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: "Did it ever occur to you that you might be a little nuts if you make up your own..."

It often occurs to me that DiogenesLamp might be a little nuts.

DiogenesLamp: "The truth appears to be:
1. Slavery couldn't expand.
2. Slavery couldn't be abolished."

Your claims that "slavery couldn't expand" are just nonsense.
US slavery could & did expand across the west, wherever it could be productively employed and wasn't prohibited.
For just one example, there were thousands of slaves in the California gold fields.

And there were many Southern "filibusters" into Caribbean and Central American countries intended to set up more territories for slavery to expand into.
So what slavery lacked in 1860 was not the will to expand but only the military power needed to force & enforce it.

As for abolition, slavery could be, and was, abolished wherever enough non-slaveholders lived.
An example is California.

DiogenesLamp: "Just these two points puts a stake through the heart of most of the propaganda on the subject, at least for any rational man."

But lies can't "put a stake" into anything.
At best they serve to confuse the weak minded.
The truth is, in 1860 slavery could & did expand wherever it wasn't strongly opposed.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp referring to a fantasy map of victorious Confederacy: "But I'm glad you posted that.
It supports my claim that the Confederate states would have become a major powerhouse if they had been left alone, and it was because the New York/WashingtonDC alliance saw this threat as well as others that they decided to invade the South."

What that map supports is the idea that Confederates were very expansion-minded and needed ever more territory for "slavery, slavery, slavery".
It suggests that even if Jefferson Davis had not ordered his assault on Fort Sumter, he was likely to order some other military adventure which would lead to war with the United States.

DiogenesLamp "You know what's funny about you?
You post evidence that supports my point even when you don't realize you are doing so.
I cannot wait to see how you now try to backtrack and claim that they would have never gotten so powerful."

Naw, the truth has no "sides", it just is true.
In this case the truth we're discussing is Confederates' natural aggression & expansionism to find more room for their "slavery, slavery, slavery".
Plus I'm satisfied Confederates also wanted to teach "d*mnyankees" a lesson by giving Northerners a bloody nose they'd not forget, thus leaving Confederates free to gobble up US territories shown here like Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, along with Caribbean and Central American countries.

Did that motivate Northerners in early 1861?
Not that I've ever seen.
Northerners then were more concerned about those seized Federal forts.

But eventually Confederates actually invaded many more Union states including Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, & Kansas thus convincing any Northerners who might have been in doubt that Confederates were some bad hombres who needed to be strongly opposed.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "do once again ignore the point about money ending up under the control of New York and Washington DC."

Which were then under the iron rule of Democrats -- Southern Democrats in Washington and Northern Democrats in New York -- political allies, economic partners, social friends, business associates, ideological soulmates, etc.

By the way, it didn't all go to New York, since the US mint in New Orleans was seized by confederates in early 1861 and its gold became the original Confederate treasury.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I provided no reasons why a section of the Country that produces between 73-85% of all exports to Europe would monopolize trade with Europe?
Are you stupid?"

But that's not a reason, that's a cockamamie lie as are all your more outrageous claims.

[LS]

California, in fact, for a while had its own gold dollars-—paper money backed in gold.

[SoCal Pubbie]

How fun for me to find something you wrote while researching for this debate!

[LS]

I didn’t check the link. Was that “California Bankers” with Lynne Pierson Doti?

[SoCal Pubbie]

From Hard Money to Branch Banking, California Banking in the Gold-Rush Economy.

Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti

[DiogenesLamp]

But that's not a reason, that's a cockamamie lie as are all your more outrageous claims.

This is why I don't bother reading most of what you write. Rather than put forth reasonable or valid points, you tend to prefer histrionics.

The South was producing the money. The North was reaping a large benefit from this money. The South was going to take away that money, and make it even harder for the the North to earn money on it's own.

The North was not going to tolerate this. The North invaded the South to prevent this.

All else is just made up crap to justify what they did.

[DiogenesLamp]

What possible reason would Idaho or Montana have to join up with the Confederacy?

Res ipsa loquitur.

The 2004 electoral map that you keep posting and reposting robotically is a product of a "cultural war" that didn't get started until the 1960s or 1970s and didn't take its present form until the 1990s.

Here you are partially right. I think this culture war has been going on at least since the English Civil War, regarding which many people suggest the US Civil War was just a later iteration. (Red Necks refer to Presbyterians who wore red collars)

rather than knuckle under to the Confederacy.

In what manner would they be expected to "knuckle under" to the Confederacy? It incorporated by design far more Federalism than did the Northern Union. It had less power to bother people. Power was less strongly concentrated.

They are "knuckling under" with the current system, which is far more intrusive than the Southern Confederacy would have been. It would have secured connections with economic ties. People would have been part of it because their economic interests would have been better served by it, and because culturally they would have been more like the people of the South, than those of Urban concentrations in the North.

[DiogenesLamp]

No, I’m simply pointing out that it’s pretty common knowledge how the gold rush worked. People came west to seek their fortune, and if they didn’t go bust they sent money (or gold) east. The USS Central America has already been mentioned, and anybody who’s ever seen an old western movie has seen the Wells Fargo stage carrying a strongbox full of gold with a shotgun rider up top.

This is dodging the point about how this specie came to be spent to buy stuff in New York.

This constant portraying of New York investors as Southron hating boogiemen seems very Bernie Sanders to me.

Where are you getting that? Are you listening to BroJoeK again while he tries to put words in my mouth?

New York was loving the South so long as the money kept flowing in from Europe. They didn't get upset until they realized the South was going to stop that money flow, and then take most of their trade with Europe away from them.

That would have been followed by a drain on population and businesses of which some would relocate to the South to resume business.

The point here is that an independent South would have been enormously costly to very wealthy men of power, and who were backers of Lincoln.

[SoCal Pubbie]

None of the gold from California, Colorado, or Montana, or silver from Nevada, was from the South, was it? Kind of shoots a hole in your contention that all the specie came from Southern trade, doesn’t it?

[x]

In what manner would they be expected to "knuckle under" to the Confederacy? It incorporated by design far more Federalism than did the Northern Union. It had less power to bother people. Power was less strongly concentrated.

How do you know what the future would possibly have held for the CSA?

Do you have an alternative reality future-predicting crystal ball? We know that the CSA was more statist than the US during the 1861-1865 Civil War. How could you possibly know that that wouldn't continue?

People would have been part of it because their economic interests would have been better served by it, and because culturally they would have been more like the people of the South, than those of Urban concentrations in the North.

Did you even bother to read my post? In 1900 there were no great differences between Washington and Idaho or Montana and Oregon or Vermont and Iowa or Wisconsin. They were all largely rural states. They shared a common culture and a common economy, that contrasted radically with the segregationist South. Even in the more urban states, the many farmers in the Berkshires or Catskills had much in common with those further west.

Hint: the economy and culture didn't always look like it does today. But I guess you'll never learn or admit anything. You'll just have to outgrow your obsessions -- if you can. I thought pretty much as you did when I was in high school and convinced that the teachers had it all wrong. Then I grew up.

[LS]

Ok. That’s an article we took from the book. There is a full book called “California Bankers.”

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?” <<

None Dare Call it Treason.

The Shadows of Power

[SoCal Pubbie]

It’s interesting that the preamble to the CSA constitution states:

“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”m

Permanent federal government? What about the right to secede?

[DiogenesLamp]

Permanent federal government? What about the right to secede?

Rather poor form that, Wot?

Our Second Founding document used the term "Perpetual."

Of course the United Kingdom was also a government of "Permanent" or "Perpetual" nature, and so the very authority to which we appealed to break it was the laws of nature and of nature's God.

If the laws of nature and of nature's God can break allegiance owed to a thousand year old monarchy, then it is certainly sufficient to break all lesser enduring forms of governance.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "This is why I don't bother reading most of what you write.
Rather than put forth reasonable or valid points, you tend to prefer histrionics."

Some of what you post is at least arguable, but much is just flat-out lies.
If your point can be argued, I argue it, but if it's just cockamamie nonsense, I call it what it is.

DiogenesLamp: "The South was producing the money.
The North was reaping a large benefit from this money."

No, slavery, supported by Federal laws and financed by Northern banks, produced 75% of the world's export cotton, earning about $200 million in 1860, half of US 1860 total exports and 5% of the US $4.4 billion GDP.
Otherwise, according to the March 4, 1861 Savanah Republican:

"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."

Cotton in 1860 paid the planter about $.10/pound FOB New Orleans and paid the shipper $.135/pound FIS Liverpool, LeHavre or Boston.
The difference of $.035/pound paid for shipping, warehousing, finance, tariffs, insurance and any other such costs.
It also helped maintain a fleet of several hundred ocean-transport ships plus hundreds more coastal & river transports.

$.035/pound totaled about $70 million in 1860 or 1.5% of US GDP.
There were never legal restrictions on who could build, own or operate any of the transportation & warehousing.

DiogenesLamp: "The South was going to take away that money, and make it even harder for the the North to earn money on it's own."

Maybe, but absent war economic realities in 1861 would suggest the same cotton ships transporting to the same European importers and returning with import goods to the same US ports.
Might some Confederates decide to enter the risky ocean-freight business?
Sure, but ships were not cheap to build & operate and cotton required hundreds of them.

Bottom line: if the Confederacy wished to continue its booming economic times in 1861 it would have to continue using most of the infrastructure then in place, which would then have years to adjust to whatever the new regime wanted.

DiogenesLamp: "The North was not going to tolerate this.
The North invaded the South to prevent this.
All else is just made up crap to justify what they did."

Rubbish, a Big Lie that even 1860s Confederates were too ashamed to pretend.
I've said before, it would make Goebbels blush, but Stalin's boys would nod knowingly.

The simple fact is nobody would start or maintain a major war based on just who, exactly, was going to own the ships used to transport cotton, so it's an absurd suggestion.

[iowamark]

“Permanent federal government” was wishful thinking. Everyone in 1861 knew that the Confederate government was going to need a lot of luck to survive.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp post #514 referring to New Yorkers: "there is the factor of how many people want to do business with people who really really hate them and consider them immoral? "

x: "This constant portraying of New York investors as Southron hating boogiemen seems very Bernie Sanders to me."

DiogenesLamp "Where are you getting that?
Are you listening to BroJoeK again while he tries to put words in my mouth? "

Sorry, there's no need for anybody to put words in your mouth, you put plenty there yourself, as witness your comment about New Yorkers in post #514.
And now you want to back away from New York hating??
It's the whole point of your argument -- New Yorkers are evil -- so if you suddenly fall in love with New York, your whole point flushes right down the toilet.