I should have included a link with a commission 😆 I avoided them for a long time too, something about not wanting to The Man to be able to track me down for my (non-existent) crimes, but I decided to just stay on the straight and narrow instead 😉
The very serious problem which has befallen present day wokers is the insistence that all white people have unjust privilege because Blacks were treated poorly. Blacks are about 14% of the population and it is absurd to assert that bad treatment of 14% is what made the other 86% wealthy. Of course, the other 85% is not wealthy. The moral evil which most current wokers, e.g. The 1619 Project, bring to us is the idea that Whites were only oppressors. They focus on Thomas Jefferson's owning slaves and totally discount the Dec of Indepen which he expressly worded to end slavery. One does not find any acknowledgement that it was White men alone who laid the foundation to end slavery. They did not do it in the Declaration for the same reason American Blacks have not rooted out all predatory behavior in their own community. Some laudable goals are not achievable at a particular time and place. Wokers present a simplistic and racist faux history which always ends up with "Give us Money."
The wokers are bringing a nasty backlash which will result in a deep red Congress after the Nov 2022. The wokers can cry racism all they want, but it will only elect more right wing GOP to office. In MLK's dream, Blacks were not attacking Whites. BTW, Juneteenth day is NOT about equality. It is about Freedom. Freedom and equality are immiscible. We can have equality by simply allowing everyone to be enslaved. I do not recall the salves in Galveston Texas on June 19th yelling for the Whites to become slaves just like thr Blacks so that they would all be equal.
Hi Rick- Thanks for coming by. You may be new here so you may not realize that I do not take the positions above that you describe and then oppose. I am not sure what any of it has to do with my post today, though. You may be projecting opinions onto me. Have a good evening!
I did not think you did. I should have made that clear. I have been subjected to so much wokerism lately that I just took an opportunity to complain without acknowledging that it did not apply to your extremely thoughtful article. I apologize for not taking time to make that clear. I think the last thing really made me angry was when Biden said Juneteenth was about Equality! I just wanted am opportunity to scream, "No it's about FREEDOM."
Alongside our relative comfort and privilege I think our family myth is one of discovering America. My parents were literally the first to get out of Brooklyn, and the ideal of American politics is very important to all of us even if it has ended up midcentury liberal in all cases.
I wonder when this retroactive judgmentalism took hold? It seems very much like a religion for the irreligious. You find your GGGrandfather's obit difficult to believe? Perhaps you don't recognize a product of the South's "honor culture." Incidentally, the slaughter and the horror of the Haitian slave rebellions was a constant theme in the South's resistance to abolition. History is never so clear-cut to those living it. You should consider that born in the same circumstances at any time and any place you would hold the same beliefs and perform the same actions as those you so easily- I might say cheaply- condemn. My Irish and German ancestors settled in the North and wore blue. Oddly, they were more forgiving of their erstwhile deadly opponents than so many today who have never "seen the elephant." You might find Mary Chesnut's Civil War Diary a very interesting entry into the mind of the Old South - she was a friend of Mrs. Davis and a member of the planter elite. She is quite the character. Richard Taylor was Pres. Zachary Taylor's son and lead the Rebels in the battles in LA. His memoir "Destruction and Reconstruction" is an excellent picture of the war from a rather unreconstructed point of view. His personal attributes are in the mould of those ascribed to Morris. Plus, he is a rare writer. "The past isn't dead, it isn't even past." One more- a great read "Separate" by Luxenberg a wonderful and readable examination of the Plessy V Ferguson case. So much about the complications of color and caste in New Orleans post-war. Heroes and villains abound.
Hi Hugh- Thanks for coming by. I do expressly state above that I don’t know how I’d act in their situation, and that it’s only over the course of time that we gain moral clarity. I attempted to paint my forefathers as complex and not singularly good or evil but maybe I did not achieve the balance I intended. I want to believe Morris’s obituary was an accurate account of his kindness. Hope that helps to clarify the intent of this piece.
Sorry, if I painted you with too broad a "woke" brush. I'm a Civil War nut, a Lincoln man, and a "Loyal Jerseyman" as we were then called. So, this modern outbreak of iconoclasm has made me crazy- more crazy? Anyway, let us take Juneteenth for example. It was a charming regional commemoration that has been elevated into unearned mythic status. "Unearned," how? Because, as any Civil War buff worth the name will tell you, slavery ended on December 6th 1865. Not June 19th 1865. The last slaves held by right of law were in Kentucky and Delaware. The ratification of the 13th Amendment on 12/06/1865 ended slavery everywhere in the United States and its territories. Interestingly, Delaware didn't ratify the amendment until 1901. In Kentucky there was a celebration of slavery's end on August 8th- Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vividly racist VP and successor, was governor at the time and he freed his slaves on that date.
I do go on- it's an Irish thing ;) One last contrarian point, we used to have a big celebration of emancipation in this country and everybody took part. It was called Lincoln's Birthday. Lift Every Heart and Sing was written in his honor for a celebration a hundred years and more ago.
I appreciate your article, and I very much appreciate your reply. I also appreciate your patience with what my wife kindly refers to as a "crank." If you find your way into a greater appreciation of history through genealogy that's fantastic. In a real sense "you were there." I recently did a presentation on Lincoln's genealogy. His line descended from relative prosperity to poverty.
As to the question of “where did the money go”, look into the legal record. Pre Civil War, as a planter you could mortgage your slaves to raise money (big market in England for such securities). My (Union sympathizing) slaveholding family in Kentucky did that, and when emancipation came, there went the collateral, and the mortgage holders came after the land instead. The court record make fascinating reading. It was hundreds of acres of prime Bluegrass land. At today’s prices the value of the land would be at least $4 million. We were also working class until my great-grandfather married into a prosperous business-owning family in the 20th century.
The entire liquid net worth of the South disappeared with Appomattox and Emancipation. There were counties in the South that didn't regain their antebellum economic levels until after WW2. A big part of the slave controversy came with the opening of the Louisiana purchase lands of the lower south to plantation culture. Vast fortunes were made with speculation in land and slaves. Vast fortunes were lost when loans went bad, crops failed, or panics struck. We don't think of Alabama or Mississippi as the frontier but they were. Younger sons from Virginia or South Carolina saw their chance and took their surplus slaves with them. The value of slaves went up as the labor to exploit new lands came at a premium.
I am just trying to say something friendly here. My great-grandparents' generation was the one which came through Ellis Island on both sides, and after my mother became interested in genealogy she could not really get any farther back than that. But if my great-grandmother had not been willing to run away to the United States to marry for love I would not be here at all.
This was a very interesting post to read! Really appreciated it. The history was fascinating to me.
Now you've gone and inspired me to order one of those 23&Me kits. I've been avoiding doing it for for a few years, for some reason.
I should have included a link with a commission 😆 I avoided them for a long time too, something about not wanting to The Man to be able to track me down for my (non-existent) crimes, but I decided to just stay on the straight and narrow instead 😉
(This may come back to bite me if I find myself participating in a righteous rebellion against tyrannical forces...)
Or if the Wokesters decide breaking statues isn't enough and they decide to go after people with "guilty" DNA.
The very serious problem which has befallen present day wokers is the insistence that all white people have unjust privilege because Blacks were treated poorly. Blacks are about 14% of the population and it is absurd to assert that bad treatment of 14% is what made the other 86% wealthy. Of course, the other 85% is not wealthy. The moral evil which most current wokers, e.g. The 1619 Project, bring to us is the idea that Whites were only oppressors. They focus on Thomas Jefferson's owning slaves and totally discount the Dec of Indepen which he expressly worded to end slavery. One does not find any acknowledgement that it was White men alone who laid the foundation to end slavery. They did not do it in the Declaration for the same reason American Blacks have not rooted out all predatory behavior in their own community. Some laudable goals are not achievable at a particular time and place. Wokers present a simplistic and racist faux history which always ends up with "Give us Money."
The wokers are bringing a nasty backlash which will result in a deep red Congress after the Nov 2022. The wokers can cry racism all they want, but it will only elect more right wing GOP to office. In MLK's dream, Blacks were not attacking Whites. BTW, Juneteenth day is NOT about equality. It is about Freedom. Freedom and equality are immiscible. We can have equality by simply allowing everyone to be enslaved. I do not recall the salves in Galveston Texas on June 19th yelling for the Whites to become slaves just like thr Blacks so that they would all be equal.
Hi Rick- Thanks for coming by. You may be new here so you may not realize that I do not take the positions above that you describe and then oppose. I am not sure what any of it has to do with my post today, though. You may be projecting opinions onto me. Have a good evening!
I did not think you did. I should have made that clear. I have been subjected to so much wokerism lately that I just took an opportunity to complain without acknowledging that it did not apply to your extremely thoughtful article. I apologize for not taking time to make that clear. I think the last thing really made me angry was when Biden said Juneteenth was about Equality! I just wanted am opportunity to scream, "No it's about FREEDOM."
Ah, thank you for clarifying- Hugh’s comment might have put me on the defensive ☺️
Alongside our relative comfort and privilege I think our family myth is one of discovering America. My parents were literally the first to get out of Brooklyn, and the ideal of American politics is very important to all of us even if it has ended up midcentury liberal in all cases.
I wonder when this retroactive judgmentalism took hold? It seems very much like a religion for the irreligious. You find your GGGrandfather's obit difficult to believe? Perhaps you don't recognize a product of the South's "honor culture." Incidentally, the slaughter and the horror of the Haitian slave rebellions was a constant theme in the South's resistance to abolition. History is never so clear-cut to those living it. You should consider that born in the same circumstances at any time and any place you would hold the same beliefs and perform the same actions as those you so easily- I might say cheaply- condemn. My Irish and German ancestors settled in the North and wore blue. Oddly, they were more forgiving of their erstwhile deadly opponents than so many today who have never "seen the elephant." You might find Mary Chesnut's Civil War Diary a very interesting entry into the mind of the Old South - she was a friend of Mrs. Davis and a member of the planter elite. She is quite the character. Richard Taylor was Pres. Zachary Taylor's son and lead the Rebels in the battles in LA. His memoir "Destruction and Reconstruction" is an excellent picture of the war from a rather unreconstructed point of view. His personal attributes are in the mould of those ascribed to Morris. Plus, he is a rare writer. "The past isn't dead, it isn't even past." One more- a great read "Separate" by Luxenberg a wonderful and readable examination of the Plessy V Ferguson case. So much about the complications of color and caste in New Orleans post-war. Heroes and villains abound.
Hi Hugh- Thanks for coming by. I do expressly state above that I don’t know how I’d act in their situation, and that it’s only over the course of time that we gain moral clarity. I attempted to paint my forefathers as complex and not singularly good or evil but maybe I did not achieve the balance I intended. I want to believe Morris’s obituary was an accurate account of his kindness. Hope that helps to clarify the intent of this piece.
Sorry, if I painted you with too broad a "woke" brush. I'm a Civil War nut, a Lincoln man, and a "Loyal Jerseyman" as we were then called. So, this modern outbreak of iconoclasm has made me crazy- more crazy? Anyway, let us take Juneteenth for example. It was a charming regional commemoration that has been elevated into unearned mythic status. "Unearned," how? Because, as any Civil War buff worth the name will tell you, slavery ended on December 6th 1865. Not June 19th 1865. The last slaves held by right of law were in Kentucky and Delaware. The ratification of the 13th Amendment on 12/06/1865 ended slavery everywhere in the United States and its territories. Interestingly, Delaware didn't ratify the amendment until 1901. In Kentucky there was a celebration of slavery's end on August 8th- Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vividly racist VP and successor, was governor at the time and he freed his slaves on that date.
I do go on- it's an Irish thing ;) One last contrarian point, we used to have a big celebration of emancipation in this country and everybody took part. It was called Lincoln's Birthday. Lift Every Heart and Sing was written in his honor for a celebration a hundred years and more ago.
I appreciate your article, and I very much appreciate your reply. I also appreciate your patience with what my wife kindly refers to as a "crank." If you find your way into a greater appreciation of history through genealogy that's fantastic. In a real sense "you were there." I recently did a presentation on Lincoln's genealogy. His line descended from relative prosperity to poverty.
Best wishes, Hugh
As to the question of “where did the money go”, look into the legal record. Pre Civil War, as a planter you could mortgage your slaves to raise money (big market in England for such securities). My (Union sympathizing) slaveholding family in Kentucky did that, and when emancipation came, there went the collateral, and the mortgage holders came after the land instead. The court record make fascinating reading. It was hundreds of acres of prime Bluegrass land. At today’s prices the value of the land would be at least $4 million. We were also working class until my great-grandfather married into a prosperous business-owning family in the 20th century.
The entire liquid net worth of the South disappeared with Appomattox and Emancipation. There were counties in the South that didn't regain their antebellum economic levels until after WW2. A big part of the slave controversy came with the opening of the Louisiana purchase lands of the lower south to plantation culture. Vast fortunes were made with speculation in land and slaves. Vast fortunes were lost when loans went bad, crops failed, or panics struck. We don't think of Alabama or Mississippi as the frontier but they were. Younger sons from Virginia or South Carolina saw their chance and took their surplus slaves with them. The value of slaves went up as the labor to exploit new lands came at a premium.
I am just trying to say something friendly here. My great-grandparents' generation was the one which came through Ellis Island on both sides, and after my mother became interested in genealogy she could not really get any farther back than that. But if my great-grandmother had not been willing to run away to the United States to marry for love I would not be here at all.