vacation book report: Upon the Altar of the nation
the first book i finished reading was by Harry Stout called Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. he alternated between praising and condemning Lincoln. He condemned Lincoln for escalating the warfare to one on civilians but also praised him for rising above the claims of whose side God is on. there were several quotes that stood out to me...
p.4-5
Both candidates- and their parties- believed that america stood in the vanguard of world history. The issue was in what way. In essence, the Lincoln-Douglas debates suggested two conflicting moral visions for america. Douglas's vision privileged democratic local preferences over all else in political decision making. In this context, slavery emerged morally neutral. If the people, territories, and states wanted it, they could have it; if they did not, they could refuse it.
Lincoln's vision subjected local consensus to moral dictates, whether based on history, the Bible, or enlightened rationality. Any democracy worth keeping, Lincoln reasoned, required moral consensus grounded in some higher authority. For Lincoln, that authority was the Declaration of Independence and its ringing affirmation that "all men are created equal." If that declaration was morally right, Lincoln argued, then slavery was morally wrong and therefore could not be allowed to proliferate in the federal territories. Lincoln's idea of the moral consensus was summed up in the party's pithy motto: "Free soil, free labor, free men." By implication, the Constitution became an antislavery document subject to charge only by appeal to a higher law than itself. Douglas criticized Lincoln's categorical rejection of slavery in the territories as reckless and an inevitable call to civil war.
regarding the numbness to the carnage...
p. 240
With minds set like flint on the task at hand, no question arose of proportion or acceptable losses. One suspects that the casualties could have numbered one hundred thousand instead of fifty thousand and the response would have been the same. One writer for the independent noted how numbed Americans had become to bloodshed. In the opening, relatively benign, military encounters, "every early dash in the was was turned into fame...Our first defeats threw the whole community into panics, for men were then unused to stern times." But that changed profoundly for the worse: "We have since become so familiar with war, the Gettysburg, a greater battle than Waterloo, made no such impression upon the popular mind as the first few flashes of powder from [Fort] Moultrie, at daybreak of April 19, 1861." The moral brake linings had sheared, leaving only reflexive endorsements of a cause that knew no limits.
regarding Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus which he did after Jeff Davis did, president of the confederacy. i've been told slavery bad but Lincoln worse and implying that the confederate government was better than Lincoln. i'm not sure how any government can be good that denies human rights to the humans it governs (Roe v. Wade anyone)...
p.262
Besides taking the war more directly to civilians and the partisans hidden among them, Lincoln continued to defend his suspension of habeas corpus when dealing with disloyal and traitorous citizens. The decision was difficult he conceded, and "I was slow to adopt strong measures." But military necessity required it: "Civil courts are organized chiefly for trials of individuals, or, at most, a few individuals acting in concert - and this in quiet times, and on charges for crimes well defined in the law...Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are proved to be guilty of defined crime; and its suspensions is allowed by the Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held who cannot be proved to be guilty of defined crime, 'when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.' This is precisely our present case -- a case of rebellion wherein the public safety does require suspension."
Stout is not unaware of the contrast and similarities of the Christian right and left now and then and the parties who support African Americans.
p.281
Democrats had their heroic generals who fought loyally even as they opposed Lincoln's policies. Most notable was McClellan, the "Christian General." His behavior in the field comported with the limited goals of Democratic politicians. He tried to enforce Sabbath observance and strove to avoid belittling and vilifying the enemy.
McClellan's "humane" voice stood in stark contrast to the crude and sometimes profane utterances of Grant or Sherman, but it did not extend to slaves and Northern freed blacks. Their humane "place" was the inhumane condition of enslavement. In an earlier address to the House of Representatives, Congressman Cox praised McClellan and condemned Republican moves towards escalation. Lincoln's removal of McClellan "was a sacrifice to appease the "Ebony Fetich."
Just as i've seen in other books the claim that blacks preferred slavery never seems to match up with the data of runaways and rebellion and in this highlight, enlistment in the Union army.
p.309, 310
Like Kirkwood, many Northern military officers saw plainly the advantages to be gained by enlisting freedmen and slaves into the conflict...Union General Sherman was no friend to abolitionists, but he did see the utility of employing fugitive slaves behind the lines and worked to actively promote the service (albeit not in combat.)
Lincoln did not have to wait long to see if slaves would enlist. The answer was yes, in droves. To Lincoln's delight, the most striking candidates came from the border states. Forty-two thousand black men from the border states served in the army and 2,400 more in the navy. The historian Ira Berlin shows that black enlistees amounted to 25 percent of eligible black men in Delaware, 28 percent in Maryland, 39 percent in Missouri, and a whopping 57 percent in Kentucky. In all 180,000 to 200,000 black soldiers fought for the North, with killed and wounded totaling 68,178 of more than one-third of the total engaged...Northern blacks were slower to enlist than their Southern counterparts, citing discrimination and the thinly veiled threats f confederates to murder black prisoners of war or sell them into slavery. [see my earlier book report on the Fort Pillow massacre]
in the afterword, Stout laments the means, total war, that achieved the end, total abolition, and the legacy of those emans.
p.460
By condoning the logic of total war in the name of abolition - and victory - Americans effectively guaranteed that other atrocities in other wars could likewise be excused in the name of "military necessity." While Lincoln passed tragically from the American scene, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan remained to carry the new moral logic forward. When Grant became president and commander in chief, his general of the army was William Tecumseh Sherman, and commander of the Department of the Missouri was Philip Sheridan, supported by George Custer. Together, they would pursue wars of extermination in the Indian campaigns of 1868 and 1883, employing the same calculus their commander in chief, Lincoln, had approved in the Civil War. Just as Sheridan wreaked vengeance in the Shenandoah Valley, so he would wreak vengeance on american Indians - and with the same moral justification.
Knowing that the western Indians could roam and attack freely over the warm-weather months, when separated from their wives and children, Sheridan began attacking the Indians in the winter camps. The braves would have to remain to protect the women and children or see them killed before their eyes. Another tactic Sheridan used, one already tried and proved in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of the Civil War, was starvation. By destroying winter foodstuffs (and later exterminating buffalo), Sheridan forced the Indians to flee through the brutal winter cold and snow, where most died of starvation of froze to death.
coincidentally, if there such things as coincidences, i've been reading Jeremiah, who constantly warned an overt religious country, Judah, about the coming judgment by heathen, because of their hypocrisy. The confederacy was full of Christian preachers who justified slavery over and over again from the Bible, somehow managing to skip the parts about limiting it to 7 years for those in fellowship. Its interesting how the constitution forbids indentured servanthood but permitted slavery. the union was both evangelical as well as liberal. the confederate army experienced many spiritual revivals during the war while the racist, atheistic Sherman brought war to the weak in the South, which also freed uncounted numbers of their slaves. but it was Lincoln who told ministers that the was was just a part of God's plan and God was not a part of his plan. the confederacy had many national fast and intercession days, but God's plan would not be changed.
the African genocide by white Americans in general and the Indian genocide brought on by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan lead to my next book reports.
p.4-5
Both candidates- and their parties- believed that america stood in the vanguard of world history. The issue was in what way. In essence, the Lincoln-Douglas debates suggested two conflicting moral visions for america. Douglas's vision privileged democratic local preferences over all else in political decision making. In this context, slavery emerged morally neutral. If the people, territories, and states wanted it, they could have it; if they did not, they could refuse it.
Lincoln's vision subjected local consensus to moral dictates, whether based on history, the Bible, or enlightened rationality. Any democracy worth keeping, Lincoln reasoned, required moral consensus grounded in some higher authority. For Lincoln, that authority was the Declaration of Independence and its ringing affirmation that "all men are created equal." If that declaration was morally right, Lincoln argued, then slavery was morally wrong and therefore could not be allowed to proliferate in the federal territories. Lincoln's idea of the moral consensus was summed up in the party's pithy motto: "Free soil, free labor, free men." By implication, the Constitution became an antislavery document subject to charge only by appeal to a higher law than itself. Douglas criticized Lincoln's categorical rejection of slavery in the territories as reckless and an inevitable call to civil war.
regarding the numbness to the carnage...
p. 240
With minds set like flint on the task at hand, no question arose of proportion or acceptable losses. One suspects that the casualties could have numbered one hundred thousand instead of fifty thousand and the response would have been the same. One writer for the independent noted how numbed Americans had become to bloodshed. In the opening, relatively benign, military encounters, "every early dash in the was was turned into fame...Our first defeats threw the whole community into panics, for men were then unused to stern times." But that changed profoundly for the worse: "We have since become so familiar with war, the Gettysburg, a greater battle than Waterloo, made no such impression upon the popular mind as the first few flashes of powder from [Fort] Moultrie, at daybreak of April 19, 1861." The moral brake linings had sheared, leaving only reflexive endorsements of a cause that knew no limits.
regarding Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus which he did after Jeff Davis did, president of the confederacy. i've been told slavery bad but Lincoln worse and implying that the confederate government was better than Lincoln. i'm not sure how any government can be good that denies human rights to the humans it governs (Roe v. Wade anyone)...
p.262
Besides taking the war more directly to civilians and the partisans hidden among them, Lincoln continued to defend his suspension of habeas corpus when dealing with disloyal and traitorous citizens. The decision was difficult he conceded, and "I was slow to adopt strong measures." But military necessity required it: "Civil courts are organized chiefly for trials of individuals, or, at most, a few individuals acting in concert - and this in quiet times, and on charges for crimes well defined in the law...Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are proved to be guilty of defined crime; and its suspensions is allowed by the Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held who cannot be proved to be guilty of defined crime, 'when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.' This is precisely our present case -- a case of rebellion wherein the public safety does require suspension."
Stout is not unaware of the contrast and similarities of the Christian right and left now and then and the parties who support African Americans.
p.281
Democrats had their heroic generals who fought loyally even as they opposed Lincoln's policies. Most notable was McClellan, the "Christian General." His behavior in the field comported with the limited goals of Democratic politicians. He tried to enforce Sabbath observance and strove to avoid belittling and vilifying the enemy.
McClellan's "humane" voice stood in stark contrast to the crude and sometimes profane utterances of Grant or Sherman, but it did not extend to slaves and Northern freed blacks. Their humane "place" was the inhumane condition of enslavement. In an earlier address to the House of Representatives, Congressman Cox praised McClellan and condemned Republican moves towards escalation. Lincoln's removal of McClellan "was a sacrifice to appease the "Ebony Fetich."
Just as i've seen in other books the claim that blacks preferred slavery never seems to match up with the data of runaways and rebellion and in this highlight, enlistment in the Union army.
p.309, 310
Like Kirkwood, many Northern military officers saw plainly the advantages to be gained by enlisting freedmen and slaves into the conflict...Union General Sherman was no friend to abolitionists, but he did see the utility of employing fugitive slaves behind the lines and worked to actively promote the service (albeit not in combat.)
Lincoln did not have to wait long to see if slaves would enlist. The answer was yes, in droves. To Lincoln's delight, the most striking candidates came from the border states. Forty-two thousand black men from the border states served in the army and 2,400 more in the navy. The historian Ira Berlin shows that black enlistees amounted to 25 percent of eligible black men in Delaware, 28 percent in Maryland, 39 percent in Missouri, and a whopping 57 percent in Kentucky. In all 180,000 to 200,000 black soldiers fought for the North, with killed and wounded totaling 68,178 of more than one-third of the total engaged...Northern blacks were slower to enlist than their Southern counterparts, citing discrimination and the thinly veiled threats f confederates to murder black prisoners of war or sell them into slavery. [see my earlier book report on the Fort Pillow massacre]
in the afterword, Stout laments the means, total war, that achieved the end, total abolition, and the legacy of those emans.
p.460
By condoning the logic of total war in the name of abolition - and victory - Americans effectively guaranteed that other atrocities in other wars could likewise be excused in the name of "military necessity." While Lincoln passed tragically from the American scene, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan remained to carry the new moral logic forward. When Grant became president and commander in chief, his general of the army was William Tecumseh Sherman, and commander of the Department of the Missouri was Philip Sheridan, supported by George Custer. Together, they would pursue wars of extermination in the Indian campaigns of 1868 and 1883, employing the same calculus their commander in chief, Lincoln, had approved in the Civil War. Just as Sheridan wreaked vengeance in the Shenandoah Valley, so he would wreak vengeance on american Indians - and with the same moral justification.
Knowing that the western Indians could roam and attack freely over the warm-weather months, when separated from their wives and children, Sheridan began attacking the Indians in the winter camps. The braves would have to remain to protect the women and children or see them killed before their eyes. Another tactic Sheridan used, one already tried and proved in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of the Civil War, was starvation. By destroying winter foodstuffs (and later exterminating buffalo), Sheridan forced the Indians to flee through the brutal winter cold and snow, where most died of starvation of froze to death.
coincidentally, if there such things as coincidences, i've been reading Jeremiah, who constantly warned an overt religious country, Judah, about the coming judgment by heathen, because of their hypocrisy. The confederacy was full of Christian preachers who justified slavery over and over again from the Bible, somehow managing to skip the parts about limiting it to 7 years for those in fellowship. Its interesting how the constitution forbids indentured servanthood but permitted slavery. the union was both evangelical as well as liberal. the confederate army experienced many spiritual revivals during the war while the racist, atheistic Sherman brought war to the weak in the South, which also freed uncounted numbers of their slaves. but it was Lincoln who told ministers that the was was just a part of God's plan and God was not a part of his plan. the confederacy had many national fast and intercession days, but God's plan would not be changed.
the African genocide by white Americans in general and the Indian genocide brought on by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan lead to my next book reports.
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