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Its the life of non- slave holding people during this period I rarely see described any where. There are a few soldiers journals, letters and diaries, but by and large I think the master and slave relationships are ones that have become fodder for fact and fiction. Perhaps there was nothing to romanticize about the Scotch-Irish who came after all the good plantation land was taken. I think they are romanticized briefly as confederate Soldiers. They would obviously out number the Slave Barons by quite a bit but we rarely think of them as taking part as the beneficiaries of this antebellum period in the south.
If William Johnson was born in 1909, then he would not have been a slave.
Oops....1809. Johnson was born in 1809 and managed to become wealthy. I don't know how he managed to become free since freeing slaves was illegal in Mississippi at that time. One of the "work arounds" was to send the slave to another state where he could be freed and then bring him back.
They romanticize it for the same reason that medieval romances are so popular. A small number of people enjoyed vast wealth, power and social privilege. Everybody else got to live short, brutish lives to support that. The images are of gowns and balls and courtly manners, because everything else got shoveled into an early grave.
Its the life of non- slave holding people during this period I rarely see described any where. There are a few soldiers journals, letters and diaries, but by and large I think the master and slave relationships are ones that have become fodder for fact and fiction. Perhaps there was nothing to romanticize about the Scotch-Irish who came after all the good plantation land was taken. I think they are romanticized briefly as confederate Soldiers. They would obviously out number the Slave Barons by quite a bit but we rarely think of them as taking part as the beneficiaries of this antebellum period in the south.
Poor whites had to compete with slaves in the labor market. Their life was mostly miserable and dire. My great-great grandfather was from Missisippi, and made his way to Joplin, Missouri to join the Oregon Trail in 1846. His options in Mississippi were poverty or misery, his choice. Unfortunately, he was too poor to outfit a wagon, so the wagon masters wouldn't take him. Enter my great-great grandmother from Ohio, who had the money but her husband had died soon after setting out. Frankly, she probably should have looked harder, but she was in a hurry to get west before all the good land was taken. He was almost a caricature of the dumb, ignorant white southerner. Just 150 miles short of his goal he got into a fight, ended up with a broken arm and they had to abandon their wagon and possessions and finish the trek on foot. They did homestead 640 acres of good farm land, but she had to handle family finances and business because he never learned to read or cipher. I'm sure thousands of men just like him volunteered for the rebel army because sleeping in the mud and being killed wasn't much different from their daily lives.
Olde South balls are common at a lot college sororities/fraternities, and many women idolize Southern belles as models of respectable womanhood.
In Tennessee, for example, teenage girls visit a Southern belle school where they learn antebellum manners, period dances, and Southern traditions (see video below)
Oh, and let's not forget about "Gone with the Wind."
What is it about the antebellum era that continues to captivate the popular imagination? Why is that period so often romanticized? There's a certain nostalgia that many have for that time period. Why is that?
Pretty funny stuff in your link. A lot of it was old history, but some of it is important. There are entire websites devoted to Black Confederate soldiers - pictures and everything - which, I have concluded, is pure fabrication and mythology. I can't decide which is worse; knowing nothing at all, or believing the myths.
But then I am left wondering how much I "know" is actually mythology? Any position taken, it seems, can be supported by something found on the internet.
I guess you can believe what you want, but there were black soldiers in the confederacy. Some were slaves that were forced to fight, others were free men who chose to, for whatever reason. Why would would think that is a "myth" is beyond me, especially considering there is photographic evidence of such.
I also didn't realize it was still debatable about how the war started. Abraham Lincoln was elected despite EVERY southern state voting against him. You can't get much more distinct than this:
New York, Pennslyvania, and Ohio could pretty much outvote the south just by themselves... As such, they felt that their only recourse to maintain any political say over their own affairs was to leave.
The United States then pushed slavery as the main issue because what kind of a case is "we are going to fight a war to make them follow our rules and continue to pay taxes to us" - if that were the issue the North rallied behind, they wouldn't have rallied at all.
So, at best it's a mixture - the South was fighting for freedom and "state's rights" while the north was fighting to abolish slavery (again, claiming this is what caused a lot of people to sign up to fight a war they otherwise would not have supported) but also to subjugate the south to laws that southerners did not support.
At any rate none of this has anything to do with the many black men who, once elected to office, were unable to perform the duties of that office due to their being illiterate.
Illiterate people should not hold office.
I post examples of real people, which should be dismissed according to you, but we should accept unnamed individuals as fact.
Since you can only allude to these illiterate African Americans, unworthy of political leadership, let me assist you in your critical analysis with the help of the late John Hope Franklin professor emeritus at Duke University and the preeminent scholar of Reconstruction who wrote in "Reconstruction: After the Civil War" University of Chicago Press pages 89-90 wrote:
"Significant among African American leaders were those who were almost wholly self-educated. Robert M. Smalls of South Carolina pursued his studies diligently until he had mastered the rudiments. Later he went to the United States House of Representatives. In MIssissippi, John Roy Lynch regularly took time off from his duties in a photographer's studio to gaze across the alley into a white schoolroom, where he kept up with the class until he had mastered the courses taught there. When he became speaker of the Mississippi house and later member of Congress, he relied on this earlier training. Before Jefferson Long wen to Congress from Georgia, he had educated himself and had become a merchant tailor in Macon. There were numerous other self-educated African American leaders, including John Carraway, and Peyton Finley of Alabama, James O'Hara and A.H. Galloway of North Carolina, and James E. Bland and Lewis Lindsay of Virginia. From this educated element came the articulate, responsible blacks who contributed substantially to the writing of the new constitutions and the establishment of the new governments in the former slave states.
Most of the African American leaders were ministers. A fair number taught school. Some were employees of the Freedman's Bureau or another federal agency. Here and there one found one who had been trained in the law. There were, of course, farmers and there were some artisans engaged in a variety of occupations. The economic interest and aspirations of the black leaders varied widely. It would be wrong to assume that they had no economic interests or that they had no views regarding the economic future of the South."
Now before you begin, will it be your argument that a. self-education isn't sufficient (to paraphrase the old gospel song, If it was good enough for Lincoln isn't it good enough for...) and b. that white state legislators and local politicians were all distinguished graduates of College of William and Mary? Will you provide a statistical analysis of educational levels of prewar southern politicians vs African Americans who attained elected office in the post war period. I gleefully await your analysis.
I guess you can believe what you want, but there were black soldiers in the confederacy.
That is indeed a myth unless you call teamsters, servants, and ditch diggers soldiers.
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especially considering there is photographic evidence of such.
Oh, how I do ardently hope that you will provide us examples.
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I also didn't realize it was still debatable about how the war started. Abraham Lincoln was elected despite EVERY southern state voting against him.
So did Eisenhower, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, Theodore Roosevelt and Benjamin Harrison. Is there some point to be made?
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New York, Pennslyvania, and Ohio could pretty much outvote the south just by themselves... As such, they felt that their only recourse to maintain any political say over their own affairs was to leave.
Yes, why of course the lost the Presidency... and we all know that the Congress has no say in the government, or did they lose those elections as well?
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The United States then pushed slavery as the main issue because what kind of a case is "we are going to fight a war to make them follow our rules and continue to pay taxes to us"
Perhaps some day rebel apologist will explain their actions regarding replacing elected border state governments with one's "loyal" to the Confederacy at the point of a bayonet?
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So, at best it's a mixture - the South was fighting for freedom and "state's rights"
The state's right to what, pray tell? The devil is always in the details.
I still don't see where he said blacks were being held in virtual slavery and that was justified. I think your stretching things a bit to fit your argument. He said recently freed illiterate slaves should not hold office. That's what he said..
I would argue that an honest illiterate black man was far better than a literate white crook but that's not really the point. Your trying to make Listener out to be a racist because he doesn't believe as you do..
Read what Listener wrote. He said that if the blacks had not been prevented from voting and holding office that the US would have become like several notably unstable African countries. That, sir, is racist, particularly since by the end of Reconstruction, the blacks in the South were not significantly more "ignorant" or "illiterate" than the Famine Irish had been or the immigrants who came later from southern and eastern Europe would be. The US survived those huge migrations just fine.
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