Blog 4 History

This is a WWI War Bond Chritmas poster:

In what has to be one of the great acts of American history, Washington’s stepping down as President is truly divine.

“After demonstrating exemplary leadership as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, George Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief and retired to Mount Vernon, Virginia. This act established the important precedent that civilian elected officials, rather than military officers, possess ultimate authority over the armed forces. Six years later, Washington was elected US president. What was Washington’s annual presidential salary?”

Click Here for answer.

Wig-Wags is a great new blog by a military history student that I have added to the blogroll. This is easily one of the best new Civil War blogs around. Currently posted is an excellent discussion on the causes of the Civil War: Exploring Causes of the Civil War – Part VII: Political Discord, Slavery, and the Fight for Political Control. Welcome Wig-Wags

The following is from The Objective Standard, a magazine that I have not read a lot of, but am starting to read more. The author of this article is Dr. John David Lewis, who is a Senior Research Scholar in History and Classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in classics from the University of Cambridge, has taught at the University of London, and is a fellow of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. His background allows him to approach, I think, his subject from a point of view both intellectually and politically armed to write with authority and objectivity.

His article, which I partially quote, deals with the political and social variables that led to and “allowed” Hitler and his war machine to devastate Europe, and murder millions of Jews. There are never any easy answers and sticking to murky “greyish” areas and not being able to see the black and white nature of an issue, can lead to catastrophic events.

“The Balm for a Guilty Conscience”: Moral Paralysis, Appeasement, and the Causes of World War II
John David Lewis

Author’s note: This is the second of three articles for The Objective Standard dealing with military history and its (in this case implicit) lessons for the modern day. The third article will consider the lessons of the American victory over Japan in World War II. These articles draw from my forthcoming book, Nothing Less than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History from the Greco-Persian Wars to World War II (Princeton University Press).

Imagine that an asteroid is heading toward the earth at thousands of miles per hour. While it is still far away, a small force can change its direction a few degrees and avert a catastrophic collision. But as it moves closer to the earth, the force needed to divert it multiplies exponentially, until only a massive explosion can prevent disaster. It would be one thing if men did not know of the asteroid, or saw it coming and were impotent to act. But suppose they had the bombs and the rockets needed to deflect it—but refused to do so because of “international opinion,” a desire to spend the money on “social programs,” or a claim that we must not interfere in the comet’s own “natural” movements? This describes, in essence, Europe’s drift into World War II.

During the 1930s, men stood at a cusp in time, a point of momentous decision, watching the growing power of Germany under its screaming, malevolent leader. Their failure to confront Germany—and the devastating consequences of that failure—demonstrate the power of ideas, both to motivate aggressors and to undercut defenders from taking the actions needed to protect freedom.

On September 1, 1939, twenty years and nine months after the armistice of November 11, 1918, that had ended World War I, millions of Germans obeyed their Leader’s call for a war of national aggrandizement and launched a new slaughter across Europe. The attack on Poland was the climax of five years of military buildup by Germany, which had followed fifteen years of feverish international diplomacy, economic transfers, and political agreements. Most European leaders had worked fervently to avoid a new carnage. They fell prostrate before Hitler’s “Lightning War.” The deepest reasons why so many Germans joined the armies of the Nazis, hailed their leader, followed their orders, and drank to their war cannot be found in reasons as shallow as economic stagnation, political dissatisfaction, or bad feelings about the last war. These factors were present in many nations that did not attack. In essence, the Germans were in the grip of a philosophic pathology, a set of ideas that told them it was morally good to sacrifice themselves and others to the all-powerful State, the Race, and the Leader. The power of these ideas in German culture was expressed in the mass support that the Nazis enjoyed among “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”1

But another force, outside of Germany, also pushed the world toward blitzkrieg and Auschwitz. This force too was a set of ideas—ideas in the minds of Germany’s opponents—which prevented England and France from confronting Hitler when they could. In the mid-1930s, British politicians in particular were restrained from action, not by an incapacity to act, but by a lack of will. Certain moral ideals—which rose to the cultural forefront after the horrendous experience of World War I—conditioned British politicians and their constituents to become virtual allies of Germany in its drive to regain its status as a powerful nation. The result was a paralysis in the western European nations, which disarmed them as surely as any bomb and allowed Hitler to build up his forces to the point where his ability to fight exceeded that of his enemies.

Read more…

In case there was any thought that slavery was NOT the very definition of “cruel an unusual punishment.”

Here’s an excerpt from Melvin Grigsby’s 1888 book, “The Smoked Yankee,” concerning a plantation along the Mississippi in 1863, he writes:

On that plantation I used to read the records kept by the overseer. It seems that every overseer of a large plantation kept a daily record. That record showed that there were negroes whipped, bucked, and gagged, and otherwise punished every day. Every negro who came from the field with less than his stint of cotton, received so many lashes. I saw there the same kind of instruments of torture that I afterward saw in Andersonsville. One machine was rigged for stretching negroes over a large roller, so that the lash could be applied to the bare skin.

pages 33-34.

I’ve been writing for sometime now on the activities of cotton profiteering along the Trans-Mississippi and the results which included: needless loss of life, lack of discipline and morale in the army, and not to mentioned that it destined Arkansas to become a wasteland of death and suffering.

I am pretty much at the end of my blogging on this (in terms of posting sources and info) as I am going to at least write an article on the subject, maybe more.

Here is a letter by Charles Dana written to Stanton after he set out to start his own Cotton Speculation company along the Trans-Mississippi region. His investigation into the trade caused him such alarm, that he immediately wrote back to Stanton to denounce the entire trade:

Memphis, January 21, 1863

Dear Sir: You will remember our conversations on the subject of excluding cotton speculators from the regions occupied by our armies in the South. I now write to urge the matter upon your attention as a measure of military necessity.

The mania for sudden fortunes made in cotton, ranging in a vast population of Jews and Yankees scattered throughout this whole country, and in this town almost exceeding the numbers of the regular residents, has to an alarming extent corrupted and demoralized the army. Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay.

Cotton speculation in this region is a surprise to no one, but there are implications here. First, scores of soldiers were purposely kept in cotton rich areas in order to exclusively search out cotton. Meanwhile Arkansas suffered (Gen. Hindman and his guerrilla fighters) as Federal troops focused on the eastern side of the Mississippi south of Helena, instead of west of it and Central Arkansas.  Second, not to mention all of the profiteering that cost lives.

Dana does exaggerated when he claims that “every soldier” wanted in on the trade, though I am sure they might have wanted to reap the rewards of their blood and tears, but almost to a man they despised having to do it and many in the Cotton Brigade spoke openly of mutiny.

Dana might have just been sore that he missed out on an opportunity to rake it in, but nonetheless his observations are very correct.

I’m surprised I missed this back in September, did anyone out there post on this? I’m not posting this because I agree or disagree for that matter. I do question whether Medved needed to make such an argument and do so the way he does. Was he out of line, did he completely take historical facts and warp them?  It seems he does make some generalizations and leaps of logic that will be for many hard to accept.

The below “inconvenient truths” were put forward by Michael Medved in his column here: Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery.

Medved was responding to what he saw as overstated and incorrect presentations of American history in regard to slavery, that exaggerate “America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all. No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.”

In this article he writes:

Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation.

I wonder about some of his historical “truths” and their accuracy. Here are his “Six Inconvenient Truths” which he goes into some detail to explain in his article. So I do urge you to read his article before commenting, if so desired.

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

The above photo is of Japanese officers joyfully (with a riveted crowd) executing prisoners. British historian Mark Felton’s latest book Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan’s Naval War Crimes documents the Imperial Japanese Navy and its deliberate and sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention during WWII. Crimes that have by and large gone unpunished, and ignored. All too often slanted textbooks love to hammer home the point that we indeed dropped terrible bombs on Japan and, of course, not once but twice atomic bombs. However, it indeed saved lives, the ideology the United States was confronting had it invaded the island, is best described as follows:

Felton tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.

Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub’s foredeck.

From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: “Do not look back because that will be too bad for you,” Blears recalled.

One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.

According to Blears: “One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera.”

Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.

He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.

To read more…

Had the opportunity to read the latest issues of a couple of my favorite Civil War magazines and found, as usual, some excellent content. First, in the January 2008 issue of Civil War Times, historian and author Timothy B. Smith has an excellent article on Lew Wallace and the battle of Shiloh.

Though I do not believe any serious Civil War historian would argue that Wallace was delinquent in his duty that day, but in case there was any doubt, Smith dismantles the myth that is Wallace’s supposed poor performance. What I liked most was Smith actually taking the time to hike the same trails that Wallace passed over and document results (timing the walk on his own) which shows that Wallace did a heck of a job covering the terrain with his army.

As for his orders, Grant screwed that up as much as anything. Finally, the only true “hindsight” criticism would be, had Wallace continued on his original march down the Shunpike and over Clear Creek and onto owl Creek, he might have struck the Confederates at the rear near Hardee’s division, and that could have spelled disaster for the attackers.

Finally, Steven H. Newton article’s article, “What Kind of War?” in this year’s #3 issue of North & South is an interesting and perhaps flawed attempt to re-address or re-direct the questions surrounding the nature of the fighting during the war and whether or not it might have approached Total War?

He contends, “whether it is the extend and magnitude of noncombatant death and suffering which crosses the border into the realm of total war or the intent of formal policies of suppression.” (24).

The backwoods bushwhacking and guerrilla warfare that took place all across the border states, and the lack of military intervention, according to Newton, points to a deliberate neglect on the part of military officials to intervene in atrocities aimed at civilians. This “intent” was to allow the in-fighting among the civilians to be “played out,” to use a term of the times.

I like Newton’s logic, though his approach (starting with Kit Carson and his campaign against the Navajo and attempting to connect it with the fighting east of the Mississippi) is misguided I felt, however his arguments are strong.

I have attempted in the past to argue that the intention of the belligerents was as “total” as it could get for situation and time. This was a culture and society of chivalry and honor, two opposing cultures that did not have racial animosity towards the other, and could not have directly took part in wholesale slaughter of civilians and other non-combatants. It simply could not have happened as it did against the Indians and in Europe where racial superiority reigned.

I think Newton does a good job with his thesis and I think there is still wiggle room for making the argument that in their own way the Civil War approached, if not partially enter, the realm of totality.