Rethinking the Civil War Era

My recent trip through Pottawatomie and inability to get into the John Brown museum piqued my curiosity about the Civil War era so I went to the library and checked out a book. The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton proved to be both fascinating and informative.

I was not well-versed in this area before, but this book covered quite a bit of ground, starting with the religious reform movements of the 1840’s through the rise of capitalism and corporate wage slavery in the latter decades of the century. It is not a biography of Lincoln but a sweeping looking at the social, political and economic forces that shaped a century and still underlie modern American culture.

A blurb on the back cover refers to this work as “a major reinterpretation of nineteenth-century American history”. Burton casts the Civil War not as a war to abolish slavery, but, rather, as a cultural war to define the very notions of freedom and liberty. Even though the North won in the sense that the Union was kept intact and the Emancipation Proclamation ended slaveholder’s “property rights”, the war itself never really ended. Sure, Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9th, but then five days later, Lincoln was shot. The attempts during Reconstruction to endow freed African-Americans with the full rights of citizenship were briefly successful, but then they were thwarted by the guerilla warfare tactics of the KKK. The details of the violence and corruption during this period are enough to disturb even a hard-hearted reader.

And why wasn’t the federal government there to back up the new laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866? Well, on the one hand they were busy out west fighting Native Americans, and on the other hand they were busy toadying up to capitalistic interests in the North and making small fortunes. Within a couple of decades of the “end” of the war, the die-hard abolitionists had, well, died, and no one else really seemed to care if African Americans had any rights or opportunites. The white working class had their own troubles, becoming, as they were, a cog in the machine of the new industrial age. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which included rioting in several major cities and lasted for two months, was an abject failure. The corporations won and “progress” continued as usual.

Although it is not difficult reading, it took me three weeks to get through this book. The fog from the chemo has, apparently, not lifted entirely and I often found myself reading pages twice. But for the last year I have read almost exclusively science fiction because that was all I could handle. It was a refreshing change to read a non-fiction book, especially one like this that really makes you think. I highly recommend The Age of Lincoln to anyone interested in the roots of our current political situation. It may help you see how much and how little things have changed.

 

Passing through Pottawatomie

My kids, my partner and I recently took a trip to Kansas City. On the way home, we drove down highway 169, passing through Pottawatomie, Kansas. There’s a brown road sign, very official-looking, that informs you of the John Brown Museum located right there in Pottawatomie. We already knew about that, though, because we’d passed through a few years ago and didn’t have time to stop. Now, we were all excited. The kids were sleeping in the backseat, but the John Brown Museum would be worth waking up for.

We pulled off the highway and then we realized it was early on a Sunday afternoon, and the museum would probably not be open. How right we were. Except for the Sonic drive-in, which was the only place to eat, the town was completely dead. We finally passed a rickety old store front with a hand-lettered sign in the window saying “Do You Know Who John Brown Is?” I don’t know what I was expecting, certainly not the Nelson-Atkins, but this was a bit disappointing. We drove a little further along Main Street, wondering what the hell people did for fun in Pottawatomie, and then we left.

Still, it was fun, driving through Kansas and trying to picture John Brown with his sons and followers riding through the area on horseback. Everything I know about John Brown comes from reading Russell Banks excellent novel “Cloudsplitter”. Here’s a link to a great review if you don’t mind finding out what happens in the end. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98may/brown.htm.

I’ts not a spoiler because the real story is inside of the character’s minds. Russell Banks tells you right from the outset that he changes some historical facts to improve the flow of the story. And that’s okay. Except that when reading it you’re always wondering what is true and what isn’t. The important thing is that it brings history alive in the way that dry textbooks can’t.

Before reading Cloudsplitter., I’d never thought much about the civil war. Now I’m thinking about things like the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What divided times the 1850’s were. It almost reminds me of now. The main difference was that the earth was still whole then and the weather wasn’t so weird. There’s a strange optimism in the works of Russell Banks, an optimism I’m not sure I can fully share in.

 

The Saddest Little Collection in the World

Many years ago, I decided to start a collection of American communist paraphenalia. The catch was that items had to be pro-communist. Sure, there’s all kinds of stuff out there talking about the red menace, but it’s not easy to find things that say “vote communist” as if it were a valid choice. I’ve found two.

Truth be told, I’m not a collector by nature so perhaps I haven’t searched as hard as I might have for pro-communist collectibles. But I think it’s sad that so much effort is required. I think it’s sad that an alcoholic gambler like Joseph McCarthy could ruin careers just by calling someone a communist without any evidence to support his accusations. But then, the right-wing has had more than its share of reactionary nut jobs who grab power by appealing to people’s fears.

Take, for example, the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956. Here was an innocuous bill to fund mental health services in the territory of Alaska. Prior to this act, Alaska had no mental health services, and state residents had to travel to Portland, Oregon for treatment. The act proposed to fund services locally by means of a land grant. The selling of mineral and forestry rights would provide a revenue stream. The bill had wide bi-partisan support, but then controversy erupted.
The American Public Relations Forum, an anti-communist women’s group from Southern California made an observation and jumped to an incredibly stupid conclusion:

“We could not help remembering that Siberia is very near Alaska and since it is obvious no one needs such a large land grant, we were wondering if it could be an American Siberia.”

They claimed that the act would allow the government to grab people off the street and send them to “concentration camps” in Alaska on the flimsiest of excuses. That would be a gross violation of civil rights, but, of course, the act said no such thing. On the other hand, I guess they felt that what McCarthy was doing was okay. As a bunch of housewives and anti-communists in pre-feminist America, it wasn’t their careers that were in danger.

Well, I decided I wanted a t-shirt that said “vote communist”. Ever since George Bush stole the presidency in the “election” of 2000, I’ve had no faith in the American electoral process. And, of course, there is no valid communist candidate for which one might choose to vote. But that doesn’t mean I can’t wear the t-shirt. So, once again, using my trial copy of Xara Xtreme, I drew a fist. It took me hours, but I was quite pleased with final result.

Unfortunately, my trial copy has now expired so I won’t be drawing any more t-shirt designs unless I pony up $90 to buy the Xara program. It’s something I’m considering. Click on the fist if you’d like to buy a shirt and help fund this purchase. If not, that’s okay. I do have a job.