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What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?
National Review ^ | April 7 2018 | Daniel Gerelnter

Posted on 04/08/2018 3:39:59 PM PDT by 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; Travel
KEYWORDS:
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To: DiogenesLamp

Please do. Once I dispatch your one hundred and fifty year old fake news I will school you on other matters pertaining to the myth of the glorious Lost Cause of Old Dixie.


81 posted on 04/09/2018 8:09:07 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
Please do. Once I dispatch your one hundred and fifty year old fake news I will school you on other matters pertaining to the myth of the glorious Lost Cause of Old Dixie.

I look forward to it.

So let's start with this.

What does this map mean?

82 posted on 04/09/2018 8:23:36 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: iowamark
1776
83 posted on 04/09/2018 9:08:28 AM PDT by bruin66 (Time: Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once..)
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To: DiogenesLamp
It means ports in what would become Union states were paying a lot more tariffs than those that would be Confederate.

I’m looking for the specific tariff acts, who passes and signed them, and how they unfairly targeted southern states that would precipitate secession. I doubt you’ll be able to.

84 posted on 04/09/2018 12:51:01 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie; DiogenesLamp
Here is how one prominent Virginia author saw the question in a novel in 1836:

The Partisan Leader.

85 posted on 04/09/2018 12:55:10 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: Ohioan

Too bad the civil war didn’t happen until 1860, when southern democrats rejected the election of 1860. I wonder what happened with tariffs between 1839 and 1860? Hmmmm.....


86 posted on 04/09/2018 1:17:55 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
It means ports in what would become Union states were paying a lot more tariffs than those that would be Confederate.

That's what it looks like, doesn't it? :)

Obviously the North was producing the vast majority of that wealth represented by those tariff collections, wouldn't you think?

I’m looking for the specific tariff acts, who passes and signed them, and how they unfairly targeted southern states that would precipitate secession.

You can start there, but that's not the important part of the story. Find out the value of Northern export Products to Europe. That's a better place to start.

I doubt you’ll be able to.

I think you are going to get surprised.

87 posted on 04/09/2018 2:48:09 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Ohioan

I’ve read quite a ways into that story, and I mean to finish it, but I keep getting distracted. I have too many irons in the fire. It is very well written.


88 posted on 04/09/2018 2:49:50 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Billthedrill

A History Of The American People by Paul Johnson. A Brit tells it like it is.

An excellent, excellent tome!!

A few pages before bed every night. Might even finish it before Christmas.


89 posted on 04/09/2018 3:17:46 PM PDT by ForMyChildren
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To: DiogenesLamp

Tariffs were a federal tax, so the revenue went into the coffers of the entire nation, not any one region. They we’re paid by the merchants in the area that was importing the materials and goods. So northerners were paying the taxes, not southerners. This completely undermines your argument.

I’m still waiting for you to name the tariff laws in question that unfairly punished the south, and explain how they targeted southern.


90 posted on 04/09/2018 3:29:40 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: DiogenesLamp

Tell me about the tarrif acts of 1845 and 1857 at least.


91 posted on 04/09/2018 3:51:23 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
Tariffs were a federal tax, so the revenue went into the coffers of the entire nation, not any one region.

But the bulk of Federal expenditures of this money were done in the North.

They we’re paid by the merchants in the area that was importing the materials and goods.

Where did the merchants in the area (New York) get the money to pay for European goods? How did they obtain European cash?

So northerners were paying the taxes, not southerners. This completely undermines your argument.

That's what it looks like, doesn't it? :)

But that nagging question still needs to be answered. Where did the Northern merchants get the European cash to pay for European imports?

I’m still waiting for you to name the tariff laws in question that unfairly punished the south, and explain how they targeted southern.

It wasn't just the tariff laws. The "navigation act of 1817" caused all sorts of problems for the South. It virtually handed a monopoly on shipping to the New York shipping industry.

As to how the tariff laws punished the South, we need to go back to figuring out where those Northern Merchants got the money to pay for those European imports.

92 posted on 04/09/2018 3:59:42 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: SoCal Pubbie
Tell me about the tarrif acts of 1845 and 1857 at least.

They aren't salient to my argument. My argument revolves around the money flow and the European trade. What percentages of what goods were taxed is not that important when you look at the bigger picture.

I've dug through the specifics of the tariffs a long time ago, and they invariably protected Northern manufactures, but I don't consider the details to be all that important.

Henry Clay's mercantilism (Lincoln's Mentor) made protectionism a centerpiece of their methodology.

93 posted on 04/09/2018 4:05:49 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Ezekiel
Best investigative reporting on the planet.

Men In Black (1997) - Trailer

More like the only investigative reporting on the planet. All we've got are stenographers.

94 posted on 04/09/2018 7:52:15 PM PDT by Tzaphon
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To: SoCal Pubbie

I agree it was a bad move to take Lincoln’s bait to start a war, but the idea that any political means to secede beyond “quitting” the club was necessary is silly.


95 posted on 04/10/2018 4:20:01 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: SoCal Pubbie

LOL! BS = I’m not able to refute facts so I just declare it’s not true. Are you sure you belong on a conservative board, because that there is classic liberal debating?


96 posted on 04/10/2018 4:23:33 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: Lee'sGhost

Let’s see what General Lee had to say about secession;

Robert E. Lee to George Washington Custis Lee
An 1829 graduate of West Point who had distinguished himself in the U.S.-Mexican War, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee wrote to his eldest son while serving as the acting commander of the Department of Texas. Lee would return to Washington on March 1 and resign his commission in the U.S. Army on April 20, three days after Virginia voted to secede.

Fort Mason, Texas, January 23, 1861.
I received Everett’s “Life of Washington” which you sent
me, and enjoyed its perusal. How his spirit would be grieved
could he see the wreck of his mighty labors! I will not, however, permit myself to believe, until all ground of hope is gone, that the fruit of his noble deeds will be destroyed, and that his precious advice and virtuous example will so soon be forgotten by his countrymen. As far as I can judge by the papers, we are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May God avert both of these evils from us! I fear that mankind will not for years be
sufficiently Christianized to bear the absence of restraint and force. I see that four States have declared themselves out of the Union; four more will apparently follow their example. Then, if the Border States are brought into the gulf of revolution,one-half of the country will be arrayed against the other. I must try and be patient and await the end, for I can do nothing to hasten or retard it.

The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of
the North, as you say. I feel the aggression, and am willing to take every proper step for redress. It is the principle I contend for, not individual or private benefit. As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded.

But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an cumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and
forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many
guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution. . . . .


97 posted on 04/10/2018 4:52:01 AM PDT by OIFVeteran
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To: OIFVeteran

And US Grant believed the South had the right to secede. Big deal.


98 posted on 04/10/2018 5:05:08 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: OIFVeteran

Indeed...

Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved,and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and save in defense will draw my sword on none.


99 posted on 04/10/2018 5:17:21 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: DiogenesLamp

“But the bulk of Federal expenditures of this money were done in the North.”

Factually incorrect, as are all of your “arguments.”

Federal expenditures 1789-1860

________1789-1834____1834-1837____1838—1850____1851—1860______Total

Fortifications

Free____$5,265,332___$1,122,644___$4,711,611___$5,281,373____$16,380,960
Slave___$10,019,249__$1,666,990___$4,357,427___$6,004,100____$22,047,767

Internal improvements

Free____$2,452,635___$1,779,958___$2,013,511___$1,780,077____$8,026,183
Slave___$1,859,710___$1,872,903___$545,229_____$1,428,090____$5,705,932

Lighthouses

Free____$2,001,946_____$509,319___$1,155,375___$2,976,079____$6,642,720
Slave___$2,161,047_____$530,769_____$636,760___$2,044,640____$5,373,218

Hospitalization

Free________________________________$392,032___$688,238______$1,080,271
Slave_______________________________$282,005___$757,813______$1,039,819

Pensions

Free____$21,894,322___$8,012,252______________$5,589,210*
Slave___$6,816,542____$2,588,091______________$2,816,534*

“Where did the merchants in the area (New York) get the money to pay for European goods?”

Probably the same places where merchants get the money to finance business today. Supplier credit, bank loans, stock investment, past profits. What a dumb question.

“The “navigation act of 1817” caused all sorts of problems for the South.”

That act simply required imported goods to be shipped on vessels owned by companies in the US or in nations from which the goods were made. How is that unfair to one region or another?


100 posted on 04/10/2018 4:16:41 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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