Try to focus on what you are actually saying. Making the name of a Civil War song the title of a book on the Civil War is illegitimate? Even a reflection of Leninism? That's crazy talk. And it's victim talk. Is William Davis's "Look away! : a history of the Confederate States of America" part of the plot, too. Is he telling us not to look too closely at Dixie? Or could both titles just be an attempt to recapture part of the spirit of the time?
Polemical titles are par for the course here -- "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War," "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men," "The South Was Right!" "Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun" -- All polemical titles that assert what they intend to prove. But nobody objects much to the titles on that score. They read -- or at least open -- the books to see what the author's say and how valid it might be. But for you, even to advance a thesis that goes counter to your own beliefs is wrong, unfair and subversive.
It would be nice if it were as you say, but in reading your posts it looks like you dismiss virtually everyone who has a serious historical appointment today. You make a lot of noise about McPherson and Foner and use them to dismiss other scholars working seriously in the field these days. If those who disagree with you vote Democrat they are Marxists or Communists to you, if they support the Republicans, you see them as corrupt Claremontites. That leaves you with the postbellum apologists for the Confederacy and their present-day followers to fall back on. If you dismiss everything we've learned in the last few decades, they may be convincing, but otherwise not.
You don't seem to have any objection to Marxist or class-based historical analysis when it supports your own opinions. It's only when it cuts the other way that you get mad. Thus, for you, an analysis of the conflict from a conservative point of view that supports the federal or unionist cause is merely a stalking horse for powerful Northern interests, while a more liberal or radical anti-slavery perspective counts as Marxist and is worthy of condemnation, even if it makes the same kind of noises about the downtrodden oppressed and the privileged oppressors that you love to make yourself.
The secret here is that there's probably more of the Marxist in you than in many of the people you are arguing with. From what I can see, you're far more influenced by Marxism than Lincoln was. That doesn't in itself invalidate your arguments, any more than it does Foner's, but it might make you less inclined to dismiss opposing viewpoints simply by slapping labels on them.
All polemical titles that assert what they intend to prove. But nobody objects much to the titles on that score.
Stipulated to. And I don't object to the titles, but to what they intend to prove. "Proving" that Lincoln fought for "freedom", as he claimed in his subversive and revolutionary Gettysburg Address, is prima facie evidence of intention to mislead for political purposes.
From what I can see, you're far more influenced by Marxism than Lincoln was.
LOL -- incontrovertibly true! Since Lincoln is certainly excluded by his date of decease from having been "influenced" by fully-articulated, worldwide-propagated Marxism himself. God, you're good! LOL!
That doesn't in itself invalidate your arguments, any more than it does Foner's......
Whaaaat....after all that ad hominem? I'm disappointed in you. I thought surely you were going to invite me to emulate the great poet by quaffing a quart of Lysol.
.... but it might make you less inclined to dismiss opposing viewpoints simply by slapping labels on them.
I dismiss them on content, as a way of high-grading my reading list. Which, you have taken care not to notice, doesn't include the Lost Cause authors or DiLorenzo, either, who are polemicists just like McPherson and Foner and the NYU Communists of 60 years ago. Oh, I'll discuss DiLorenzo's material when other people bring it in, but he isn't going to make my reading list with underbaked accusations. It's one thing to post up to someone who thinks Abraham Lincoln was fathered by Abraham Enloe, and kick his days and dates around, and another to part with good money (and my time) for 350 pages of that stuff. Let them prove their case, and I'll read about it later. On the other hand, the systematic suppression of information to the effect that Lincoln may have been illegitimate, by historical actors committed to Lincoln's cult, is another story, and so the new material being excavated from Herndon's letter archive is relevant, not to understanding Lincolnian policy, but to the historiographical policy of the Unionist "triumphalists", the keepers of the flame who sent Gutzom Borglum up Mount Rushmore with a chisel. Also qualitatively different are speculations about Lincoln as a sufferer of Marfan's and syphilis, since those might indeed have affected his policies and his family life -- and, later on, the conduct and reputation of Mary Todd Lincoln, for whom William Herndon, who had to know she despised him, pleaded with others for forbearance and understanding.
I'll read a magazine article in a minute, but if someone wants $30 and four days of my time for a book about it, I get pretty picky, and I have zero time or toleration for Reds who I think are attacking the American people through their history, for having humiliated the Marxists' false and murderous god. No quarter there, sorry.
Show me how. Cite me, quote me, analyze the argument and show how it's Marxist.
As opposed to anything else.
Let's not forget William Davis's A Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government. The title refers to CSA Secretary of War John Breckinridge's desire that the Confedracy not humiliatge itself in its last moments. Jefferson Davis, however, had other plans.
"The secret here is that there's probably more of the Marxist in you than in many of the people you are arguing with. From what I can see, you're far more influenced by Marxism than Lincoln was."
Ouch! 'grac', that's got to hurt.
Indicating once again that you are bloviating about that which you have only a cursory understanding, the book entitled Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun is a simple compilation of major speeches and essays by Calhoun edited by Ross M. Lence and put out on a scholarly press. It is not a "polemic" and does not set out to "prove" some "polemical title." It is an edited compendium of well known historical documents by Calhoun!
In short, you don't have a clue what you're ranting about, Mister X, yet we all know that such shortcomings would never impede you from unleashing your verbal dairrhea all over the thread.