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]

x: "That is indeed a fake quote.
It's curious how many fake quotes still survive and are circulated on the Internet."

Thanks! I'm probably guilty of accepting on good faith more of our Lost Causers' "quotes" than they deserve.
But some sound so "off" even I can't buy them.

[BroJoeK]

x: "The quotes about half-way down show how little interest Southern planters had in industrializing.
That's not to say that there were no factories in the old South, but the culture didn't encourage it the way it did in the North."

Thanks, I'll try to read it but am put-off by the opening paragraphs suggesting its a big anti-capitalist screed.
Not much interested in that, maybe our Lost Causers would like it?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "If Lincoln was doing "God's Work", then why was his own personal life so tragic?
One would think that a man doing what God wanted done, would be given some peace in his life."

Lincoln was not a particularly religious man, but his life was no more tragic than many Americans of his day, or indeed of other presidents.
Consider, for examples, the 1861 outgoing Democrat President Buchanan had no wife & children.
Preceding Buchanan, Democrat President Pierce:

"Pierce was popular and outgoing, but his family life was a grim affair, with his wife Jane suffering from illness and depression for much of her life.[1]
All of their children died young, their last son being gruesomely killed in a train accident while the family was traveling shortly before Pierce's inauguration"

So Lincoln's family life was not unusual for his time, and besides, God is known to have often selected flawed vessels to carry His message.
So nobody said that either Lincoln then or our current President now are saints, just that they are best suited to do the job which desperately needs done.

[x]

Thanks, I'll try to read it but am put-off by the opening paragraphs suggesting its a big anti-capitalist screed.

Baptist's book is. Guelzo's review isn't. He does a good job tearing down Baptist's arguments about the centrality of slavery to the US economy.

[x]

DiogenesLamp: "The political and economic ties over time would start to look like this, which is it's natural affinity."

What natural affinity? What ties Idaho to Alabama or Utah to South Carolina or Iowa and Arkansas? Those states were on opposite sides of America's political divides from much of the country's history. I guess this is just more of Diogenes's monomania. It's hard to argue with people like that because everything they say just reflects the one idea that has taken possession of them.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "All four of them. Or was it only three? I forget.
I know it wasn't all 11 states, but in our modern discussions of this, it has become common place to accept that this minority of states represents the majority. Dishonest, that."

See my post #649 for a closer look at the more important "Reasons for Secession" documents.
Yes, there were well more than four.

DiogenesLamp: ""Federal Properties" is just the token excuse.
Fort Sumter was useless..."

So claims DiogenesLamp, but people of that time felt differently.
As many Lost Causers here have pointed out, Confederates in April 1861 did not consider Fort Sumter "useless", but so vital and dangerous to them it had to be attacked militarily if not immediately surrendered.
So Fort Sumter was very valuable to Confederates.

As for Sumter's value to the Union, it was just one of a series of forts built to protect US harbors after the War of 1812 against any similar threats.
Sure, time rendered it obsolete, but that was far from obvious in 1861.
Indeed, from April 1863 until war's end Fort Sumter proved very valuable to Confederates in protecting Charleston against Union assault.

Similar forts to Sumter continued in use, Fort Jefferson in the Florida Keys until 1900, Fort Pickens near Pensacola until 1947.
This site lists dozens of similar US coastal forts kept active well into the 20th century, including four in South Carolina alone.
So your suggestion that Fort Sumter particularly or coastal forts in general were of no use after 1865 is not supported by actual facts.

DiogenesLamp: "Eventually they realized it was no longer worth the trouble to keep up the pretense, and so they just stopped, and it has been basically abandoned ever since. "

Wrong again.
Fort Sumter was restored & maintained until 1876, then again for the Spanish American war after 1898.
It was not finally deactivated as a coastal fort until 1946.
Remember, it was just one of dozens like it whose status & condition changed over time depending on perceived military threats.

DiogenesLamp: ""Federal Properties" my @$$. It always was just an excuse. "

So you keep posting, but with no serious evidence to support it.
The fact is that Jefferson Davis himself knew attacking Fort Sumter would bring down the Union might on him:

"Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.
You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.
It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.[15]" -- Robert Toombs, Confederate Secretary of State

DiogenesLamp: "And here is where you just smear people because they are whipping your @$$ in the raw facts of the debate."

But of course you have no facts, none, to support any of your lunatic claims.
It's all just fantasy & Lost Causer wet dreams.

DiogenesLamp: "I don't give a sh*t about full citizenship for freed slaves, and I contend that was going to eventually happen anyways."

Of course you don't, thereby suggesting why your contention is pure fantasy.

DiogenesLamp: "What bothers me is the fact that some Plutocracy that is still running Washington DC today, launched a war over money that killed 750,000 people directly, possibly another 2 million indirectly, destroyed the relationship between the States and the Federal government which the Founders had established, and created the gargantuan borrow and spend monster that is currently eating us alive today."

Total fantasy, Lost Causer wet dream demonstrating only a serious lack of respect for actual historical facts.

DiogenesLamp: "You want to keep the topic on slavery, because it is the only possible way to pretend the civil war was not a horrible disaster, which it was, and it is also the only moral justification of which anyone can think for what was done.
The problem is, it's just wrong.
It isn't supported by the facts, and the Corwin amendment alone should make that clear to any objective person."

No the real problem here is you're just wrong, about your "facts" and "reasons", and seemed consumed by a historical fantasy which has no redeeming value.

You make a big deal of the Corwin Amendment, but Lincoln said it only repeated what the Constitution already implied, so was no change as far as he was concerned.
And it was helpful in keeping Border States in the Union.
Indeed, two months before Corwin submitted his amendment, Senator Jefferson Davis submitted one of his own very similar -- so don't tell me it wasn't about slavery.
Are you calling Jefferson Davis a liar??!

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp alleged Lincoln quote: "...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..."

rockrr: "I think I’ll go with snopes on this one."

Thanks rockrr for the link, DL's quote is fake.

DiogenesLamp another alleged Lincoln quote: "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel."
speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837."

One problem with this quote is that word "capitalists" allegedly used by Lincoln in 1837.
Well, Karl Marx is widely credited for inventing the term "capitalism", but in fact he never used it and he lived until 1883.
The first recorded uses begin in 1850 but they would not be widely known, and the word was not coined & introduced in its current sense until 1906.

See etymology of "capitalism" here, here and here.

It does seem the word "capitalist" preceded "capitalism", but its original meaning is unclear, likely only referred to wealthy people, which Lincoln in 1837 (age 28) was not.

So we can give Lincoln a lot of credit for prescience, but doubt if even he in 1837 could predict a word & meaning that was still over 50 years in the future!

By the way, I've long thought DiogenesLamp had a Marxist streak in him, but he denies that, so I'll settle for calling it his little "inner Democrat", who drives him to crazy ideas & talk.
But here note DiogenesLamp approvingly quoting the devil himself, Lincoln, when Lincoln is made to sound like DiogenesLamp's fellow Marxist, fake quote or no.

[DiogenesLamp]

rockrr: "I think I’ll go with snopes on this one."

Thanks rockrr for the link, DL's quote is fake.

My God, you are just a propaganda tool. The man told you exactly where he got that quote, and *I* showed you that Jack London cited it in his book in 190-Freaking-8, and you are going to come back with the quote is fake?

Yes, Pennsylvanian Jack London was just so stupid that he got pulled in by a fake quote over a 100 years ago, and which other Lincoln references have verified.

You just make up what you want to believe, and ignore any evidence that you can't force into your narrative.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Without the interference with Trade, the Union numbers would be much worse, and the Confederate numbers would be much better.
It is dishonest to pretend they represented what would have happened absent the conflict. "

What's totally dishonest is to pretend that even one dollar of 1860 exports somehow "belonged" to the 1861 Confederacy.
It didn't, first because from 1/3 to 1/2 of Southerners were Border State & Upper South Unionists, and second because there's no credible evidence saying all products shipped from, say, New Orleans were even produced in "the South".

DiogenesLamp: "Those producers who would benefit from direct Trade with Europe would have eventually done what was in their economic best interest, so even if his 'Southern origin' included the slave states that remained in the Union, once they saw others reaping far greater profits than they, they would have been of a mind to join that other coalition."

But producers exporting out of, say, New Orleans already had "direct Trade with Europe", so a Confederacy would have no effect on their prosperity.
Just the opposite, since according to this source Confederates intended to tax their exports while the Union never did.
That means exporters in the South would be far better off shipping products out of Union ports.

Indeed, here is a March 4, 1861 report from the Savanah Republican which sheds great light on this debate:

"Leaving direct taxation out of view, as the last resort of dire necessity, it is proposed to levy an export duty....
If a tax be levied on exports, nearly all the money it raises will come out of the cotton planter, for, except sugar, which mounts up to a respectable figure, the Confederate States export nothing but cotton, worth speaking of.
The little rice, tobacco, naval stores and lumber we export amount to a very small sum.
Half a cent a pound on cotton, as proposed, will bring in eight or ten millions -- all of which the cotton planter must pay, leaving other industries comparatively untaxed.
But even the import and export duties together will not probably produce the amount desired..."

The Savanah Republican did not consider exports other than Cotton & Sugar to be "worth speaking of".
Could it be because all those other items were in fact Union exports?

Bottom line: the Confederate export tax would drive Southern producers to ship from Union ports and DiogonesLamp's entire sand-castle-in-the-sky comes crashing down to Earth, destroyed by the winds of reality.

Why am I not surprised?

DiogenesLamp: "The threat to New York's money stream was the same, the only question was one of timing.
It may have happened sooner, or it may have taken a little longer, but New York's (and Washington's) money stream was going to get interrupted absent a war to stop it."

Sorry, now you have to cancel your Confederate victory party because they were going to add an export tax which would cancel out all the alleged benefits of "direct trade with Europe".

DiogenesLamp: "With Federal gunboats steering trade back to New York, and prohibiting Southern trade that would otherwise have occurred, it became a "captured market" in a very different meaning from the usual economic term. "

No, you have that backwards.
The northernmost Confederate fortress on the Mississippi River was in Columbus, Kentucky.

"A chain was suspended from Columbus to the Missouri shore to stop Northern boats from moving down river."

Another Confederate fortress was Vicksburg, Mississippi, and it was they, not Union forces, which prevented commerce.

"From 1861 to 1863, the Confederates controlled the Mississippi River.
Their northernmost fortress at Columbus closed the upper river to Union gunboats.
Vicksburg, the largest and most formidable river fortress, stopped any Union force invading from the south.
Both forts held the title "Gibraltar of the West" - meaning impregnable, natural strongholds."

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "So there's the answer to that question. 2% of the land accounts for about 4 trillion dollars per year. They must grow ambrosia there or something."

Now explain why you skipped right over the more important point, which is, on that 2% of land live 17% of our population producing (take your pick) 15% to 20% of US GDP.
In other words, the population of the "Northeastern Megalopolis" is, on average, no more and no less economically productive than any other Americans.
In short, there's nothing special about them, they just happen to live more closely together than the rest of us find comfortable.
And there's no special reason to think those 50+ million Americans are any more or less wicked, evil or controlling than anyone else.
Sure, they're mostly Democrats but that's true of any large cities.

DiogenesLamp: "And what does "Washington DC" produce to make it such a large part of GDP?
While we're at it, i'm not recalling having used too many products manufactured in New York City."

I doubt if Washington would be self-sustaining at its current size without massive Federal spending there.
As for New York: finance, technical services, media, trade, health care and still some manufacturing in lower rent districts.

And your problem with all that is what, exactly?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The Ghost Amendment that Haunts Lincoln's Legacy."

Sure, it clearly says, "signed by President Buchanan", and Lincoln forwarded it.
If that's your whole case for Lincoln "orchestrating" Corwin, then it's ludicrous.
Forwarding is hardly "orchestrating".

I'll repeat, if Lincoln "orchestrated" anything, it was the defeat of Corwin, since only a handful of states ratified it, and most later rescinded.

Indeed, if you truly want to blame somebody for Corwin, then that should be Senator Jefferson Davis who submitted his very similar version two months before Corwin did.
That's where it got started, not with Lincoln!

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Value of Total U.S. Exports ..........$278,902,000
Total Southern Contribution ....................$252,000,000"

Total complete rubbish, a laughable lie on the face of it, beyond despicable propaganda, which should utterly shame you, if you were capable of honest shame.

$252 / $279 = 90% of US exports "Southern products" -- absurd, and it tells us the perpetrators of this fraud are complete liars to be trusted in nothing, zero, nada trust.

Actual details on US exports can be found here.
It puts the lie to the whole concept of "Southern products" by showing that except for cotton most "Southern products" were not seriously reduced in 1861 and some significantly increased.

So they might have been "Southern products" but certainly not "Confederate products".

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Having no choice but to trade with the North, the Europeans did so, but without those warships, the Europeans would have chosen to trade instead with the South, and that would have absolutely wrecked the financials of various Northern businesses."

Of course they would "trade with the South", just as they did before 1861, shipping directly to and from major Southern ports like New Orleans and Baltimore.
The question here is: were there enough customers in the Confederate South to buy up the hundreds of shiploads of imports on their return-from-Europe voyages?
Answer: in no possible way -- zero, nada, zip way.
Oh, you claim, it would be cheaper to "ship direct".
No it would be vastly more expensive to land imports in, say, Savanah for shipment by rail to, say, Chicago, because of both the double tariff and at least 25% higher rail freight costs.

So the whole notion is absurd, a Lost Causer's wet dream unsustained by any reality.

DiogenesLamp: "You keep running away from the point, because you can't think of a single manner to address the point honestly.
When looked at honestly, the North was in a great deal of financial trouble, and badly needed a war to prevent it."

Hogwash, I'm running from nothing but you are drinking 100 proof Confederate joy-juice and its rotting your brain -- get off it!

The truth is in April 1861 only war could add Virginia and the Upper South to Jefferson Davis' little Confederacy, since they had already voted "no deal", and only war could take those states away from the Union.

So who really needed war and who lost more from it?

Answer: 1) Davis 2) Lincoln

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I’m not trying to put forth a tu quoque argument as you are with this nonsense, I am merely pointing out that propaganda has been going on a long time in this conflict, and that the term 'slaveocracy' was intended from the beginning to be a form of propaganda in the manner that 'anti-choice' is also a deliberate misstatement of the other sides’ position."

But unlike "anti-choice" the term "slaveocracy" is a 100% accurate description of who, what & why ruled the Deep South and some regions in Upper South & Border States, and who was grossly over-represented in Congress due to its 3/5 rule.
Sure, the truth might hurt, but it was still the truth.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "My argument is that the Northern coalition cared so very little about the plight of slaves that they offered permanent protection for slavery in an effort to coax the Southern states into staying in/rejoining the Union."

I'd call that a brilliant piece of propaganda -- how to turn "slavery, slavery, slavery" against the Union while simultaneously absolving Confederates from it!
The only problem is it crashes & burns in the face of real facts.

First of all, the Corwin amendment began with Senator Jefferson Davis in December 1860, and Davis should have known -- if anyone did -- what really mattered to secessionists, right?
If Davis assured his Senate colleagues "this will do the trick", why would they doubt him?

Second, yet again: Lincoln did not believe Corwin was any change in the Constitution's meaning, so its effects were purely symbolic, in Lincoln's view.
If Corwin would help hold some Border States in the Union, then it was not a problem for Lincoln.
Lincoln's first priority was to preserve the Union.

DiogenesLamp: "That they offered it, and the Southern states were not moved by it, demonstrates clearly that neither side really gave a sh*t about the issue of slavery, and so modern attempts to portray the war as having been about that are just dishonest."

Total absurd rubbish.
Confederate "Reasons for Secession" documents, (see my post #649) clearly show that protecting slavery was their first concern, and for many their only reason.
The Republican 1860 platform clearly shows their intentions to protect US territories against slavery, mentioning it in four of 17 "planks".
So slavery was vitally important to both sides.

Indeed, that "Southern states were not moved by" Corwin only tells us they received a much better offer from the Confederate constitution which made slavery lawful in all places at all times, for all time.
Corwin merely restated what the US Constitution already implied, and secession itself proved that was not enough for Deep South slavocratic rulers.

DiogenesLamp: "The one most damaged by the "Corwin Amendment" is Lincoln, who clearly offered his support for it in his first Inaugural address.
It makes him appear to be two-faced. "

Only to people who hated "Ape" Lincoln and his Black Republicans in the first place.

DiogenesLamp on making slavery mandatory everwhere: "And effectively what the US constitution also gave them, though many people in the North refused to accept it."

It certainly does not, regardless of how often you repeat it.
Yes, Dred Scott said something close to that, but it was never recognized before, anywhere, or after by the vast majority of Americans.
It's what elected Republicans in 1858 and 1860.
They hated legislation from the Supreme Court's bench.

DiogenesLamp: "Forbidding any state law to interfere with the return of a slave to his master effectively nullifies any and all laws against it."

Against what, slavery??
If so, that was a lie the first time you posted it, and every time since, regardless of how often you claim it.
You invented that out of thin air, with no historical or legal support whatever.
Indeed, one would have to loathe & despise his own country to take such a bald-faced lie about it seriously.

Of course free-state citizens rightly feared the Taney court could soon make just such a ruling, but nobody before Dred-Scott believed or advocated it.

Why do you?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You are trying to dodge the point again.
You allege the Southern states had a total commitment to slavery, and you also allege they controlled congress.
If both of the things you allege were true, there would be no need for 'compromise' and there would be no possibility of such a thing as the 'Wilmot Proviso' even making it to the floor."

Wilmot's proviso passed the House, but never the Senate, during a brief period of Whig ascendance.
By 1853 Southern Democrats again controlled both houses of Congress and the Doughfaced Northern Democrat President Pierce.

DiogenesLamp: "Now you've been caught.
You have to discard one claim or the other, because they are patently contradictory.
Both cannot be true or the 'Missouri Compromise' (which was itself unconstitutional) could not have made it through congress.
The majority that is committed to something do not 'compromise' regarding it."

Ridiculous -- Missouri Compromise of 1820, seriously?
The 1820 Missouri Compromise was made during the "era of good feelings" when President Monroe had over 80% Democrats in both houses of Congress.

So possibly you meant the 1850 Compromise, which was entirely different.
Do you remember Whig Henry Clay from Kentucky, a slave-holder from a slave-state?
He sponsored the 1850 Compromise, so the political issue was one group of Southern slave-holders versus another, not strictly North vs. South.

[SoCal Pubbie]

How come, if the North was so despotic and abusive of Southern economic interests for so long, the Confederates were willing to stay in the Union if the Northern Democrat Buchanan won, but had to bolt if a Republican won, be in Lincoln or Fremont before him? I mean if it was all about money shouldn’t they have seceded regardless?

[DiogenesLamp]

How come, if the North was so despotic...

Who said Despotic? You must be listening to BroJoeK's mischaracterization of what I say.

I mean if it was all about money shouldn’t they have seceded regardless?

Have you ever heard the expression "Straw that breaks the Camel's back?" I think they saw the election of Lincoln as proof that they were never going to get what they considered a fair shake, so added to other complaints about their relationship with the USA, they had had enough.

But you still mischaracterize the point about money. The North went to war to stop the loss of the money. Their monetary incentive was far more desperate than that of the South. For the South, increased profits was only part of it, but for the North, massive and serious losses was far more significant.

The South left because they had had enough of the lopsided deal they had been living with, and the constant vituperation directed at them from big city Liberals.

The North saw the direct losses of the Southern trade, and future losses caused by European direct trade with the South and the Midwest.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“I think they saw the election of Lincoln as proof that they were never going to get what they considered a fair shake, so added to other complaints about their relationship with the USA, they had had enough.”

The problem with this idea is that the Southrons had already threatened to leave the Union should Fremont be elected in 1856. It was the Republican Party that the Confederates could not abide. And what was it that set the Republicans part from the Whigs? I mean, the Southern Democrats never called them “black Whigs, did they?” Nope, it was the paranoia of the abolitionist movement that struck fear into the heart of Johnny Reb.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I do not even know what you mean by "C.L.C.P", but I am long accustomed to you using the phrase "cockamamie nonsense" whenever you've come up against something you can't refute."

Certified Lost Cause Propagandist.
Awarded only to those who stick to their stories, no matter what.
Certified Fellow Lost Cause Propagandist is someone who not only repeats Lost Cause orthodoxy flawlessly, but also contributes new arguments to the cannon.
I think you could easily apply for "fellow" level certification, if you didn't already. ;-)

DiogenesLamp: "Dred Scott loses his case strictly from Article IV, Section 2.
Indeed, you would have thought any competent attorney of the era would have advised him against filing it because so long as Article IV, Section 2 remained part of the Constitution, no state law of any sort (outside the laws of the state holding him) could rescue him from his condition."

Here, for example -- I've never before seen a Lost Causer with the Brass B*lls & BS (BB&BS is a CLCP merit badge) to come right out & defend Dred Scott, so that should surely merit you something extra.

As for the validity of your claim here -- the Dred Scott decision was notable in overturning decades of stare decisis recognizing slaves as freed if kept too long in free-states or territories.
So Dred Scott (the man) simply did what many others had done before in suing for his freedom.

We see now, the Dred Scott decision represented the slave-power's legal high-water mark and the event behind Lincoln's "House Divided" speech:

Lincoln himself said one more decision like Dred Scott would make the USA an all-slave nation:

"...Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits...
Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.
Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown.
We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave..."

So, what do you know, it was "slavery, slavery, slavery" after all!
Of course making slavery "alike lawful in all the States," is what the Confederate Constitution did, and a logical reason why Confederates states "rejected" Jefferson Davis' Corwin amendment -- they had a much better offer!