Victor Davis Hanson Ping!
Posted on 05/21/2004 8:38:10 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
General William Tecumseh Sherman--a quirky, difficult, and much misunderstood man--deserves a place on the roll call of great liberators in human history. More than any other person, he destroyed the institution of American slavery and the Southern aristocracy that was interwoven with it. In the late fall of 1864 he marched an army of over 60,000 rural, voting Americans--mostly farmers from the Midwest--into the heart of the Confederacy, a patrician society based on bound labor. Sherman’s agrarian citizen-soldiers upended that world of slaves and masters, instantly liberated tens of thousands, and helped therein to destroy forever the idea of privileged nobility in America. In a 300-mile march covering less than 40 days these armed men changed the entire psychological and material course of our national history.
Make no mistake about it--Sherman waged total war. After taking and burning the city of Atlanta, he set off across the heart of Georgia on his way to the Atlantic coast. Moving without an unwieldy supply chain, his men lived off the land. Earlier Northern battlefield successes had neither destroyed Southern morale nor dented the Confederacy’s ability to field new armies. Union forces had gotten to within a few miles of the Confederate capital in Richmond yet the South had not sued for peace and did not, in fact, feel it was beaten.
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
Reminiscent of Band of Brothers, not that any of the enlisted men were calling Major Winters "Dick," but that same air of familiarity. I just got done reading Red Storm Rising again and it's there in the relations between Lieutenant Edwards and his Marines by the time you get to the chapter after they stop the Soviet troops from raping the farmgirl. Edwards just starts referring to the sergeant as "Jim" when they barely got along previously.
For example, there may have been only 10,000 or so really large slaveholders in the South. About 75 percent of the South’s white population had never had any connection with African chattels at all. Only 385,000 out of some 6 million citizens who lived in the Confederacy or border areas sympathetic to the South were themselves currently slave owners.
Something every American schoolchild should know.
In the process, these soldiers did more than any abolitionist or liberator ever born in our country to guarantee the American proposition that each man is as good as another.
Bears repeating.
Ping!
Victor Davis Hanson Ping!
Victor Davis Hanson Ping!
Actually, in some respects it was a Northeastern aristocracy with status gained at birth that defeated a Southern one.
vdh BUMP!
But ... But ... the folks at ANSWER say that war never solved anything! Can't we all just get along?
Ping, suh.
}:-)4
About how I feel about our current crop of corporate globalists.
Many of the Founding Fathers were "aristocrats" too, but they cared about the plight of the common man. If Northern aristocrats ended slavery, bully for the Northern aristocrats.
An absolutly brilliant article!!
How do you define "fair"?
Many of the Founding Fathers were "aristocrats" too, but they cared about the plight of the common man. If Northern aristocrats ended slavery, bully for the Northern aristocrats.
There are all kinds of indenture, some are simple, some are not. There is a long history of aristocrats who don't abide competition, believing themselves destined to "lead." The lash can just as easily be outrageous fines from an imperious bureaucrat tyrannically implementing rules designed to favor that aristocracy.
I could go into a long spiel here about how the early yers of the Industrial Revolution were marked by gross managerial efficiency and wages only became truly unfair post-war when blah, blah, blah, but instead I'll cut to the chase: Is there any wage that isn't fair in comparison to slavery? I don't think there is.
The lash can just as easily be outrageous fines from an imperious bureaucrat tyrannically implementing rules designed to favor that aristocracy.
I still don't see where moral equivalency can be drawn between management practices in the North and owning an African. Let's also remember that the Illinois farmboy was not ruled by the Industrialist, but everyone in Southern society was to some extent ruled by the wealthy plantation owners. Note also that the oppressed New England shoemaker could move West and become a homesteader, while the African could temporarily escape his bondage and end up hobbled for his trouble.
One thing he left out (possibly because he mentioned it in one of his An Autumn of War essays) is Sherman's use of the words "bottled piety" to describe the outrage some abolitionists expressed at his tactics. He was disgusted that these people railed against slavery for decades in the worst terms they could think of (and all of them justified) and then blasted him for doing the one thing that would end it.
If you take today's war protestors and remove the hard-core Communist/Anarchist types, what you have left is a lot of people operating on a hateful (mostly Bush-hatred) version of that same "bottled piety." They claim to want all sorts of justice, but they will not do what it takes to secure it, and that includes criticism of many methods that stop short of war.
I didn't say that there was. Although the assumptions and practices of slavery are despicable, that doesn't exculpate the sponsors of those Northern soldiers, however noble their motives might indivudually be, for political mendacity or the all too human predeliction to take advantage of the concentration of power in the Federal government that resulted from the Civil War. In other words, slavery is bad, but so is fascism.
Without slavery, Jefferson might have ended up a Jeffersonian small farmer.
"They deemed themselves great raiders and marauders, who harassed fixed garrisons and terrorized timid populations."
So does that mean that by today's standards we would deem the confederacy terrorist?
The Case of Victor Davis Hanson: Farmer, Scholar, Warmonger
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138659/posts
Yes, but if the Southern apologists discover this thread, VDH better duck :)
Eerie shades of the Iraqi prison scandal, no? The reason Sherman was he most hated of all Northerners was his humiliation of the aristocracy. I'm not so sure that deep humiliation of Baathists and Al Quaeda is such a bad idea--especially when the photos of it are available for all to see.
The dog leash photo strikes me a Shermaneqsue in that sense. Mounds of naked Baathists does too. By 1864, the North was sick and tired of the deaths imposed by the Southern Aristocracy in trying to save their 'way of life.' Sherman's humiliation of the aristocrats was accepted and embraced. He made the South howl and the North applauded.
How long before our multicultural nice-guy pretensions are sufficiently eroded that we are willing to do what needs to be done to win the WOT? When Islam finally howls its humiliation to the sky, I will lead the applause.
As always, Wow!
Isn't there a Civil War ping list?
Getting out the popcorn for this one...
An excellent comment on your part with regards to a great deal of the so-called "Progressive"movement in this country.
Actually Hansons article is more like a excerpt from the book that Devlin was spouting off about.
Interesting comparison. - Obviously, Devlin is a flipped out & raving 'states rights' racist.
Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the ping. Unfortunately the links are down. I even went to his website and can't find the article. I'm very depressed after reading everyones comments. Aaaaaargh!
One that is agreed to by both involved parties. No one HAD to accept work at a northern factory, nevermind a particular factory.
Remember Pullman?
Yes...it was the start of socialism in this country.
Or even more precisely, it was the point at which wages were no longer agreed to by both parties but dictated by socialist unions.
You are really butchering the term, "socialism."
In the case of the Pullman Strike, the government didn't own the means of production. That's not socialism; it's the workers agreeing to incorporate, the essence of capitalism. In fact, the socialism that exempted unions from anti-trust laws has done more to ruin unions than anything, which explains in part its fans among the liberal elite. Had unions remained competing profit making businesses supplying skilled labor, both the workers and their employers would have been better off.
In some respects, that model is being employed today by companies setting up sub-operations inside larger factories under contract.
it's the workers agreeing to incorporate, the essence of capitalism.
Huh? There is a reason the communists' banners read 'workers of the world unite' And make no mistake...Debs, the leader of the Pullman strike, was a communist.
Unionization is the destruction of honest negotiations and agreement. If an employee does not agree to the employment terms offered, there are multitudes of other options he is free to choose...including starting a competing company. If a company does not accept the demands of its union?
Of course he was. That doesn't mean that collective bargaining is socialism.
Nonsense. Do you call Manpower, or Accountemps the destruction of honest negotiations and agreement? Corporations supplying skilled labor, including training, personnel, and benefits management is a service to another. The only aspect of unionization that is corrupt is its exemption from anti-trust laws and income taxes.
No, and they are not unions. Furthermore, the skill sets and experience they bring are extremely flexible, and not learned at the expense of the corporation hiring them. Furthermore, as temp workers, they by definition will not be essential to the core function of a business.
Unionization is the elimination of the capitalistic free market for labor. Outside of a union, any man (labor provider) can make any deal with any company (labor consumer). A union has a monopolistic lock on any given company's labor force, and uses it to hold the company hostage. A company cannot choose another union or replace its entire workforce...the labor market is no longer based on the mutual consent of both parties. One party is trapped.
It is the difference between walking into a bank and asking to make a deal for a loan, and walking into a bank, taking hostages and demanding money. The only difference is that it is the company itself that is hostage to its union.
While the fact that the founder of the modern union movement was a communist does not definitively mean that unionization is socialist, it is a pretty good indicator. Unions are not by definition socialist (as you point out), they virtually always are in practice. That is not coincidence. Socialism is the use of government to seize the fruits of private ownership for 'the workers'. Unionization accomplishes the same thing, for the same purpose, by directly by holding the company hostage in labor negotiations. They extort a price higher than the free market would bear. Whether the confiscation takes place through one sided negotiations or taxes is a minor philisophical difference.
"Workers of the World, Unite!"
Nonsense. Socialism is the use of government to seize the fruits of private ownership for the politically dominant, just as easily corporate masters as it is "the workers." "The workers" is just a cover story. Indeed, "the workers" usually end up chumps for the former having been deliberately allowed to paint themselves into a uncompetitive corner. Hence the Slave Party's use of unions to feed the globalist agenda.
Capital always has options. Companies can hire strikebreakers, which they often do. They can relocate, which to this day they often do. Lest you think either an undue hardship, think of a person who moved to a company town. They had the choice of moving at their own expense, accepting an often misrepresented offer of employment without recourse (they couldn't afford lawyers, much less judges), or watching their families starve.
The real evil is monopoly in either case, because both monopoly unions and monopoly corporations (or collusive oligopolies, which is what we have) fail to incorporate the externalities and sunk costs in the labor contract transaction, most notably opportunity and sunk costs.
You misunderstand me, totally. I have as much disgust at what unions have become as you do. I understand totally who Eugene Debs was and who were the true sponsors of Marxist ideology (you do know that the Rothschilds were involved?). However, I also recognize the funcitons unions could have and should have performed were they subject to competition, and the principles at work which support that architecture, something you refuse to consider. The principle I am arguing is the right of collective bargaining. That right is part and participle to free association, no less than is pooling risk through stock ownership. If you weren't so enamored with ideology that you could think, I would bother with the historic, economic, and constitutional fallacies in your reasoning. Unforutunately, you have allowed your opposition to unions paint you into an ultimately unsupportable corner.
Great post. Thanks.
The politically dominant is 'the workers' especially in a socialist democracy. There is nothing for factory owners to use the power of gvernment to seize from 'the workers' short of absolute communism where people are told where to work.
think of a person who moved to a company town.
There is a reason there aren't 'company towns' anymore. And it is not that there was a law stopping it. The free market eliminated them.
The only legitimate issue the early unions had was worker safety, and that function has long since been taken over by government (OSHA etc).
You object to my association of unions and collective bargaining and consider me so 'enamored with ideology' that I can't 'think.' I would suggest the same to you. You sound like another of the communists who still think that communism would be a beautiful thing...if only it were done right next time. They cannot see that the flaws are built into the system and that is why it fails...every time. Unions by their very nature are coercive. Their very purpose comes down to 'you do what we want, or we hurt you' That is the antithesis of capitalism, free trade among willing partners without threat. Perhaps, maybe in some alternative world there could possibly maybe kinda sorta someday be enough competition between unions that this would not be the case, and maybe communism really would work next time. But that is not reality...that is blinded by ideology.
And you think corporations locked in competition to survive are oligarchical, but if only there would were more than one union, it would be a free market for labor...that unions wouldn't collude?
Ideological test question, what is responsible for the vast majority of the increase in worker standard of living, unionized collective bargaining, or the efficiency of free market capitalism? (hint: you can't confiscate what doesn't exist)
This piece needs some references for consideration. I'll start:
Some Union soldiers executed for rape
"I hope anything I may have said or done will not be construed as unfriendly to Mr. Lincoln or Stanton. That negro letter of mine I never designed for publication, but I am honest in my belief that it is not fair to our men to count negroes as equals. Cannot we at this day drop theories, and be reasonable men? Let us capture negroes, of course, and use them to the best advantage. My quartermaster now could give employment to 3,200, and relieve that number of soldiers who are now used to unload and dispatch trains, whereas those recruiting agents take them back to Nashville, where, so far as my experience goes, they disappear. When I call for expeditions at distant pints, the answer invariable comes they have not sufficient troops. All count the negroes out. On the Mississippi, where Thomas talked about 100,000 negro troops, I find I cannot draw away a white soldier because they are indispensable to the safety of the river. I am willing to use them as far as possible, but object to fighting with 'paper' men. Occasionally an exception occurs, which simply deceives. We want the best young white men of the land, and they should be inspired with the pride of freemen to fight for their county. If Mr. Lincoln or Stanton could walk through the camps of this army and hear the soldiers talk they would hear new ideas. I have had the question put to me often: 'is not a negro as good as a white man to stop a ballot?' Yes, and a sand bag is better; but can a negro do our skirmishing and picket duty? Can they improvise roads, bridges, sorties, flank movements, &c., like the white man? I say no. Soldiers must and do many things without orders from their own sense, as in sentinels. Negroes are not equal to this. I have gone steadily, firmly, and confidently along, and I could not have done it with black troops, but with my old troops I have never felt a waver of doubt, and that very confidence begets success. . . ."
Source: U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (originally printed 1891, reprinted by The National Historical Society, 1971), Part 5, Vol. 38, pp. 792-793.
In fairness to VDH's article, though, looking at the list of offenses, none of them seem to correspond to the March to the Sea or the subsequent march through the Carolinas, except maybe James Preble for the one near Kingston (Kinston?), NC?
}:-)4
You are exceedingly optimistic. Half our country can't even abide the little war we now have in Iraq. What happens when the suicide bombings start to take place in this country, as they will? I am not at all certain that US voters will be any tougher than the Spanish were. It will be the 18-35 year old voters who will vote for appeasement and install a government that doesn't wish to fight the Islamists, just as they did in Spain. These spoiled children never have been denied anything and have been indoctrinated by the education system from K through grad-school to believe that peace and the environment are the only reasons for living...not the stuff of which patriots are made. Check the polling numbers on any poll and they will bear this out. If this demographic turns out to vote in strong numbers in Nov., Pres. Bush will lose.
It is the 45 year old 60's boomers that are the frighten children. It is they who will react as the Spaniards did, and they will do so with even more self righteousness to cover their cowardice. The failure of American will rest at their doorstep not the younger crowd ( I am a boomer too, BTW.)
How do you define "fair"?
A wage that is below subsistence, so the Company, through the Company Store becomes the legal slave master?
Is there any wage that isn't fair in comparison to slavery? I don't think there is.
Yes. With slavery the owner had a fiscal investment in the slave. With the Northern Company Store system of slavery there was no such investment. If a worker died there were others to take his place at no cost to the Company.
The Northern Company slave could not move to another town or change jobs. Vagrancy and debtor laws insured the Companies’ success.
No one HAD to accept work at a northern factory, nevermind a particular factory.
Correct. One could always starve or live in a prison for being a vagrant.
That's not just indenture, it's entrapment. "Republican" ideologues who somehow call that a "free market" are full of crap. People don't go through the risk and pain that those workers did for no good reason. However evil Debs and crew were, there was ample justification for binding together and asserting their individual interest as a corporate interest, just as there is today. They have every bit the right to do that as a matter of free association as stockholders do.
My objection to current law governing unions is that they exempt unions from anti-trust law. There is thus no reason for the union to supply a high quality service or market the skill sets of their members to greatest effect. That is an evil too and we can thank the Slave Party for it as well. That Taft-Hartley exemption was the worst thing ever done to unions because it permitted them to operate in a non-competitive fashion with no regard to market principles.
This is a good point. OTOH, you should hear public school boys talk about homosexuals when their teachers aren't listening. The celebration agenda the schools are shoving at them is not necessarily working the ways the schools intended it.
It might be well if more people actually read the Declaration of Independence with understanding, so that they could more easily refute those who seek to confuse American principles with Communist principles. (For the Declaration with a brief analysis, see Declaration Of Independence.)
Beyond that, the writer is easily discredited as an authority on what is American. Those patrician Southerners that he appears to scorn, represented the same class, North and South, that led us to independence. Class warfare should never be accorded acceptance, much less respectability, in any American society. But again, I do not think that that was any part of Sherman's motivation.
William Flax
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