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

PGA Weblog ^

[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.

[0.E.O]

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

So did the South but they starved them to death anyway. And prisoner exchanges were halted because the rebels refused to consider black Union - the ones they didn't murder first that is - to be soldiers.

[rockrr]

Civil War POW camps were scandalous - for both sides. It’s an idiot move to try to toss stones on that issue.

[donmeaker]

The pretended confederacy just wanted their own states, and all the states next to them.

[donmeaker]

The contrabands were given the opportunity to work at 50 cents a day.

Back when gold was 16 dollars to the ounce, that would be 1/32 of an ounce of gold or roughly 50 dollars a day, perhaps 5 dollars an hour.

[donmeaker]

Where the US didn’t have resources to feed prisoners, such as Appomattox Courthouse or Vicksburg, many thousands of soldiers were paroled, without exchange, and they were given what food was available.

[donmeaker]

In the United States, the most notorious Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting Black people’s freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

First paragraph in Wikipedia under the subject “Black Codes”.

The defining feature of the Black Codes was vagrancy law which allowed local authorities to arrest the freedpeople and commit them to involuntary labor.

The Black Codes outraged public opinion in the North because it seemed the South was creating a form of quasi-slavery to negate the results of the war.[108] When the Radical 39th Congress re-convened in December 1865, it was generally furious about the developments that had transpired during Johnson’s “Presidential Reconstruction”. The Black Codes, along with the appointment of prominent Confederates to Congress, signified that the South had been emboldened by Johnson and intended to maintain its old political order.[109] Railing against the Black Codes as returns to slavery in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill.[110]

The Memphis Riots in May 1866 and the New Orleans Riot in July brought additional attention and urgency to the racial tension state-sanctioned racism permeating the South.[110]

After winning large majorities in the 1866 elections, the Republican Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts placing the South under military rule.

So, you are incorrect that Reconstruction was begun by Republicans to win elections. Rather, it was in response to the “Black Codes”, and only possible AFTER the Republicans had won a large majority.

[donmeaker]

Disease was the great killer of the Civil War. Military discipline was not sufficient to keep people from defecating or urinating in military camps or upstream of where water was collected.

With less discipline that that of the military, it would have happened more often.

[wardaddy]

take it up rocky with those who started the conversation

I was replying to one of your homeos?

shame simply bashing Wilson is not something all can enjoy in a loving way

I doubt New Jersey’s famous governor slash president has any admirers here

but now that wasnt good enough for your gang

had to blame me.....GOP voter since 1977 for it all...lol

hey why arent you guys bleating on a trayvon thread?

there is life beyond hating white southern men you kniw

[wardaddy]

union refused to exchange with Andersonville even knowing the situation

look it up

dont need to lecture me on Vicksburg

I am from there......wandered that maze of granite monuments and kudzu as a boy.....replete with ghosts

my great great great and great great grandfathers were there

and I assume

paroled...... with Bolstons (sic) MS cavalry

[wardaddy]

yes we murdered all black prisoners....wonder any were left at all

why are you not on a Trayvon thread....none of yall are really....I looked

you can really screech there

dead black man

white killer....sorta

moss hanging from trees

a few southern accents left

let her rip black avenger....dont hold back on my account

how do you reconcile federal troops raping black slave women they were freeing

was that acceptable

poor blacks couldnt win for losing

why they loved yankees so much they waited half a century before they moved north to be with their liberators in any real numbers

and now most have moved back down South

guess yankees loved em too much

[rockrr]

I knew that, given the chance you would double-down on stupid. It must be in your genes or something.

[Pelham]

“So did the South but they starved them to death anyway.”

Rubbish. The South barely had enough to feed themselves.

The facts are that Lincoln wanted to burden the South with the Union prisoners and refused to swap for them and refused to send medicine or food for them.

[wardaddy]

We can’t all be angry black man here day in day out disparaging the most reliable conservative group left in America while our culture circles the toliet drain

On JR’s dime....

But you have fun......

The rest of us will tend to the grown up work for you my main man

If you even care beyond your myopic southern white devil world view

[wardaddy]

Lincoln and Marx chilling with some cool. Handwritten intercourse

One of those little historical nuances forgotten like Martin Kings love for Uncle Ho

Or Ghandis weakness for nubile girls and general sexual weirdness

LBJ and Slicks love of other mens wives

God love em

Btw....for the record.....I do not see Lincoln in the pantheon like Levin....Beck and LS do

But neither do I condemn him....I’m ambivalent....in the most defined way

[BroJoeK]

SeeSharp: "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. "

donmeaker: "The contrabands were given the opportunity to work at 50 cents a day.
Back when gold was 16 dollars to the ounce, that would be 1/32 of an ounce of gold or roughly 50 dollars a day, perhaps 5 dollars an hour."

For more details on this subject:

"Prior to the War, the owners of the slaves would have been legally entitled to request their return (as property) and likely would have done so under the federal 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
But, Virginia had declared (by secession) that it no longer was part of the United States.
General Butler, who was educated as an attorney, took the position that, if Virginia considered itself a foreign power to the U.S., then he was under no obligation to return the three men; he would hold them as "contraband of war."
When Confederate Major John B. Cary requested their return, Butler refused the request.
Because the practice effectively recognized the seceded states as foreign entities, President Abraham Lincoln disapproved of it.

"Gen. Butler did not pay the escaped slaves wages for work that they began to undertake, and he continued to refer to them as slaves.

"On September 25, 1861, the Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles issued a directive to give 'persons of color, commonly known as contrabands', in the employment of the Union Navy pay at the rate of $10 per month and a full day's ration.[1]
Three weeks later, the Union Army followed suit, paying male "contrabands" at Fort Monroe $8 a month and females $4, and specific to that command.[2]

"In August, the US Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces.
The next March, its Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves forbade returning slaves to Confederate masters or the military."

The pay of $10 per month in today's values is about $1,800 plus a "full ration" worth, what, maybe $25 today = another $760 per month.
Then there were government provided quarters, doubtless not palaces, but equivalent to Union soldiers' quarters and certainly equal to those the escaped slaves left behind.
Maybe $250 in today's values.

So we're looking at economic compensations equivalent to circa $2,800 per month or $33,600 per year in today's values.

Finally, regarding alleged "concentration camps", where supposedly "thousands died" -- first, cite a source and second, remember those escaped slaves were always free to return to their former masters.

During the war, how many did?

[0.E.O]

why are you not on a Trayvon thread....none of yall are really....I looked

That is about the most pathetic attempt to excuse away rebel actions that I've seen.

[0.E.O]

Rubbish. The South barely had enough to feed themselves.

Really? So please point out instances of famine and starvation among the Southern population. I'd be interested in hearing about it.

The facts are that Lincoln wanted to burden the South with the Union prisoners and refused to swap for them and refused to send medicine or food for them.

And that's your excuse for starving them to death?

[0.E.O]

Lincoln and Marx chilling with some cool. Handwritten intercourse

Can you point me to one of the letters that Lincoln wrote to Marx? Just curious.

But neither do I condemn him....I’m ambivalent....in the most defined way

LOL!!! Sure you are.

[BroJoeK]

wardaddy to rockrr: "union refused to exchange with Andersonville even knowing the situation. look it up"

I did, some of the details are here.

One of my ancestors was exchanged, and eventually went back to the fight.
That's one reason I have huge respect for all involved.

O.E.O.: "And prisoner exchanges were halted because the rebels refused to consider black Union - the ones they didn't murder first that is - to be soldiers."

I personally did not know those exchanges were at some point officially shut down, by Washington.

Various reasons were given, and if you read the link you'll see where even Ken Burns PBS series bought into one of them -- a cockamamie story about black Union soldiers.

The truth of the matter was brutal military necessity.
In military theory, the offensive army needed three-to-one superior numbers over defenders.
After 1863 the Union Army was typically on offense, Confederates defending, and so every Confederate prisoner released for defense was equivalent to three Union soldiers on offense.
That's why Washington shut down POW exchanges.

By the way, my ancestor was captured and paroled by that most offensive of all offensive Confederates, cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forest.
Forest did not consider my ancestor's unit as any more dangerous than boy-scouts at a campfire, probably more trouble to the Union that it could ever be to Confederates, so Forest was content to release them.

In the end, my guys proved Forest wrong, but it certainly did take years...

[central_va]

First hand account of Yankee Cavalry in action:

Halloo! here comes a cavalry charge from the Yankee line. Now for it; we will see how Yankee cavalry fight. We are not supported; what is the matter? Are we going to be captured? They thunder down upon us. Their flat-footed dragoons shake and jar the earth. They are all around us—we are surrounded. "Form square! Platoons, right and left wheel! Kneel and fire!" There we were in a hollow square. The Yankees had never seen anything like that before. It was something new. They charged right upon us. Colonel Field, sitting on his gray mare, right in the center of the hollow square, gives the command, "Front rank, kneel and present bayonet against cavalry." The front rank knelt down, placing the butts of their guns against their knees. "Rear rank, fire at will; commence firing." Now, all this happened in less time than it has taken me to write it. They charged right upon us, no doubt expecting to ride right over us, and trample us to death with the hoofs of their horses. They tried to spur and whip their horses over us, but the horses had more sense than that. We were pouring a deadly fire right into their faces, and soon men and horses were writhing in the death agonies; officers were yelling at the top of their voices, "Surrender! surrender!" but we were having too good a thing of it. We were killing them by scores, and they could not fire at us; if they did they either overshot or missed their aim. Their ranks soon began to break and get confused, and finally they were routed, and broke and ran in all directions, as fast as their horses could carry them.

Private Watkins