The Populists and the Progressives

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, New York: Random House, 1955

Richard Hofstadter examines the great American reform movements from 1890 - 1940 (the Populist Movement, Progressivism, and the New Deal) and asks: (1) What were the ideas of the participants? and (2) How did Populism and Progressivism differ from the New Deal?

The ideology of the Populist movement reflected the American agrarian myth (the virtues of the independent yeoman farmer). Urbanization and industrialization, coupled with a virtual “immigrant invasion” gave rise to the notion of an innocent and victimized rural population. Populism insisted that the federal government had some responsibility for the common welfare, “The people versus the interests, the public versus the plutocrats, the toiling multitude versus the money power….” (Hofstadter, 65) Failure at the ballot box (the defeat of the third party bid to capture the White House) led rural interests to pursue modern methods of pressure politics and lobbying within the framework of the existing party system where they were largely successful in accomplishing their economic goals. (Hofstadter, 95)

The Progressive movement was urban, middleclass and nationwide. Progressives (like the Populists) were native born Protestants. Corporations, labor unions, and political machines (which organized incoming immigrants) were aggregating and presenting unorganized citizens the prospect that they would be unable to resist the new forces. The Progressive movement was “the complaint of the unorganized against the consequences of organization.” (Hofstadter, 216) Progressivism tried to restore a type of economic individualism and political democracy that was believed to have existed earlier in America and to have been destroyed by the great corporations and the corrupt political machines.(Hofstadter, 5)

Hofstadter argues that Populism and Progressivism were driven by moral absolutes arising from the Protestant evangelical tradition. He suggests that to some degree both the Populists and Progressives were deluded by these ideological motivations which did not align with either their true economic interests or the necessity for new organizational modes required by a more advanced technological society. He argues for example that, “The prosperity of the commercial farmers was achieved not only in spite of but in good part because of the rise of American industry and the American city”. (Hofstadter, 110) Hofstadter argues that Progressives were trying to keep the benefits of the emerging organization of life and yet to retain the scheme of individualistic values that this organization was destroying. (Hofstadter, 217) Hofstadter’s central argument is that modern organizational necessities trumped ideology, “In their search for mechanical guarantees of continued popular control the reformers were trying to do something altogether impossible…to institutionalize a mood.” (Hofstadter, 266) Neither the Populists nor the Progressives offered an effective countervailing organizational structure for the realization of their reform goals. The New Deal, which was above all else pragmatic and boldly experimental, offered such an alternative organizational structure, pro-active big government.

How effective is Hofstadter’s argument? His deconstruction of the “soft” and “hard” motives of the Reformers is illuminating. He basically suggests that there was no inherent conflict between the new emerging organizations and the Protestant farmers and middle class who made up the Reform movements. Farmers’ economic interest benefited from the advent of urbanization and industrialization. In absolute terms, the native middle class also enjoyed material benefits. Hofstadter’s view is perhaps too materialistic. Progressives at the time argued that the nation was enjoying prosperity but losing its soul. “Anything that makes the organization greater than the man…is against all the principles of progress.” (Hofstadter, 226) Hofstadter appears to have little patience with intangibles and projects a firm believe in the values of pragmatism. To dismiss intangibles, however, is to deny the importance of irrational motives in history. There are, however, numerous historical examples of people and nations acting in ways inconsistent with their apparent self interest (e.g. the continuation of the slaughter in World War I long after the point where any conceivable goal could justify the cost).

Hofstadter’s concentration on the “critical path” of history, determined by emergent technical and social forces, is a powerful analytical technique. Basically his argument runs: The growth of big organizations was inevitable in a more complex technical and social environment. “Soft motives”, like the myth of the yeoman farmer, always lag behind the emerging necessities of modernity. Such old myths may produce social anxieties but may also have uses in softening transitions between historical periods (e.g. reform movements). “The rise of big business may have been inevitable, but if so it was salutary that it should have taken place in a climate of opinion that threw it intermittently on the defensive”. (Hofstadter, 255)

Hofstadter’s book is a product of the 1950s and makes virtually no mention of either women or African Americans which will be jarring for the modern reader.

The Gilded Age and Revolution

Love, Sex and Marriage in Victorian America

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The Civil War in Northern Virginia

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Book Review: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s

LINK TO: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s By Sherrie Tucker

The history of “all girl” bands of the 1940s highlights the issue of the relationship between art and commerce, or what you might call “the artist’s dilemma” (i.e. I can pursue my artistic vision or I can pursue commercial success). There were substantial financial rewards to be had by musicians. Elsie Blye, for example, found that the wartime demand for musicians made switching from Oklahoma schoolteacher to Hollywood pianist a lucrative option as her salary shot up three hundred percent. Many black women found music paid better than domestic work or sharecropping (Tucker, 55). While artists could make money doing what they loved, they did so at the price of giving up control over the “rules” of work. Then and now, it seems that managers and music entrepreneurs, rather than artists, control what is played, how it is played and under what circumstances it is played in order to maximize profits. Maximizing profits depends on catering to audience expectations and pre-dispositions not only about the music but about the performers. Musical marketing appears to be a “total package” concept, involving the music, the performer, and the values/dreams the music and performance embody for the audience (i.e. does the music allow the audience to vicariously “live the life they have imagined”).

The American public embraced “all girl” bands during the World War II era as a novelty, a temporary expedient in time of war. This is not how the women, many of whom were professional musicians before the swing band shortage of the war years, saw themselves, “We put in the time. We put in the hours. We didn’t consider ourselves a novelty”. Creative artists are generally in the vanguard of social movements, anticipating the changes in society which are about to emerge. White women were joining “all girl” black bands in order to become better musicians and to find a more appreciative audience for the type of music they wanted to play. They were being accepted at considerable risk to the black members of the band out of what you might term artistic solidarity. The artists were anticipating the social changes that were about to come, but as a practical matter had to conform to social conventions. Thus white performers had to be hidden and disguised in order to play with black bands. Similarly, women musicians had to conform to conventional expectations of femininity, often being dressed in elaborately feminine frocks that made playing their instruments more difficult. As a practical matter, individual artists could not do just as they pleased, they had to operate between the freedom of art and the constraints of commerce. Although artists constantly struggle for autonomy, and frequently violate norms and conventions, they can only go so far before risking commercial failure. As has been said of one of the “all girl” bands, the Darlings of Rhythm, “Women who broke too many rules wound up on the cutting-room floor of earthly history”(Tucker, 224).

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe: First Lady of Rock

LINK TO: Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe


The career of “Sister” Rosetta Tharpe embodies many of the themes endemic to American popular music, authenticity, gender mediation, the impact of technology on the creation and distribution of music, and race mediation.

Rosetta Tharpe was raised within the Pentecostal tradition which regarded music as a way of achieving religious ecstasy. Gospel music audiences expected their singers to be “clean and untarnished by the world” (Wald, 139). Songs were expected to be spiritual and spirit filled, a gospel song was to be, “a sermon set to music”. Rosetta Tharpe could perform within this milieu, but like many other gospel performers faced the dilemma of limiting her options (and income) or crossing over to perform secular music as well. Performers such as Tharpe, and Sam Cooke “crossed over”, while others such as Mahalia Jackson and Dorothy Love Coates, “could not relate to (secular) music”. Mahalia Jackson was embraced as the preeminent Gospel singer because of her authenticity. Gospel audiences were skeptical about Rosetta Tharpe’s sincerity as a spiritual entertainer because she also performed secular music.

There was room for skepticism. Rosetta’s personal life suggests that while she may have been willing to placate audiences and offer up a public persona somewhat matching their expectations, in private she was a woman with the type of “will to power” associated only with men during that period. Rosetta was a hard living woman with a string of husbands and some say at least one woman lover (the later being an unforgivable sin to conservative Christian audiences). In her professional career she was a domineering force (to the chagrin of men), outplaying men on the guitar ( the “man’s instrument”) and issuing orders authoritatively to subordinate males (reversing the “natural order” of things).

Rosetta pragmatically adapted her career to meet changing circumstances. Starting in gospel music, she crossed over to secular blues music as the size of radio and television audiences eclipsed the size of gospel audiences. In the early 1950s she was not afraid to record with country music idol Red Foley. In 1958, as Britain and Europe embraced American black musicians, Rosetta quickly discovered the value of “folk credentials” (bestowed on her a decade earlier by Alan Lomax). “If ‘folk’ was the rage among a record buying public of earnest young people, then ‘folk’ she would be” (Wald, 175).Sister Rosetta Tharpe played the game, and played to win.

The unintended consequences of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s larger than life career are musically telling. She had a tremendous influence on young British musicians who, in turn, would re-interpret American black music and re-introduce it to mainstream American audiences. The British invasion together with the heavily Gospel/Blues influenced music of Elvis Presley put black music and style at the center of American popular music, “but the conduit(s) of these new sounds and styles did not have to be black” (Wald, 145).

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Book Review of: Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience

Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience
by Steve Waksman

Did rock ‘n roll represent the “pent up anger of the age, and loud rock ‘n roll thus became an acting out of that anger?” Music historians would have you believe that it was music that brought down racial barriers and changed American society. This may be a romanticized myth.

Rock, like other cultural forms, represented the fears and aspirations of its time. It did not cause them, it reflected them. It was two world wars and the advent of nuclear weapons which threatened life on earth that caused great numbers of people to question the old racial, gender and religious myths and mores of failed elites who had produced such devastating consequences in the lives of the people of the world. If rock ‘n roll had never emerged, some other cultural device would have been used to manifest the aspirations of the people.

Interestingly, it was that most conservative of all institutions, the military, that proved to be the exemplar for promoting social and racial equality in America. In 1948, President Truman signed an Executive Order integrating the military and mandating equality of treatment and opportunity. It became illegal, per military law, for a soldier to make a racist remark. Truman's Order extended to schools and neighborhoods as well as military units. In 1963, the Department of Defense made it the responsibility of every military commander to oppose discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents and to foster equal opportunity for them. The military needed black manpower during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, racial liberalization in the military followed. Similar troop level requirements led to the integration of women and gays into the military on terms of equality.

Which force was more powerful in acting as a catalyst for racial and gender change in American society, the amorphous message of rock (“turn on, tune in, drop out”) or the directed mandate of the military? A difficult question, but what is clear is that whatever the personal motivations of individual musicians, the music business itself, is just that, a business. Not a cause, but a business. Musicians like Muddy Waters were more interested in commercial success than some notion of racial “authenticity”. Chuck Berry pursued financial success by appealing to what white teenagers were focused on at the time, “school, love, and cars”. Col. Parker and RCA made Elvis “tone down” his act to reach wider cross-over audiences. Jimi Hendrix’s decided to play rock music as oppossed to a “blacker” style such as jazz, soul, or even straight electric blues.(Waksman,177) What music gets made and promoted for mass consumption is done for purley business reasons. Popular music and musicians are, first and foremost, the saleable commodity of the music industry.

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Civilian Life in the Civil War

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS, VIRGINIA 

Alexandria and Northern Virginia were the first areas to feel the fury of the Civil War. The New York Herald war correspondent observed, “Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession of the Federals. . . . Alexandria is filled with ruined people; they walk as strangers through their ancient streets, and their property is no longer theirs to possess. . . . these things ensued, as the natural results of civil war; and one’s sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor, the exiled, and the bereaved.”

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3



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The Past is a Foreign Country: Civil War Documents

There is a danger in writing history, that one will portray the past in warm golden hues of nostalgia, or worse yet, that one will super-impose today’s norms and values on people long dead. It is prudent to recall that the past is like a foreign country, “they do things differently there.” What is not different, however, are the basic rhythms of life. The men and women who lived one hundred and fifty years ago possessed the same passions, strengths and weaknesses, and capacity for self-deception and rationalization that we possess today. It is only by turning to the letters, documents and speeches of the people who lived at the time that we have any hope in capturing the mind of the time. In these documents, the people of the time speak by themselves, for themselves. We are all creatures of the times in which we live and must justify ourselves to history as best we can.


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Weddings in the Civil War

The dynamics of courtship and engagement changed with the coming of war. Social activities decreased and the number of eligible men, especially in the South, significantly decreased. Esther Alden expressed the attitude of young women in the South as the war progressed, "One looks at a man so differently when you think he may be killed tomorrow. Men whom up to this time I had thought dull and commonplace . . . seemed charming."





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Victorian Weddings

Love, Sex and Marriage in Victorian America

Over the centuries, brides continued to dress in a manner befitting their social status—always in the height of fashion, with the richest, boldest materials money could buy. The poorest of brides wore their best church dress on their wedding day. The amount of material a wedding dress contained also was a reflection of the bride's social standing and indicated the extent of the family's wealth to wedding guests.

Brides have not always worn white for the marriage ceremony. In the 16th and 17th centuries for example, girls in their teens married in pale green, a sign of fertility. A mature girl in her twenties wore a brown dress, and older women even wore black.





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Victorian Wedding Superstitions

Victorians had superstitions about being "lucky in love," even before the engagement was made. Victorian women would reject a suitor whose last name began with the same initial as hers. Hence the saying, "To change the name, but not the letter, is a change for the worse, and not the better." If the right suitor was found and the couple became engaged, all sorts of omens were considered for the big day. Wednesday was considered the luckiest day of the week. "Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday-the best day of all! Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, Saturday-no luck at all.”

Love, Sex and Marriage in Victorian America

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Review: Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics and Country Music

Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (American Crossroads)
by Peter La Chapelle
University of California Press;(April 3, 2007)

In 2003 the Dixie Chicks set off a firestorm by criticizing George W. Bush at the outset of the Iraq War. Playing in London at a time when a million anti-war protestors jammed the streets, singer Natalie Maines expressed “shame” that Bush was from her state of Texas. Later Maines argued, “We’ve never been a political band. It wasn’t a political statement. It was a joke to get laughs and entertain…and it did”. The comment did not entertain fans in America however. Sales slid. Country radio stations refused to play Dixie Chicks songs. Radio announcers denounced the “contempt” of the Dixie Chicks for the values of the country music listening audience. The entire Dixie Chicks episode highlights the question, “Can mass market performers express personal convictions that run counter to the expectations of the fans who buy their “brand”? The answer depends on whether you have a normative or pragmatic view of the world (things as they should be vs. things as they are). Artists should have the right of free speech, but as a practical matter, as one Republican Senator noted concerning the Dixie Chicks, “ Political statements have business consequences.”

These business consequences, in a time when the marketing and distribution system of the music industry is more important than the artist, can spell the difference between a product selling forty thousand copies and a product selling millions of copies. (La Chapelle, 206). Such was not always the case. In the 1930s radio was unevenly standardized allowing performers such as Woodie Guthrie and Maxine Crissman to sing about migrant abuses and engage in political and populist discourse. In this case, a liberal station owner, in a de-centralized distribution system, could allow what could be called niche marketing by Guthrie and Crissman .

As distribution became more centralized this flexibility vanished. Increasing use of the Top 40 playlist de-politicized country music. Restrictions were placed on what DJs could say on the air. Songs with controversial themes lost out as radio and television grew as hit makers (La Chappelle, 119-122). The career of Jean Shepard in the mid-1950s exemplifies the problem. Shepard wrote the song “Two Hoops and a Holler” railing against the gender double standard and concluding “Women ought to rule the world”. Disc jockeys, almost exclusively male during this period, did not give the song radio air time. Starved for public exposure, the song failed to place on the charts. Shepard correctly assessed the power realities and began featuring a more ambivalent assertiveness. Her career prospered. (La Chapelle, 175).

In 1965 Orange County’s Country Music Life advised aspiring musicians to think of themselves and their act as a commodity. In 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War, Merle Haggard wrote “Okie from Muskogee”. Although Haggard had previously been praised by the Left, this song made him into a pro-war, anti-hippie conservative icon. The song sold millions of copies. Haggard remained relatively silent about his politics, only later admitting that the song, “Made me appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded, possibly, than I really am.” (La Chapelle, 204).

As the internet offers the promise of a more decentralized system of distribution, it may be that performers will be able to more freely express personal views without facing devastating consequences. After all, fringe candidate Ron Paul raised four million dollars in one day on the internet. Until such time as distribution is decentralized, popular music idols, like constitutional monarchs, express their private convictions in public only at great peril.

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Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit

The true impact of the Motown sound on the civil rights movement was probably an unintended consequence of Berry Gordy’s (founder of Motown Records) drive for profits. While white folk artists of the 1960s, such as Pete Seeger, stressed their “otherness” from middle class norms and values to galvanize a progressive core constituency, Gordy stressed the “sameness” of his artists in an attempt to crossover into white markets. “Strong ideas of bourgeois respectability shaped (the Motown) image” (Smith, 120).

Gordy stressed the creation of music that was, “simple, direct and emotional” with cross over potential. He established a factory like operation, complete with a “finishing school” that polished ghetto kid performers, and produced a consistent string of star performers and hits. Gordy’s emphasis on creating non-threatening performers made blacks and by inference the civil rights movement more palatable to whites. The scenario would play out like this: “I like the music, I like the performer, he/she isn’t so bad. I now have a cultural bridge (however narrow) to relate to other blacks. They aren’t so bad.” Whites begin to relate to blacks in terms of common humanity rather than stereotypes using the cultural bridge provided by the Motown sound. Television impresario Ed Sullivan summed it up when he said, “(The Negro performer) has become a welcome visitor, not only to the white adult, but to the white children, who will finally lay Jim Crow to rest.” (Smith, 132).

The civil rights struggle of the 1960s in some ways mirrored the civil rights struggle in the Reconstruction South following the Civil War. In Mobile, for example, African-American leaders were divided between the privileged black elites who had lived in the city before the War, and recently freed blacks migrating to the city after the War. The black elites were socially and politically moderate and allied with moderate whites. Recently emancipated ex-slaves from the country were more radical. This group was willing to take its demands to the streets and felt they would only get their rights by “making a bold stand.” In the Reconstruction South, the triumph of black militancy often led to white backlash and race warfare. Dr. King’s ability to negotiate a strategy of non-violent civil disobedience in an environment of black militants, white hardliners, and white moderate “fence sitters” was his genius. Arguably, the cultural amalgamation created by rock ‘n roll, coupled with King’s message of non-violent change (given urgency by Malcom X’s message of the possibility of violence) permitted the triumph of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

As Smith suggests, the triumph was not complete. Although avenues were created for black upward social mobility (as envisioned by Booker T. Washington), and although a black President (who had numerically more white supporters than black supporters) has been elected, a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, indicates that the divide between black and white wealth is so wide that achieving parity would take more than six hundred years at the current rate of change. Is black capitalism the answer? The career of Berry Gordy suggests that a black capitalist is a capitalist first, and black second. The marketplace is color and gender blind, which is beneficial to all, but capitalism is also amoral, driven by its own imperatives of economy and efficiency rather than equity and humanity. The good that capitalism does, as in the case of the nexus between the Motown sound and the civil rights movement, may be largely unintentional.

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Pirate Treasure Uncovered

In 1984, professional treasure hunter Barry Clifford discovered the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah, the first pirate ship ever to be recovered with its hold brimming with treasure. “Separating the fact from the folklore became my challenge,” writes Barry Clifford, “My primary source of information were the accounts of Captain Cyprian Southack, the salvor dispatched in 1717 by Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute to retrieve the Whydah’s treasure.”

Clifford has recovered a spectacular fortune in coins, ingots, jewelry, weapons and artifacts, many of which can be seen at the Whydah Pirate Museum in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The total value of the treasure is estimated in excess of $400 million.



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Top 5 Reasons to Study the History of America

By-line:
This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of a PhD. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24@gmail.com

The story of the United States of America is one of the greatest success stories in world history thus far. From its humble beginnings to its current position as one of the main leading voices in the world, the history of the US is both rich and intriguing, while at the same time incredibly violent and, at times, astonishing. Learning more about the history of the US isn’t just for public school students; there are many different things out there to suit one’s interests—all you have to do is look for them.

Sheer Determination

The original settlers of the first colonies in the US were pioneers in the truest sense of the word. It is hard to believe that these people made it through the harsh winters without any real infrastructural support in an unknown land. The determination to stay and develop the lands they “discovered” is practically mythology in the annals of American history.

Learning Curve

Our nation is not very old; there are churches in Europe that are hundreds of years older than the US. This being said, there has been a significant learning curve in the leadership of this country over the years. From the travesty of slavery to the eradication of Native Americans, our leaders have made many mistakes in the past. The wounds suffered by the victims of these crimes of humanity and their heirs still run deep for many.

A Unique System

Our government is certainly one-of-a-kind. Though it is a democracy, there are so many intricacies when dealing with the inner workings of such a large and diverse country. The foundations for an extremely successful country are still being laid; our fledgling country has grown by leaps and bounds and is still learning how to best deal with certain problems and situations.

Innovation Station

The US has been ground zero for a number of some of the greatest—and most terrible—innovations and technologies in human history thus far. Technological advances abound, while our spirit of exploration has taken us beyond the borders of our atmosphere and into outer space. As the world continues to grow and change, count on the US to play a major role in the molding of the future.

The Future is Unwritten

If we look back just 125 years, we were still fighting Native Americans for territory. Sixty or so years ago, there still weren’t 50 states in our nation. While no one is expecting any drastic changes are foreseeable, history teaches us that nothing can stay the same and that often it repeats itself. Studying the history of the US can help us to make educated decisions when changes start to occur.

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If Germany Won World War II

What would have happened if Germany Won World War II?

Here are a couple of views on the ever intriguing question:

The book describes how the war was lost by the Allies and how the world looks in the year 2000. Using authoritative sources (footnoted) the book outlines the war aims of the Nazi leadership as if they were realized. The following is an excerpt: "With the collapse of the Soviet Union, America stood alone. Germany began construction of bomber bases in Iceland, the Azores, and the Canary Islands (Shirer, 879). Although Germany did not have aircraft capable of reaching the American coast in 1942, plans for new super weapons, to include long range bombers and submarine launched missiles, were initiated...'.In a kind of delirium the Fuehrer pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire. He described the skyscrapers being turned into gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky.' (Speer,87)."

Also check out this intriguing video:



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For Cause & Comrades: Book Review

James M. McPherson, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997

The Romance of War

The Reality of War

McPherson asks the very basic question: Why did Union and Confederate soldiers fight? And, “Why did so many of them fight like bulldogs?” McPherson’s central argument is that in the Civil War, there was a close and ongoing relationship between group cohesion and peer pressure that were powerful factors in combat motivation and of concepts of duty, honor, and patriotism that prompted soldiers to enlist in the first place. Soldiers fought for both comrades (primary group cohesion) and cause.

McPherson argues that these were very self aware armies, “They needed no indoctrination lectures to explain what they were fighting for…” McPherson argues that convictions of duty, honor, patriotism, and ideology functioned as the principal sustaining motivations…while impulses of courage, self-respect, and group cohesion were the main sources of combat motivation.

McPherson acknowledges that his argument runs counter to those of some other historians of the Civil War. Bell Irvin Wiley, for example, concludes that, “American soldiers of the 1860s appear to have been about as little concerned with ideological issues as were those of the 1940s” (Page, 91). Gerald Linderman indicates that battle made Civil War soldiers skeptical of notions of ideology, duty and honor. (Page,168).

Is McPherson’s argument convincing? It is clear that he is trying to understand the mind of the Civil War soldier, but as he states, “How does an historian discover and analyze the thoughts and feelings of three million people?” McPherson rejects the use of memoirs, letters written for publication, regimental histories, and wartime diaries “improved” for publication. These sources suffer from having been “written for publication”. McPherson relies for evidence on the personal letters written by soldiers during the war to family members, sweethearts, and friends, and the unrevised diaries that some of them kept during their service. These letters and diaries were “…more candid and far closer to the immediacy of experience than anything the soldiers wrote for publication then or later.” This is the most appealing aspect of how McPherson constructs his case, and is a fruitful way of analyzing what at least some soldiers were thinking.

A problem arises, however, when McPherson uses this methodology in conjunction with a flawed sample and then generalizes too broadly from the sample.
McPherson’s sample consists of 1,076 soldiers: 647 Union and 429 Confederate. With respect to age, marital status, geographical distribution, and branch of service, the sample is fairly representative. In other respects it is not. Illiterate soldiers, 10-12 % of all white soldiers on both sides are not represented. Black Union soldiers are not represented adequately, some 1 % in the sample vs. 9 % of the Union army. Foreign born soldiers are substantially underrepresented: 9 % in the sample compared to 24 % of all Union soldiers. Thus, some thirty five per cent of the Union Army is under-represented in the sample.

There are similar problems with the sample regarding the Confederate army. Two thirds of the sample were slave owners vs. one third of all Confederate soldiers in the army who owned slaves. Officers are over-represented in both armies. The bias in the sample is toward native-born soldiers from the middle and upper classes who enlisted early in the war. The sample is skewed toward the ideologically literate and motivated. Logically, one might expect highly motivated ideological partisans to be the very people who would be the first to take up arms and the last to put them down in an ideological struggle (especially a civil war). Is it surprising then that McPherson finds, “For the fighting soldiers who enlisted in 1861 and 1862 the values of duty and honor remained a crucial component of their sustaining motivation to the end.”?

McPherson frankly acknowledges the flaws in the sample, but characterizes these biases as “blessings in disguise”, explaining that, his purpose is to explain the motives of the Civil War soldiers for fighting. “I am less interested in the motives of skulkers who did their best to avoid combat. My samples are skewed toward those who did the real fighting”. (Page ix) This is not a convincing argument if one is trying to generalize about the motivations of the generic “Civil War soldier.” Are we to assume that the thirty five percent of the Union army not represented in the sample did no fighting at all, or that their presence was unnecessary to the final victory? McPherson has brilliantly identified why a sub-set of Civil War soldiers fought and fought “like bulldogs”, but he overstates his argument based on the evidence presented.

 The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

Captured in pictures. The last death agonies of the Confederacy.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

In 1860, disgruntled secessionists in the deep North rebel against the central government and plunge America into Civil War. Will the Kingdom survive? The land will run red with blood before peace comes again.

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The Confederate Economy

King cotton. Speculation in real estate and slaves. The failure of technology.



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Confederate Finance and Economics

Confederate banks and banking. Confederate money. Taxation. Inflation. Forging. Blockade runners. Partisan Ranger Act.



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Treasure Hunting: The Lost Confederate Treasury

The fall of Richmond. What happened to the Confederate treasury? Where is it now?





Treasure Legends of the Civil War


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White by Law: Book Review

In White By Law, Haney Lopez argues that race is a socially mediated idea which has never been primarily based on physical characteristics. In America, the concept of race developed as an intellectual construct used to distinguish social values and beliefs distinct from those of the dominant Anglo-Saxon majority (and subsequently the “white” European majority) (Haney Lopez, 56). For example, a federal district court in 1921 barred Asian naturalization under the rationale that, “The yellow or bronze racial color is the hallmark of Oriental despotism”. Thus Asians were not fit for republican self-government and were to be denied citizenship.

Haney Lopez uses fifty one court decisions rendered on immigration cases during the period 1878-1952 (the “pre-requisite decisions”) to demonstrate that the concept of “whiteness” was created through a process of legal exclusion. The application of law, both in terms of its coercive and ideological arms, constructed the racial superstructure of America. For example, the very act of excluding Asians from America influenced reproductive choices for those who were included in the American polity.

During the period 1878-1952, the courts determined “whiteness”, sometimes inconsistently, on the basis of four rationales: (1) common knowledge, (2) scientific evidence, (3) Congressional intent, and (4) legal precedence. The decisions coming out of the “pre-requisite cases” appear to the contemporary reader to be both illogical and, in many cases, unjust. The record does however support the view of Oliver Wendell Holmes that “the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed and unconscious, even the prejudices which the judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed ” (Haney Lopez, 95). Thus, in Haney Lopez’s analysis the law emerges as a conservative coercive and ideological institution adjudicating in favor of a white racist status quo.

The law by its very nature is a conservative force acting to protect the long term interests of the status quo. The question then becomes: Who rules? Haney Lopez suggests that the primary concern of the status quo is to preserve racial hierarchy. Racial domination is the motive for legal decisions. An economic interpretation of the same set of facts reveals a different emphasis. In a Marxist interpretation, class (or the economic) is more real, more fundamental and more important than race. Racism is a low hanging branch of a tree that is rooted in class relations (Wages of Whiteness by David Roediger 7-8). Haney Lopez cannot see beyond racism when Chester Rowell expresses the businessman’s viewpoint of 1909 that “…we find the Chinese fitting much better than the Japanese into the status which the white American prefers them both to occupy – that of biped domestic animals in the white man’s service. The Chinese coolie is the ideal industrial machine, the perfect human ox.” ( Haney Lopez, 62). An economic interpretation of this statement would suggest that it is in the nature of capitalism to objectify people, to turn the worker wherever possible into “the perfect human ox”, and that in the absence of countervailing force will do just that. Immigrants were politically weak and could thus be exploited, let in, restricted, and kicked out as required by the economic elite. It is only shifting power relationships that change laws.

The Chinese Exclusion Act and American Labor

A brief look at the background of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the relation of race and class in the American labor movement.

Guarding the Golden Door by Roger Daniels: Review

In Guarding the Golden Door Daniels presents an overview of the development immigration policy in the United States from the founding of the Republic through 2003. America has had a love/hate relationship with its immigrant population, on the one hand reveling in the nation’s immigrant past while, on the other, rejecting the immigrant present (Daniels, 6).

Opposition to immigration has successively centered on exclusion because of religion (e.g. the Irish and German and Catholic menace which gave rise to Protestant nativism in the 1840’s), race (e.g. Chinese exclusion act of 1882) and ethnicity (e.g. Immigration Act of 1924 setting quotas on the basis of national origin). (Daniels, 11).

Underlying these differences are more subtle arguments: (1)Because of religion, race or ethnicity these groups are too “other”, and therefore cannot be assimilated into American culture. The un-assimilated presence of these groups, so the argument runs, will corrupt American values; (2) Immigrant groups, because of innate inferiority or prior cultural disposition, are not capable of self-government and are therefore a danger to our political institutions;(3) An influx of immigrants will result in loss of jobs for native Americans, and will bring about a lower standard of living.

American immigration policy has manifested both liberal and pragmatic impulses, but has predominantly been driven by pragmatic considerations. The founding fathers recognized the need for immigration to provide cheap labor in the building of the new nation. (The introduction of slavery into the South was largely the result of inadequate immigration during colonial times. The lack of sufficient indentured white servants to work plantations resulted in the forced “immigration” of Africans beginning in the late 1600’s). Chinese immigration was encouraged during the period of the building of the trans-continental railroad, when cheap labor was needed, but anti-Chinese agitation increased after the driving of the “golden Spike” in 1869 (Daniel’s, 12). Interestingly, it was Senator Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist, who was the champion of a liberal immigration policy towards the Chinese, calling for a color-blind naturalization statute (Daniels, 119). Sumner recognized that the same liberal impulses that animated abolitionists before the Civil War should be applied to immigration policy. The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 represents the triumph of the economic interests which did not want to create unintended social consequences (i.e. the growth of a large unassimilated racial minority) once its economic goals had been realized.

Other examples of the primacy of the economic motive are seen in Immigration Act of 1924, wherein quotas were not extended to most Western Hemisphere nations because many Southwestern and Western legislators insisted their regions needed Mexican laborers (Daniels, 52), in the exemption of Filipinos from immigration restrictions into Hawaii if the Secretary of the Interior thought the importation of more Filipino laborers was advisable (Daniels, 72), and in the push to bring temporary Mexican workers into the U.S. during World War II because, as Herbert Hoover wrote at the time, “…we need every bit of this labor we can get and need it badly.”

U.S. immigration policy underwent a change after World War II. Prior to World War II, America had a tradition of isolationism. After World War II America became a world power. Ideas of Nordic superiority were rejected (Daniels, 116). After having defeated the Nazi ideology of racial superiority the United States could hardly embrace such an ideology as it entered into a global contest for “hearts and minds” with the Soviet Union. Henceforth, foreign policy would take primacy in matters of immigration and America would increasingly embrace multi-culturalism as a national ideal. Economic pragmatism with regard to immigration policy gave way to geo-political pragmatism with regard to immigration policy.

The Chinese Exclusion Act and American Labor

A brief look at the background of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the relation of race and class in the American labor movement.

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Sir Francis Drake - Pirate

Who were the pirates? Raiding the Spanish Main. The strange case of Sir Francis Drake.



Legends of Pirate Gold

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Female Pirates

The exploits of famous women pirates. Henry Morgan and the sack of Panama. Are there pirate treasures? What does pirate treasure look like?



Legends of Pirate Gold

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Immigrants, Movies, and Labor Discipline

The values of nineteenth century America were largely white Anglo-Saxon values that stressed Protestant self-reliance and Victorian respectability. Men worked and subdued the frontier (both literally and figuratively), while the woman’s domain was religion (moral uplift) and the home. Education, self-cultivation and upward mobility were the hallmarks of Anglo Saxon values. The central theme of this value system was Progress (expressed in terms of material progress) versus primitivism.

According to Larry May in his book Screening Out the Past, immigrants presented a disorganizing element into American society because they brought with them other (less restrictive) value systems. In the view of the white Anglo-Saxon majority, immigrants needed to be Americanized in order to, “make no trouble for the right minded” (May, 15). The workplace was one area in which the immigrant must be bent to (industrial) discipline. The other area was leisure. The middle class wanted to control immigrant leisure, and as Roy Rosenzweig points out in Eight Hours for What We Will leisure became a battleground between groups with different value systems.

For immigrants, amusements constituted an important counterweight to the rigors of industrial discipline. Movies were particularly appealing to multi-lingual immigrants. Because movies were silent, they were universally available as an outlet for romance and adventure and formed the ground pattern of social life for the young (May, 38). The movies provided immigrants with a form of acculturation into American life (Mayne,33). Although the middle class frowned on the low themes of the earliest movies, in general movies were much less of a threat to industrial discipline than were other amusements such as drinking in saloons. Immigrants carved out leisure (and especially movies) as a public space apart from work where they could indulge hopes, dreams and aspirations. In embracing the culture of the movies ( and its concomitant consumerism) so enthusiastically, the immigrant movie go-er accelerated the breakdown of old ethnic norms and the development of a more homogeneous society based on mass culture and consumerism. Consumerism offered the image of a homogenous population pursuing the same goals of living well and accumulating goods. The emergence of consumerism served to mask the transformation of the immigrant from person to commodity and tempered resistance to labor discipline (Mayne,34).

The development of the movie industry itself was a tremendous social safety valve. The movie industry, in which immigrants were heavily represented, demonstrated that success could be had without a long laborious submission to the Anglo Saxon value system (May, 196). Success was democratized in the persona of the movie star who by talent and imagination could become an overnight success (May, 233).

In Eight Hours for What We Will, Roy Rosenzweig talks about alternative ethnic worker cultures as opposed to oppositional cultures. Rather than directly challenging the economic elite, the alternative culture passively resists. Initially immigrants found strength to passively resist industrial discipline within the traditions and norms of their ethnic communities, to paraphrase Rosenzweig’s book, “they found a different way to live and wished to be left alone with it” (Rozenzweig, 64). Mass culture appears to have taken the place of the immigrant neighborhood. The modern American citizen passively resists labor discipline by immersing in consumerism and the products of mass culture. Meaning is found in conspicuous consumption.

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