McPherson's Left Wing Politics

Any freeper who has visited a thread discussing Abraham Lincoln, the great war in which he participated, or practically anything pertaining to American history between 1850 and 1870 has likely encountered the posting of commentary by Princeton University historian James McPherson, author of The Battle Cry of Freedom. On any of these threads McPherson himself is a controversial figure. To supporters of Lincoln and the North, McPherson is adored and his book is, as one of his supporters recently put it, a "highly-balanced, factual account." To supporters of the South and critics of Lincoln, McPherson's book is a heavily pro-northern account tainted with political bias and historical revisionism. Though conflicting appraisals of McPherson have been going on between the two sides for years, I only recently became curious about McPherson himself. Having an opportunity to weigh in, I decided to do a little research on the guy's background simply to find out who he was and what his issues were. Almost immediately and with but a single internet search I discovered not only was McPherson a liberal regular in the world of academia, but he also has ties to the left's radical and socialist elements.

Having seen McPherson characterized as balanced, objective, and even implied to be conservative, or at the least moderate or politically neutral, it became obvious somebody wasn't telling the whole story. Accordingly, I decided to compile the information found on Professor McPherson's radical left wing ties and introduce them as a whole into the record.

During the second term of his presidency, scandal plagued Democrat President was impeached by the United States House of Representatives for his extensive criminal activity in office including his obstruction of justice and repeatedly perjuring himself under oath. During the debate over impeachment and the judiciary hearings regarding what to do with Clinton in light of his crimes, liberal academia rushed to the defense of their embattled president. Not the least among them to line up on Clinton's side was James McPherson of Princeton University. McPherson's activities on behalf of Clinton are many:

On December 8, 1998 professor Sean Wilentz of Princeton, who had co-authored with Arthur Schlessinger the petition of 400 so-called constitutional scholars defending Clinton and purporting his actions to have not merited impeachment, testified on Clinton's behalf before the House Judiciary Committee. The Daily Princetonian in the article linked here reported on Wilentz's testimony. The article also mentioned that James McPherson had been invited by the Clinton White House to testify on Clinton's behalf along with Wilentz. McPherson could not testify because the time conflicted with his classroom committments. McPherson nevertheless weighed in stating that the Constitution's requirements for impeachment "mean public offenses" along with the implication that Clinton's offense had not been a public offense.

James McPherson himself signed the petition of 400 so-called constitutional scholars defending Clinton and opposing his impeachment as is documented here. The petition asserted that impeachment of Clinton would "undermine" the United States Constitution and "leave the presidency permanently disfigured." Regarding the charges agaisnt Clinton, it stated "the current charges against him depart from what the (Constitution's) Framers saw as grounds for impeachment." The petition ran in newspaper advertisements across the nation paid for by the liberal group People for the American Way. It was also frequently cited by Clinton's defense in support of his acquittal. When asked about his signature in the article here, McPherson stated that Clinton's impeachment "might come back to haunt the country" and that he had signed it once and would sign it again. The list of signatures on the document reads like a whose who of liberal academia including Arthur Schlessinger and Julian Bond.

When the Senate considered whether or not to remove Clinton during January and February of the following year, McPherson continued to speak out on Clinton's side. Before the vote was taken, McPherson stated, as can be found here, that a senate vote to remove Clinton "would cripple the executive branch . . . weakening the presidency for years to come." During Clinton's senate trial, McPherson argued the same line while giving a lecture at Kent State University. To make his case he pointed to Andrew Johnson complaining that Johnson's impeachment had weakened the presidency so much that it didn't regain the strength it had under Lincoln for another 35 years. During the same lecture reported on here McPherson continued to make his case on Clinton's side by praising Clinton's rhetorical abilities and comparing them to Abraham Lincoln. According to McPherson, Clinton had the same "gift" of connecting to the people that Lincoln did, and that is why Clinton remained popular in polls at the time.

McPherson continued his defense of Clinton as an historian by accusing those who sought to impeach Clinton of a "personal vendetta." Showing a pro-northern bias, McPherson, in the same interview, contrasted what he called the personal vendetta against Clinton with Andrew Johnson's impeachment, which he claimed was not personal (Johnson's impeachment is almost universally considered a fraudulent show trial over purely political differences between Johnson and an unconstitutional act the radical northern Congress had passed). The quote appeared in McPherson's interview on the World Socialist Web Site, which he appears on frequently and has published several articles. The quote in its entirity states "There was enormous substance to the issues involved in the impeachment of 1868 in a way that I think was totally absent from the Clinton impeachment. That was a personal vendetta, and in Johnson's case, I don't think it was personal." McPherson continues, asserting "The major difference is that the impeachment of the 1860s concerned really serious matters of substance, and the 1990s' impeachment was a more personal vendetta" and making sure to point out that Andrew Johnson was never impeached over what he calls "personal behavior." Elsewhere in the same three part interview, McPherson took jabs at conservatives classifying "groups, like the anti-abortion people" as "extremes on the Right."

On Nov. 3rd, 1999, Professor James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, appeared for a lengthy political discussion about the candidacy of George W. Bush on the "Democracy Now" program of the socialist Pacifica Radio Network. The topic of that particular show was a discussion devoted to accusations of white supremacy alleged against Bush by the show's two socialist hosts.

Pacifica radio is a multi-city socialist affiliated radio network headed up by Mary Frances Berry , the socialist Democrat chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Berry is perhaps best known as instigator of the 2000 florida election "voter disinfranchisement" show trial hearings and ensuing "reports" from the commission accusing Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris of denying the right to vote to minorities. Berry's report was drafted on statistical models by a former paid consultant to Al Gore. Berry is also known more recently for waging a political battle against George W. Bush's appointees to the commission by refusing to seat them.

"Democracy Now," one of Pacifica's most popular programs, is a left wing political talk show that was, at the time McPherson appeared on the show, hosted by Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman. The program is one of the top political discussion outlets for the radical left in America. It has in the past featured among its guests MIT Professor and leftist guru Noam Chomsky, Socialist presidential candidate David McReynolds, socialist and black panther activist Angela Davis, and radical Democrat congressman and reparations activist John Conyers. Pacifica itself is practically the exclusive domain of the radical left. With almost no exceptions, it's guests range from left to far left and its shows are hosted by open marxists and other radicals.

The first host McPherson appeared with, Juan Gonzalez, is an vietnam era activist and organizer who helped found the 1970's era "Young Lords" political movement, a Latino affiliate modelled after the Black Panther Party and formed under the guidance of imprisoned Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Gonzalez' "Young Lords" organization was a socialist latino liberation movement that dedicated itself to the abolition of capitalism, dissolution of the United States military, implementation of worldwide socialism, and assisting "Brothers and Sisters around the world" who are under assault by forces opposed to communism. The "Young Lords" movement staged "liberation" events in the early 1970's to preach socialism to crowds carrying banners reading "Viva Che!." It is also considered one of the organizational precursers of the Puerto Rican FALN movement of Clinton pardon fame.

The second host McPherson appeared with, Amy Goodman, is a socialist activist and was featured as a guest speaker at the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference of American held in New York. She appeared at this socialist convention along side several noted socialists including Vermont congressman Bernie Sanders and other affiliates of the Progressive Caucus, the congressional wing of Democratic Socialists of America.

Also appearing on the program as a guest with McPherson was Ed Sebesta, a leftist anti-confederate activist and ally of the leftist attorney Morris Dees of the SPLC. Sebesta has devoted much of his recent energy attempting to brand republicans with the accusation of racism and was on the show with McPherson exclusively to make allegations of white supremacy against George W. Bush. Among the Republicans Sebesta has attempted to smear are then Texas governor and now president George W. Bush, current Texas governor Rick Perry, and attorney general John Ashcroft. Sebesta was a major promoter of disinformation about Ashcroft and the Southern Partisan interview during the Senate confirmation hearings.

McPherson appeared along side the two socialist wackos Goodman and Gonzales as well as Sebesta. During the course of the show from which transcripts are available online, he took an anti-south position. Among McPherson's positions were the assertion of his support for the removal of confederate symbols from the Georgia and Mississippi flags, criticism of Republicans who opposed their removal, and direct accusations of white supremacy against two national confederate veterans ancestry groups. Perhaps most amazing was McPherson's seeming abstention from rebutting the absurd charge of white supremacy being waged against Bush by the other three clowns. Among McPherson's statements from the Pacifica broadcast are the following two excerpts:

"I do know that the issue of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and also in Georgia where the Confederate battle flag was incorporated into the state flag back in 1956, that those, that...of those flags has a contemporary political agenda, and to the extent that any politician endorses that, I think Trent Lott did as well a couple of years ago, far more vigorously, I can't support them in doing that."

"I think, I agree a 100% with Ed Sebesta about the motives or the hidden agenda, not too, not too deeply hidden I think of such groups as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. They are dedicated to celebrating the Confederacy and rather thinly veiled support for white supremacy. And I think that also is the again not very deeply hidden agenda of the Confederate flag issue in several southern states."

A Google web search reveals 27 "hits" for James McPherson on the World Socialist Web Site, www.wsws.org. The World Socialist Web Site is the official internet home of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The site lists its purpose as providing documents of analysis and study "from the heritage of the socialist movement" (apparently McPherson's many articles on this site are among those documents). The site itself proclaims to be involved in a movement to solve economic and social equality struggles, which it claims are "inseparable from the growth in the influence of a socialist political movement guided by a Marxist world outlook."

The organization that runs the website, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), is the direct descendant of an international socialist organization founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. It has affiliate third party political organizations in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Germany, among others.

The World Socialist Web Site has a profile devoted to McPherson under their history section. McPherson's profile is linked their history index along side their other history pages. It is identified as "James McPherson: Historian of the American Civil War" and is one of many sections of mostly socialist themes. Among the others are "Marxism and the fundamental problems of the 20th century," "Leon Trotsky" and "The Struggle for Social Equality." Among the items under McPherson's profile are several of his publications including a three part exclusive interview with the organization that runs the site.

In addition, a mini-biography of a profile of McPherson is given on the World Socialist Web Site located here. This biography is by David Walsh, a socialist activist and arts editor for the World Socialist Web Site. In it, Walsh clearly identifies McPherson as a friend to socialists, stating "Nearly 40 years ago Professor McPherson arrived at a conception of the American Civil War, based on the work of the best of his predecessors and his own researches, as a revolutionary struggle for equality and democracy and he has not, I think, ever deviated from that view. This is noteworthy in light of the fact that the last several decades have not been favorable for progressive social thought" (my emphasis added). The rest of Walsh's mini-biography lavishes McPherson with praises for viewing the war as a "social movement" of "liberation" and proceeds to quote one of the north's strongest advocates during the war itself, Karl Marx, to show that the granddaddy of communism's view is consistent with McPherson's. The article does concede that McPherson is generally a political in his writings, but nevertheless maintains the title "progressive" - the famous euphemism used by leftists to refer to themselves and their allies in terminology with less inflamatory connotations than "leftist," "communist," or "liberal."

Your methods are not those of a historian. Your obsession with tying Lincoln to Marx is repellent. Had Marx been alive in 1776, he would most assuredly have supported Jefferson and the American Revolution. Marx was after all a revolutionary, opposed to kings, the nobility and established churches.

Marx's preference for the Unionists can be ascribed to the Confederacy's close tie to slavery. From what I've seen Marx shows a general indifference to unionism, and is only interested in the question of slavery. Had the Confederacy truly been free of slavery and feudal remnants, Marx would perhaps have supported it, as he supported the Paris commune in its revolutionary rebellion against France.

As with your McPherson diatribe, your attack on Lincoln isn't based on history, but on circumstantial smears. What influence could a petty, impoverished, and bilious exile journalist in London have had on American policy? Does anyone seriously believe that he was the "originator" of the arguments of the unionist side? Was Lincoln incapable of coming up with his own ideas? What evidence of an influence have you found? Have you read Mill's contemporary writing? How deeply have you read contemporary newspapers and the Congressional Globe? Have you really studied and assimilated the tracts of the time that dealt with the conflict at greater length and with greater circulation in America?

Would you have prefered it had Lincoln preserved and encouraged slavery in order so as not to be a "Marxist"? Was Marx the only person in 1861 to have been outraged by slavery? Does all abolitionist sentiment reflect Marxist origins? Even though Garrison began when Marx was still a lad? Are we all to agree with you because Marx disagreed? If Marx believed in the value of a good breakfast, must we take issue with him on that point?

It's foolish to believe that because journalists or ideologists think themselves important, that everything must come from them -- or must come from those who think themselves the most important. It also seems to me absurd and monstrous to maintain that Confederatist views are untainted by association with slavery while painting unionist views as communistic. Open the door to guilt by association, and you have to open it all the way, not selectively.

Yours is the "attack dog" method that ignores real and substantial connections for sensational and insubstantial ones. So long as you can tie your opponent to some evil force, you aren't concerned with their real motivations or the origins of their actions.

I am not trying to paint all Confederates and confederatists as leftists or Marxists. I don't have that familiar cast of mind -- that you share with so many leftists -- that wants to put everyone who disagrees with oneself in the devil's camp. I do point out that connections between Confederatism and leftist thinkers have been common in the past, so it isn't appropriate for you to argue that McPherson's socialist sympathies somehow put him outside the pale. Confederatists have assimilated other leftist thinkers and arguments, and haven't let socialist credentials prevent them from doing so. If he supported your views on secession and the Confederacy, his opinions about present-day matters wouldn't matter so much to you.

I know little about McPherson, but this idea of the "non-political embodiment of fairness and balance" is another of those strawmen you seem to love so. All historians have their biases. None is completely balanced between competing views. What matters is not indifference or equidistance between competing opinions, but scrupulousness in dealing with evidence. Even given that scrupulousness, people will disagree. It's a question to be resolved by evidence and arguments, not by charges of conspiracy and evil influences.

People appeal to McPherson as the author of the standard history of the era. Now they may find other sources which present similar facts and interpretations based on the available evidence.

I have tried to avoid more reductionist arguments and cynical readings of the motives of others when I could. I admit it hasn't always been easy and I haven't always suceeded. It may be that all "ideologies" encourage cynical and reductionist characterizations of their opponents. But that does not mean that all individuals must or should behave in that fashion. The inability to resist this temptation is something I find in common among leftist and confederatist critics of Lincoln and the union. I suppose you could also find it among opponents of the Confederacy and the "slave power," but you should recognize that different means of argumentation are possible.

You are also doubtless aware that there are few if any leftists in history of the "one-tenth the prominence" of Karl Marx, so your challenge is hardly in good faith.

The question of Genovese is more complicated than you suggest. To you he might have wound up "on the other side." To others, he might be seen as hostile to the mainstream both now and then, changing the grounds for his attack but keeping the same enemy in view.

I do notice the similarity between many of the arguments presented in these Civil War threads and those of Gore Vidal. It would be hard to separate some of the ideas you present from those of the man who may be the most prominent leftist in America today. But I doubt any of your styles or syntax could ever be confused with his.

Your methods are not those of a historian. Your obsession with tying Lincoln to Marx is repellent.

I don't believe I've ever professed myself to be an historian per se and my scholarly background is in political philosophy rather than history, so make of it what you like. As for my tying Lincoln to Marx being "repellent," I need only note that you are arguing against a thorough and extensive historical record. Downplay it all you want, but the writings of Marx in support of the North are there and they are extensive. They also correspond in near verbatim the arguments used today in support of the north.

Had Marx been alive in 1776, he would most assuredly have supported Jefferson and the American Revolution. Marx was after all a revolutionary, opposed to kings, the nobility and established churches.

Not necessarily. Marx would probably have accepted it as a movement but never would he have been content with that revolution in and of itself. In fact he specifically said that in his 1865 letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating the latter for his reelection. Marx characterized the 1776 revolution as a movement of the middle class - not exactly one of Marx's favorite social "groups." So he was far less than satisfied with that revolution or what it brought. He saw it as a movement in a hegelian influenced pattern of history, but one that remained repulsive to his own ideology.

Comparatively, and though he did not think his desired system was anywhere near complete in Lincoln, Marx saw Lincoln's wartime action as a major event in history to usher in a system of the working class. To Marx, the middle class system of 1776 was to be replaced by an increasingly socialist system as an "inevitable" direction of history, and he saw Lincoln's victory as having set this in motion. So while it would be accurate to suggest that Marx would have consented to 1776 as a part of his hegelian history process prior to the achievment of communism, he was anything but content with its results and therefore longed for another movement to supplant them (and he saw Lincoln as the start of this). If one traces the marxist movement itself he will find that this is consistent with the ideas of later marxists in the early pre-leninist 20th century development of the movement. Marxists at the time proclaimed a great battle emerging between what they termed the idea of 1789 and the late 18th century and the idea of 1914. The idea of 1789 was the classical liberal concept of parliamentary and republican governments that emerged in the wake of the ideas of the American and French revolutions. The idea of 1914 was the marxist world they anticipated to emerge in the wake of the first world war that had set in that year.

Marx's preference for the Unionists can be ascribed to the Confederacy's close tie to slavery.

Partially on the surface. But very clearly dominating behind the preference itself was Marx's belief that the union was setting in motion the emergence of socialism.

From what I've seen Marx shows a general indifference to unionism, and is only interested in the question of slavery.

To the contrary. I believe it was in his first editorial on the matter that he argued the CSA to be nothing more than a battle slogan of rebellion, itself still geographically and politically tied to the union.

Had the Confederacy truly been free of slavery and feudal remnants, Marx would perhaps have supported it

Possibly, though I still think his sympathies would have gone to the north. Of all the regions in the country, the south was the most aligned with an aristocratic presence, which naturally drives away Marxists.

As with your McPherson diatribe, your attack on Lincoln isn't based on history, but on circumstantial smears.

No, not really, as you are mistaking the purpose and argument of both my attack on McPherson and on Lincoln. The only reason I point out McPherson's political circumstances and affiliations is to expose the fraudulency of his defender's oft-stated claim of political objectivity on his part. McPherson supporters frequently suggest him to be a middle of the road or even conservative writer whose greatest traits are fairness, objectivity, and freedom from bias. Curious about this, I did a little research on him and discovered that, far from being a balanced middle of the road scholar, the guy's a far left wing kook.

As for Marx, my argument is not to "smear" Lincoln for simply associating with him. Rather it is to note the indisputable similarities of the arguments posed by Marx and the arguments posed in Lincoln's favor by his advocates today. I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that Marx was the originator of those arguments back in 1861 and he made them because he saw Lincoln's actions as a positive move in the cause of the historical push toward communism.

What influence could a petty, impoverished, and bilious exile journalist in London have had on American policy?

For starters one could look at the very purpose of his articles. They were written to advance the northern cause in a great british newspaper debate over the war involving several very influential thinkers of the time. A main purpose of the debate was to influence british treatment of the war itself, which at the time was seen as a key factor in the outcome of the war. In America itself, I've read that some of Marx's editorials were later picked up by some of the largest northern newspapers in support of the northern cause including Horace Greeley's.

Does anyone seriously believe that he was the "originator" of the arguments of the unionist side?

First, the arguments themselves are identical to those of today. That much is indisputable. Next if we look at the dates, Marx wrote them in 1861. They were contemporary to the war itself and therefore could not have been preceded. That makes Marx the originator. Finally, in light of their publication in some of the largest American newspapers plus those in Britain at the time, it is indisputable that they influenced, as editorial opinions, persons in support of the northern side at the time. This establishes both a date that makes Marx the originator and a wide degree of publication, giving the arguments in their original form a large audience on the northern side. As strong elements of those same arguments are detectable to this day among yankee advocates, I think it is fair to say that Marx is both their originator and original propagandist.

Was Lincoln incapable of coming up with his own ideas?

Certainly he was and he did. But they were by no means the only northern arguments nor did all northern arguments exclusivley belong to Lincoln. Several of Lincoln's own extend to this day, but my point is in examining them side by side with today's arguments, so do Marx's and in a very strong way.

What evidence of an influence have you found?

Extensive publication at the time including in some of the largest northern newspapers.

Have you read Mill's contemporary writing?

Some of them, particularly the exchange with Dickens. They too are substantially pro-northern though Marx's are probably the strongest as far as leanings toward the north.

How deeply have you read contemporary newspapers

A good number of editorials, some news clippings - not overly extensive, but a good deal of them - probably more than many of the northern posters on FR.

and the Congressional Globe?

I did my undergraduate thesis on political theory in the winter session of 1860-61, and read several of its major debates extensively. Elsewhere I've read various records in the globe on individual topics before congress throughout the war era and some from the years just prior to it. I've also read practically all of Lincoln's letters during the winter session plus several of his speeches. Does that answer your questions?

Would you have prefered it had Lincoln preserved and encouraged slavery in order so as not to be a "Marxist"?

He did seek to preserve it in by constitutional amendment in early 1861. As for Lincoln, I don't think the man himself was a marxist. Marx definately took up his cause though.

For the record, one interesting similarity did exist between the two in some of their personal politics. Lincoln subscribed to a rudimentary version of the labor theory of value and espoused it throughout his political career.

Was Marx the only person in 1861 to have been outraged by slavery? Does all abolitionist sentiment reflect Marxist origins?

No and no, but a significant portion of the modern pro-north series of arguments is so strikingly similar to those put forth by Marx in 1861 that the two are virtually indistinguishable.

Even though Garrison began when Marx was still a lad? Are we all to agree with you because Marx disagreed?

Now you are flat out jousting with scarecrows. Abolitionism is an entirely different debate, as my point about Marx concerns with the similarities in his pro-north arguments to those of today and the british and northern audiences he reached at the time he wrote them. It's foolish to believe that because journalists or ideologists think themselves important, that everything must come from them

Yes, but when they happen to have played a leading role formulating arguments in a great and widely read historical newspaper debate, it is not at all unreasonable to suggest the presence of an influence when others repeat the exact same arguments in near identical terms during a time period after the original assertion of them in that debate.

It also seems to me absurd and monstrous to maintain that Confederatist views are untainted by association with slavery while painting unionist views as communistic.

Who ever said the confederates were untained by slavery? I don't believe I've ever denied this reality. I do object however to persons who paint everything southern with the words slavery and racism, noting as an aside that those who do so engage in an even greater guilt-by-association to discredit the south than the very worst you allege of me, itself significantly based on scarecrows of your own creation, regarding the north and Marx. You are not beyond this type of argument in your own postings on FR

Funny. Cause that description sounds EXACTLY like what you northern activists and south bashers do here daily as the basis of your entire arguments against the confederacy.

I am not trying to paint all Confederates and confederatists as leftists or Marxists.

You more or less attempted something very similar in your previous post while at the same time issuing your blanket dismissal of Marx's own south bashing.

I do point out that connections between Confederatism and leftist thinkers have been common in the past

And I respond by noting that connections between yankeeism and the foremost leader of leftist thought in world history was also common in his own writings. If you seek to argue the support of a few obscure leftists for things confederate, I see no reason why I cannot point out the support of the granddaddy of leftist thought for things yankee. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I know little about McPherson, but this idea of the "non-political embodiment of fairness and balance" is another of those strawmen you seem to love so.

Is it though? I lay no claim to assigning anyone that characterization of McPherson and don't think you could ever demonstrate it to be an invention of my own. I note this as it may be readily seen as an argument put forth in his defense on almost any given thread where his writings are discussed. When any southerner dares to characterize McPherson's writings as biased toward Lincoln, excessively pro-union, politically liberal, or anything of the sort, the yankees respond in unison by declare McPherson the epitome of fairness and balance.

All historians have their biases. None is completely balanced between competing views.

And I agree with that. Why don't you share that with your yankee friends who seem to think McPherson is the exception to this reality? Even given that scrupulousness, people will disagree. It's a question to be resolved by evidence and arguments, not by charges of conspiracy and evil influences.

Yet again, I agree. Why don't you share this though with your yankee friends who, instead of discussing the evidence of history, appeal to the authority of McPherson as the source of "truth" only to attack those who dare question the accepted yankee proclamation of McPherson's alleged fairness and balance? And speaking of conspiracies of evil influences, why don't you share this with the many persons on this forum who regularly throw accusations of racism, white supremacy, klan membership and any number of other horrible things at anybody who even deviates the slightest bit from their accepted line of secular deification bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln? If you doubt me, look no further than their comments on this thread and other recent ones. Seldom does a Lincoln thread go by where one of his defenders does not accuse some or all of his critics of unsubstantiated klan affiliations, racism, and all sorts of wild bigotry conspiracies.

You are also doubtless aware that there are few if any leftists in history of the "one-tenth the prominence" of Karl Marx,

And that is precisely the point. You cannot build your argument on leftists by conveniently ignoring the greatest exception to that argument, who also happens to be the single most prominent leftist of all time.

I do notice the similarity between many of the arguments presented in these Civil War threads and those of Gore Vidal.

If you do, you are perfectly free to test your theory by demonstrating, with specifics and specific quotes, where you believe the similarity exists.

It would be hard to separate some of the ideas you present from those of the man who may be the most prominent leftist in America today.

I would tend to think that title falls more in the Chomsky crowd. Vidal is prominent, but Chomsky has a virtual cult following among the left wing.

It's hard to argue with someone who is so convinced that his opponents' ideas just have to go back to Karl Marx. It certainly does make things easier if one can give one's opponents an evil genealogy. You will doubtless dismiss the feudal, anticapitalist, "socialist" side of antebellum proslavery thought, as you dismiss later leftist arguments taken over by neo-confederates. Doubtless you will ignore Fitzhugh and the growing anti-capitalist, anti-commercial spirit of the antibellum South, since it conflicts with your prosecutorial mission. Dismissing anomalies and connections inconsistent with the case one wants to prove makes prosecuting that case easier, though it gives critics a lot to latch onto. But, alas, how to argue with someone who just discounts opposing arguments?

Marx characterized the 1776 revolution as a movement of the middle class - not exactly one of Marx's favorite social "groups."

No. Marx strongly admired the "bourgeois" French Revolutionaries of 1789. And he had great admiration for the ability of the middle classes to overthrow feudal, monarchical, aristocratic and theocratic institutions and barriers to production. To be sure the "proletarian revolution" was to overthrow the bourgeoisie as the bourgeoisie had overthrown the aristocracy, but Marx had great admiration for bourgeois revolutionaries and great desire to imitate them, though eventually he sought they would be superceded. If you don't see Marx's ambivalent attitude towards the bourgeoisie and "bourgeois reformers" your results will naturally be skewed.

First, let's look down your list of supposed arguments that Marx "originated" in your article on shucksnet. That the confederates started the war. Lincoln said as much months before Marx ever wrote on the subject. That the Morrill tariff wasn't the cause of the war. You needed Marx to give you that idea? The tariff only passed the Senate because the Southern states had already left. Barring secession, the tariff would not have been adopted. That confining slavery would lead to its demise. Hadn't this been a topic of discussion for at least 40 years before the war? That the war was caused by the dispute over slavery. A controversial conclusion at the time, but did one really need Marx to put the idea into one's head? In 1861 more energy was needed to suppress that idea than to generate or promote it. That secession was invalid. See Lincoln's inaugural address five or six months before Marx's editorial. As for the concluding tributes, we non-Marxists accept that Marx could be wrong about things. Certainly there's no reason to grant his assessments any priority over other contemporary views. On the whole, pretty poor stuff. Nothing that indicates that Marx was the missing link for any ideas of importance.

Secondly, you argue that because Marx published first, he must be the originator, that the articles "were contemporary to the war and could not have been preceded." The articles that I have seen date from late 1861, when the secession crisis and war had already been going on for some time. Most of the ideas you ascribe to Marx was already in the air before his articles were published. And your dates of publication? Are they the Austrian, the British or the American dates of publication?

Arguably, Marx could have been "original" in that he came up with his own views by himself, but not an "originator" of pro-union arguments. But unfortunately the arguments that you cite at shucksnet aren't particularly original or unique to Marx. Lincoln had already made his case for union before Marx ever put his pen to paper on this topic.

Thirdly, there are some things that you can't pin on Marx or turn into examples of Marxist philosophy. If someone makes a dubious assertion about tariffs, is one not to rebut it, because Marx already is on record as having done so? Aren't some things simply true or false, regardless of who says them?

But very clearly dominating behind the preference itself was Marx's belief that the union was setting in motion the emergence of socialism.

This is your own reading of the texts. Someone reading them now or in 1861 would find no evidence of this. In the articles of 1861 Marx's opposition to the Confederacy is based on his opposition to slavery. This is what any reader would pick up on. Your argument relies on some occult or esoteric meaning that would not have been accessable to most readers. One could share Marx's opposition to slavery without accepting any socialist or communist views.

Obviously, Marx would oppose whatever he viewed as feudal. Obviously he opposed the existing form of slavery. Clearly he thought that the overthrow of feudal survivals and the triumph of the bourgeoisie would ultimately lead to communism. But communism was a distant goal.

It's not clear that Lincoln was any further along that road than Washington, Franklin or Jefferson. Marx may have seen the defeat of the Confederacy as a step on the way to communism or as a victory for enlightenment and liberty. He might have privately thought of it as a victory for the proletarian cause, but given no inkling of it in these articles, as appears to be the case.

And once again, it's not as though Marx's view of Lincoln should be given priority over other assessments then or now. The man could be -- and often was -- terribly wrong about things. Issuing pronouncements is what factional leaders do, whether they are Bob Avakian, or Lew Rockwell or Lyndon Larouche. The rest of the world sees them for the hangers-on and freeriders angling to pin their cause to anything that seems successful or newsworthy that they are.

Thomas Carlyle said at one point that he didn't write about the war because he thought his style or his racial views would turn people off and lose supporters for the Confederacy. What if someone of Carlyle's racialist views concealed them and wrote a lucid defense of the Confederacy? Are those who use arguments that others find similar to those expressed in that defense somehow occultly tainted by the author's unexpressed racial views? And what about when an author has expressed such racialist views? If you agree with him on other questions, are you automatically infected with those racial views and subject to quarantine?

To understand the era is to understand its oppositions. To take Lincoln out of the historical context and paint him as a Marxist or a vehicle of the Marxist cause without looking at the whole universe of political discourse and options of the time is an unhistorical and distorting operation.

Among your colleagues the attitude seems to be that the Confederates were "just like us" and the Yankees were like "our oppressors" today. That's what you get when you gut the real conflicts of history to make people feel good and make simplistic identifications and analogies. That's what happens when one focuses on Lincoln alone out of the context of his time and the ideas of his opponents.

When this is criticized the response is always the childish, "That's what you do to us," which doesn't advance anything. Confederatists have gone on and on about Lincoln's shortcomings. What they don't deal with is how so many at the time looked at Lincoln and looked at Davis and chose Lincoln. I suppose the response to that is "that's not our job." But getting the whole picture is the job of everyone looking for truth.

Most people, in so far as they think of the Civil War at all, have a nuanced view of the conflict and an appreciation of its tragic aspect. They have some sympathy with both sides. They sympathize with the defeated South and wish the losses could have been avoided, though ultimately most probably still prefer Lincoln to the secessionists and are happy that the union was preserved, and slavery ultimately abolished. There are reasons to criticize or quibble with or debate the notion that Lincoln preserved the union and freed the slaves, but in the end this popular view does express the achievement of a generation, if not of an individual.

I pretty much saw things that way once. Reading enough polemical and unconvincing articles about how Lincoln was some Marxist or communist or national socialist or tyrant who destroyed the "Old Republic" or about how "we" were truly "free" before the Civil War and "slaves" afterwards brought me round to a more engaged, decisive, even militant view. You should not be surprised or dismayed if many people react to your writing in this way.

It's hard to argue with someone who is so convinced that his opponents' ideas just have to go back to Karl Marx.

You need not argue with such an opponent as that opponent is of your own straw construction. I no more maintain that your ideas "just have to go back to Karl Marx" than they "just have to go back to Bill Clinton." I do however note a significant number of them on the individual topic of the northern cause have a tangable link and distinguishing similarities to their original historical assertion by Karl Marx in 1861. See the difference between that reality and your scarecrow yet? If you don't, here's a hint. It's a lot harder for you to joust with the argument I put forth than the one your scarecrow does.

On a similar note, I find it perfectly reasonable to point out that I am no more guilty (and in fact probably less) than you are in trying to establish links between the left and our opponent's various sides of the debate.

It certainly does make things easier if one can give one's opponents an evil genealogy.

Kinda like the "all the pro-south confederates here are closet white supremacists and racists" assertion made by the likes of Walt and others against their opponents while pursuing this debate? Or would you be referring to your own recent attempt to brand the pro-southern side of the argument with purported links to purported allies on the political left that are themselves far weaker to the tangable link between a more prominent leftist and your own side's argumentation?

You will doubtless dismiss the feudal, anticapitalist, "socialist" side of antebellum proslavery thought, as you dismiss later leftist arguments taken over by neo-confederates. Doubtless you will ignore Fitzhugh

I won't ignore him, but I will dismiss him as the historical fringe extremist he was. For all practical purposes, Fitzhugh was dismissed as a fringe writer in his own time by all but those who exploited him for political gain along the lines of "look at this guy's wacky theories cause he's what the south is really all about" even though such a suggestion was without factual basis. Lincoln was among the more famous who did this, and he did it to stir up fears. Meanwhile the sensible saw Fitzhugh for what he was - a fringer who made his name espousing wacky extremism and sank into obscurity from the war's start forward. His last blip of any significance was campaigning to the bitter end against southern secession, beyond which people simply forgot about him. As for his arguments being taken over by confederates in modern times, I don't believe I've encountered any yet who advocate a system of racial hegelianism much of anywhere in their pro-southern arguments.

and the growing anti-capitalist, anti-commercial spirit of the antibellum South, since it conflicts with your prosecutorial mission.

Just as you severely overstated Fitzhugh's fringe influence as if it were something significant or mainstream, you do the same with this purported anti-commercial element. Sticking to the economic themes themselves, an indisputable grievance of the south against the north was over economic policy. The southern mainstream vehemently opposed the protectionist tariff sought by the north and by Lincoln. They opposed the north's government subsidy, protection, and economic mingling to advance northern industry. They opposed the north's affection for an interventionist national level monetary policy. By all reasonable means on the major economic policy issues of the day - tariffs, industry support, and economic intervention - the south tended to side with the non-interventionist position. Lincoln, himself a self professed economic Whig of the Clay model, was the exact opposite.

Dismissing anomalies and connections inconsistent with the case one wants to prove makes prosecuting that case easier

Is that why you dismiss pro-north Marx from the discussion while simultaneously trying to make your case that leftist influences dominate the southern side of the argument? If so, thanks for being up front about it.

But, alas, how to argue with someone who just discounts opposing arguments?

I've been asking myself that one in light of your recent discounting of Marx from the debate while trying to make your case.

No. Marx strongly admired the "bourgeois" French Revolutionaries of 1789.

1789, 1776. French revolution, American revolution. Bourgeois, petit-bourgeois. No two are one and the same. Never have been, never will be. As for the issue of the middle class itself, I think you miss the key point and in doing so give way too much credit to Marx's consideration of the middle class. Marx was never content with the middle class being an end result, and that end result was literally EVERYTHING to his entire system of thought. To him it was all little more than a movement in history leading to that end result, which was communism itself. Sure, it "overthrew" something undesirable to him, but was itself also undesirable save in the so called end of history. It was all but a stage in history along what he saw to be the pattern of things, with only the end stages being the ones he truly favored. And as his letter to Lincoln reveals, he saw Lincoln's actions as being the initiating factor of bringing about that end "workingman's" system out of the previous 1776 system that preceded it.

If you don't see Marx's ambivalent attitude towards the bourgeoisie and "bourgeois reformers" your results will naturally be skewed.

Surely no more than they would be skewed if I were to overstate those attitudes to the neglect of the end result, which was literally the heart and the overwhelming substance of the entire theory. That seems to be exactly what you do, hence the problems in your position.

...but not in the same argumentation put forth by Marx. Lincoln stated that the confederates _fired the first shot_. Marx took it a huge step further arguing that the confederates waged an aggressive war on the north to expand the territory of the confederacy. Marx's theory is a near verbatim representation of that of today's yankees, who argue it to have been the southern goal to take at least all of the border states and some territory, all of it achieved by unilaterally initiating a war. Lincoln, at least privately, was not of this position and knowingly maneuvered them into a first shot, itself far from unilateral in nature, to boost the northern political cause. Lincoln further admitted in his cabinet meeting notes that Sumter's remaining in yankee hands probably fueled the secessionists more than it would in confederate hands.

That the Morrill tariff wasn't the cause of the war.

You misread Marx's quote. Stating the tariff was not a cause alone is not the inherited argument. The inherited argument is the factually incorrect assertion that the tariff issue did not even emerge until 1861. It was already on the table and on the way to passing in mid 1860. With House clearance achieved and a tariff friendly president about to enter office, two of three hurdles to its passage were already cleared before a single state seceded. Secession did, as you note, expedite senate passage but a senate block was nowhere near the sure thing you suggest it to be. The senate had very heated and heavy divides among its membership in a time of political turmoil where any number of circumstances could have pushed it through. Not the least of them was a presidential drive for it, especially since Lincoln, in the month before his inauguration, publicly vowed that no other issue should deserve as much attention as the Morrill tariff bill in the next session if it was not passed by the time the winter session ran out.

That confining slavery would lead to its demise. Hadn't this been a topic of discussion for at least 40 years before the war?

You again miss a significant part of the quote, that being Marx's contention of a southern scheme to breed slavery into perpetuation. You also significantly misalign the reasoning behind the containment policy. Some circles arguably believed that it would lead to slavery's demise, but Lincoln would never admit anything of the sort nor would the overwhelming majority of those who believed in containment. One of the frequent reasons given, itself used by Lincoln some, was a desire to keep blacks themselves out of the territories in order to keep them free of competition with white laborers. Another, and perhaps the most visible and longest serving of the issues, was the battle for control of the senate once those territories entered the union. Southern states were in sectional conflict with the northern states in the senate off and on for decades. Hence republicans were inclined to set the groundwork for free states which would give them votes and control of the senate. Marx's theory on containment has been assigned to Lincoln by others since then, perhaps as a way redeem him from his openly racist public statements before the war, but Lincoln himself, up until the later part of his presidency, always denied any efforts to bring about the elimination of slavery itself, often asserted his acceptance of it where it existed, and even proposed measures to prolongue it during the secession period.

That the war was caused by the dispute over slavery. A controversial conclusion at the time, but did one really need Marx to put the idea into one's head?

Potentially no (though some around here like walt do tend to build their arguments entirely on regurgitating what others have put into their heads), but similarly at the time very few were willing to so openly state it to the degree that Marx did. Nowadays that is basically the only degree it is asserted in, with anything less often prompting personal smear accusations from the pro-north crowd.

That secession was invalid. See Lincoln's inaugural address five or six months before Marx's editorial.

Again you fail to make key distinctions. Lincoln undoubtedly considered secession invalid, but he also treated the issue in formalized warfare against a politically organized opponent even without recognizing their validity. That was the only way he could do it. But Marx goes beyond this in his declaration of secession to be invalid and does so by reducing it entirely to what he calls a battle cry and nothing more - another position frequented by modern yankees.

As for the concluding tributes, we non-Marxists accept that Marx could be wrong about things.

Sure he could have and often was. But one must ask whether or not some elements in these is statements eerily haunt us today. Take for example his view of Lincoln's actions as a greater part of his socialist picture. I don't you can dispute that a reasonable case can be made, whether you support it as a contention or not, that the centralization of American government was set into motion by Lincoln's actions. Some have likened the centralization of American government as it has happened and, more so, as it has the potential of happening in the future as a spiral toward an increasingly centralized state with emerging socialistic elements.

Certainly there's no reason to grant his assessments any priority over other contemporary views.

In and of themselves, no. But that does not address that in those views we find origins of many later pro-northern arguments.

The articles that I have seen date from late 1861, when the secession crisis and war had already been going on for some time. Most of the ideas you ascribe to Marx was already in the air before his articles were published.

Not really, and not in the refinements of the how Marx stated them as arguments. See above for the individual details of this. Though they were politically behind the same side, Marx's arguments were not restatements of Lincoln's before him. I will concede some had common elements. As for the dates, they are first publication, which means the British newspapers. Marx was in Britain during much of the time he wrote them.

Arguably, Marx could have been "original" in that he came up with his own views by himself, but not an "originator" of pro-union arguments.

As noted, I believe he was original in reaching them. But I also believe the argumentation he used was itself an original refinement of the issues by Marx. They cover similar issues but they are definately not restatements of Lincoln or Mill or much of anyone else I can think of who would have been making arguments for the northern cause. That suggests Marx was the originator of them in those particular refinements, which I have also noted appear very strongly within many modern arguments - even significantly stronger IMHO than many of Lincoln's.

But unfortunately the arguments that you cite at shucksnet aren't particularly original or unique to Marx.

Ah, but they are as I have noted above. Only by oversimplifying them around the issues they address were you able to suggest otherwise.

Lincoln had already made his case for union before Marx ever put his pen to paper on this topic.

And it was a related but distinctly different case.

The problem though is that Marx's rebuttal and those after him, including to a degree your own, misdate the tariff issue significantly after when it arose and misrepresent the reality its close proximity to becoming law just before and during the days that secession picked up steam. Before any state had seceded, the only barrier was the senate, where the bill was making headway. When Lincoln pledged to push the issue as top priority, the first post-SC wave of secession had only been underway for about a week and many of those states senators were still voting in Washington.

Aren't some things simply true or false, regardless of who says them?

Indeed they are, and marx's post-dating of the morrill act was false when he first said it just as it is false today when others repeat it.

This is your own reading of the texts. Someone reading them now or in 1861 would find no evidence of this.

Really? Cause he says it directly and in very clear terms with some of his statements. Granted, I suppose somebody reading just a few of them might not detect it and that may have even been the intent. But with Marx himself, I don't think it can be disputed that his support for the north was out of socialist motives regarding its role in the next progression of history. Now this one is from 1865, but it openly concedes socialist motives as the reasoning behind Marx's position: "The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes." In the same writing, he continues "From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class."

Elsewhere he may be less direct, but when he openly admits it, such as the quotes above, I don't find it far fetched or interprative at all to characterize this as the driving reason behind his position on the war.

Your argument relies on some occult or esoteric meaning that would not have been accessable to most readers.

No. Quite to the contrary, it relies upon familiarity with a greater scope of Marx's writings on the subject than any one editorial, where he directly states the socialism element to have been the true case of his position on the war. One could share Marx's opposition to slavery without accepting any socialist or communist views.

Potentially, but one could not thoroughly embrace Marx's commentary on the war without also touching what prompted it, namely that "From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class."

In some ways. But he clearly identified Lincoln's actions as that which would bring it all to the working class.

He might have privately thought of it as a victory for the proletarian cause, but given no inkling of it in these articles, as appears to be the case.

That is because you are unfamiliar with the articles beyond your own reading of the first half of the excerpts I provided. Marx directly says it in 1865 with "From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class" and also suggests it elsewhere.

What if someone of Carlyle's racialist views concealed them and wrote a lucid defense of the Confederacy? Are those who use arguments that others find similar to those expressed in that defense somehow occultly tainted by the author's unexpressed racial views?

You tell me, for is that not exactly what you are trying to do when you call upon leftist academics who wrote pro-southern histories to forward your theory that modern confederate arguments come from leftist roots? I suppose it depends entirely upon what he said, how he said it, and how closely the arguments resembled each other. But since you are arguing a hypothetical, this is unknowable and therefore pointless to continue on. But returning to Marx's case and what he said, I believe the following is true.

First, Marx's arguments very are nearly identical to the point of appearing in several modern ones. It is one thing to be of similar nature but another to be identical to the point of being indistinguishable, and with marx I believe the similarities make the two nearly identical and virtually indistinguishable. Second, Marx's motives for making his arguments do appear in his articles if you read them in full and are openly admitted in the 1865 piece I quoted. Third, for reasons I have stated I do believe the specifics and forms of Marx's arguments qualify them as significantly original to their time. Therefore I believe my link remains valid in itself and certainly more valid than the one you allege between the left and modern confederate arguments.

To understand the era is to understand its oppositions. To take Lincoln out of the historical context and paint him as a Marxist

You are back to jousting with scarecrows as I have never painted Lincoln himself a marxist beyond noting the fact that he subscribed to a rudimentary version of the labor theory of value, which I noted you can make of whatever you want. Try again though.

or a vehicle of the Marxist cause

For the record, Marx himself saw Lincoln as that. Make of that fact whatever you want.

When this is criticized the response is always the childish, "That's what you do to us," which doesn't advance anything.

It doesn't, though that itself does not address that you do "do that to us." In fact as I have stated and will state again, I solidly believe that many of your characterizations and complaints are significantly more applicable to your own side, yourself included, than what you purport them to apply to in your various characterizations and frequent mischaracterizations of my arguments and purpose.

Confederatists have gone on and on about Lincoln's shortcomings. What they don't deal with is how so many at the time looked at Lincoln and looked at Davis and chose Lincoln.

What about those who looked at Lincoln and looked at Davis and chose Davis?

Most people, in so far as they think of the Civil War at all, have a nuanced view of the conflict and an appreciation of its tragic aspect. They have some sympathy with both sides.

Agreed, and I'll even concede some sympathies with certain persons on the northern side myself despite a strong southern tendency.

They sympathize with the defeated South and wish the losses could have been avoided, though ultimately most probably still prefer Lincoln to the secessionists

But the question remains of who do you mean by most, and with it the issue of whether or not the truth is but a matter of majority sympathies or opinions. Regarding the losses, I am of the belief that they could have indeed been avoided. I further think that what was lost is significantly outweighed by what was gained especially in light of the potential to gain what was gained in ways other than what occured. Is this belief different from the majority of "them"? Possibly. Does whether it is or not determine its validity as a belief? No.

There are reasons to criticize or quibble with or debate the notion that Lincoln preserved the union and freed the slaves, but in the end this popular view does express the achievement of a generation, if not of an individual.

It is an acheivement to some, a tragedy to others. The fact that many consider it an achievement does not lessen it as a tragedy, especially considering how thoroughly popular opinion of history is shaped by the version of it they recieve. Most never examine that version beyond having recieved it. Some examine it and stay with it. Others examine it and reach something different.

You should not be surprised or dismayed if many people react to your writing in this way.

Potentially, though the only reaction of recoil I know to have encountered from my writings has occured by those already heavily decided upon a staked position in the northern side. In very few ways would I exempt you from consideration in this same group.

I had originally written, "It's hard to argue with a monomaniac," in my last post, but took it out. I'll let it stand in this one. You are obviously a true believer with a strong emotional investment in your argument. Keep circulating your ideas and you'll find those who will give this the detailed refutation it deserves -- or hopefully, one better than it deserves. I don't have the time or energy to continue. But I will make a few parting comments.

The fire eaters and militant Southern secessionists are still the forgotten men in your schema. Reading the speeches of Rhett or Yancey or Wigfall, or DeBow's Review or the Charleston Mercury, one could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the war was tied in with Southern aggression and bellicosity. That might not be the only possible view or a complete one, but one certainly didn't need Marx to arrive at it.

Tariff reform had wide spread support in the late 1850s. Even Buchanan supported tariff reform to alleviate a fiscal crisis. Do not confuse the later Morrill Tariff rates elevated to pay for the war with the original Morrill Tariff. The fact that by your own dates, Senate approval was only given at what may have been the end of the session, after several states had already seceded, indicates that opposition was strong and the votes may not have been there to pass the bill. A three fifths vote was necessary to cut off debate, and this was unlikely to be attained had states not already seceded.

You cheat in your next argument. I said that the idea that confining slavery would lead to its demise had been a topic of discussion for 40 years -- if not longer. You say that Marx introduced the idea of a Southern scheme to "breed slavery into perpetuity." Are you unfamiliar with abolitionist literature? Have you never heard of the "slave power" thesis? You are forgiven for not having been alive during the 1850s but not for having slept through them in school. The paranoid arguments on both sides may have been mistaken, but one can't deny that they were in the air. I'm not aware that anyone has used the language you attribute to Marx or that it would matter if anyone did, but one didn't need Marx to come up with that idea either.

Where you cheat is in tacking on a digression about Lincoln as a presumed answer or rebuttal to my point that the idea that the restriction of slavery would kill it had been part of the political landscape for at least a generation if not longer. What you say does not rebut my point. Go back to abolitionist literature, or proslavery literature, or to the debates on the compromises of 1820 and 1850.

Lincoln undoubtedly considered secession invalid, but he also treated the issue in formalized warfare against a politically organized opponent even without recognizing their validity. That was the only way he could do it. But Marx goes beyond this in his declaration of secession to be invalid and does so by reducing it entirely to what he calls a battle cry and nothing more - another position frequented by modern yankees.

Is this nonsense or merely semantics? Lincoln's point of view was that the secession was invalid. Your point is what? That Marx's language and characterization of secession has entered into subsequent argument? I am not aware that Marx's rhetorical flourish adds anything to Lincoln, or that it has contributed anything to subsequent debate. Everyone I've seen who addresses this question and agrees with Lincoln uses Lincoln's argumentation. Lincoln had to deal with realities, and Marx and ourselves can be content with rhetorical flourishes. You may pride yourself on your subtlety but your point is so thin as to be insubstantial.

You cheat again in your discussion of the tributes. It appears to be your argument that Marx's articles of 1861 reflect some communist philosophy of class conflict and inevitable proletarian revolution and socialism, and that somehow Marx's arguments tainted by communist ideology have entered into the bloodstream of those who disagree with you. I denied that any socialist or class based philosophy or ideology would be apparent to the readers of these articles in 1861. You trot out Marx's tribute to Lincoln of 1865.

I take this as an acknowledgement that you concede my point and have found no actual evidence in the articles to refute it. I said that someone reading these articles in 1861 would find little or no real "Marxism" in them, and you have provided no evidence to disprove this. When you say that your argument "relies upon familiarity with a greater scope of Marx's writings on the subject than any one editorial", you essentially admit that you haven't found a recognizably or distinctly "Marxist ideology" in the articles, and that those reading such articles in the early 1860s would have imbibed no such Marxist ideology from them.

For what it's worth, I have the place of first publication as "Die Presse" in Vienna. The dates Marx gave to the articles also don't coincide with the dates of publication, being some day earlier than the publication. I presume that English or American publications would have come still later.

You are convinced that you have found some stylistic or rhetorical or logical watermark or fingerprint or molecule or DNA strand in Marx that has made its way into subsequent assertions of the Unionist position and tainted them. That seems to be a very strange way of arguing. The human mind is capable of coming up with all manner of reasons for proving what it wants to believe, and the nature of evidence and the universe is such that the same arguments will occur to different people at different times independently. But what if there was some rhetorical nuance or flourish traceable to directly Marx? It's unlikely that there would be or that you could prove it's origin in him, but really, so what? Are you so paranoid to suggest that that would make us all communist or marxist or that our view is irredeemably tainted.

You keep asserting that I've tried to make out confederatists to be leftists. I've grown tired of pointing out that I just demonstrated how quick they are to adopt leftist arguments when they suit the confederatist cause. But I do have a larger point. The thesis one sees represented at "Chronicles" and elsewhere is that the North is somehow tainted by "foreign" ideas and the South has remained "pure" or "true." It's a distorted and pernicious idea.

The nation as a whole saw a turn towards Democracy in the 1820s and 1830s. The north saw some labor organization then and the awakening of the transcendentalists and reform movements in the 1840s. There was some socialism thought afoot -- still mostly of the utopian or communal variety. That was a current of the time in the West and it was not likely that America could remain wholly outside of it. What is remarkable about early 19th century America and late 19th century America is not how much but how little socialism there was.

The South was more insulated from socialism by its agrarian way of life, racial divisions, and preoccupations with slavery and racial solidarity. But that doesn't mean that the South didn't have its own temptations towards feudalism and oligarchy. There were currents towards a radical inegalitarianism based on color and slavery. These currents were cut off by the defeat of the Confederacy, but ignoring them would be a mistake.

You would doubtless take any name I would give and argue that it is unrepresentative or on the fringe. The Deep South secessionists were the fringe and were dominated by "unrepresentative thinkers." It's only defeat that makes it possible for one to ignore them or forget them.

Nor has the South been so free of socialism or statism as partisan minds claim. From populism through the New Deal there is ample evidence for Southern support for statist measures, even if one doesn't make the connection between slavery and statism, or indeed, between Confederate economic measures and statism. Am I saying that they were socialists or statists? I wouldn't go so far as to say that uncategorically, but they also didn't avoid socialist or statist policies as means to an end, going further in this regard than many Northern Republicans.

So where I take objection to confederatism is in this idea of a pure, uncorrupted line in American history that is only threatened from without. Equally so with the idea of pure Jeffersonian line unwaveringly opposed to tyranny and oppression. That wasn't true of Jefferson himself, and it hasn't been true of those he influenced. There are always corruptions and deviations and sometimes deeper perversities.

I don't argue that Southerners or Jeffersonians are more evil or tyrannical than other people, just that there's a tendency to rest on the conviction that one has the "right" tradition and that it's the others who are always wrong or depraved that makes people intellectually lazy and sloppy thinkers. Things are inevitably more mixed up and more of a mixed bag than such preconceptions will allow. There may be a pure Jeffersonian ideal, but recognizing how far Jeffersonians and others have deviated from it is a step in the direction of wisdom.

It also seems to me strange that one of the great supporters of free enterprise and individualism becomes a socialist in your strange world. It may make sense from some radical agrarian or anarcho-capitalist universe, but hardly in a thickly settled nation like our own where such options are no longer available. Seen from a view far enough detached from contemporary realities, the whole modern world may seem to be of one piece. From inside, one sees the differences that separate modern ideologies, and also, perhaps, how a radical rejection of socialism, or capitalism or modernism somehow admits the very idea under attack in the back door, again corrupting the "pure" genealogies and distinctions.

Lincoln the socialist is more of a religious or mythological conviction, than a real political analysis. He has to be an evil figure to explain the lost Eden. Assuming that is that one needs someone to blame for it. To the extent that there was an Eden, it was lost when the frontier was filled in, when subsistence agriculture was abandoned, when income and withholding taxes were instituted and institutionalized and when modern weapons made the oceans no longer secure barriers. Lincoln and the defeat of the rebels had little role to play in the presumed loss of Arcadia.

I suppose the response is something about the "Lincoln cult." If there were such a cult, it would be little better than the anti-Lincoln cult. But I don't see a cult. Maybe in my father's or grandfather's day, but not now. I see people who have weighed what the alternatives were at the time and what they would have meant for the country, and decided that, whatever his faults, Lincoln was probably better than the alternative. That there were others who disagreed is always the case, but their views don't stand up for me in the end.

It seems to me that you have labored mightily on your mountain and produced a pretty molehill. Further argument on this topic would merely convince you further of your scheme's validity. Not having the time to continue and not wanting for you to get any more trapped in your delusion, I'll have to bow out.

I had originally written, "It's hard to argue with a monomaniac," in my last post, but took it out. I'll let it stand in this one.

As you please. I do prefer it though when my opponent shows the true color of his invective in his posts rather than trying to hide it.

You are obviously a true believer with a strong emotional investment in your argument.

If you want to call it that. My position is one that I have formed over time and through much consideration. I suppose I could just as easily say that your investment is of a similar nature in the opposing side.

Keep circulating your ideas and you'll find those who will give this the detailed refutation it deserves -- or hopefully, one better than it deserves.

Perhaps, though I remain reasonably confident in my ability to rebut such an attempt as has been the case in many encounters to date.

Are they though? I don't believe we've even had the opportunity to discuss them or their influences making me wonder as to how you reach your conclusion that they are forgotten. If you wish to discuss them you may do so, but don't throw out claims that they are somehow being neglected when an opportunity has not even arisen to examine them.

Tariff reform had wide spread support in the late 1850s.

It had some support, but still very sectional and limited. When the issue came up, most politicians as late as the winter of 1859 were very careful to tread there save the die hard protectionists in the northeast. Lincoln himself was reserved on the issue, suggesting his support but only in vague terminology, until after it emerged as a viable issue in Congress. But with that and evidence that his lobbying was needed to get it through the senate, Lincoln did not hesitate at all to publicly declare it the most important issue on the agenda, which he did in February 1861.

Do not confuse the later Morrill Tariff rates elevated to pay for the war with the original Morrill Tariff .

Why should I? The original was enough to be a point of major contention for the south.

The fact that by your own dates, Senate approval was only given at what may have been the end of the session, after several states had already seceded, indicates that opposition was strong and the votes may not have been there to pass the bill.

Which makes my point - the bill was a major point of contention. In normal times I do believe it would have been a tough albeit perfectly winnable fight for the protectionists. Legislative manuevering and pressure from the white house can do a lot of things including pushing an otherwise contentious bill through. Witness recent activity in congress today for example. Lincoln's tariff speech in february had essentially said full speed ahead to pass the thing, and while the senate remained the biggest block in the road, everything BUT the senate had already been cleared making it the primary focus of the effort. Combined with a fiscal shortfall, contentious conditions on other issues, and a heated battle developing on clearly sectional lines, to suggest tariff passage in the senate to have been an impossible scenario is nothing short of absurd.

You cheat in your next argument.

No, not really, as my next argument was a correction of your own cheating found in the oversimplification given to Marx's comment in your characterization.

Are you unfamiliar with abolitionist literature?

Sure, it was there and I do concede it contained several common elements. But Marx's characterization of it was IMHO significantly unique to most of that, to the other arguments of the time, and definately to Abraham Lincoln's argument.

I'm not aware that anyone has used the language you attribute to Marx

If you would bother yourself with reading it and at the same time pay attention to what was being said by your allies on this topic, you would likely think differently. I know Walt certainly did when I presented Marx's terms before him and he expressed agreement with them.

or that it would matter if anyone did, but one didn't need Marx to come up with that idea either.

In the refinement of the argument used by Marx and his angle it did. You are arguing similarities ranging from extremely vague to distinctly related, then concluding because of those loose similarities Marx must have followed them in argument. In doing so you miss the issue. It is not one of similarities in having addressed the same issue on the same side of the argument or even having addressed it with similar but distinct conclusions. It is those distinct conclusions of Marx that are at issue, and IMHO they are Marx's own. It is further my contention that a significant portion of the pro-union positions align with Marx's take so closely and so precisely it makes those positions of Lincoln or Sumner or Garrison or Spooner or anybody elses at the time look foreign - a point I believe I have proven to be the case with certain freepers by comparing them side by side and believe that I could probably do again with others.

Is this nonsense or merely semantics?

It's called getting specific on the issue. Since bloviating in the world of vagueness seems to be your strength and for the most part sole form of argumentation, it is understandable that your unfamiliarity with specificity would prompt a reaction from you not unlike the above.

Lincoln's point of view was that the secession was invalid. Your point is what? That Marx's language and characterization of secession has entered into subsequent argument?

No. My point is that Marx's position and Lincoln's position, though they are in the same direction against secession, do not end in the same place on the same line of argumentation and are therefore not the same position. It's one thing to say that Marx and Lincoln both considered secession invalid. It's another to say that Lincoln considered secession invalid for reason X and treated it as Y, whereas Marx considered it invalid for reason Z and treated it as A. The first is a vague characterization - your strength and the position you predictably took. The second is a specific consideration. Everyone I've seen who addresses this question and agrees with Lincoln uses Lincoln's argumentation.

So you may have, but as I have noted, you do not see everyone's take on this issue and far from it.

You cheat again in your discussion of the tributes.

No, I don't believe I agree with you there. As with the other cases where you have made such suggestions, actual cheated characterizations has not been the case but rather the issue of specificity. You have a strong tendency to both generalize and overgeneralize - to keep the conversation vague and absent of specifics. Others have suggested you do this to disincline persons of differing opinion from engaging what you say, or perhaps to always leave yourself a way out. It is always easier to do those type of things when you surround yourself with a cloud of generalizations rather than walls of concrete and tangable facts. Accordingly your characterizations of Marx's statements and consideration of them in the context of others from the period relied upon simplifying them from their complex existence to generalized positions that could be compared for similarities to similarly generalized positions of others, like Lincoln or the abolitionists. I responded by reintroducing the specificity that was originally present in Marx's quote, and you respond to that by calling it "cheating." In reality, the only thing that has been "cheated" is your prefered arena of argument, it's vagueness having been violated by specificity.

It appears to be your argument that Marx's articles of 1861 reflect some communist philosophy of class conflict and inevitable proletarian revolution and socialism

That is what Marx's own take on them ammounted to. He said so more than once.

and that somehow Marx's arguments tainted by communist ideology have entered into the bloodstream of those who disagree with you.

Not entirely, though significant elements of it have including some of it without them even knowing it. But then again, did you not argue the same thing had happened to confederate positions via left wingers like Vidal and former leftists like Genovese? Try as you may, I don't believe you can escape your having done so. You seem to be trying since you have not addressed this matter of consistency in your most recent posts despite its ever emerging prominence in your position. I don't believe you can deny that I've stood by my characterization and defended it regarding Marx. You have not with your own characterization of confederate arguments, though, holding their validity for hypothetical purposes, they would fall suspect to the very same arguments you are offering now. Nor have you indicated in any way that this same situation has forced you to abandon those earlier characterizations of your own making. In short, it seems to me that you wish to have it both ways. You wish to keep your argument of leftist influence behind confederate positions while at the same time denying significantly more prominent leftist influence behind yankee positions for reasons that, if valid, would discredit your first argument in the process. It is a fundamental inconsistency that undermines your entire position. I denied that any socialist or class based philosophy or ideology would be apparent to the readers of these articles in 1861.

And you did so without giving any indication that you ever read the articles themselves beyond the excerpts I provided.

You trot out Marx's tribute to Lincoln of 1865.

After you contended that his opposition to slavery, rather than Marx's admitted actual motive, was the driving force behind his position. It appears that you are yet again attempting to retreat into vagueness now that I have introduced another matter of specificity into the debate. In doing so you attempt a sleight of hand trick that switches your position from its initial statement (a denial of socialism's presence as Marx's motive behind the position he took in the 1861 text) to a less objectionable yet still problematic statement (a denial of the socialist motive being openly evident to the reader of the 1861 statement's text). For what it's worth, I'll credit this as a crafty maneuver on your part to avoid the hit taken on your earlier argument by the introduction of 1865 quote. But this time somebody saw you do it. You got caught.

If that is indeed the case, I would find it unusual as the first of the editorials in particular expresses identifies its intended audience as British. The article opens identifying itself as a rebuttal of the pro-southern contentions made by others recently in the British papers and proceeds to name several unmistakably British publications such as the Economist and the London dailies.

You are again retreating to vagueness. Inescapably different arguments at different times will resemble each other, but rarely ever do they widely share a nearly identical nature and virtual indistinguishability without various influences of the former having made its way into the latter. By retreating into vagueness, you can accurately say that people at different times can reach similar conclusions. But if specificity is reinserted, a link that is identifiably stronger than simple chance conclusions of a similar nature appears.

Are you so paranoid to suggest that that would make us all communist or marxist or that our view is irredeemably tainted.

Again it depends entirely upon the specific incident of argument. I don't consider it out of the ordinary at all to say that some of Marx's positions on the war derived from inescapably socialist elements and are therefore tainted by them. Others perhaps in and of themselves are not so. I do think that cases of both survive in modern arguments, if that's what you are asking.

I don't believe you've demonstrated anything of the sort (though you have tried) at least nowhere to the degree that Marx appears in northern arguments.

But I do have a larger point. The thesis one sees represented at "Chronicles" and elsewhere is that the North is somehow tainted by "foreign" ideas and the South has remained "pure" or "true." It's a distorted and pernicious idea.

I'll agree that such a view is probably oversimplified, but so is your characterization of it being the view taken by Chronicles. Though I will concede that a good friend and former co-worker of mine has strong connections to the magazine and in the institute itself, I personally don't subscribe to it and only read it on the ocassion that I encounter a copy in circumstances similar to what one would find, to call upon an overused example, sitting on the table in the waiting room of a doctor's office. On a similar note, what you point out as a problem of oversimplification in the confederate position is no less a problem in the yankee position espoused for example by Claremont, and in fact in there case I would argue more so. No, that does not avoid the problem itself nor do I intend it to attempt that much. But I do think you have a strong tendency to notice these types of "issues" in the confederate side without recognizing their presence in the yankee side as well, often in stronger doses.

You would doubtless take any name I would give and argue that it is unrepresentative or on the fringe.

It depends on the case. Historically, I do think Fitzhugh was on the fringe and further think his supposed position of esteem to have been almost entirely a creation of the northern recoil, including its many disingenuous elements to use him as a fear tactic. Now on the other hand if you were to state that, say, Louis Wigfall had reasonably large influences on the confederate political situation, I would not deny it and would probably agree. Some of his speeches during the winter session strongly evidence a particular southern sentiment that played a role in secession. But Wigfall was not Fitzhugh, nor was Fitzhugh a U.S. Senator. Nor were either Jefferson Davis. Nor were Wigfall, Fitzhugh, or Davis Robert E. Lee. Nor were any of those four Alexander Stephens. And of any of the other individuals, I don't believe Fitzhugh ever came close to the ammount of influence exhibited by even the least from that group.

From populism through the New Deal there is ample evidence for Southern support for statist measures,

And I'll agree. The Bilbos and Hugo Blacks provided some of the strongest support for the New Deal. But in light of the near unanimaty being given to FDR's programs at the time, it is notable that some of the only congressional resistence to them came from the deep south, as did anti-new deal political movements.

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