Posted on 09/08/2017 11:35:05 AM PDT by Javeth
We are witnessing a growing trend of angry attempts to erase past racial injustices through attacks upon Civil War monuments, those symbolically associated with a tragic era of slavery.
Inflamed by violence leading to a death characterized in the media as a "white supremacist rally" protesting removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia hundreds of other statues, markers and other symbols memorializing important Confederate figures and events are now also under siege throughout the nation.
If we are to erase evidence and symbols of historical injustices, where does this end? After all, why stop with Confederate leaders when great blame for racial intolerance and misery can be attributed to Northern leaders for terrible oppressions directed to indigenous Indian populations?
Injustices against people like my great grandmother’s Winnebago tribal members who were forcibly relocated to reservations in Minnesota and Nebraska, for example.
So if we’re really serious about removing public memorials to "white supremacists," shouldn’t those who perpetrated devastating racial assaults upon true Native Americans be included? And why not begin with Grant’s Tomb in New York, N.Y.?
I’m referring, of course, to President Ulysses S. Grant, whose administration transferred vast tribal lands to private pioneers, land speculators, and railroad and mining companies.
If not actual genocide, his solution to the "Indian problem" certainly influenced a cultural genocide. As he explained, "I see no substitute for such a system, except in placing all the Indians on large reservations, as rapidly as it can be done."
As white settlers continued to push Indians off their tribal lands, those on reservations experienced increasing poverty and desperation. Meanwhile, Grant’s administration oversaw the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad and the great slaughters of the Plains buffalo which destroyed their traditional ways of life.
Rebellions against Grant’s Indian "peace policies" led to tragic massacres and military conflicts. Included were the Modoc War in California, the Red River War in Texas, the Nez Perce conflict in Oregon, and the Black Hills campaign and Battle of the Little Bighorn led by George Armstrong Custer.
Efforts by great chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, Geronimo and Cochise who led battles to preserve their lands and ways of life were ultimately defeated. They were no match for frontier generals commanding ever-growing armies and devastating weaponry.
As Oglala Chief Red Cloud told Grant upon visiting the White House in 1870, "The riches we have in this world . . . we cannot take with us to the next world. . . . "Then I wish to know why agents are sent out to us who do nothing but rob us and get the riches of this world away from us."
Grant predicted in 1874 that "a few years more will relieve our frontiers from danger of Indian depredations." Assisted by another Union leader, his prediction was provident.
General William Tecumseh Sherman who began his military career under then-General Grant in the first Battle of Bull Run of 1862 worked to bring about a "final Indian solution." In 1865 Sherman assumed command of a campaign against the Plains Indians in support of powerful politically-connected interests, including corporations involved in building the transcontinental railroads.
Following the War Between the States and his 1864 "scorched-earth" torching of Atlanta and pillaging of civilian properties which laid waste to lives and livelihoods along a large swath of Northern Georgia, Sherman renewed his Indian extermination conquest. In 1865 he was given command of the Military District of the Missouri which commenced a 25-year-long war against the Plains Indians.
As Sherman wrote to Grant in 1867, "We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress [of the railroads]." He clearly described his assigned Indian extermination objective as being "to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy."
Sherman assured his subordinate General Philip H. Sheridan, "I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops." This referred to prior authorization to kill as many women and children that Sheridan and his subordinates thought necessary when attacking Indian villages.
Both Sherman and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." So let’s also schedule the two large Washington, D.C. equestrian monuments dedicated to Sherman and Sheridan for demolition too.
Alternatively, we might heed some advice offered by Texas Governor Greg Abbot in an American Statesman article, "We must remember that our history isn’t perfect. If we do not learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it . . . instead of trying to bury our past, we must learn from it and ensure it doesn’t happen again." He added that "tearing down" those symbols won’t change the past, nor will it help the nation’s future."
The loss of income suffered from no longer funneling Southern Trade through New York would be nothing compared to the loss of income from Industries starting up in the South, and Cheaper European goods being imported into the country without the protectionist tariffs to make domestic production competitive.
Sure, in your Fantasyland. If you're serious about this you ought to look at the real reasons why Southern industry lagged in the early 19th century.
Apart from the climate and periodic epidemics, free workers weren't keen on competing with slaves, and the slave owning class feared anything that would weaken their hold on society. Southern thinkers and politicians prided themselves on not giving in to industrialization. Read Wigfall's comments beginning "We are an agricultural people."
I can't help noticing how you switch back and forth from post to post. One minute you're saying the Northern Establishment was created after the Civil War, and the next you're saying it caused the Civil War. You want to have it both ways: they were big and powerful and pushed everyone around, but no, they needed the war to become rich and powerful.
In fact, Northern commercial elites had to compete politically with Southern agricultural elites before the Civil War and it was as often the latter who got their way. After the war, Northern commerce and industry took off, but they didn't strictly speaking need a war to achieve that.
On the contrary, the few who shared your vision of Southern industrialization needed a war more than the Northerners did. They needed to break existing commercial ties to encourage Southern domestic industry.
P.S. Maybe you and your pal should look up just exactly who it was that wanted to "repeal the Missouri Compromise" in the 1850s. You might be surprised, though if you knew your history you wouldn't be.
We are now at the point in the conversation where you can begin to openly defend Sherman's crimes.
Next: you can defend apprentice war criminal John M. Chivington. I'll try to find some eye witness accounts of his activities.
“I’m perfectly rational.”
I think you have found your tag line.
You should repeat this claim in every post at least once. Maybe use full caps.
But of course Lincoln was not the aggressor at Fort Sumter.
Jefferson Davis was and that's why he bears responsibility for however many deaths DiogenesLamp fantasizes.
DiogenesLamp: "You invade other people's land for no good reason, and yes, you are in the wrong."
But by your own abject confession, it wasn't just "other people's land" at issue, was it?
"Lincoln moved quickly to stop the South from gaining Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.
He obviously recognized that if this thing was allowed to get started, there would be no stopping the exodus of other states who's financial benefits would lie more with a Confederacy than a New York controlled "Union."
Adding West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri to the Confederacy would have likely made the South unbeatable in any subsequent conflict."
So, was that DiogenesLamp who 'fessed-up to such a monstrous scheme?
Now, finally, you recognize that it wasn't "just money" at stake, but rather the ultimate destruction of the United States?
DiogenesLamp: "Almost Lincoln's entire cabinet, and Major Anderson to boot, said if Lincoln sent those ships, it would cause a war."
No, see my post #162 above.
Most believed that if war was almost inevitable anyway, and if it had to start somewhere, let it be Confederates who started it.
Fort Sumter was as good a place as any, better than most.
DiogenesLamp: "The orders said that if they encountered no resistance.
If they encountered resistance (a foregone conclusion) they were to use their entire force to open a passage to the fort.
That meant ships firing guns at the confederates.
That is exactly what that meant."
Right, exactly what I said: NO FIRST USE OF FORCE!
Thank you for confirming the truth of my report and the falseness of your own contrary claims.
DiogenesLamp: "It is as result of the second ship being sighted that the orders to assault the fort were given.
Don't send the ships.
No war.
Send the Ships. War."
But the choice to start war, by using force against Union troops, was Jefferson Davis'.
Davis ordered the FIRST USE OF FORCE.
Lincoln ordered NO FIRST USE OF FORCE.
The resulting "3 million deaths" (or whatever number you fantasize today) are on Davis.
DiogenesLamp: "It's that simple. Lincoln Davis started it.
He started it deliberately.
He knew it was going to start as a result of his actions."
Fixed it for you.
The only evidence for such claims is a statistical analysis based on the 1870 census, where it was found Southern populations did not increase as much as previously.
However, that census was notoriously unreliable in the South, and if numbers from the 1880 census are used instead, you find a straight line in Southern population growth, before & after Civil War.
When I need another word for ‘’delusional’’ I’ll use yours.
Comes to mind the vignette in the 1965 movie “Major Dundee” the character played by Charlton Heston rebukes his erstwhile friend: “Ben, you were once a rock. Now you are crumbling like old chalk.”
You make an intellectual defense of Sherman's total war against native Americans - and perhaps Chivington's too, - by saying: "Were any Native American tribes treated more savagely than they treated their own enemies? No? So by their own standards they were treated quite civilly, right?"
Brother Joe, you are crumbling like old chalk.
But of course it was, Davis decided that at Fort Sumter.
Then the Confederates' Congress reinforced Davis' decision by formally declaring war against the United States, on May 6, 1861.
At the same time, Davis was already sending military hardware to Union Missouri to kill people there.
DiogenesLamp: "It is also mostly futile to quote the Northerners, because they mostly did not speak of their true motivation for sending destruction at other people."
So here we see the core essence of the DiogenesLamp version of history:
DiogenesLamp: "What they would do would be to divert attention from their real reasons by claiming they were sending death for some other reason like "Preserving the Union".
Of course at the time, that didn't have a lot of moral force, and most people thought that it simply wasn't worth the degree of death and destruction that would be required, and so they had to search around for another justification for murdering other people. "
Actually, "preserving the Union" had a lot of moral force, even in such slave states as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware.
That's why none of them ever voted for secession.
Even states like Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas refused to vote for secession until the Confederacy started & declared war on the United States.
But all of those states had significant anti-slavery, pro-Union populations.
DiogenesLamp: "They seized on "Freeing the Slaves" about two years after the war started, and that is the propaganda they have gone with ever since."
Actually emancipating slaves began very early in the war, May 1861 at Fort Monroe.
By the end of 1861 Lincoln's State of the Union address called for legislation on "contraband" and purchasing freedom for slaves.
In January 1862 Congress began work and passed several bills which forbade the US Army from returning runaway slaves, paid compensation to slave owners who freed their slaves and outlawed slavery in US territories.
By the summer of 1862 newspapers like Horace Greeley's New York Tribune were saying:
So emancipation was on Union minds from the beginning, second in importance only to preserving the Union itself.
DiogenesLamp: "The Northern Industrial complex stood to lose huge sums of money and huge percentages of their existing markets.
An Independent South was a threat to them financially, and they had put their agent into power..."
In fact, if your alleged "Northern Industrial complex" had an "agent", it was former New York Governor and now Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward.
But Seward was the member of Lincoln's cabinet most opposed to actions which might lead to war.
DiogenesLamp: "He [Lincoln] could destroy their economic competition before it could grow into a much greater threat."
Pure fantasy so far as the actual historical record is concerned.
It shows that Lincoln's cabinet was most concerned with preserving the Union, especially, as you detailed previously, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware.
And orders which said, in effect: NO FIRST USE OF FORCE.
DiogenesLamp: "To a man their dread was that attempting to reinforce the fort would trigger a civil war. Anderson said the same thing. "
And they all had second thoughts, especially Wells (from Connecticut) & Chase (from Ohio).
They came to believe that if war was inevitable anyway, then Fort Sumter was as good a place as any to let it start.
DiogenesLamp: "There is another one I saw on PBS that I don't see included in this list. "
So you confirm my suspicion that none were peaceful Native Americans living on their reservations.
I also note the first four you list could not have been under the commands of Sherman or Sheridan.
That leaves us with seven incidents over 22 years in which a total of 764 Native Americans died at US Army hands, about 35 per year, on average.
At the same time, I count another seven incidents where 116 white settlers and soldiers were killed by Native Americans, and that does not include Little Big Horn.
Regardless, the issue raised by jeffersondem is alleged "genocide" or "extermination" of Native Americans by the US Army under Sherman & Sheridan.
The evidence you just posted does not in any sense support such claims.
The only census data I can find shows late 1800s Native American population around 300,000.
From those we could expect maybe 15,000 babies born per year so over those 22 years 330,000 births.
Of course, pre-modern infant deaths were quite high, but nothing suggests that the 754 "massacre" deaths you listed could in any way amount to "genocide" or "extermination".
“Can you cite examples of peaceful Native Americans on their reservations attacked by the US Army?”
Because of your excellent response to this attempted defense of Sherman’s aspirational war of extermination, I think we will soon see a shift in strategy. Look for the boys in blue to start making Castro-length posts about anything but Grant’s, Sherman’s, and Sheridan’s final solution to the native American “problem.”
I think we’ll see a lot of talk about Ft. Sumter and how the North really was “fighting to free the slaves.”
Just to help you out here, DiogenesLamp took the trouble of posting a listing of alleged massacres by the US Army during the late 1800s.
Some could not have been under the command of Sherman or Sheridan, leaving seven incidents with 764 Native Americans killed, which might have been.
We might also note that during this same period there were another seven massacres of white settlers & soldiers, totaling 116 killed.
Leaving all that aside, plus whether any of those were in some sense justified, we should first note that 764 killed over 22 years, 35 per year on average, from a total population said to be around 300,000 does not in any way suggest the policy of "genocide" or "extermination" you claim.
So your argument is bogus.
Let's be clear. It was Billy Sherman that advocated, in words too clear to deny, extermination. Yes, he was probably just following orders.
But let's read it again:
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.”
Sherman embraced extermination then. Your fellow-travelers embrace it today. But you don't.
For that, I'm kind-of proud of you.
You often get on the wrong side of the facts. Take care it doesn't happen yet again tonight.
Let's be clear: those would be your "fellow travelers", kemosahbee, not mine.
So what, exactly, do we know about this particular quote?
So, here's what we have:
General Sherman is reliably quoted as recommending to Grant in 1866 that "we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.".
And yet the Sioux were not exterminated, the numbers killed in seven wars less than the numbers of whites who died at their hands.
General Sheridan is apocryphally quoted as saying, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."
And yet there is no evidence in census numbers, or war outcomes, of extermination during Sheridan's period of command.
Bottom line: many Americans look back today and say, "we should have treated Native Americans better than we did," and that may be true, but it's no reason to exaggerate the numbers or to somehow imply that General Sherman is equivalent to a Hitler with his camps exterminating millions.
Nothing in the data supports such nonsense.
Hmmm.... I thought phil Sheridan said “the only good queer is a good queer. “
Guess I was mistaken
By definition, genocide is: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
Note well the words “intent” and “in whole OR PART.” (emphasis added)
Sherman's own words have him saying: “”we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.”.
Sherman's intent was extermination.
But as you point out, his actions were not totally successful. He was only able to destroy the men, women and children of the tribes “in part.”
Still, it doesn't look good. Not by today's standards. Not even by the standards of many in the 1800’s.
But go ahead: defend Sherman and Chivington.
Nice post BroJoek. I started one remarkably similar to yours - and then “Why bother?” there’s not much point is casting pearls before swine like demojeff.
The interesting thing to me is that he and that other idiot have no problem placing themselves squarely in the anti-American camp. Every act of Americans is evil according to them. One would think if they hate our nation so much why they’re still here....except perhaps to troll.
Sherman's words here are taken out of context so you probably don't remember what they really meant, and what was the result.
They were Sherman's response to the 1866 Fetterman Massacre where 79 US soldiers & two civilians were killed by Sioux warriors, the greatest US Army disaster against Native Americans before Little Big Horn.
Fetterman's Massacre was one action in the Red Cloud War (1866 - 1868) in which the US Army attempted to defend its treaty obligations to the Crow against encroachment by Sioux.
The US Army & Crow were allies against Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
So, the context of Sherman's letter to Grant was the following: "Sir, General Grant, sir, we are getting our butts royally kicked here, the Sioux are way too strong for us and if we don't do something more serious, we'll lose this stinking war.
Let us loose to make them really hurt, sir."
And what did Grant do?
Nothing, Grant did not let them loose, there was no "genocide" or "extermination" in whole or "in part".
And what happened?
As Sherman could have predicted, the US lost that war, the Sioux were victorious and took over Crow lands under dispute, as spelled out in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
So, how many Crow were exterminated by Sioux genocide we don't know.
But what we do know for certain is that neither Crow nor Sioux, nor any other Native Americans of that era, spent any time in academic debates over the definitions of such words as "genocide" or "exterminate", "in whole" or "in part".
Today the Crow number about 12,000 their 3,600 square mile reservation the fifth largest in the US.
Today the Sioux number nearly 200,000 most living on two dozen reservations in Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Canada.
Bottom line: in the Red Cloud's War the US Army committed no extermination and no genocide, regardless of whatever Uncle Billy Sherman may have asked his boss for permission to do.
“Sir, General Grant, sir, we are getting our butts royally kicked here, the Sioux are way too strong for us and if we don’t do something more serious, we’ll lose this stinking war. Let us loose to make them really hurt, sir.”
May we see your data on this?
The reason I ask: this sounds like something you made up to justify Sherman’s extermination plans.
In truth, didn’t you just make this up? I can’t help but notice Sherman’s use of the word “extermination” has been omitted from your account.
Extermination is such an unhappy word.
Is it your intent to use this made up exchange between Sherman and Grant as justification for actually killing native American women and children including infants and lap babies?
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