Thursday, December 30, 2010
Book Review - "How the States Got Their Shapes"
How the States Got Their Shapes
-by Mark Stein-
In conjunction with Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It, I also heartily recommend How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. It details the crazy journeys our wonderful 50 states took in order to end-up in the shapes that we know and love today. For example, did you know that Washington (before it got the D.C. moniker) was supposed to be a square city, made up of equal parcels of land donated by both Maryland and Virginia? Well, the city wasn’t growing that fast and Virginia was eventually able to reclaim their gift. I bet D.C. really regrets that now! Also, you were probably not aware that Illinois owes its possession of “Chicago” to slavery, in particular, New England hatred of slavery. Illinois businessmen sold the federal government on the idea that by giving Illinois a toehold on Lake Michigan they would be able to connect the goods of New England to the markets of the midwestern states, all without having to go through the South-controlled Mississippi River. All of these stories and more are presented in How the States Got Their Shapes in short little stories that do an excellent job of illuminating this very important, though much overlooked, portion of United States history.
Book Review - "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It "
Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It
-by Michael J. Trinklein-
Who wants to live in the breakaway territory of Nataqua? Apparently no women did, so it failed to acquire the population necessary for statehood. Anyone favor living in “Transylvania”? It was a failed state, in what would later become Kentucky, proposed by Daniel Boone. How about the state known as “Chicago”? You read that last sentence right, the great city of “Chicago” once had aspirations of becoming its’ own state. This was mostly born out of anger at not having enough representation in the state government (being outvoted by farmers makes one think of revolution). This book is full of many more cases of states, some crazy (like Boston as a city-state) and others rather logical (such as a better division of Idaho, Washington and Oregon) as well as the details behind the division of the Dakotas, the reoccurring attempts at New Jersey and Maine divisions and the desires of Long Island to separate from New York and become its own state. “Lost States” is a walk down the popular Historic Lane of What Might-Have-Been. It is a series of engaging, interesting, funny and surprising tales, all contained within a book less than 200 pages long. Each “failed state” has the pertinent details behind its creation attempt described and also includes either a map of the period with the state on it, or one of the author’s own creation. These short little snippets of our forgotten history help to illustrate the parts, politics, population, foreign policy, state and federal governments, environment, human temperament and sheer randomness played in the creation of the country we know today as the “United States of America”.
-by Michael J. Trinklein-
Who wants to live in the breakaway territory of Nataqua? Apparently no women did, so it failed to acquire the population necessary for statehood. Anyone favor living in “Transylvania”? It was a failed state, in what would later become Kentucky, proposed by Daniel Boone. How about the state known as “Chicago”? You read that last sentence right, the great city of “Chicago” once had aspirations of becoming its’ own state. This was mostly born out of anger at not having enough representation in the state government (being outvoted by farmers makes one think of revolution). This book is full of many more cases of states, some crazy (like Boston as a city-state) and others rather logical (such as a better division of Idaho, Washington and Oregon) as well as the details behind the division of the Dakotas, the reoccurring attempts at New Jersey and Maine divisions and the desires of Long Island to separate from New York and become its own state. “Lost States” is a walk down the popular Historic Lane of What Might-Have-Been. It is a series of engaging, interesting, funny and surprising tales, all contained within a book less than 200 pages long. Each “failed state” has the pertinent details behind its creation attempt described and also includes either a map of the period with the state on it, or one of the author’s own creation. These short little snippets of our forgotten history help to illustrate the parts, politics, population, foreign policy, state and federal governments, environment, human temperament and sheer randomness played in the creation of the country we know today as the “United States of America”.
Friday, December 10, 2010
South is Rewriting Last 150 Years
The really South is a bunch of sore losers. The have spent the last 150 years rewriting their own history in order to justify both their eternal support of a losing idea and the foundations of that idea. This country needs to get over this love-affair with a bunch of racist-cry-baby-bullies who withdrew from the Union because they didn't get their own way.
To that end, I have a few suggestions:
1) Strip the Confederate flag off of EVERY SINGLE fraking state flag that still includes it
2) Ban showings of such films as: "A Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind", south of the Mason-Dixon Line. They merely help perpetuate this stereotype of "happy slaves" and "the Lost Cause". After the obsession with the Confederacy has passed away, future southern generations will one day be able to enjoy these films again.
3) Outlaw the "Daughters of the Confederacy". It is groups like these that helped push the "Lost Cause" myth into the public conscienceness after the war and have spent the last 150 years keeping it firmly there. If
banning the group is too extreme, then state that for every dollar they spend "glorify" Confederate war
heroes, preserving plantations, and promoting the "Lost Cause", they have to spend an equivalent dollar on
something that helps the descendants of the slaves those plantations and great warriors fought to keep in chains. This could be anything, donated to the NAACP, black scholarships, preservation of the documents and homes of notable black artists, or even on educating the public about the first black legislatures during Reconstruction.
Here's hoping that one day we can rid our fair country of the stigma of participating in the fraud that is "The Lost Cause" and STOP glorifying the the racists who almost destroyed our nation all in the name of slavery.
To that end, I have a few suggestions:
1) Strip the Confederate flag off of EVERY SINGLE fraking state flag that still includes it
2) Ban showings of such films as: "A Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind", south of the Mason-Dixon Line. They merely help perpetuate this stereotype of "happy slaves" and "the Lost Cause". After the obsession with the Confederacy has passed away, future southern generations will one day be able to enjoy these films again.
3) Outlaw the "Daughters of the Confederacy". It is groups like these that helped push the "Lost Cause" myth into the public conscienceness after the war and have spent the last 150 years keeping it firmly there. If
banning the group is too extreme, then state that for every dollar they spend "glorify" Confederate war
heroes, preserving plantations, and promoting the "Lost Cause", they have to spend an equivalent dollar on
something that helps the descendants of the slaves those plantations and great warriors fought to keep in chains. This could be anything, donated to the NAACP, black scholarships, preservation of the documents and homes of notable black artists, or even on educating the public about the first black legislatures during Reconstruction.
Here's hoping that one day we can rid our fair country of the stigma of participating in the fraud that is "The Lost Cause" and STOP glorifying the the racists who almost destroyed our nation all in the name of slavery.
Can you celebrate secession without celebrating slavery? | Need to Know
Since the 150th anniversary of the civil is upon us, questions involving the cause of the war and the reasons each side chose to fight it have come to a head.
This article is interesting.
Can you celebrate secession without celebrating slavery? | Need to Know
This article is interesting.
Can you celebrate secession without celebrating slavery? | Need to Know
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Civil War in Historical Memory
I have read a variety of accounts, written from all different perspectives, of and about the Civil War. However, the ones to really catch my ire are the ones that seek to glorify the Confederacy and "return Southern honor", as if there could be any honor in attempting to overthrow the legitimately elected government, merely because of what the chief executive "might do". There are a whole horde of reasons why certain people chose to support the Confederacy over the Union: slavery, economics, hatred of Lincoln, fear of abolition, and favoring a government with strong state governments and a week federal one. Choosing one as the "soul" reason for the war is ludicrous, they all played their part. However, the South, in attempting to rewrite their own history, has chosen to downplay or even ignore the part that slavery played in sparking the war and keeping it going. They favor blaming the politicians for causing it. as Rodger Pryor does:
"The bloody business of secession, with all its disastrous consequences, was wholly the act of the professed men of peace --- the politicians."
Pryor also divorces the Confederacy from supporting slavery as well:
"True, the material interests of the South were essentially implicated in the maintenance of the system; but philosophically, it [slavery] was the occasion not the cause of secession. For the cause of secession you must look beyond the incident of the anti-slavery agitation to that irrepressible conflict between the principles of State sovereignty and Federal supremacy,"
Confederate General Jubal Early, has nothing but criticism for all those attempting to write histories of the Civil War, but most of his scorn is for the Northern writers:
"In the former character [as criminals --- rebels and traitors seeking to throw off the authority of a legitimate government to which we were bound by the lies of allegiance] our enemies are seeking to present us, not only by their historical records, but by their literature and by the whole scope and tendency of their legislation and governmental policy."
Early is incapable of even considering that the victorious side might write a "fair and balanced" account of the South's actions during the Civil War. However, he is not really interested in an accurate accounting, he only cares in exonerating Confederate soldiers of any wrong doings and in insuring that any history written of the war portrays Southerners as a "honorable and valiant people".
I am with General Sherman, in that there was a "right" and a "wrong" in the Civil War and the Confederacy was clearly on the "wrong" side.
"There are such things as abstract right and abstract wrong, and when history is written human actions must take their place in one or the other category. We claim that, in the great civil war, we of the National Union Army were right, and our adversaries wrong; and no special plending, no excuses, no personal motives, however pure and specious, can change this verdict of the war."
However, though Sherman wants history to be written to CLEARLY show that the Union victors were on the "right" side during the war, he does counsel that the negative feelings experienced by the country from 1860-65 should not be allowed to linger in the present. He believes that the lessons of the Civil War need to be remembered, not glossed-over or altered so as the make American history more palatable.
Finally, I am in Sherman's corner that we should not be censoring or editing history in order to make ourselves feel better about the past or to present a better face to the world. The events that happened, good and bad, happened and denying their occurrence or altering them serves only to distort our past and is truly beneath us as American citizens. However, I also agree with Walt Whitman who speaks of the "untold and unwritten history of the war".
"The bloody business of secession, with all its disastrous consequences, was wholly the act of the professed men of peace --- the politicians."
Pryor also divorces the Confederacy from supporting slavery as well:
"True, the material interests of the South were essentially implicated in the maintenance of the system; but philosophically, it [slavery] was the occasion not the cause of secession. For the cause of secession you must look beyond the incident of the anti-slavery agitation to that irrepressible conflict between the principles of State sovereignty and Federal supremacy,"
Confederate General Jubal Early, has nothing but criticism for all those attempting to write histories of the Civil War, but most of his scorn is for the Northern writers:
"In the former character [as criminals --- rebels and traitors seeking to throw off the authority of a legitimate government to which we were bound by the lies of allegiance] our enemies are seeking to present us, not only by their historical records, but by their literature and by the whole scope and tendency of their legislation and governmental policy."
Early is incapable of even considering that the victorious side might write a "fair and balanced" account of the South's actions during the Civil War. However, he is not really interested in an accurate accounting, he only cares in exonerating Confederate soldiers of any wrong doings and in insuring that any history written of the war portrays Southerners as a "honorable and valiant people".
I am with General Sherman, in that there was a "right" and a "wrong" in the Civil War and the Confederacy was clearly on the "wrong" side.
"There are such things as abstract right and abstract wrong, and when history is written human actions must take their place in one or the other category. We claim that, in the great civil war, we of the National Union Army were right, and our adversaries wrong; and no special plending, no excuses, no personal motives, however pure and specious, can change this verdict of the war."
However, though Sherman wants history to be written to CLEARLY show that the Union victors were on the "right" side during the war, he does counsel that the negative feelings experienced by the country from 1860-65 should not be allowed to linger in the present. He believes that the lessons of the Civil War need to be remembered, not glossed-over or altered so as the make American history more palatable.
Finally, I am in Sherman's corner that we should not be censoring or editing history in order to make ourselves feel better about the past or to present a better face to the world. The events that happened, good and bad, happened and denying their occurrence or altering them serves only to distort our past and is truly beneath us as American citizens. However, I also agree with Walt Whitman who speaks of the "untold and unwritten history of the war".
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