What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

National Review ^ | April 7 2018 | Daniel Gerelnter

[iowamark]

A friend recently posed this question: “If you had to recommend one book for a first-time visitor to the U.S. to read, to understand our country, what would it be and why?”...

If the goal is an education, we could recommend Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s Growth of the American Republic, a two-volume history that used to be required reading...

Huckleberry Finn may be the greatest American novel... But there is no single novel, no matter how great, that can do the job alone.

Consider instead the great American essayists who invented a new style of writing in the 1920s and founded The New Yorker. E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat is the finest such essay collection... Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel is nearly as great...

Teddy Roosevelt’s short book The Strenuous Life, which opens with his 1899 speech by that name, is an explanation of America’s view of itself — a view that greatly shaped the 20th century. It was the peculiar marriage of power and prosperity together with a sense of moral urgency. Roosevelt demands an active life, a life of struggling for personal and national virtue. He commends a triad of strength in body, intellect, and character — of which character is the most important. America must meet its moral obligations vigorously, he tells us: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”...

The origin of that moral urgency was America’s most important spiritual crisis. It is best expressed in a single speech, rich in Biblical imagery and contemporary prophecy: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is the greatest of all American writing. It is a tone-poem or photograph of the American soul. A complete understanding, in just 697 words.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "No more illegitimate than the claim by the Colonists that the British were "oppressing" them.
The Canadians were under the exact same laws, but they didn't feel oppressed.
The British Loyalists in the US also didn't feel oppressed."

But our Founders certainly did feel oppressed, for dozens of factual reasons listed in their Declaration.
Among those reasons, the Brits had already started, declared & waged war against them, and would hang them if captured.
Those are far from trivial or "at pleasure" reasons for "secession", they amounted to clear & present necessity and nothing remotely resembling those conditions in late 1860-'61.

[DiogenesLamp]

But our Founders certainly did feel oppressed, for dozens of factual reasons listed in their Declaration.

Like this one.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...

[SoCal Pubbie]

As I’ve stated your premise that southern interests always got voted down is false. Does Dred Scott ring any bells? How about the tariff of 1857?

Sheesh you lie a lot!

[DiogenesLamp]

As I’ve stated your premise that southern interests always got voted down is false.

Stating that someone else's premise is false is a very different thing from demonstrating it to be false. You've brought up the tariff thing before, and I acknowledged that they voted for them (and the Navigation act of 1817) in previous years, but I also pointed out that they did not realize at that time how this would come back to bite them in the rear, and by the time they figured it out, they no longer had the ability to vote them back out.

Sheesh you lie a lot!

And you are a little quick to declare that someone disagreeing with you equals lying. You may not have realized it at the time, but I didn't agree with your claim that the South agreed with the tariffs because Southern state congressmen had previously supported them.

By the time of the Civil War, they no longer supported them, and the saw them as excessively costly to their interests, and biased towards Northern interests.

Have we made any progress on the Math/Numbers topic? I'm waiting for you to either agree, or dispute some particular of my math or numbers.

[SoCal Pubbie]

You know damned well that Southern interests were delighted with the tariff of 1857, yet you push the old falsehood of Northern domination of American politics. That’s lying.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I’ve disputed your numbers throughout. Furthermore I dispute that they had any bearing on Southern secession. Southerners at the time disputed it too.

[DiogenesLamp]

You know damned well that Southern interests were delighted with the tariff of 1857

Delighted? And for what reason would they have cause to be delighted? Who wants to pay for higher tariffs?

yet you push the old falsehood of Northern domination of American politics.

Party_________ Total seats
Republican Party 108
Democratic Party 44
Independent Democrat 1
Constitutional Unionist Party 30
Totals 183

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1860

That’s lying.

You claim to know what I know, and on the basis of what you think I know you claim I am lying? That's called "Jumping to a conclusion."

[DiogenesLamp]

I’ve disputed your numbers throughout.

You've said you disputed them, but you haven't put forth any good sources which dispute them, and you haven't demonstrated the sources I have put forth to be incorrect. You may have disputed them in your mind, but in objective reality, not so much.

Furthermore I dispute that they had any bearing on Southern secession.

You did that before you even looked at them, so I hardly think restating your pre-biased opinion is proof of anything. Indeed, how can you possibly know i'm wrong before you've even looked at what I had to say?

[SoCal Pubbie]

I HAVE looked at what you have to say. Knowing that gravity is a fact before you try to sell me a can of Upsidaisiun is not a pre-biased opinion,

[SoCal Pubbie]

“Delighted? And for what reason would they have cause to be delighted? Who wants to pay for higher tariffs?”

Jesus man are you dense?!

“After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.”

Georgia seccessation document, January 29 1861

[DiogenesLamp]

I HAVE looked at what you have to say.

You have now. But you started out declaring me wrong before you had even heard what I had to say.

Knowing that gravity is a fact before you try to sell me a can of Upsidaisiun is not a pre-biased opinion,

The economics of 1860 America is not quite so strong as gravity in forcing recognition of it's reality.

Fortunately we can look at what people recorded.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“Who wants to pay for higher tariffs?”

Tariffs were not high in the years just before the Civil War. This has been pointed out to you time and again. Why do you keep lying?

[SoCal Pubbie]

You were and are wrong. Your numbers have been challenged. Even IF true they offer no explanation as to why the South started the Civil War.

[DiogenesLamp]

Tariffs were not high in the years just before the Civil War. This has been pointed out to you time and again. Why do you keep lying?

It may have been said repeatedly time and time again, but that isn't the same thing as having been pointed out to me.

Tariffs varied depending upon what was being imported, but they usually were high on things the South wanted, and usually low on things the North wanted. (and low on things for which there were no domestic producers.)

But the issue of tariffs is mostly a red herring to the cause of the war. Tariffs were only a small part of the reason why the South wanted out of the Union.

A bigger reason had to do with losing about 40% of their profits to New York. New York controlled the shipping, the banking, the warehousing, and all other related matters, and all of this took a big chunk out of the profits for their exports. The Navigation act of 1817 gave New York a virtual monopoly on shipping, and so Southern producers were stuck having to pay rates that were just under the fines they would incur for using foreign ships and/or crews.

If you want to hear a contemporary account of their real gripes, this man did a fair job of covering them, though by no means complete.

http://www.civilwarcauses.org/rhett.htm

[DiogenesLamp]

“After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.”

Georgia seccessation document, January 29 1861

And here is the rest of the material that puts your excerpted statement into context. The FedGov had it's thumb on the scale in favoring Northern economic interests.

The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade.

Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency.

The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.

But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.

[DiogenesLamp]

You were and are wrong. Your numbers have been challenged.

They have been called wrong. They haven't been shown to be wrong. As I mentioned before, you've conceded 60% of all exports were from the South, and you were only counting cotton. You are ignoring the other 13% from the South consisting of Sugar, Hemp, Molasses, and Tobacco.

Even IF true they offer no explanation as to why the South started the Civil War.

Well that's because the South didn't start the Civil War. If you want an explanation for that, you will have to look to the fact that Lincoln sent a fleet of warships with orders to attack them. (or did you even know about that?)

The South wanted independence because they would see an immediate economic benefit from gaining independence, because most of that European traffic to New York would have moved to their ports.

Lincoln started the civil war because New York would not sit by and take such losses, and the Federal government would also be out a lot in revenue that would have to be made up by further taxing the North.

Now you may come along and say "Oh! but the moral imperative of "Slavery"!

I'm a cynic. Show me a fight involving large quantities of money, and I will peg that as the cause over concerns about the welfare of people they hated anyway.

[FLT-bird]

And the bottom line is this: in 1861, despite an 80% reduction in US cotton exports, overall exports fell only 35%.
And 35% sounds about right for the importance of the Confederate economy to the overall US national economy.

You disagree?

Charles Adams disagreed in his books on the subject and a whole slew of newspapers on both sides as well as foreign papers disagreed. The only major export the Northern states had at that time was Midwestern grain. That had only really started to be exported in abundance in the latter years before the war. As far as manufactured goods, the Northeast exported practically none. They struggled to compete against European manufacturers even in the US without a very high tariff because The Europeans had industrialized first and already had economies of scale.

---

Well, actually Confederate propagandists figured out early-on that our European trading partners would not like a civil war over slavery, but could well understand “free trade” and “oppressive Federal government”, so that is the line they used as early as 1861.

Certainly they knew that however it could hardly be argued to be a war over slavery when the Northern states offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment and when the US Congress passed a resolution saying they were not fighting over slavery.

Northern propagandists only “discovered” a full 2 years into the war and from Mill of all people a whole ocean away that what they had really been fighting and dying for all along was actually slavery....even though they still had slaves themselves and while they were busy subjecting the Plains Indians to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Oh well. I guess it sounds better than admitting they were fighting a war for money and empire.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "New York had virtually total control of the shipping, and they had bought up virtually every cotton contract that came available."

Say, I hate to break this to you, but there is no such a person as "New York", never was, never will be.
Many "New Yorkers" then as now, came from elsewhere and returned elsewhere in due time.
New York elites were long-term family, friends & political allies (Democrats) of the Southerners they did business with, and felt much closer to them than to those deplorable Republicans always ranting about abolition & such.

DiogenesLamp: "The money came back through New York.
It didn't go directly to the people who actually produced the commodity, it went first to New York where they skimmed off a big chunk of the profit."

Of course every resale adds a profit margin, but in 1860 there were no people anywhere else on Earth better off than your average cotton planter and his white neighbors.
For you to pretend otherwise is pure nonsense.

DiogenesLamp: "And the bulk of Federal Revenues, and 73% of the trade going into New York."

Roughly 50% of Federal Revenues and only a small fraction of the total trade going through New York.
Remember: less than half the $200 million in cotton exports shipped from New York, and the total trade still accounted for only 5% of the US $4.4 billion GDP.

DiogenesLamp: "The Fed gov was not induced so much to launch a "moral" war as they were to get that money back and stop any future competition to the Northern money men who had gotten their own agent in control of the government."

I get it -- that's your story and you're sticking to it, no matter what.
But the fact remains that those "New York elites" you obsess over were all Democrats and political, social & economic allies of Southern planters.
As such they were just as horrified by Lincoln's election as today's Democrats are by Trump's!

That's part of what makes your narrative as wrong as it can be.
You portray Lincoln's political enemies as his rulers when they were nothing of the sort.
Yes, once Confederates started civil war, those New York Democrats did ally temporarily with Republicans to help win it, but it was a very uneasy alliance, as witnessed by the 1863 NY draft riots.
And it did not for long outlast the war.

[FLT-bird]

That was 1830 so in 1860 South Carolina was careful to enlist the entire Deep South in secession, and make the reason slavery, not tariffs.
But while protecting slavery sold well at home, it won no friends in Europe, and so was jettisoned there in favor of “free trade” and “oppressive Federal government.”

And that Confederate argument seemed to work pretty well, until Lincoln blew it away with his Emancipation Proclamation.

This is a PC Revisionist lie. The Lincoln administration and the Northern dominated Congress was only too happy to offer the Corwin Amendment which would have expressly enshrined protection of slavery effectively forever in the US Constitution.

The US Congress then passed a resolution stating that they were not fighting over slavery.

Meanwhile of the 7 original seceding Southern states only 4 issued declarations of causes. Of those 3 of them listed tariffs and unequal federal expenditures along with some added complaints about the failure to provide border security by Texas. THEN Lincoln chose to start a war. THEN 4 and arguably 5 more states seceded. Obviously they were not seceding over slavery but instead over the principle that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed as had been stated in the Declaration of Independence.

[FLT-bird]

Total, complete fantasy.
Sure, Confederates in 1861 may have hated damnyankees, but none of them wanted to become one!

Southerners very much did see by 1860-61 that industrialization was the way forward. They also saw that the existing structure in which they were being systematically bled dry to finance Northern industrialization would make their own development nearly impossible.

“Secession, southerners argued, would ‘liberate’ the South and produce the kind of balanced economy that was proving so successful in the North and so unachievable in the South.” (John A. Garraty and Robert McCaughey, The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877, Volume One, Sixth Edition, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, pp. 418-419, emphasis in original)

“The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control.” Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861

“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Jefferson Davis 1860 speech in the US Senate

“Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this.” ——Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton

[To a Northern Congressman] “You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange, which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of Northern Capitalist. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and our institutions.” Rep. John H. Reagan of Texas

“Northerners are the fount of most troubles in the new Union. Connecticut and Massachusetts exhaust our strength and substance and its inhabitants are marked by such a perversity of character they have divided themselves from the rest of America - Thomas Jefferson in an 1820 letter

“The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue,” John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question,” March 4, 1850