About Woodrow Wilson's concentration camps......

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[ProgressingAmerica]

Little known is it that FDR is not the first president to have relocation camps, and Japanese Americans were not the original target. Nearly 30 years prior to World War two, German Americans were the targets and the most interesting thing is that very little is written about this. History has been virtually expunged of this topic. Historians do not write about it, so history books don't contain it, and even from various news journals at the time it was largely unreported. When it was reported, some of the blurbs on it were small and not noteworthy.

The first American President to have internment camps got away with it.

I could only find a handful such articles about the incident, one of which details the treatment of war captives. "How the United States Takes Care of German Prisoners (June, 1918)" The other stories I found are often times reported in passing, they detail the harassment of citizens, business owners, and others who clearly don't exist in a war or battle context.

One such citizen was Agathe Wilhelmine Richrath who:

MISS AGATHE WlLHELMINE RICHRATH, instructor in German at Vassar College, who has been taken into custody at Poughkeepsie on a charge of being pro-German and of circulating German propaganda, has tendered her resignation and it has been accepted. Miss Richrath will be interned as an alien enemy.

The paragraph above the one I quoted lists Dr.s Richard Goldschmidt and Rhoda Erdmann were both detained and interned as well.

Richrath's internment did actually get reported in the NY Times, along with the names of several other people in passing.

Finally, quite a scene was created when the government went after Heinrich Bockisch:

STATUS OF M. WELTE & SONS DEFINED

Official Statement Issued by Bureau of Investigation of the Alien Property Custodian

E. M. Atkin of the Bureau of Investigation, Alien Property Custodian, New York, issued the following statement on Tuesday last relative to M. Welte & Sons:

"Heinrich Bockisch, the factory manager and a large stockholder in M. Welte & Sons, Inc., was taken into custody by the United States Government on April 22, 1918, on charges of German propaganda. He was ordered interned and was removed July 2 to Fort Oglethorpe, with 17 other alien enemies.

The story talks about a fight on the street and more.

These are all names which are lost to history at this point, but what I'm getting at is that Woodrow Wilson's concentration camps were real. The government did not just intern foreigners(which is bad enough) but they also went after those who emigrated to our country, set up businesses, were attempting to be productive members of society, may have planned on staying, and some who were even full time citizens. One of the most "well known"(His name is specifically listed on Wikipedia) internees was Dr. Karl Muck, who once he was released from his year of detainment, left the country.

[BroJoeK]

donmeaker: "The Austrian Painter was connected through his history of homosexual practices to German commanders. That was how he was so close to Ludendorf at the Munich revolt that got him jailed."

Most interesting that Ludendorf helped raise Hitler to prominence, while Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor.
And Hitler's military ambitions were those of his former commanders.

The Painter's rise to power was no accident, was not the "fault" of Versailles punishments, or even the Great Depression.
It came from German national policy, and could only have been prevented by Germany's utter defeat and Unconditional Surrender in the First World War.

Such a defeat for Germany was advocated by many, including our own General Pershing, who warned that anything less would simply result in a rebirth of German imperial ambitions, in another 20 years or so.

But Pershing's views were overruled by the Wilsonian idea of peace without victory.
In effect, Central Virginian, President Wilson originally wanted Germany treated as, in his mind, Confederates should have been treated after the Civil War.

Much of Wilson's idea got forgotten at Versailles, but it was the basis for Germany's request for armistice in November 1918.
And enough was preserved to give Ludendorf and Hindenburg power enough to raise that Austrian Painter to rule over their German empire.

[rockrr]

I was hoping that cva would call him out for a link to that whopper.

[donmeaker]

It would have been interesting if Germany was divided after the first world war: with a Prussian northern half and a Bavarian southern half, along with the divisions that existed historically (Austria, Swiss, Danzig) That might have slowed the Nazi takeover of a major industrial power.

[donmeaker]

Sad thing is the confederates were treated with kindness and subject to good government after the war. Only after they began using terrorism to re institute slavery was a harsher reconstruction invented. Even then, the US federal government after a few elections left them to self government, upon which time Jim Crow laws were passed, and even with Plessy vs. Ferguson, got federal support.

[donmeaker]

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=305

This notes that escaped slaves had been abandoned by their putative masters as the US Army approached, and the camps were established to give them food and shelter at federal expense, rather than letting them die.

[donmeaker]

I remember Tommy Lasorda, the Dodger’s Manager, made a commercial in which he displays a cake with a hole in the center,

“Sometimes you have to know when to Bundt.”

[SeeSharp]

And you claim that was intentional?

Both commanders were veterans of the Mexican American War and knew exactly what they were doing. Yes, it was intentional.

[SeeSharp]

and the camps were established to give them food and shelter at federal expense, rather than letting them die.

So why did thousands of them die? And why were they put to work as slaves by the Union Army? Grant may have been generous as he was passing through, but Butler, who set up the program, certainly was not.

[BroJoeK]

CK: "The Confederates during the Civil War had what was in effect a concentration camp for Southern Unionists."

This refers to what, where and when, exactly?

[central_va]

Apparently some weird crap went on in Bradley County, Tennessee during the late unpleasantness. Not sure of the specifics.

[SeeSharp]

Again, completely made up by you. Reconstruction was passed because the Republicans were losing elections in the North and they needed to create a permanent majority by rigging the election in the South. The Union Army troops stationed in the South were permitted to vote in local elections in the hope that this would deliver those states and districts to the Republicans. It worked for a few election cycles, but then the Union troops began voting for Southern Democrats, mainly out of revulsion at the wholesale looting being carried out by the Union officer corp, and out of anger at the freeing of the slaves. The purpose of Reconstruction was to disenfranchise large numbers of Southern voters.

Kindness and good government? South Carolina didn't finish paying off the last of its debts from Reconstruction until 1954. The Yankees stole everything that wasn't nailed down. They taxed nearly every plantation into bankruptcy. They closed every manufacturing business. They borrowed against the public credit until they couldn't get anymore. Then they went home. Yeah, it was good government for somebody all right.

Jim Crow didn't begin until after reconstruction.

[SeeSharp]

I was hoping that cva would call him out for a link to that whopper.

Is there something wrong with your hand?

Better Than Slavery? Contraband Camps and Abuses at the Hands of Liberators (mp3)

[BroJoeK]

SeeSharp: "The first concentration camps in America were authorized by Congress in 1851 with the passage of the Indian Appropriations Act."

2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten: "People should not confuse POW camps for internment camps."

ansel12: "Are you calling the carving out of reservations for the Indians, “concentration camps”?"

SeeSharp: "Well let's see. The put you there against your will and shoot you if you try to leave..."

According to this source, a "concentration camp" is defined as:

"The Random House Dictionary defines the term 'concentration camp' as:

'a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.'
,
whilst the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as:

'A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions.' "

This source identifies the first US "concentration camps" as:

"The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of 1838, when President Martin Van Buren ordered the U.S. Army to enforce the Treaty of New Echota (a Native American removal treaty) by rounding up the Cherokee into prison camps before relocating them.
Called "emigration depots", the three main ones were located at Ross's Landing (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Fort Payne, Alabama, and Fort Cass (Charleston, Tennessee).
Fort Cass was the largest, with over 4,800 Cherokee prisoners held over the summer of 1838.[131]
Many died in these camps due to disease, which spread rapidly because of the close quarters and bad sanitary conditions: see the Trail of Tears.

"Throughout the remainder of the Indian Wars, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 2 years."

[BroJoeK]

SeeSharp: "It was a police action by a sovereign state against a foreign army.
And it in no way threatened the Federal Government.
Washington could have continued indefinitely to exist and serve (or rule over) its remaining member states with or without a military outpost in the CSA."

First of all, the Confederacy had no legitimate claim to Fort Sumter -- zero, zip, nada -- since it was a Federal fort, built on Federal property, with Federal funds and manned by Federal troops.
So any threats against those Federal troops were necessarily acts of rebellion and/or war.

But second, and more to the point: Confederates' assault on US forces, and seizure of Fort Sumter, were absolute acts of war against the United States, regardless of how "justified" Confederates may have felt themselves.
That Confederate assault was equivalent to the Japanese December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
It created a state of war.

Third, it was also an existential assault on the United States itself, since the immediate result was to convert four Union states with double the population of the original seven and those four had already voted against secession.
Fort Sumter caused them to change their votes to secede -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Finally, their success in military action at Fort Sumter lead the Confederacy to attempt similar military success in three more Union states which refused to secede -- Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.
Those three states would again double the population of the Confederacy's original seven, if they joined it.

Loss of those last three states would, in the opinions of Union leaders, lead to destruction of the United States.

Bottom line: any claim that the Confederacy "just wanted to be left alone" is ludicrous, since from Day One it assaulted and seized every United States property and territory it could reach.

[celmak]

You da’ man!

:)

[BroJoeK]

Sam Gamgee: "The anti-German sentiment in WWI was out of control and perspective, considering the US got suckered into a war of British imperialism.
The British just couldn't handle the fact they might not be the big boy on the block once German naval buildup rivaled their own."

Sorry, but those are words of pro-German propaganda, not historical fact.

In historical fact: Germany's high-command pushed Austria into starting the First World War, for the main purpose of expanding its empire into Russia -- yes, "lebensraum" began in the First World War.
But the German "Schlieffen Plan" required conquest of France before Russia, and so they first marched west.

France and Britain responded to German invasions of Belgium and France.
The rest is history -- or propaganda, take your pick.

As for anti-German sentiment in the US -- the numbers of German-borns interred during the First World War (circa 2,000) was a small fraction of those during the Second World War (around 11,000), while the damage caused by German agents in this country was far higher during the First World War.

For details see AnalogReigns post #20 above, and this link.

[wardaddy]

He spent most of his life in New Jersey

Are they proud of him?

[wardaddy]

One sentence

North had recources to feed prisoners but did not and refused swap for your beloved Federals at Andersonville

[wardaddy]

Cuckoo thread eh?

[0.E.O]

Both commanders were veterans of the Mexican American War and knew exactly what they were doing. Yes, it was intentional.

A 30 hour bombardment that carefully avoided killing anyone? Are you really serious?