it made no offer for placement itself. The “named” portion of that park, a block west, would be a better spot for them.

Texas Observer, in a long-form piece shortly after the 2014 private markers were erected, notes the "shabbiness" of the site, among other things.

An even better spot would be seven blocks further west, on the grounds of the Cooke County Courthouse, next to the Civil War Memorial, as shown at left.

Unfortunately, I have no doubt that Cooke County has as little eagerness to commemorate the Great Hanging as does the city of Gainesville, and for similar reasons.

And, a note to them, especially the city of Gainesville.

Real patriotism, per Rand McNally voting you the most patriotic small town in America, doesn't mean whitewashing less than ideal portions of your past. And, besides that, the Unionist side could be sold as idealism itself, if you want to do so, whether out of true patriotism or chasing the Benjamins.

UPDATE

That said, at least the site has a little more respect.

There's a brief annual commemoration day ceremony. And this year, on Oct. 12, it had some added events. (I already had plans to go to Fort Worth for the reopened Amon Carter. I could have waited two weeks, but ...)

The tour of graves, I can do on my own; I don't know how much of a lecture accompanied it.

And, per the photo above and the one at left?

A memorial bell was dedicated, and rung.

And, per the story, and just "behind" the bottom of the picture above? Two benches have been added.

I gave the bell a soft thump or four with my knuckles a Saturday later, when taking these photos.

Dallasites, #ConfederateStatues, mountains, molehills and gnat-straining

The Lee statue in Dallas, the day of the big downtown protest at the Confederate monuments site.

OK, some Dallas, or Dallas-area, residents, are reportedly complaining about the $450K or so it cost to remove the Bobby Lee statue from Oak Lawn Park.

(Note to Dallas City Council — keep that temporary reversion to the park's original name and make it permanent.)

You know what?

That $450K is out of a city budget that will spend nearly $1.3 billion next year just out of the general fund. In other words, we have people gnat-straining over THREE-ONE HUNDREDTHS of a percent, written decimally as 0.03 percent.

But, really, it's not Dallas residents who are gnat-straining. It's wingnut talking heads like Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media. As for O'Neil's "but the other driver"?

Big red herring.

The driver of the semi could have crashed into somebody else. After all, HE ran a red light.

Second, shouldn't O'Neil be, instead, repeating the wingnut mantra of "personal responsibility" and lambasting the semi driver? Shouldn't he laud the crane driver for blocking the red-light runner from instead possibly hitting a car and killing other people instead of himself?

Yes, he "should" on the first. And serious, the second would have been quite likely had Murray, the semi driver, not hit the crane.

And, speaking of, contra O'Neil, but vis a vis the federal regulatory state? Was Murray driving over hours or committing other violations? O'Neil never asks.

That's in line with not telling you who died, and that Murray, who did die, was at fault.

See, the likes of O'Neil don't actually care about Murray. He's just a tool, or a "tool," in that sense, to create red herrings and straw men in situation like this.

Irish myth — Northeastern urban mudsills?

Why can't some Irish-Americans honor the spirt
of reconciliation behind the center bar of the flag
of the Republic of Ireland?

A very interesting piece here at Pando about Irish history from John Dolan, who also does The War Nerd podcasts.

Let's dig into the headline of this post more.

First, there's a historic error related to the Battle of the Boyne. It was the Union, not Confederates, that named Civil War battles after rivers. You won't find Douglas Southall Freeman talking about "Bull Run"; it's "Manassas" for him. Now whether that's an accidental error or a deliberate one, I don't know. But, I find it "interesting" that a person who self-identifies as "The War Nerd" would make such a mistake, if mistake it is.

Because, from there, he talks about "The Twelfth," namely the Protestant gloating, and worse, the day after the Boyne, on the 12th of July, and how that became an Ulster tradition that carried into the New World.

Now, back to the Civil War and full circle to tie to that bit of history.

You know what started a day after 'The Twelfth"? The New York City draft riots, which ran July 13-16, 1863. And largely involved Irish. And, besides them attacking Protestant churches (understandable) also included terrorizing and lynching blacks. At least 120 were killed, probably well more than that. Lincoln had to recall troops from the field, fresh from Gettysburg, to help suppress the riot.

Hence, my "mudsills" reference.

Something I've blogged about before, in fact, more than once, in reference to Trump's election.

Anyway, from there, Dolan talks about 1870s Irish-Ulsterman turf wars in New York. This goes merrily on without note of how the Irish "turf warred" blacks out of New York City and into Brooklyn in the aftermath of the draft riots. (Per Wiki's link on The Twelfth, there's little evidence it was regularly celebrated in the US as it was in Ireland — and Wiki specifically mentions Canadian celebrations.

Dolan does mention the draft riot in passing. He doesn't note the date connection, nor whether Ulsterman celebrated The Twelfth in style the day before. Nor does he note that, per Wiki's link on the riots, nearly 25 percent of New York City's 1860 population was German-born. A fair chunk of Germans were Catholics, too, though not normally tormented by north German Protestants.

Anyway, he talks one place earlier, before his brief mention of the riot, about Irish-American "versus" African-American:

But in America, the economics of cotton planting made Africans the more significant, “visible” and persecutable, minority, victims of choice for a predominantly pale-skinned polity. So, to their own surprise, the Irish were allowed to pass, after a few miserable generations as America’s lumpenproletariat, into the blur of middle-class America. And when they did, all the horrors that came before were dissolved in America’s huge shark stomach, one of those shark bellies of urban legend that when opened contains only a trace of what fed the animal—a boot, a bone, a set of keys to a tenement apartment in Jersey City. America has digested the Irish so thoroughly it thinks they’re cute, if a little slow.

A problem here.

The Irish didn't try to move to the South. And slavery existed only in Southern states at the time of the Famine. And, it was more native-born whites who worked in New England's pre-war textile mills. 

(Speaking of, it's funny that they're taking a similar attitude as those of the very same Ulsterman Scotch-Irish in the South who called them "white Negros," which in turn gave them two mudsills below them — the Irish, and the actual Negros of African-Americans.)

Back in Ireland, the Great Famine was a horrible tragedy. Holocaust? I think not, and I don't reserve that word just for the Jewish Holocaust; I have no problem calling the Ottoman Empire's actions against Armenians a holocaust. Given that, among other things, Catholic emancipation's major legislation had been passed by 1829 and that lesser degrees of potato blight hit the Scottish Highlands as well as elsewhere in Europe, the idea that Englishman were committing genocide? Tosh.

Some of this almost — almost, not totally — comes off like Serbs still lamenting Kosovo, which was a full 300 years before the Boyne.

Mudsills? You make the call.

Besides, Dolan and others of his ilk — probably mainly Irish-Americans trying to be more Irish than those in Dublin, need to move on. Per David Rieff, too much remembrance is a bad thing. Besides, the flag of the Republic has the orange of Ulster as well as the green of Erin in it — and deliberately so.

#Slavery, the #ConfederateFlag, and symbols of racism

The severe whipping at left is, of course, a symbol of racism. So, too, is the whip at right, used to inflict wounds on the slave pictured at left.

Why pretend otherwise?

This was the reality of race-based slavery in the U.S. and elsewhere in the New World for centuries.

The iron mask and collar, at left, was also an image of slavery. It's an image of control, of a master's power over even a slave's voice.

And, if, per the above picture, a whip was not deemed sufficient to control slaves, something almost medieval, like this adaptation of a cotton screw press, was another instrument of punishment, and an image and symbol of slavery.

But there are more.

I suggest going to this page of images from the University of Virginia for more "enlightenment" on images related to slavery. Since U.S. slavery was race-based, and from there went on to a belief in the mental inferiority of an invented "race" called black, these are all also symbols of racism.

But, they're not the only ones.

This, too, is a symbol of slavery — the original Confederate battle flag at left. And, it didn't really appear out of nowhere — note its broad similarity to South Carolina's flag of secession, at right, and the rectangular version was proposed as a CSA flag.

The "St. Andrews Cross" or battle flag has 13 stars, for the 11 seceding states plus the attempts in Missouri and Kentucky; South Carolina's 15 are for all 1861 slave states.

This shows, first, that the Confederate battle flag, while created for battlefield visibility, and for more distinction from "Old Glory" than the original Confederate governmental flag, the "Stars and Bars," that it was already being adapted to politics early on. And, when it was decided to move on from the Stars and Bars, for a more Confederate-looking flag?

This, "The Stainless Banner," incorporating the battle flag, became a symbol of racism on May 1, 1863. It was followed by "The Blood-Stained Banner" on March 4, 1865.  (The Stainless Banner is an all-white union, if  it's hard to tell.)

Given that the constitution of the CSA, as well as documents of secession of several Confederate states (including Texas), explicitly mention slavery as a prime reason for secession, there you are.

And, that is seemingly that, is it not?

Well, if you're the likes of William Lloyd Garrison, there were other symbols of racism. Ditto if you're a critic of some Supreme Court cases, like Plessy v. Ferguson. Or, of certain presidents, like Woodrow Wilson.

One of those images of racism, at least for some, whether today or in the past, is at left. The other, whose text begins with "We The People," and then called people enslaved by race "three fifths of all other persons" for census and apportionment purposes, nothing more, and most of the First Peoples as "Indians not otherwise taxed" and excluded from citizenship, is at right.

Indeed, Garrison called that symbol at right "a covenant with death" and "an agreement with hell." While hyperbolic, he's at least partially right, and it's not just the constitution itself. As Lincoln knew, and as this book and others document, the North had its own share of racism, and its own share of profit off Southern slavery.

None of this is to "excuse" the Confederate flag, in any of its forms. Or the racism behind it.

It is, though, to invite us to reflect on Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and his growth in recognizing that black people were people, even as he still had room to grow before his assassination.

Namely, this, reflecting on his version of "Divine Providence" affecting both sides in the Civil War. One need not be a theist to accept the broad outlines in this.

He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.

Just as Booker T. Washington called his autobiography "Up from Slavery," an "autobiography" of the US must be the same.

Speaking of such issues, whether Lincoln would have done THAT much better than Andrew Johnson on Reconstruction, I don't know. I do know it would have been impossible for him to do worse.

#MemorialDay, aka the #TeaParty national day of distortion

As you think about Iraq War or Gulf War veterans, especially those who were killed in combat, today, let's not forget how and why Memorial Day started.

It was created to honor the nearly 400,000 Union dead from the Civil War.

You know, the war that had the ultimately result of ending slavery.

The war that was fought over the right to slavery in the first place, an issue tea partiers will deny until they turn red in the face.

That’s despite the Confederate constitution mentioning the actual words “slave” or “slavery” several times.

Like this, from Article I:

Section 9

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

For one.

And this, from Article IV:

Section 2.
1. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any state of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property: and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired. …
 3. No slave or other person held to service or labor in any state or territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor: but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due.

For another.

And this:

Section 3.
3. The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several states; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states.

For a third.

That's despite the declarations of secession of Georgia, Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

South Carolina:

The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. 

Texas:

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the (laws, etc.) as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States …
 based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color

And Virginia, all mentioning slavery, often a dozen or more times. More here. And here.

The reality of Memorial Day?

  

First, the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The first time the U.S. Constitution used the actual word, rather than euphemisms to shield thin Southern skins.

Then the Fourteenth, for civil rights for all: 

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

THAT's what Memorial Day is about. 

The real problem is tea party "Lost Cause" types don't want to admit that the South — and its ideology — lost, period. And, too many Northerners were too indulgent of them too soon after April 9, 1865, part of why we need a national Appomattox Day.

This is why it matters when we talk about who started Memorial Day and why — including black Southerners reburying Union dead with honor.

Needed: "Appomattox Day," or better, "You Lost Day"

The New Republic sums the case up well, on the 150th anniversary of Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

First, given that a racist president susceptible to flattery via pretended groveling from his pre-war Southern "betters," Andrew Johnson, took Abraham Lincoln's already mild "rosewater policy" and gutted it, and then that the Supreme Court gutted the intent of the 14th Amendment from the 1870s through Plessy v. Ferguson, it's hard to believe at times that the South did, in fact, lose the Civil War. (Would Lincoln have done as much better with Reconstruction as some thing? I ask that in Part 1 of my sesquicentennial tribute to his death.)

But it did. And Brian Beutler is right. It should be a federal holiday, though there's less than zero chance of the current Congress making that so.

Per Beutler and a New York Times article he links, yes, we also ought to rename military installations named for Confederate generals, like Fort Hood here in Texas.

And, contra Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg and their Lincoln movie, Lincoln was wrong. Maybe the Wade-Davis Act was too harsh, but Lincoln was too mild, and he refused to negotiate with Congress on this issue after his pocket veto of Wade-Davis. Would he, in the face of the rise of the Klan in 1866, gotten tougher? Well, he would have been tougher than Johnson, but would he have stopped downsizing the Army or even asked for more troops? Possibly not, and maybe, probably not.

For good alliteration of sorts, I've long said that Reconstruction might have worked with 200,000 bluecoats in the South for a generation rather than 20,000 for a decade.

Really, the U.S. South, without a little bit of an "iron heel," essentially promulgated its version of something like the Dolchstosslegende a half-century before General Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler and other right-wing nuts did in Weimer Germany. Beyond denying that the Civil War had been about slavery, the "Lost Cause" idea claimed that, due to various factors, it hadn't been a fair fight.

Anyway, Lee wasn't such a five-star general as the Lost Cause makes him out to be, despite even a Brit fawning over him in an awful book. He was often a poor strategist who refused to implement a semi-modern general staff for the Army of Northern Virginia. Nor was Stonewall Jackson Paul to Lee's Jesus, despite a Texas historian who isn't worth his reputation trying to claim that. (As for long marches, the Union Fifth Corps once marched 25 miles in a day to get in place for the start of Gettysburg.)

As far as Southern pre-war boasts of licking five Yankees?

Well, the US Census was conducted, per the Constitution, in 1860. You knew how much you were outnumbered. Well, you were wrong, even if you try to hide that fact in Lost Cause mythos and trailing clouds of glory.

Anyway, just like Hitler, et al, Southern leaders might have accepted the reality of "you lost" more had their been a bit more pain, as well as a bit more Reconstruction in general.

That said, the Congressional Radicals all needed to view freed slaves as human beings first, political tools second, or third. Some did have this view, but others did not. At the same time, non-Radicals in the GOP needed to get a bit more Radical. Also, outside of New England, blacks were still not just second-class citizens, but only semi-citizens in much of the North, and New England then (versus, say, South Boston today) was seemingly more enlightened precisely because there were so few blacks.

So, that part of Lincoln's Second Inaugural, lauded by me here, was partially correct. The North had its share of blame in the perpetuation of slavery — and the perpetuation of its profits, and even the push for increasing "efficiency," just like in Northern factories, as detailed in this book.

That said, Lincoln didn't go far enough. While the Second Inaugural wasn't meant to be a policy speech, nowhere before his death did he go beyond it to indicate that fair chunks of the North would need their own quasi-Reconstruction. Of course, some Radicals, and some modern historians, argue that part of that quasi-Reconstruction still may have needed to start at 1600 Pennsylvania, had Lincoln lived.

Yes, Lincoln had gotten past his colonization schemes. Yes, after listening to Frederick Douglass, he finally realized that the United States, not an African kingdom or another, was home for African-Americans. He even accepted that some of them had American ancestries older than his.

But, he still didn't understand — despite facts such as tiny, almost slave-free, Delaware having rejected graduated emancipation and Stephen Douglas' racism in 1858 — that many people in the Border States and the Old Northwest (not to mention the Irish of New York), hadn't evolved like he had over the previous four years.

And so, the failure to insist on a thoroughgoing Reconstruction — maybe not punitive, but more than "rosewater" — before his death wound up failing North and South alike.

This, though, is the bottom line. Much of what was "rosewater" was like giving an inch and the South taking a mile:

That lack of consensus was an ineluctable consequence of concerted postbellum efforts to sand down the seams reuniting the states. There was a real but inadequate constituency for crushing the Southern establishment after the Civil War, and reintegrating the country under an entirely different paradigm. Instead, the North enabled the South by giving it unusual influence over shaping the official mythology of the war. Yes, the South surrendered. The states ratified the 13th Amendment. The Union survived. These facts couldn’t be altered. But memorializing the rebellion as a tragedy of circumstance, or a bravely fought battle of principle—those narratives were adopted in part for the unspoken purpose of making the reunion stick. "You lost, we won, and we're all living in the USA," Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall once wrote. "But we'll let you win in the battle of memory and valor and nostalgia."

Really, the U.S. South, with the "Lost Cause," was just living up to the "honor tradition" that led it to vapidly ingest the narratives of "Ivanhoe" and other Walter Scott novels, and otherwise claim to be Cavaliers, etc. These narratives were ready at hand to the South. (And, speaking of honor, and that book about the profits of slave capitalism? Southern "honor culture" hates nothing more than Southern-born whites writing about these things.)

Beyond that, as far as Southern "nobility"? It's easy to point a finger at Nathan Bedford Forrest and the slaughter of surrendered black soldiers at Fort Pillow in 1864. And, Southerners today probably wouldn't try to defend him. But, it's also easy to point a finger at Lee, watching wounded black soldiers at the end of the Battle of the Crater, during the 1864 Petersburg campaign, be bayoneted while he refused to intervene.

Beutler is right that a federal holiday for April 9 is unrealistic today.

But, we can rename those 10 forts, Fort Hood and others. "Fort Colin Powell" immediately comes to mind. We can stop federal dollars going to Confederate monuments. And, the rest of the nation in general can stoop kowtowing to Southern attitudes.

Beutler is kind enough to suggest "New Birth of Freedom Day" rather than either my straightforward or hard-core realism alternatives. But, I stand by his ideas — except, a bit, for making this part and parcel of American exceptionalism, which he hints at near the end.

And, while I've saluted Lincoln's Second Inaugural for questioning American exceptionalism, nascent at his time, and given an overall salute to the Lincoln movie, I stand by my caveats to that movie, too. Indeed, Lincoln was perhaps, like John Kennedy, lucky he died when he did. Unfortunately, he had the wrong Johnson as his vice president.