Posted on 01/07/2004 7:12:30 AM PST by Aurelius
How do you get to the proposition that, if the Cherokee had a prior beef with the federal government (and if I thought really hard I might be able to guess what it was!), anything else they said about the federal government and its relationship to the States, which it was then laboring mightily to change to the extreme disadvantage of the States and the Peoples it was waging open warfare upon, would a priori be null and void? Or even discounted?
A guy shoots me. I complain. He shoots someone else, and I complain again. But my second complaint is bogus and I have no beef on account of the second shooting, because the guy shot me first?
Sounds like schoolboy debater's reasoning (or brawling and eye-gouging) to me.
That may be true, and it's a good point to remember. But you are still making what is essentially an argument ad hominem against the Cherokee declaration, rather than accept its face argument, that the Cherokee had suffered mightily at the hands of the U.S. Government. They had also had bloody differences with white settlers even in colonial times, per the comment above about the Cherokee's and other tribes' cooperation with the British, which kept the white settlers in the three prerevolutionary counties of Tennessee forted-up and unable to expand for ten long years, and their population stagnant thanks to disease and malnutrition. That will have been a bitter memory on the other side.
Bottom line, the Cherokee had had concrete experience with the operational policies of the Government and the kind of people who drove them that illuminated their own best interest and guided their choice of allegiance in 1861.
Or is that not a fair statement?
Damn! Where did that happen, s_w?
There's another possibility that General Jackson rented Lewis. That often happened, and if so it would be true that Jackson didn't own Lewis. If he habitually rented servants, then he might never have actually owned slaves. Which is a distinction without a difference, when the question is whether Jackson participated in the peculiar institution.
Anyone know whether Lewis is the slave Jackson is depicted as speaking to about slavery and the future in Gods and Generals?
However, the problem with this article is, continuing with your example, it's ignoring the fact you were shot at all, and simply stating that because you dislike the shooter, it must mean that you totally agree philisophically with the second victim. The article then would be propping you up as "proof" that the shooter is just evil, since if you hate him to when he's done nothing to you, why he has to be a bad guy.
Or, let's use another analogy, albeit a bit of a stretch. Say an Israeli soldier is on trial for a minor offense, say, failure to pay a traffic ticket, and a the jury is full of Hamas terrorists. (And no, I'm not comparing the Cherokee to terrorists nor comparing the Trail of Tears or attempted genocide to a traffic ticket. It's an analogy. Simmer down). If the jury returns a guilty verdict and recommends the death sentence, is it okay to ignore any prejudicial thoughts they may have had which went into the verdict/sentence? That's what the author of this wonderful piece seems to think. "Hey, guys, never mind that the Feds mistreated them for years prior to this and fueled a visceral hatred and mistrust. The truth of the matter is they sided with the Confederates just because the Confederates were right!" Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
As was stated earlier in the thread (post 58, I believe, although I'm too lazy to look back), this was an excuse to make war on the Feds, and this time they had others to help, adding to their strength. My argument is not that the Cherokee had no beef with the Feds, or that the Federal government can do not wrong. Lord knows I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying the author is conveniently leaving out pertinent details which would have the effect of undermining the point he appears to be making, which is that the Confederacy was right because the Cherokee supported them. That's a ridiculously near-sighted argument. Did we support the Soviets and agree philosophically with their system of government simply because we were both fighting the Germans? There's more to this than meets the author's eye.
And you are right... Jackson could only have rented his services. But, according to Anna Jackson, they did own slaves.
Frankly, I don't think the tribes would be united, or even thoughtful, enough to have a reasoned political position such as you describe. I think that they took part against the federals through warrior passion, or from a sense of feeling invaded, than through a rational philosophy.
They probably took arms because their neighbor took arms, and nothing more complicated or theoretical than that.
There is an interesting essay today on "Cold Mountain" on National Review Online--this is the Civil War that I heard about from my own ancestry. Quite a resonation, this particular essay.
I was defending myself from the attacking ducks ;o)
Yes, it is ... we just rented that last week. (Outstanding Lee, very good Jackson, everyone else's beards looked fake, and the women were too treacly, in my opinion!)
$150 would not have purchased any slave, let alone an adult man with skills, on the open market at that time, so it seems likely that was a hire agreement.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
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