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.

[DiogenesLamp]

Theirs was revisionist history right from the start.

Yes, but I was unaware of this until about the last three years. I got a hint of it a little over a decade ago, but I didn't realize the truth of it until I began to notice things that didn't make any sense if you believed what we were told growing up.

We've been lied to about the Civil War for our whole lives.

Unfortunately for purveyors of this propaganda, we can read. We can see what they actually said and did at the time rather than what they later said.

But unfortunately you have to search out this information, and you have to look for it while being subjected to the gale force wins of revisionist propaganda, and "everybody knows the war was fought over slavery" ad populum fallacy.

The numbers tell the truth. The North deliberately provoked a war with the South because the South was going to take away most of their European trade, and thereby cause all sorts of financial stress in their wealthiest city.

The Empire of New York was behind this war because someone dared threaten their money stream.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird quoting: "Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted 'the Confederates were not battling for slavery' and that 'slavery had never been the key issue' (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524)."

Your quote doesn't tell us who or when this happened, but it does support the idea that Lost Cause mythology began at the top, even during the war itself, with men like Davis.
Important to remember that by the time Davis resigned from the US Congress, January 21, 1861, five Deep South states had already declared secession: South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia & Alabama, and Louisiana would soon.
So far as we know, Davis was involved in none of these secession conventions, but had been working in Congress on his own version of the Corwin amendment.
So, while Davis had no personal knowledge of what was going on in those secession conventions, his own efforts were devoted to the one issue they all said was most important: slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery."

But they weren't and certainly didn't.
When push came to shove, slave-holders would have none of it, since slavery was their reason for Confederacy, what sense did it make to abolish slavery?
Yes, sure, in the war's final days when handwriting was clearly on the Confederate wall, then some half-hearted efforts were made to enlist a few black army units.
But leadership did not treat well those who had long advocated for enlisting blacks in the Confederate army.
Patrick Cleburne comes to mind.

FLT-bird quoting Davis: "I tried all in my power to avert this war.
I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not."

Showing that Davis like any good Democrat could lie with passion.
In fact, Davis could easily have prevented civil war simply by not ordering a military assault on Fort Sumter.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'We are not fighting for slavery.
We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination.' - President Jefferson Davis The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14, Number 83"

Again, no date given, but have to guess from late in the war when Davis was staring at the jaws of defeat and hoping to inspire yet more young Southerners to throw their lives away for an insane enterprise.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.' Union Colonel James Jaquess

"'No, it is not, it never was an essential element.
It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination.
It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded."

So here we see one origin of Lost Causer "slavery was pretext, not reason" meme.
But note carefully Davis' metaphor, slavery was non-essential because it only "fired the musket".
And yet, in fact, trigger pulling is the essential act, which determines life or death, and yet here Davis claims it's "non-essential".

You know what it proves?
It proves that Davis was just your typical Democrat eager to blame the gun, not the shooter!!

So just don't tell me that Democrats today are any different than they've always been -- utterly insane.

FLT-bird quoting: "Those who advocated the right of secession alleged in their own justification that we had no regard for law and that the rights of property, life, and liberty would not be safe under the Constitution as administered by us.
If we now verify their assertion we prove that they were in truth fighting for their liberty, and instead of branding their leaders as traitors against a righteous and legal government, we elevate them in history to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots, consecrate them to the admiration of the works, and place them by the side of Washington, Hampden and Sidney.'
- President Andrew Johnson on Radical Reconstruction"

A remarkable (though questionable) quote which, if valid, reminds us how lucky we were to have President Lincoln sandwiched between two lunatic Democrats, Buchanan and Johnson.
Of course, impeached Johnson is now condemned by virtually everyone -- by Southerners for being too harsh in Reconstruction and by most everyone else for going too easy on them.
My complaint is not that Johnson was too harsh or too easy on defeated Confederates, but rather that, it appears here, he let them get away with their Lost Cause Big Lies and so set back the cause of freedom for the next 100 years.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'Candor compels me to declare that at this time there is no Union as our fathers understood the term...'
President Andrew Johnson 3rd annual message to the Union"

Thus revealing why Republicans were angry enough to impeach Johnson.

FLT-bird quoting: "...concluded that Confederate soldiers 'fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government.'
The letters and diaries of many Confederate soldiers 'bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self government,' writes McPherson..."

Sure, especially as the war dragged on, year after year, and ever more Confederate territory fell under Union army control.
Nobody denies that Confederate soldiers were highly motivated to defend their homes & families.
But no reasonable person can accept that slavery was not essential to those Confederate leaders who, until the very end when all was certainly lost, refused to do the one thing which could have changed the war's course: offer slaves their freedom in exchange for army service.

FLT-bird quoting: "What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim.
The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine..."

This re-posted quote is doubtless intended to suggest it was not "all about slavery", but it really says the opposite.
Consider, "before the rise of the new Republican party" actually means: before slavery could be openly debated.
But more glaring is the suggestion that "free states" were encouraged to join the Confederacy.
Well, theoretically, maybe, but certainly not before they adopted slavery 100% as it was understood in the South.
That was, after all, the whole purpose of secession & Confederacy.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all.
Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for.
It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.' Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864"

This part of Cleburne's quote seems real, since we also find it here.
But the first sentences quoted sound fake and are not found confirmed elsewhere.

Regardless, Cleburne's words did not win him any friends in Confederate leadership, he was passed over for promotion three times and died in battle, in 1864.

FLT-bird quoting: "As mentioned, at least some 75 percent of Southerners did not own slaves."

Extraordinarily interesting, since it refutes FLT-bird's claim (i.e., post #394) that: "...slave owners comprised a total of 5.63% of the total free population in the states which seceded....meaning 94.37% did not own slaves."

Unlike FLT-bird, this author admits that 25% of Southerners owned slaves.
And that could easily be correct, overall, because it corresponds to statistics which say almost half of Deep South families owned slaves, about 25% in the Upper South and 15% in Border States, so sure, 25% on average.
My calculations say 26% overall, certainly close enough for this purpose.

FLT-bird quoting: "I believe the Confederacy would have eventually abolished slavery.
There is evidence that suggests slavery was beginning to die out on its own.
For example, the percentage of Southern whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860 (Robert Divine, T. H. Bren... "

It's most important to understand exactly what was going on here.
Yes, slaveholding families did decline measurable percents in some regions of the South.
Where & why?
In Border States especially where many new Northern anti-slavery immigrants settled, many slaves were "sold down the river" because high prices made them unprofitable, and because freedom via the near-by Underground Railroad made escape too easy.
Slave prices were soaring because cotton in the Deep South was booming, creating insatiable demand for more slaves.
So one reason slavery was declining in Border states was because it was booming in the Deep South.

FLT-bird quoting: " 'I apprehend that if all living Union soldiers were summoned to the witness-stand, every one of them would testify that it was the preservation of the American Union and not the destruction of Southern slavery that induced him to volunteer at the call of his country.
As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty percent of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution.
No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.'
—General John B. Gordon, from Reminiscences of the Civil War, page 19"

So let's first notice that Gordon says 80% didn't own slaves, meaning 20% did, which contrasts to FLT-bird's claim it was only 5.63%.
And 20% is not so far from the 25% estimated earlier.
The difference could be fully accounted for by the home states of soldiers Gordon served with -- if more from Upper South & Border States, then yes, likely 20%.
But if from Deep South states like SC & MS, then no, it was closer to 50%.

Second, the reasons Confederates fought were not necessarily the same as the reasons their leaders declared secession.
In their Reasons for Secession documents, secessionists clearly said protecting slavery was their most important concern, if not their only reason.

Finally, Lincoln's first call for 75,000 troops was not to "free the slaves" or even "restore the Union," but rather to return the many Federal properties seized by Confederates -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
"Preserve the Union" and "free the slaves" came later.
Indeed, if you review a list of Civil War era songs, which should tell us about soldiers' feelings, you do find:

"As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, while God is marching on..."

But you don't find any which say, in effect, "let's fight to preserve the Union" or "let's fight to protect slavery".
Soldiers' feelings were more basic.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "We’ve gone over the 1928 book y’all cling to so desperately many times.
I’ve provided both of Charles Adams’ books..."

What actual data do Adams' books cite?

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird:

• "The Southern states WERE being economically exploited.
• The South DID NOT have enough votes in Congress to stop it.
• It WAS going to get worse.
• Lincoln WAS a tyrant.
• The Morrill Tariff DID jack rates up to crushingly high levels and leave them there for 50 years.
• The South DID pay the majority of the tariffs.
• Federal expenditures DID favor the North.
• The regions were totally different economically with the Southern economy being geared for export.
• Slavery was NOT threatened within the US.
• The North DID offer slavery forever via express constitutional amendment.
• The Original 7 seceding states DID reject that."

FLT-bird's version of the Lost Cause myth is somewhat unique, for example, I've never seen another make such a big deal of the Corwin amendment and lie so bald-facedly about it being "offered" and "rejected".
I'd say anyone who can concoct such a claim is a serious propagandist and could find ready employment with the Democrat National Committee.

[DoodleDawg]

Same old Southern song-and-dance.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Tariffs are paid for by the owners of the goods.
The goods brought back were sold on the open market to anybody.
They could be undercut on price though once they had had to pay the high tariffs and they would lose market share."

When you think about it, this somewhat explains why FLT-bird differs from DiogenesLamp on the role of those evil "Northeastern power brokers".
Where DiogenesLamp makes them the focus of his irrational hatreds, FLT-bird doesn't mention them, instead focusing on the alleged fact that Southerners themselves owned the imported goods, and therefore actually paid the tariffs on them.

It's an important distinction since if "New Yorkers" paid all the tariffs, as DiogenesLamp implies, then "what's the beef" from Southerners?
But if, instead, Southern planters themselves owned the goods imported through New York, then they must pay the tariff themselves and so have standing to complain.

Which is more correct?
Well, DiogenesLamp blames "New York power brokers" for virtually everything and that is clearly absurd.
But how much of America's imports in, say, 1860 were owned by the very cotton planters who exported their produce to Europe?
My guess is: very little.
And the reason is, when planters harvested & prepared their crops, they moved the bales to a rail siding or steamboat landing.
Merchants riding the train or steamboat would offer the planter a price for his cotton bales, which the planter may accept or wait for the next train-steamboat in hopes of a better price.
The merchants then move the cotton to port, export it and, on return fill the ships' cargo holds with European products.

So who were these merchants, New Yorkers? Maybe.
Southerners? Maybe
Foreigners? Very likely, representatives of European importers there to make certain their companies get the quantities & qualities needed.

Point is: once the cotton leaves the rail siding or steamboat landing, our Southern planter has his money -- that's his payday -- and ownership transfers to agents representing ultimate customers, agents who then also refill the ships' cargo holds with European imports for their return trip.

So I'm thinking DiogenesLamp stumbled slightly closer to truth on this, though both Lost Causers are distorting actual history for their own propaganda purposes.

Agree? Disagree?

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "He’s spouting the same insipid myths over and over and over and over.
There’s nothing to be learned from him."

{sigh} sadly.

[BroJoeK]

SoCal Pubbie: "I’m working on the research that’s going to disprove this whole contention that you and DiogenesLamp push on how importing and exporting was actually done, but it’s going to take a while.
So you’ve got that to look forward to."

I'm looking forward to learning how close my guesswork comes to your research results.

[SoCal Pubbie]

We’ve been arguing specifics for dozens of posts now!

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "The South was doing most of the exporting.
Had they been independent, they would have been far wealthier."

The cotton South overall was already hugely wealthy.
So the issue here is, who owned the transportation, banking, warehousing & insurance needed to get product into customers' hands?
No doubt some of that was already owned by Southerners, and I'd argue it certainly didn't require independence for Southerners to own more of it.
It only really required that more devote themselves to such enterprises, but here we run into the Wigfall rules:

"We are an agricultural people; we a primitive but civilized people.
We have no cities-we don't want them.
We have no literature-we don't need any yet.
We have no press-we are glad of it.
We have no commercial marine-no navy-we don't want them.
Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels.
We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes.
As long as we have our cotton, our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from these nations with which we are in amity."

Wigfall's words do not suggest a people chomping at the bit and raring to go towards modern industrialization and finance centered economies.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I am doing research to find specific detail as to how cotton was sold and distributed, and how imports returned to the US. I have reached out to two historians and I’m also trying to get their books. What I’ve found so far are two things.

One, the whole system was more complex than what’s described in the Southron lament. It was hardly “Southerners planted and Northerners profited.”

Two, factoring houses, already mentioned by others on this thread, were a huge part of the process.

The complexity arises because while there were usual and normal practices, different planters worked differently. Some wanted to follow the cotton through the sale. Others wanted the factor to act with complete autonomy to make the best deal. Others split the difference, giving the factor the lowest price they’d take. Even in that case, the factor might disobey that dictate if he felt he had to.

Further complicating matters is that many factor houses were Southern companies, others New York firms, and still others were American agents of British brokers and importers. In addition American and British banks invested in American businesses while not being directly involved.

Now, as you say, so far as I can tell once the deal was done the plantation owner had his money (depending on terms) and had no interest in importing. What I’ve read is that rich Southerners reinvested profits in more slaves and more land. The idea that the seller arranged shipping and not the buyer or exporter, and was forced to book round trip voyages, seems absurd to me. The market was ever changing and trends came and went, so a shipping company who wanted to charge the highest rates had to be flexible. Having your ships tied up both ways makes no sense.

That’s not to say that those profiting from crops in the South did not also participate in importing. But I don’t see a direct connection.

Oh, by the way, Louisiana politicians were all for tariffs when the duties were levied in sugar!

[rockrr]

The funniest thing is when these two klowns knock their heads together and accuse us of “revisionist history”.

In the same breath as they whine about Pro-Americans rewriting history they bleat, “We’ve been lied to about the Civil War for our whole lives.” Which is it?!

DegenerateLamp bristles at the term “slavocracy” - even though it pre-dates the Civil War and fltbird drinks heartily from the lost cause bible. They often cite original sources (which is a good thing) but draw conclusions that fly in the face of Occam’s Razor.

They are some peculiar characters!

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You keep telling me that the navigation act of 1817 had no detrimental effect on the South, and I keep telling you it was very significant.
It effectively forced the South to hire only New York shippers to handle their cargoes.
The South could have hired foreign ships and crews at much cheaper prices, but the Navigation act of 1817 made it ruinously expensive to do so, plus the use of Foreign Ships and crews to carry traffic between US ports was strictly forbidden, and would have caused the entire cargo to be seized if it was discovered. "

You keep posting this canard even though by now you well know it's false.
The 1817 Navigation act did nothing of what you claim.
It merely made cheaper for interstate shippers to use American ships.
It had no effect on international shipping, which could go in whatever ships seemed best suited.

More important: in any one of the 44 years between 1817 and 1861 Southerners could have used their influence in Washington, DC, to change such a law, if they truly wanted to.
But there's no evidence they ever did.
Therefore your entire analysis here is bogus.

DiogenesLamp: "All of these things the South could have done for itself, and would have with independence.
Warehousing was already being built in Charleston after the secession."

And could well have been done without secession, had those Southerners been truly interested in it.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Your post is too long.
I’m not going to read it."

Your posts are also often quite long, but I take the effort to read & rebut them.
It's one difference between scholarship & mere propaganda.

[DiogenesLamp]

So I'm thinking DiogenesLamp stumbled slightly closer to truth on this, though both Lost Causers are distorting actual history for their own propaganda purposes.

[BroJoeK]

SoCal Pubbie: "First, how do you calculate that three quarters of tariffs were paid by Southerners when no such stats exist."

DiogenesLamp: "Imports are payment for exports.
Is that such a hard concept to grasp?"

We've been over this ground now many times and everyone agrees that 1860 cotton exports were around $200 million, an all-time high to date.
So the first bones of contention are: what were total exports and how much more were "Southern products".
Well... if through exclusions you minimize "total exports" plus, by including everything shipped from Southern ports as "Southern products", then you can jigger the numbers to say, 80% or even 90% of US exports were "Southern products".

My response is, first, 1860 total exports including specie were roughly $400 million so cotton was about half.
Second, everything else classified as "Southern products" was also produced outside the Confederate South and therefore should not be counted as necessarily "Southern".
We see this in 1861 when Confederate exports were excluded from Union totals and excepting cotton, "Southern product" exports fell net-net only $3 million.
Indeed, some categories hugely increased.

DiogenesLamp: "Southern independence was a horrific financial threat to the Northern States that had built their industries on the belief that they would be handling most of the trade from Europe."

Such fears even if genuine in March 1861 proved unfounded or overblown.
But DiogenesLamp uses them to claim the Union was motivated strictly by economic issues and that is simply not the case.

When war started at Fort Sumter it was not over economics, but rather over who owned Federal property in Confederate states.
And Lincoln's first response was to call up 75,000 troops to retake those properties.
It was that call, not economics, which drove Virginia to flip from Union to Confederate, and along with Virginia the entire Upper South.

Yes, the next step was a blockade, based on General Scott's Anaconda Plan, but remember that plan was devised years earlier, likely while Jefferson Davis was secretary of war, and was not originally based on any particular economic issues, but simply as a potentially effective method for defeating some unknown future rebellion.

So while DiogenesLamp has a particular burr under his saddle for economic issues, and "New York power brokers" there were other more direct concerns including returning Federal properties, restoring the Union and, yes eventually, emancipation for "contraband property".

[DiogenesLamp]

Here is Lincoln himself articulating my very own argument.

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.

Lincoln talks about "Corporations", "Corruption", and "Money Power". He sounds like me, except I would argue this is how the war began, and he was their agent.

[DiogenesLamp]

But if, instead, Southern planters themselves owned the goods imported through New York, then they must pay the tariff themselves and so have standing to complain.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "So your argument is that Anderson didn't know what he was talking about?"

Sure, since we're told Beauregard knew he only had 48 hours worth of ammunition and Anderson held out only 34 hours.
Another 24 hours would have revealed for all the see the weakness of Beauregard's assault.
But Anderson didn't know and so snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, so to speak.

DiogenesLamp: "Wells had sent him authorization to surrender.
Sumter D@mn near blew up when a fire was licking the timbers outside of their powder storage. "

So now you're going to defend Maj. Anderson??
Well, then remember that under Confederate occupation Fort Sumter held out for years against Union bombardment which reduced the fort to rubble, but never forced its surrender.
So, if Confederates could hold out for years under much more intense bombardment than Anderson's men saw, then perhaps Anderson could hold out a few more days to give the Fox/Lincoln plan time to work.

DiogenesLamp: "You make insinuations about him being conflicted because he was a Kentuckian?
Wasn't Lincoln from Kentucky?
Didn't Kentucky remain a Union state?"

History records that something was wrong with Anderson, leading to his relief from command in Kentucky during the war.
I suspect that like other Kentuckians, Anderson was somewhat conflicted, rendering him ineffective.
You may remember that Kentucky supplied troops for both Union and Confederates, on the order of three to one, suggesting a large number must have been conflicted & split in their loyalties.

[DiogenesLamp]

Well, DiogenesLamp blames "New York power brokers" for virtually everything and that is clearly absurd.

Not just New York. I just say "New York" as a shorthand. It's actually the corridor of power that stretches from Washington DC, through New York, and up to Boston. But "New York" is just a simplified way of saying it. I've explained what I mean several times, but you keep pretending to not understand what I mean when I say "New York."

"Deep State", "Establishment", and "Crony Capitalists" also work.