Posted on 03/10/2002 6:31:27 AM PST by WhowasGustavusFox
Sunday Morning Talking Heads Show with Doris Kearnes Goodhead
Tomy Slow: Good Morning and welcome to our show. Today we have historian and author Doris Kearnes Goodhead with us to discuss recent events regarding her writings.
Ms. Goodhead: Good Morning
Tomy Slow: Ms. Goodhead, with regard to these stories about your published work, do you have any corrections you would like to make about history, as you know it to be true?
Ms. Goodhead: Well, I think I could correct some fallacies in the historical understanding of the American public.
Tomy Slow: Where would you like to start? Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Kennedy?
Ms. Goodhead: Well, some things said on that Ken Burns’ special were not exactly totally accurate.
Brit Hummmme: Be specific.
Ms. Goodhead: Well……..ok. Ok. Let me just say that those soldiers at Fort Sumter weren’t exactly starving in April of 1861. Yes, I kind of let it be known that the naval armada that President Lincoln sent down to Charleston was to save the starving soldiers, and well, that was just not historically correct.
Jarold Reverso: He sent the ships and military down there to rescue those poor, poor slaves in Charleston.
Ms. Goodhead: No, Jarold, that is not true. That is the over simplistic rationalization that has been taught as an expedient cause in our school system for years. The real reason he sent the ships to Charleston was that the US Treasury was bankrupt, with no source of income.
Jarold Reverso: Well, where did this story about starving soldiers come from.
Ms. Goodhead: It was a fallacious story leaked by the administration to a newspaper that used it to rationalize what was really going on.
Tomy Slow: Many of our students and historians paint the South as a poor, agrarian region with widespread poverty. Why would a US President send warships to Charleston?
Ms. Goodhead: Well, at that time annually 97% of the US Treasury was funded with tariff revenue. And, the goods returning from Europe each year, financed with the sale of our exports, produced the tariff revenue.
Jarold Reverso: I still don’t get the connection.
Ms. Goodhead: Very simple Moustache Boy. Southern grown tobacco, cotton, hemp, and naval stores constituted 70% of the value of exports. As soon as the Southern agricultural states seceded, the government had its revenue cut to 1/3 of what it was spending.
Brit Hummmme: Why not take out loans until the tax laws could be changed?
Ms. Goodhead: Well, because of the recession and bank failures in the North, the Fed had been borrowing money for the three years prior to 1861 to finance government spending, and with no tariff revenue as future collateral, the bankers would not loan money at any reasonable levels of interest to the government. It was the banking/manufacturing/political class that was pushing Lincoln into attacking the South. Money would be lent if he used coercion on the seceded states to make them pay the tariffs.
Mara Lieson: Doris, you are a wonderful person, a respected historian, and above all a role model for women. If they weren’t exactly starving, can we say those brave Union soldiers at Ft. Sumter were badly malnourished, and needed rescuing?
Ms. Goodhead: You certainly could. The pork and bread they were eating was not good for their health.
Jarold Reverso: Sounds ok to me. Kinda like eating breakfast croissants all day. I like that.
Ms. Goodhead: Yes, but think of the hardship.
Brit Hummmme: Dietary hardship causes a US President to send hundreds of troops to a state owned port for military action?
Ms. Goodhead: Ok. Ok, I slipped up again. It was the tariff revenue.
Tomy Slow: And you would still rate Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents this country has had?
Ms. Goodhead: Yes, I would. However, in my new role as historical accuracy consultant, I would qualify that statement.
Tomy Slow: Go ahead.
Ms. Goodhead: I would say that Mr. Lincoln presided over the greatest holocaust this country has ever seen, and convinced the Northern public that the results were just.
“Many people are unprepared to agree that destruction of the South was the real objective of the North, but certainly that conclusion fits all the facts. The South was indeed destroyed, many of her finest lives cut off in their prime, her most influential families impoverished and scattered, much of her most valuable property burned, her storehouses emptied, horses, mules, farm stock slaughtered or confiscated, her slaves freed, farms laid wasted, her currency rendered worthless, her citizens disenfranchised, her courts, her laws and all her government functions displaced by an alien and arbitrary military despotism. Destruction could hardly have been more complete, more deliberately systematic, more thoroughly planned. Annihilation of the white South was the declared objective of the Stevens-Sumner political group that controlled the government during and after the war.”
I am quoting someone else here.
Brit Hummmme: Yes, Lincoln was one of the greatest Presidents if you ignore that one section of the country was destroyed to allow the other to prosper.
Jarold Reverso: Shocking!
Mara Liesson: For once, you got it right Jarold.
To say the least...
What's funny?
There is plenty of reason to believe that Lincoln sent "re-supply" ships to Fort Sumter with the specific intention of provoking a confrontation.
Here's your next article. It will make as much sense as this one:
“Many people are unprepared to agree that destruction of the Germany was the real objective of the allies, but certainly that conclusion fits all the facts. Germany was indeed destroyed, many of her finest lives cut off in their prime, her most influential families impoverished and scattered, much of her most valuable property burned, her storehouses emptied, horses, mules, farm stock slaughtered or confiscated, her slaves freed, farms laid wasted, her currency rendered worthless, her citizens disenfranchised, her courts, her laws and all her government functions displaced by an alien and arbitrary military despotism. Destruction could hardly have been more complete, more deliberately systematic, more thoroughly planned. Annihilation of Germany was the declared objective of the Churchill-Roosevelt political group that controlled the government during and after the war.”
Brit Hummmme: Yes, Churchill was one of the greatest leaders if you ignore that one section of Europe was destroyed to allow the other to prosper.
Not to poke any holes in your fantasy or anything, Pea, but Burns never claimed that Sumter was starving; not in the film nor in the book.
So, I won't bore you with asking for the Confederate equivalency of the ovens, V-2's, "Pogram" of extermination, the SS, blitzkreig, concentration camps, Nurenburg, Storm troopers, Dr. Mengle, or just where in the North one would find a Poland.
Moreover, I have a quiz for you. I am going to give you a phrase, and you can answer either Lincoln or Hitler.
Ready?
1. He used scare tactics on political opponents.
2. He used terrorist tactics on the press.
3. He imprisoned and deported political opposition.
4. He used conspiracy to hide plans to use the military on the people of his own country.
5. He sent the military to imprison and coerce the people supposedly under constitutional guarantees of his own government.
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