I'm broadly sympathetic to the argument (it is true that Grant had a more serious policy of Reconstruction than one generally thinks, and it is true that the Supreme Court helped put a stop to it) but this strikes me as not-quite-right:
without the Supreme Court, the Democrats never had the votes to shut down civil rights prosecutions. The sad reality is that if Grant had been able to continue his anti-Klan policies into his second term, there is little question that the elections of 1876 would have been a decisive victory for the Republicans
He's talking about Cruikshank, in 1875. But the Democrats had won back Congress in 1874. Even if there's some subtlety to this that I'm not appreciating, he's got to do a better job of explaining why the Republicans on the Supreme Court undermined the Republicans in the Justice Department. (I think what he's leaving out is the Liberal Republicans, the splitter movement of 1872 that put the rest of the party on notice that racial justice was not on; he also needs to be saying something about Slaughterhouse.)
And even if we take all this on board, we still have to remember the Whiskey Ring, Black Friday, the Belknap scandals, etc. And while we're at it, the "Quaker policy" was a faith-based initiative, outsourcing a government duty to religious people.
"But Newman's argument, that the image of Grant as an ineffective president presiding over a wildly corrupt administration, is the result of systematic disparagement by those in the decades after his tenure in office who disagreed with his strong commitment to racial justice, is an attractive one."
It's a fair case, though I think he understates at the end somewhat the fact that there was a lot of popular support for Jim Crow.
But there can't be enough articles reminding people about Reconstruction, in my book, given how it tends to be under-taught.
I've already commented on this at ObWi, though, including noting that I got Nathan to rewrite a sentence in the piece.
I'm about halfway through the main article; I've read Newman's July 4th message.
This is the view of the original intent of the Civil War Amendments that I was taught by George Anastaplo in the 1980s. It seems old hat to me. I guess I never realized that this understanding of what happened, similar to what Newman is saying, subject to Slol's qualifications with which I agree, is not only not operative due to day-to-day and precedential requirements but a new idea to many.
I guess I've always believed in a liberal version of "Constitution in Exile" without realizing how far out of the mainstream that was.
A friend of mine who studied history during the Sixties was appalled at how unsympathetic the standard texts were to the Reconstruction and to the Abolitionists. I had a rather similiar experience in literature as late as 1980. English professors were very careful to avoid naive anti-slavery views, and diligently explained the ironies of social action and the impossibility of improving anything through politics.
Thank god my views were not shaped by anyone with views like that, John. My last course in American per se was in the mid-Seventies, so classroom is not the source for me. A seminal work in my own understanding of the whole period is Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore, a panoramic critical and historical survey of civil war era literature and society, with accute, generous readings of the major and many minor authors.
I don't know how a twenty-something reader, schooled in professional history or literary history, would react to that book today. It seems to me I've learned a great deal from books like that.
Can anybody recommend a good book on the end of Reconstruction, with all the good bits about Southern violence, etc.?
Somehow all this got left out in my Mississippi History class in 8th grade.
For current, academically respectable sources, wait a bit until eb checks in.
Can you imagine how different present-day American politics would be if the 'radical Reconstruction' had succeeded?
re: 6 I do not remember if it has the "good bits" you want, but Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution is pretty good.
The linked article has a bit of polemical overstatement, but it seems like a more or less accurate description of the Supreme Court's early interpretations of the Civil War Amendments. Like IDP, this is what I was taught in law school, so I do not see much new in this telling of the legal history.
The discussion of modern-day equal protection jurisprudence is not very impressive. In particular, if the authors want to rely on an originalist approach to the Civil War Amendments, they would have done well not to use a case about sex discrimination as their hook. One thing I think everyone agreed on when the Civil War Amendments were enacted was that they were not intended to grant women equal civil rights. That view of the Fourteenth Amendment comes much, much later.
a good book on the end of Reconstruction, with all the good bits about Southern violence, etc.
Michael Perman's Reunion without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 1865-1868 is good, so're his Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879 and Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908. Basically, all his stuff.
Oi, idp. By you, I'm not academically respectable?
Didn't realize it was close enough to your area, but, yes, I was giving you that credit.
An issue I've never seen discussed much is the fact that the Homestead Act apparently never worked for the freed slaves. Literally millions of non-English-speaking Europeans were jumped ahead of them.
I know there's a story there -- from reading local history I know that, for a time, certain tracts here in Minnesota were originally reserved for freed slaves. But it never happened.
I mean the credit for not being academically respectable. Give people the benefit of the doubt until you know, I say.
the Homestead Act apparently never worked for the freed slaves....I know there's a story there
Yes, there is: you want to read The Southern Homestead Act, by Michael Lanza.
I mean the credit for not being academically respectable.
Hmmph.
Slol is in far better position to recommend books on Reconstruction than I am. Maybe if I'd done any non-blog reading in the last couple of years I'd have read something more on that period.
Also, I'm annoyed that someone posted a comment after my last comment in that really long thread.
Someone indeed: he would think it typical we did as our mistress asked and quit the thread.
Quit this thread, all of you! I grow tired.
But eb, that comment proves the Godwin thesis so nicely! In other words, you won.
If you think we're going to start arguing over who's more punk rock Hitler, you're sadly mistaken.
I was intrigued by the resemblances, myself. Brave and charsimatic, sentimental about animals, combs hair toward eyes. Not a vegetarian though. Any other differences I'm overlooking?
Perhaps I'll open a museum to her in Delavan, Wisconsin.
You can be the punk rock Hitler, SB, and I'll be the moonbat feminazi.
Who wants to make our costumes? I wonder if Labs knows where one can buy superhero treatments, and how much they cost.
Did I not tell you to quit this thread? Bphd can stay. We're sisters. SB's status is tenous, but perhaps SB can stay as well.
And Tia can be Mistress something-or-other.
No indulgence for Ken Lay's death?
I bet he just bought a body and is hiding out at Dick Cheney's place.
"Ken Lay dead" read the news. (In German, "Ken Lag in Todes Banden".) And dead he still lies.
Revision:
I picked up the newspaper and read: "Ken Lay Dead". And dead he still lies.
"Ken Lag in Todes Banden" will be sung at the funeral.
Nice piece about Musorgsky at The Weblog, John.
When I was in school (late '80s, early '90s), there was zero detailed discussion of Grant's pursuit of equality, but then, there was no detailed discussion of pretty much any major figure's personal views, or even the views they espoused, if they weren't war or finances. I think it's just one of the sorry realities of current curricula that they don't have time to focus on everything (anything?) they should. When politics and positions were covered, especially regarding the Civil War, they were largely covered in the context of how incredibly stupid and immoral the South's position was. We had detailed discussions of Jim Crow laws, racist propaganda, KKK violence and vote supression. There was no shying away from that part of our state's history, but there was also no detailed discussion of who was in the right. The people who were in the wrong kind of sucked the oxygen out of the room.
I recently listed Grant as one of my candidates for WPE in a thread at Apostropher, but not for his personal views; it was purely for the quantity of scandal in his administration. The impression we were given when I was a student was that he was an idealist who had the misfortune of having a bunch of people in his administration who all had their hand in the till and too poor an administrator to be able to cut out the problems before they did real damage to his ability to govern. However, I'm not trying to submit that as a considered opinion or "more right" or anything like that, just noting that's how it was presented to me as a student.
The books listed higher up in the thread sound really interesting - time to start Amazoning.
That sounds respectable to me, McMP. It's been rare for people in the North to look on this stuff with any degree of indignation or sense of lost opportunity.
Academic historians or iconoclastic pariahs, whichever you prefer: is the formative role of "The Era of Good Feeling" still an important part of this story? What about mcmc's favorite movie, Birth of a Nation?
Escuse me, is this that calling-people-Nazis thread? You people should get your own thread.
I will again recommend Patriotic Gore, a remarkable sustained work of criticism and exploration.
I second LB's recommendation of Grant's memoirs; seriously, everyone should read them. I also agree with her basic sentiments. It's hard to believe that the guy who wrote the memoirs could really have been such an incompetent president.
But Grant's detractors include more than freedom's enemies. Consider The Autobiography of Henry Adams.
Haven't read it. And isn't it The Education...?
It is. Also it's a really good read.
"...and in liberal NY, we were also firmly taught that it was hopelessly naive to think that the Civil War had much to do with slavery...."
You were? You must have had bad history teachers. As I mentioned on ObWi and have mentioned elsewhere in the past, the only really decent class I remember from high school (at Midwood H.S. in Brooklyn) was Mr. Leventhal's AP History class on the civil war and Reconstruction, in which we dealt with nothing but primary sources and the major historians of the various schools, examining who thought what about why, and citing both various papers and historians and the primary source material.
No one could possibly have gotten away with such nonsense as that "the Civil War [didn't] had much to do with slavery" for five minutes.
"Grant's Memoirs (which everyone should read)"
Which you can do here. And yes, great reading, as I, for instance, blogged here.
Henry Adams' book is very interesting, but he's the oddest writer in the world. He writes everything in the third person in a completely flat, affectless style. He also plays dumb -- he was a slow learnerwhen he was in England in his youth, and he kept wondering why the devoutly anti-slavery British seemed to be supporting the Confederates. He drags his puzzlement out over a long stretch, until you wanted to shout out "Henry! Gladstone is lying to you! He's a cynic and a game-player!"
Adams was one of those, like Oliver W Holmes Jr., for whom the lesson of the Civil War was that moralism is a bad thing. (It wasn't only Confederates who hated the Abolitionists). Adams also supposedly was involved in the machinations leading to the Spanish-American War, presumably having become a full-realist cynic by then.
The Education of course.
Chosen to show another view of Grant, not to erect a different hero.
There is a great portrait of Grant by Healy, in the foyer of the Newberry Library, that captures his anomalies well.
I admired the Personal Memoirs when I was younger more than I do now. Now I prefer Sherman's. He's more like me, in the way he reacts to things.
The Education contains an odd sentence: "He heard the word paralysis," which also appears in one of Joyce's stories. Niether attributes the other. Coincidence?
42: Gary's a bit younger than I am, but I had a similar course in high school. Subtitled "The History of American History", it focused on the Civil War and the frontier as ideas. The reference and query, far upthread, about "The Era of Good Feeling" is inquiring about a historical concept I first learned as a high school junior. Primary sources, and what the likes of Parkman , Turner and later historians made of them. How much those earlier debates might be reflected in later versions. Today, for example, Ambrose's version of Lewis and Clark would be laid before us when we knew how to read it.
44: Got me going, I can google and drool for hours. This is an orphaned thread anyway. Paralysis is of course thematic to Dubliners, I can think of at least four stories, and the final frozen epiphany. Googling "Henry Adams Joyce Paralysis" 1st entry is Yvor Winters:
"But [Henry Adams] was of the Ockhamist tradition; and as for the Mathers, so for him, the significance could not reside within the event but must reside back of it. He would scarcely have put it this way, and he might have denied the paternity of Ockham; but he belonged to a moral tradition which had taken its morality wholly on faith for so long that it had lost the particular kind of intelligence and perception necessary to read the universe for what it is; and had developed instead a passion to read the universe for what it means, as a system of divine shorthand or hieroglyphic, as a statement of ultimate intentions.
He had no faith, however, and hence he could not believe that there was anything back of the event: the event was merely isolated and impenetrable. Yet he possessed the kind of mind which drove him to read every event with a kind of allegorical precision; and since every event was isolated and impenetrable, he read in each new event the meaning that the universe was meaningless. Meaning had been a function of faith; and faith had been faith not only in God and his decalogue but in a compete cosmology and chronology, that is, in all of Revelation; and if any part of this system was injured, every part was destroyed. The discoveries of geologists and astronomers caused him indescribable suffering and made it utterly impossible that he should examine dispassionately the moral nature of man:"
Goes to Emerson 43; and I could do something Joycean here. I don't think Joyce believed anything was not surface.
There's a short version of the Foner, by the way. Had I not begun the process of dropping out of and then sort of heading back (still not a sure thing) to school last year, I'd have read the long version, but the short one is pretty good anyway. I find my current reading, when I do it, taking me back to the revolutionary period and a bit of early modern europe. I suppose I should read the Perman when I get back to the late 19th century. If I ever do.
Damn
The Psuedopodium is still online. I accidentally hit this site about once a year.
Yes, the newspapers were right: scandal was general all over the Gilded Age. It was falling on every part of the Department of War, on the civil service, falling deftly upon the Whisky Ring and, farther westward, softly falling into the murky business of the Credit Mobilier. It has fallen, too, upon every part of the popular understanding of the years when Ulysees S. Grant was president. It lays thickly drifted on the crooked dealings and rigged votes; it obscures the real gains in the arena of civil rights. Grant's soul swoons slowly as he hears the scandals fading faintly from the history books and faintly fading, like the remains of a lost era, less damning to the living than to the dead.
I remember enjoying Bruce Catton's The Civil War, but I was only 14, and it may well have sucked.
In my high school 18670-1913 was a vacuum in which very little happened at all in the world. Apparently all human beings lived on Mars for the duration. This due to a curriculum that mandated that we get to WWII by the end of the year, but for a long time I had no idea what happened in the U.S. beyond 'Reconstruction didn't work' and I'm still not quite sure what went on in Europe then.
eb, that pwns.
1870-1913 was a vacuum in which very little happened at all in the world
This is of course the most important era in the history of the modern world. Which is why they have to leave it out, lest you learn something useful.
"and in liberal NY, we were also firmly taught that it was hopelessly naive to think that the Civil War had much to do with slavery"
Funny, in not-so-liberal Louisiana I was taught something remarkably similar. Or maybe it's not that funny.
As for evaluations, maybe Grant is America's Yeltsin: remarkable achievements before becoming president, time in office marred by tendency to drink, surrounded by and presided over a period of astonishing corruption, his time of transition and possibility followed by a very different era, one whose key features hide the openness of what came before.
I'm still not quite sure what went on in Europe then.
Um, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune? The unification of Germany? The defeat of Russia by Japan and the first Russian Revolution? I'm sure I've forgotten some stuff.
The invention of the modern welfare state by Bismarck?
The incredibly important technical and social changes everywhere in the world, and the misfit between the societies they created and the political institutions they inherited?
A series of wars in the Balkans that ended up being a partial cause of WWI?
L'affaire Dreyfus? The rise of communism?
Women's suffrage in Norway and Finland? (and Australia, which isn't technically Europe, but only European women were allowed to vote).
To oversimplify wildly, modern art?
upside-down tea parties? dancing chimney sweeps?
The development of large chunks of nuclear physics, by people like Rutherford and Bohr?
The completion of the unification of Italy?
mandatory tuppens? mr. banks' corporate fraud scandal?
The development of large chunks of nuclear physics, by people like Rutherford and Bohr?
Not to mention Special Relativity.
The invention of cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines? The discovery and wider acceptance of the germ theory of disease?
Telecommunications? Real-time information? The "Victorian Internet?"
The invention of the motion picture, including narrative and documentary motion pictures?
You can see all the First World War stuff happening in slow motion. The Triple Alliance. The Entente Cordiale. The creation of the Schlieffen Plan.
The assassination of the liberal Tsar Alexander II.
Though text, as usual, has the most illuminating view here.
It was grand to be an Englishman in 1910. King Edward was on the throne; it was the age of men.
Also, McKinley was assassinated in the Temple of Music by the Tower of Light between the Fountain of Abundance and the Court of Lillies at the great Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, in Buffalo.
IRL, King Edward shuffled off his mortal coil in that very year. As Alice Keppel remarked, "I shall miss the sight of his dear old bald head between my legs."
I knew the science history, but I learned that in chemistry class. And I think we covered the dancing chimney sweeps.
73: The antidote book for this "Summer of 1913" feeling is The Strange Death of Liberal England. The 20th century as we know it was simmering just beneath the surface.
I think the ghastly horror and scale of colonialism needs to be front-and-center in curriculae, and I don't care what people think about how "liberal" that is.
"Alice Keppel" is well worth a Google or a Wiki.
I won't be looking it up, but wasn't a chaise sort of thing built so Edward's weight wouldn't need to be supported by the woman? I'm trying to imagine what that would be like. Maybe that's where mcmc's chairs got the idea.