Read the article in Wikipedia found under Dissolution of the Monasteries, England and Wales.
Good idea to read it before any admiration of the UK or snickering at the Catholic Church.
Showing posts with label History lesson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History lesson. Show all posts
Monday, April 26, 2010
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Modern "cleanliness" is not so clean
Believe me, I do not enjoy it when I am forced to assume a lecturing and somewhat preachy “school marmish” tone with my blog readers, but there we have it: it is often necessary. For those of you who are young or non-English native language readers, a “school marm” is what the female teacher in a one room school house used to be called back in the prairie and Western settlement days. It is slang for a woman teacher who has to keep a strict rein on her pupils, who are rowdy and undisciplined. So with that as a foreword and forewarning, here is the subject: how modern notions of “cleanliness” have contributed to destroying the planet’s health, has reduced rather than improved human health, and has resulted in unbalanced mental and emotional views about “cleanliness.”
This is mostly going to be a history and social lesson and rumination, but here is the theology link: The often quoted “cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a quotation from the Bible. In fact, the only cleanliness referred to in the Bible was related to 1) religious injunctions and strictures, 2) hospitality and 3) spiritual and soul cleanliness, not the vanity of the body. I’m going to return to this subject later on and describe how “cleanliness” “worked” in Biblical times, but first I need to give my mostly youthful and affluent readership a few rings on the clue phone about recent history of modern “cleanliness.”
Let us start with the primary concern (aka obsession) among westerners, which is “washing” by using water in either a bath or most modernly the shower. Baths have, in general, become passé and are often not even installed in modern structures, with the assumption being everyone either uses the shower or if they want to “soak,” they do so for recreation, social and erotic reasons in hot tubs, Jacuzzis and so forth. So to keep it simple let’s talk about showers in the modern vernacular, but understand that all bodily washing previous to the past several decades was conducted in a bath tub or other container.
Why is this? Well, my young and spoiled audience, until recently having water pumped into a house at all was a luxury, not something that one would squander in a running shower that goes right down the drain. Further, the fuel to heat the water was likewise scarce. For nearly two thousand years since Biblical times until pretty much the 1950’s, water and the fuel to heat it required often backbreaking work to prepare and was expensive for the average impoverished or marginally poor family. Now here’s the rub: just because for two thousand years people did not shower that does not mean they were “dirty,” “unclean” or “smelled bad.” That is one of the great delusions of this post-intellectual society where people have skewed and distorted notions regarding just about everything. So I’m going to tell you “what it was like” as recently as the 1950’s, when I was growing up.
There is an old expression “the Saturday night bath.” This came about from the reality that the average poor family did indeed have a bath only once a week. The water was pumped from outside the house and carried by many trips with the bucket into the central location (usually the kitchen), where a large tub was filled with the water, cold water. However, if this was to be a warm bath, each bucket of water was heated, using precious coal or cut firewood, before being added to the tub. Then each person in the family took turns in the tub, using the same water.
One of the housekeeper’s main chores was to keep the family with a good supply of soap, which was made by hand by each family. What is soap? Soap is a substance that facilitates cleaning. It is not an antiseptic, as so many crazy people think today, though it had a slight element of it. Here is how soap “works.” Soap is made up of a combination of three substances that do the following: one dissolves dirt, one is abrasive to scrub the dirt away, and one is slightly reactive in an astringent way, kind of a slight antiseptic but also to make the dirt bubble up somewhat as it is scraped away. Thus soap is made up of a fat (from either an animal or plant oil), an abrasive such as ashes or sand, and a reactive material such as lye. The fat dissolves the dirt and outer layer of skin, the abrasive sloughs it away, and the reactive material makes it easy to remove and is somewhat antiseptic. Now people did not know about germs and so forth but being farmers and animal hide tanners they knew about rot. That is how people over the years realized to use substances such as lye in soap, without realizing they were also destroying some germs.
So having a bath was a huge amount of work, with hauling the water, heating it up, and using preciously made soap, for most people who were until modern times poor and of the lower classes. Even when most homes had hot water bathrooms and bath tubs in the 1950s onward, poor people still maintained a high standard of cleanliness in between infrequent baths. Whoa, wait! Did you read that right or did I make a typo? Did I really mean to say these poor slobs maintained a “high” standard of cleanliness? Didn’t I mean that they were dirty bums? Nope, I meant what I said. How did people “stay clean” when they only had weekly baths? They were EXPECTED TO STAY CLEAN ON A ROUTINE DAILY BASIS. Even men who worked in the coal mines and so forth, or in the field, in dirty jobs, were expected to stay as clean as possible on a daily basis. How did they do that? It’s a wonderful invention called a washcloth and a bar of soap. For several thousand years humans kept themselves clean by using the hand water pump located outdoors or in modern times, brought inside via a sink through modern plumbing, to “wash up” using a bar of soap and a washcloth. Imagine that!
That is exactly how things worked in my household growing up, and that is how I maintain my body, for the most part, to this day. We had a bathtub and a warm water plumbing but my dad being born in 1903 and my mother being a war refugee kept themselves clean on a daily basis, and taught me to do the same, until one had the weekly, or if for reason more frequently, full bath. That’s one reason I have lots of wonderful washcloths, and not because I have psychic solidarity with former POW Senator John McCain who as a POW realized one’s one washcloth was one’s only and most treasured possession. People who were thrifty with resources (water and fuel) either to be thrifty, from necessity, or because to procure them meant back breaking work, learned how to maximize cleanliness while causing a small “footprint” on earth resources over a period of hundreds of years. I have persistently favored a bar of a good soap, washcloths, and a once or twice a week bath, PERIOD.
The exception to what I outlined above was that small children received daily baths (and think about it that usually was in the kitchen sink or in a basin.) I still remember very well the small white galvanized basin that as a baby I was put into and washed: not filling up the tub until I was older. The basin had a red rim and two holes, which fascinated me as a baby (the holes were for hanging the basin if needed). So babies were washed daily, even by the poor, since they were seated in a small basin that was easy to fill with warm water. They didn’t drown too many babies back then while “bathing them” either. Being thrifty is also being safe, in many cases. The other exception in the 1950’s was when more and more kids, even in poor neighborhoods, had sports activities and access to school showers. People today do not realize what a change that was in how things were. So my brother was expected to shower at school, if he could, when he was in sports. Our cheap mother would otherwise argue and begrudge him using the shower or the tub in the house. See, I can share this with you because as I’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, I’m old enough to have personally experienced and can witness to you how the older generations lived, how they thrived, and how they coped and made do.
So let’s look at this wonderfully “clean” generation. We have droughts everywhere and the cost of water is going up, but people think they are filthy and damned if they don’t have a lavish shower, where the water runs down the drain, every day. Do they use regular biodegradable bars of soap? Nope. They use “bath products,” which are filled with chemicals that damage the environment and also the skin. So rather than “keep it clean in between” on a daily basis as my generation did (except for the rich ones of course who always had what they wanted, LOL), these same young people who worry about one’s “carbon footprint” sneer at someone like me who “keeps it clean in between” and who does not take a daily shower.
The same is true of washing one’s hair. NO ONE washed their hair on a daily basis anywhere in the world, EVER, until the last fifty years or so. People understood that washing the hair strips it of its vital oils and makes the scalp unhealthy, rather than “clean.” This is the origin of the old saying “one hundred strokes” came from: women used to brush or comb their hair with one hundred strokes every night to stimulate the scalp and distribute the hair’s natural oil. (That, by the way, is what a bird does when it “preens” its feathers. The bird is grasping each feather in its beak or bill, squeezing until the oil glands exude oil, and then spreads the oil in an even coating over each feather. That is not just beauty treatment; that is survival necessity as birds must be waterproofed using their natural oil in order to survive). Women would wash their hair on the weekly ‘bath day’ and to keep it clean in between they would comb or brush their hair and scalp with one hundred strokes.
The downfall of soap came about through two causes. One is the desire to have beautiful fragrance at a cheap price, so instead of using genuinely natural scented flowers and herbs, modern “bath products” are packed with artificial chemicals and colors that look and smell “like” “natural” substances, but are not. Indeed people are just scratching the surface at realizing how packed with cancer and pollution causing chemical such “cleanliness” products are. The other is the obsession with germs and doing a “thorough” cleaning, which means packing cleansers with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other chemical compounds, rather than the good old formula of oil/lye and abrasive. All of this crap, along with the wasted water of daily showers and the heating energy uses, is squandered each and every day by millions of people who think they are somehow better people for it than their grandparents who kept themselves clean as needed, and not according to one’s overheated imagination.
I spoke up about this through my local Audubon society at a city council hearing when I was in high school (1969-1970 as I recall) when modern laundry detergents, packed with nitrogen and phosphorus, were causing the lakes to be destroyed via algae blooms. For forty years I have been warning that the “cleanliness” craze was helping to destroy the planet (while, ironically, no one wants to build latrines for the over one billion people in the world who still crap in the fields and the streets). People would read and drool over science fiction like “Dune,” while then having their daily shower packed with artificial chemicals that harm both the environment and the body’s health, rather than enhance it. People don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom or handling raw food, but boy, they brag about their daily showers and their hair gels. They pay to go to fitness centers but they sneer at me for using a washcloth at the sink, as needed, and scrubbing, rather than standing like a rich moron under a shower and letting the water run down the drain.
For quite a while I have given up. I buy the lotions and bath potions in the dollar store because I like how the pretty bottles look, and artificial fragrance is all that the average person can get these days. I rub the hand creams packed with chemicals into my hands because frankly, my dears, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, since no one acts upon my warnings (except to make things worse, apparently) anyway. But that is one reason why I still buy and use Vaseline. No, not because like so many people I dream about anal sex. Vaseline is a natural product (from the petroleum process) that is great for skin care. My stepfather, bless his soul, used it for his aching muscles when he would work as a car mechanic, finding it helped far more than the chemical laden modern products. So people giggle at my washcloth as needed, my bars of soap, my Vaseline, my preference for a bath than a shower, while at the same time they are destroying the planet and making carbon and water “footprints” bigger than the clown shoes of Bozo the Clown.
So that takes us back to Biblical times. Jesus did not shower. Moses did not shower. Mary did not shower. Peter not only did not shower but he worked as a fisherman, and the gutting and cleaning of fish is one smelly job. The Prophet (PBUH) did not shower. Further, in the Qur’an you can read with great clarity what the spiritual philosophy behind the Bible scriptures is but that most moderns seem to miss. Washing was done in Biblical times primarily for 1) honoring God and 2) as hospitality. People washed to maintain their cleanliness before God, not because God was allocating bodily shower times. Thus the Bible contains instructions for the Israelites for RITUAL washing. Further, as everyone walked the “must wash” “bits” were the feet, and as hospitality, a host would provide such water and a basin and towels. This is why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, not because you were getting a glimpse of Biblical water hygiene. So here is where the Qur’an makes this clear for Bible readers who somehow miss that point. The Qur’an explains that worshippers are to wash their feet, their arms up to the elbows, and the face before worshipping God. The Qur’an then says that because God is not trying to make it difficult for people that if water cannot be found then sand can be used for the ritual cleaning. Again, it is impossible for the observant reader to miss that when the scriptures allude to washing it is only for ritual (worship of God) and hospitality reasons. The scriptures are not designed to remind a person to “keep it clean in between” since that’s just part of life and common sense is it not?
Further, what does God command when he wants a good odor in front of him? Not to squander the world’s water with prideful daily showers when they are not needed. No, God asks for sacrifice of incense at the incense altar when he wants a “good odor.” God has never sent a worshipper away for not bathing often enough or not smelling good. Sheesh!
I mention this because of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” old adage that has absolutely no Biblical or scriptural basis whatsoever. I mean, the scriptures do not tell people how often to go pee and poop since that is an “as needed” basis that has nothing to do with sanctity, does it not? But speaking of which, here is more scriptural history for you. During Biblical times people peed and pooped wherever it was convenient. It was often done in the fields since fertilizer came from both human and animal waste. People would “go” whenever and wherever they had to go. They did not have community locations or latrines, as logical as that may seem today, for the reason I just mentioned, that the fields were viewed as benefiting from whatever human or animal soil is placed there. But archeologists recently found evidence that one sect, centered in one village actually had a location outside of the village where people trekked to do their business. That was a great rarity and actually gave modern scientists realization that what seems like advancement in “cleanliness” actually caused a problem. Analysis of the soil along the path to the common latrine reveals that there was a higher evidence of harmful bacteria around that village on that path, rather than less. Why? Because people tracked the bacteria on their feet in the same places over a long period of time, allowing concentrations of bad stuff to build up rather than disperse naturally. Sanitation illness may have been HIGHER among the village that had the shared location to void outside of the village than the other Biblical villages where people just went, mostly in the fields, where it was convenient, and did not beat a path of bad germs.
This is another example of how modern people are too quick at thinking they are superior to “the old ways” and so much “cleaner.” I’m all for latrines and toilets (and again, why are over a billion people in the world not having their sewage concentrated and treated, if moderns are so interested in cleanliness). But think about that example, where without understanding the transmission of germs, that one sect’s village might have thought they had a great idea, which is everyone walk one path to a common place to poop, but instead made a germ highway that could not biodegrade, while the more primitive majority system of “going” in the fields when one needed to meant that nature could handle the biodegradation more thoroughly and without spreading and packing down germ pathways.
Before they were conquered by the whites the American Indians of the plains, the Lakota in particular, often had individuals who lived to their nineties in age and even their hundreds. Yet they did so without having daily showers and chemical laden cleansers. How did they do it? There are two keys. One is that the buffalo meat was incredibly healthy for them, along with the other natural foods that they ate. The other was that they remained active. People don’t “live longer” or are “cleaner” by having daily showers with huge carbon footprints laden with artificially scented and colored chemicals that then rush out the drain to pollute the environment, resist biodegrading and possibly cause cancers.
If I ever attend a Steelers game (which I have a lot of trouble imagining) I won’t mind at all waving my “terrible towel” except that, being mostly modest and authentic, it will be one of my “terrible washcloths.” Perhaps I could attach a hard milled bar of soap with a chain to the end of a stick and wave it as a medieval flail as my environmental and cleanliness message. Course a bar of soap, even as a flail, never hurt anyone, but a chemical filled plastic (pollutes and large footprint) pump containing a chemically filled “liquid soap” would probably do much more harm, as it most certainly does in reality. A bar of soap (for those of you who have forgotten what they look like) dissolves after use, is highly biodegradable, and comes in a waxed paper wrapper, which is also mostly harmless and biodegradable. But hey, why go with that when you can mock while using your daily high footprint plastic container and chemical biodegradable resistant goop that is flushed down the drain in order to strain the water purity even further than it already is? Who really “smells bad” in THAT case?
I hope that you have found this “helpful.”
Here's the reading from the Qur'an:
Surah 4:43 O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know (well) what you say
[This is saying to not go to prayer while drunk but wait until one is sober. Alcohol is of course forbidden in general in Islam, but God here is specifically prohibiting approaching him in prayer while 'impaired.']
nor when you are under obligation to perform a bath
[This means that you must first perform any ritual washing]
-unless (you are) traveling on the road
[In which case one can pray as needed along the way and take the measures listed below]
-until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water,
betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning; Forgiving.
So this is not a list of times, places and methods to wash the body as one would take a modern shower, but rather it indicates the circumstances under which one must ritually wash before approaching God. So if you have ritually washed, but then before you arrive at the prayer place one of the above circumstances occur (such as going to the bathroom) and you are no longer near the water place, you can use pure earth (sand) to wash one's face and hands.
This is mostly going to be a history and social lesson and rumination, but here is the theology link: The often quoted “cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a quotation from the Bible. In fact, the only cleanliness referred to in the Bible was related to 1) religious injunctions and strictures, 2) hospitality and 3) spiritual and soul cleanliness, not the vanity of the body. I’m going to return to this subject later on and describe how “cleanliness” “worked” in Biblical times, but first I need to give my mostly youthful and affluent readership a few rings on the clue phone about recent history of modern “cleanliness.”
Let us start with the primary concern (aka obsession) among westerners, which is “washing” by using water in either a bath or most modernly the shower. Baths have, in general, become passé and are often not even installed in modern structures, with the assumption being everyone either uses the shower or if they want to “soak,” they do so for recreation, social and erotic reasons in hot tubs, Jacuzzis and so forth. So to keep it simple let’s talk about showers in the modern vernacular, but understand that all bodily washing previous to the past several decades was conducted in a bath tub or other container.
Why is this? Well, my young and spoiled audience, until recently having water pumped into a house at all was a luxury, not something that one would squander in a running shower that goes right down the drain. Further, the fuel to heat the water was likewise scarce. For nearly two thousand years since Biblical times until pretty much the 1950’s, water and the fuel to heat it required often backbreaking work to prepare and was expensive for the average impoverished or marginally poor family. Now here’s the rub: just because for two thousand years people did not shower that does not mean they were “dirty,” “unclean” or “smelled bad.” That is one of the great delusions of this post-intellectual society where people have skewed and distorted notions regarding just about everything. So I’m going to tell you “what it was like” as recently as the 1950’s, when I was growing up.
There is an old expression “the Saturday night bath.” This came about from the reality that the average poor family did indeed have a bath only once a week. The water was pumped from outside the house and carried by many trips with the bucket into the central location (usually the kitchen), where a large tub was filled with the water, cold water. However, if this was to be a warm bath, each bucket of water was heated, using precious coal or cut firewood, before being added to the tub. Then each person in the family took turns in the tub, using the same water.
One of the housekeeper’s main chores was to keep the family with a good supply of soap, which was made by hand by each family. What is soap? Soap is a substance that facilitates cleaning. It is not an antiseptic, as so many crazy people think today, though it had a slight element of it. Here is how soap “works.” Soap is made up of a combination of three substances that do the following: one dissolves dirt, one is abrasive to scrub the dirt away, and one is slightly reactive in an astringent way, kind of a slight antiseptic but also to make the dirt bubble up somewhat as it is scraped away. Thus soap is made up of a fat (from either an animal or plant oil), an abrasive such as ashes or sand, and a reactive material such as lye. The fat dissolves the dirt and outer layer of skin, the abrasive sloughs it away, and the reactive material makes it easy to remove and is somewhat antiseptic. Now people did not know about germs and so forth but being farmers and animal hide tanners they knew about rot. That is how people over the years realized to use substances such as lye in soap, without realizing they were also destroying some germs.
So having a bath was a huge amount of work, with hauling the water, heating it up, and using preciously made soap, for most people who were until modern times poor and of the lower classes. Even when most homes had hot water bathrooms and bath tubs in the 1950s onward, poor people still maintained a high standard of cleanliness in between infrequent baths. Whoa, wait! Did you read that right or did I make a typo? Did I really mean to say these poor slobs maintained a “high” standard of cleanliness? Didn’t I mean that they were dirty bums? Nope, I meant what I said. How did people “stay clean” when they only had weekly baths? They were EXPECTED TO STAY CLEAN ON A ROUTINE DAILY BASIS. Even men who worked in the coal mines and so forth, or in the field, in dirty jobs, were expected to stay as clean as possible on a daily basis. How did they do that? It’s a wonderful invention called a washcloth and a bar of soap. For several thousand years humans kept themselves clean by using the hand water pump located outdoors or in modern times, brought inside via a sink through modern plumbing, to “wash up” using a bar of soap and a washcloth. Imagine that!
That is exactly how things worked in my household growing up, and that is how I maintain my body, for the most part, to this day. We had a bathtub and a warm water plumbing but my dad being born in 1903 and my mother being a war refugee kept themselves clean on a daily basis, and taught me to do the same, until one had the weekly, or if for reason more frequently, full bath. That’s one reason I have lots of wonderful washcloths, and not because I have psychic solidarity with former POW Senator John McCain who as a POW realized one’s one washcloth was one’s only and most treasured possession. People who were thrifty with resources (water and fuel) either to be thrifty, from necessity, or because to procure them meant back breaking work, learned how to maximize cleanliness while causing a small “footprint” on earth resources over a period of hundreds of years. I have persistently favored a bar of a good soap, washcloths, and a once or twice a week bath, PERIOD.
The exception to what I outlined above was that small children received daily baths (and think about it that usually was in the kitchen sink or in a basin.) I still remember very well the small white galvanized basin that as a baby I was put into and washed: not filling up the tub until I was older. The basin had a red rim and two holes, which fascinated me as a baby (the holes were for hanging the basin if needed). So babies were washed daily, even by the poor, since they were seated in a small basin that was easy to fill with warm water. They didn’t drown too many babies back then while “bathing them” either. Being thrifty is also being safe, in many cases. The other exception in the 1950’s was when more and more kids, even in poor neighborhoods, had sports activities and access to school showers. People today do not realize what a change that was in how things were. So my brother was expected to shower at school, if he could, when he was in sports. Our cheap mother would otherwise argue and begrudge him using the shower or the tub in the house. See, I can share this with you because as I’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, I’m old enough to have personally experienced and can witness to you how the older generations lived, how they thrived, and how they coped and made do.
So let’s look at this wonderfully “clean” generation. We have droughts everywhere and the cost of water is going up, but people think they are filthy and damned if they don’t have a lavish shower, where the water runs down the drain, every day. Do they use regular biodegradable bars of soap? Nope. They use “bath products,” which are filled with chemicals that damage the environment and also the skin. So rather than “keep it clean in between” on a daily basis as my generation did (except for the rich ones of course who always had what they wanted, LOL), these same young people who worry about one’s “carbon footprint” sneer at someone like me who “keeps it clean in between” and who does not take a daily shower.
The same is true of washing one’s hair. NO ONE washed their hair on a daily basis anywhere in the world, EVER, until the last fifty years or so. People understood that washing the hair strips it of its vital oils and makes the scalp unhealthy, rather than “clean.” This is the origin of the old saying “one hundred strokes” came from: women used to brush or comb their hair with one hundred strokes every night to stimulate the scalp and distribute the hair’s natural oil. (That, by the way, is what a bird does when it “preens” its feathers. The bird is grasping each feather in its beak or bill, squeezing until the oil glands exude oil, and then spreads the oil in an even coating over each feather. That is not just beauty treatment; that is survival necessity as birds must be waterproofed using their natural oil in order to survive). Women would wash their hair on the weekly ‘bath day’ and to keep it clean in between they would comb or brush their hair and scalp with one hundred strokes.
The downfall of soap came about through two causes. One is the desire to have beautiful fragrance at a cheap price, so instead of using genuinely natural scented flowers and herbs, modern “bath products” are packed with artificial chemicals and colors that look and smell “like” “natural” substances, but are not. Indeed people are just scratching the surface at realizing how packed with cancer and pollution causing chemical such “cleanliness” products are. The other is the obsession with germs and doing a “thorough” cleaning, which means packing cleansers with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other chemical compounds, rather than the good old formula of oil/lye and abrasive. All of this crap, along with the wasted water of daily showers and the heating energy uses, is squandered each and every day by millions of people who think they are somehow better people for it than their grandparents who kept themselves clean as needed, and not according to one’s overheated imagination.
I spoke up about this through my local Audubon society at a city council hearing when I was in high school (1969-1970 as I recall) when modern laundry detergents, packed with nitrogen and phosphorus, were causing the lakes to be destroyed via algae blooms. For forty years I have been warning that the “cleanliness” craze was helping to destroy the planet (while, ironically, no one wants to build latrines for the over one billion people in the world who still crap in the fields and the streets). People would read and drool over science fiction like “Dune,” while then having their daily shower packed with artificial chemicals that harm both the environment and the body’s health, rather than enhance it. People don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom or handling raw food, but boy, they brag about their daily showers and their hair gels. They pay to go to fitness centers but they sneer at me for using a washcloth at the sink, as needed, and scrubbing, rather than standing like a rich moron under a shower and letting the water run down the drain.
For quite a while I have given up. I buy the lotions and bath potions in the dollar store because I like how the pretty bottles look, and artificial fragrance is all that the average person can get these days. I rub the hand creams packed with chemicals into my hands because frankly, my dears, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, since no one acts upon my warnings (except to make things worse, apparently) anyway. But that is one reason why I still buy and use Vaseline. No, not because like so many people I dream about anal sex. Vaseline is a natural product (from the petroleum process) that is great for skin care. My stepfather, bless his soul, used it for his aching muscles when he would work as a car mechanic, finding it helped far more than the chemical laden modern products. So people giggle at my washcloth as needed, my bars of soap, my Vaseline, my preference for a bath than a shower, while at the same time they are destroying the planet and making carbon and water “footprints” bigger than the clown shoes of Bozo the Clown.
So that takes us back to Biblical times. Jesus did not shower. Moses did not shower. Mary did not shower. Peter not only did not shower but he worked as a fisherman, and the gutting and cleaning of fish is one smelly job. The Prophet (PBUH) did not shower. Further, in the Qur’an you can read with great clarity what the spiritual philosophy behind the Bible scriptures is but that most moderns seem to miss. Washing was done in Biblical times primarily for 1) honoring God and 2) as hospitality. People washed to maintain their cleanliness before God, not because God was allocating bodily shower times. Thus the Bible contains instructions for the Israelites for RITUAL washing. Further, as everyone walked the “must wash” “bits” were the feet, and as hospitality, a host would provide such water and a basin and towels. This is why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, not because you were getting a glimpse of Biblical water hygiene. So here is where the Qur’an makes this clear for Bible readers who somehow miss that point. The Qur’an explains that worshippers are to wash their feet, their arms up to the elbows, and the face before worshipping God. The Qur’an then says that because God is not trying to make it difficult for people that if water cannot be found then sand can be used for the ritual cleaning. Again, it is impossible for the observant reader to miss that when the scriptures allude to washing it is only for ritual (worship of God) and hospitality reasons. The scriptures are not designed to remind a person to “keep it clean in between” since that’s just part of life and common sense is it not?
Further, what does God command when he wants a good odor in front of him? Not to squander the world’s water with prideful daily showers when they are not needed. No, God asks for sacrifice of incense at the incense altar when he wants a “good odor.” God has never sent a worshipper away for not bathing often enough or not smelling good. Sheesh!
I mention this because of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” old adage that has absolutely no Biblical or scriptural basis whatsoever. I mean, the scriptures do not tell people how often to go pee and poop since that is an “as needed” basis that has nothing to do with sanctity, does it not? But speaking of which, here is more scriptural history for you. During Biblical times people peed and pooped wherever it was convenient. It was often done in the fields since fertilizer came from both human and animal waste. People would “go” whenever and wherever they had to go. They did not have community locations or latrines, as logical as that may seem today, for the reason I just mentioned, that the fields were viewed as benefiting from whatever human or animal soil is placed there. But archeologists recently found evidence that one sect, centered in one village actually had a location outside of the village where people trekked to do their business. That was a great rarity and actually gave modern scientists realization that what seems like advancement in “cleanliness” actually caused a problem. Analysis of the soil along the path to the common latrine reveals that there was a higher evidence of harmful bacteria around that village on that path, rather than less. Why? Because people tracked the bacteria on their feet in the same places over a long period of time, allowing concentrations of bad stuff to build up rather than disperse naturally. Sanitation illness may have been HIGHER among the village that had the shared location to void outside of the village than the other Biblical villages where people just went, mostly in the fields, where it was convenient, and did not beat a path of bad germs.
This is another example of how modern people are too quick at thinking they are superior to “the old ways” and so much “cleaner.” I’m all for latrines and toilets (and again, why are over a billion people in the world not having their sewage concentrated and treated, if moderns are so interested in cleanliness). But think about that example, where without understanding the transmission of germs, that one sect’s village might have thought they had a great idea, which is everyone walk one path to a common place to poop, but instead made a germ highway that could not biodegrade, while the more primitive majority system of “going” in the fields when one needed to meant that nature could handle the biodegradation more thoroughly and without spreading and packing down germ pathways.
Before they were conquered by the whites the American Indians of the plains, the Lakota in particular, often had individuals who lived to their nineties in age and even their hundreds. Yet they did so without having daily showers and chemical laden cleansers. How did they do it? There are two keys. One is that the buffalo meat was incredibly healthy for them, along with the other natural foods that they ate. The other was that they remained active. People don’t “live longer” or are “cleaner” by having daily showers with huge carbon footprints laden with artificially scented and colored chemicals that then rush out the drain to pollute the environment, resist biodegrading and possibly cause cancers.
If I ever attend a Steelers game (which I have a lot of trouble imagining) I won’t mind at all waving my “terrible towel” except that, being mostly modest and authentic, it will be one of my “terrible washcloths.” Perhaps I could attach a hard milled bar of soap with a chain to the end of a stick and wave it as a medieval flail as my environmental and cleanliness message. Course a bar of soap, even as a flail, never hurt anyone, but a chemical filled plastic (pollutes and large footprint) pump containing a chemically filled “liquid soap” would probably do much more harm, as it most certainly does in reality. A bar of soap (for those of you who have forgotten what they look like) dissolves after use, is highly biodegradable, and comes in a waxed paper wrapper, which is also mostly harmless and biodegradable. But hey, why go with that when you can mock while using your daily high footprint plastic container and chemical biodegradable resistant goop that is flushed down the drain in order to strain the water purity even further than it already is? Who really “smells bad” in THAT case?
I hope that you have found this “helpful.”
Here's the reading from the Qur'an:
Surah 4:43 O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know (well) what you say
[This is saying to not go to prayer while drunk but wait until one is sober. Alcohol is of course forbidden in general in Islam, but God here is specifically prohibiting approaching him in prayer while 'impaired.']
nor when you are under obligation to perform a bath
[This means that you must first perform any ritual washing]
-unless (you are) traveling on the road
[In which case one can pray as needed along the way and take the measures listed below]
-until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water,
betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning; Forgiving.
So this is not a list of times, places and methods to wash the body as one would take a modern shower, but rather it indicates the circumstances under which one must ritually wash before approaching God. So if you have ritually washed, but then before you arrive at the prayer place one of the above circumstances occur (such as going to the bathroom) and you are no longer near the water place, you can use pure earth (sand) to wash one's face and hands.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Capitalism/financial crisis: relevant ancient history
Besides God, there is nothing more important to humanity than good stewardship of the earth. By this I mean the basics, such as the ability of humans to grow food and feed all of the population (without imposing population controls) and for humans to wisely manage the ecosystems so that flora and fauna can continue to grow and flourish, and not meet extinction unless it is genuinely their time.
People must learn to be shepherds of the wild and natural flora and fauna, being activist within the natural order of things. Thus they should not be blind exploiters, nor should they be laissez faire protectionists (where they protect the land but then do not lift a finger to either prune or encourage the species within). It is not a coincidence that God gave humans to understand that the earth is a garden because gardeners tend to their garden; they neither exploit the garden nor do they seal it off to be "all natural."
Why do I mention this? It is important to understand that more of humanity's education, jobs and interest must be redirected away from the false (electronic entertainment for example) and more toward the reality of tending to the earth. That is what genuine "green jobs" should be.
I also mention this as part of my helping people to realign their thinking back to reality, and to find their way back to sanity, and back away from the freak show societal delusions. So I want to explain to you something that used to be well understood, but I'm not sure it is taught in schools anymore.
Why did humans invent writing and number systems so they can count? Not to write down stories. Not to label the great buildings with the names of the kings. Not to develop Egyptian hieroglyphs for memorializing the dead. Humans invented writing and counting for one simple reason: to inventory their food supplies.
The earliest writing is preserved from Sumeria, now known as Iraq, in the form of clay tablets and also"cylinder seals." These are blocks of stones shaped like tubes, so that when one rolls the seal the message is also unrolled. As a former antiquities collector I always wanted to add a Sumerian cylinder seal to my collection, but did not get the opportunity to afford one.
When experts decipher the very earliest of human writing, they do not find sacred scripture or the deeds of mythical or real kings. They find boring crop reports, preserved on many clay tablets. Later tablets, but more often the cylinders, were used to depict scenes, history and divine beliefs.
Remember, then, those crop reports were not boring for people who live and die based on what they can grow in that season. Just ask those in Africa and Asia, and those in drought areas elsewhere today, and you will realize that all of mundane life is ultimately summarized and glorified in the ability of the good earth to provide for humans who are fruitful and who multiply, those who share the blessings of earth with new infants, and not resent, as so many "greens" seem to do, new life and new mouths to feed.
Sometimes it is very helpful to remember that writing, which is used so much for "entertainment" and agenda driven purposes today, and numbers, which have also been given by some people a weird and incorrect supernatural and superstitious importance, would not have been invented at all if people did not realize the most fundamental need, which is to provide the goodness of adequate food for all who need it. The old saying is that "necessity is the mother of invention." Writing and counting were invented because of the need to understand and inventory food supplies. Once writing and counting were invented, it is later that they are used for other purposes.
This, by the way, is one reason that Abraham was so wealthy: it was not gold or silver, but agricultural goods and flocks, so that his family could grow and support with love all who were born within it. Wealth among early humans was measured by counting one's flocks and one's harvest, so one knew that one could support their family and contribute to the clan and tribe's survival.
Sometimes to disinfect the skewing of mindset that has taken place, and what moderns take for granted, it is useful to think back to what used to be taught with some detail in schools, which is the agricultural basis for not only capitalism (which I explained in many previous blog posts) but also writing and counting. Thus people ascribe very strange "purposes" to the written word and to numbers, without understanding that they serve humans, and humans do not serve the written word or numbers.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
If you read articles about cylinder seals, you find that they speak almost exclusively of the more "glamorous" topics, such as deities and history, since that is, of course, what they were later used for and are of the most interest to archaeologists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seals
This is a great introduction to the beginning of agriculture in the area of Sumeria, and also the written tools I describe here in this blog.
http://www.nlcs.k12.in.us/oljrhi/brown/mesopotamia/meso.htm
But the more boring history indicates what I have explained above, which is that it was not the desire to record history that promoted writing and counting (since oral history continued very strongly after writing and counting were invented), but that the actual inventions of writing and counting centered around the essential inventory of food stuffs, both their aquisitions storage and their trade.
People must learn to be shepherds of the wild and natural flora and fauna, being activist within the natural order of things. Thus they should not be blind exploiters, nor should they be laissez faire protectionists (where they protect the land but then do not lift a finger to either prune or encourage the species within). It is not a coincidence that God gave humans to understand that the earth is a garden because gardeners tend to their garden; they neither exploit the garden nor do they seal it off to be "all natural."
Why do I mention this? It is important to understand that more of humanity's education, jobs and interest must be redirected away from the false (electronic entertainment for example) and more toward the reality of tending to the earth. That is what genuine "green jobs" should be.
I also mention this as part of my helping people to realign their thinking back to reality, and to find their way back to sanity, and back away from the freak show societal delusions. So I want to explain to you something that used to be well understood, but I'm not sure it is taught in schools anymore.
Why did humans invent writing and number systems so they can count? Not to write down stories. Not to label the great buildings with the names of the kings. Not to develop Egyptian hieroglyphs for memorializing the dead. Humans invented writing and counting for one simple reason: to inventory their food supplies.
The earliest writing is preserved from Sumeria, now known as Iraq, in the form of clay tablets and also"cylinder seals." These are blocks of stones shaped like tubes, so that when one rolls the seal the message is also unrolled. As a former antiquities collector I always wanted to add a Sumerian cylinder seal to my collection, but did not get the opportunity to afford one.
When experts decipher the very earliest of human writing, they do not find sacred scripture or the deeds of mythical or real kings. They find boring crop reports, preserved on many clay tablets. Later tablets, but more often the cylinders, were used to depict scenes, history and divine beliefs.
Remember, then, those crop reports were not boring for people who live and die based on what they can grow in that season. Just ask those in Africa and Asia, and those in drought areas elsewhere today, and you will realize that all of mundane life is ultimately summarized and glorified in the ability of the good earth to provide for humans who are fruitful and who multiply, those who share the blessings of earth with new infants, and not resent, as so many "greens" seem to do, new life and new mouths to feed.
Sometimes it is very helpful to remember that writing, which is used so much for "entertainment" and agenda driven purposes today, and numbers, which have also been given by some people a weird and incorrect supernatural and superstitious importance, would not have been invented at all if people did not realize the most fundamental need, which is to provide the goodness of adequate food for all who need it. The old saying is that "necessity is the mother of invention." Writing and counting were invented because of the need to understand and inventory food supplies. Once writing and counting were invented, it is later that they are used for other purposes.
This, by the way, is one reason that Abraham was so wealthy: it was not gold or silver, but agricultural goods and flocks, so that his family could grow and support with love all who were born within it. Wealth among early humans was measured by counting one's flocks and one's harvest, so one knew that one could support their family and contribute to the clan and tribe's survival.
Sometimes to disinfect the skewing of mindset that has taken place, and what moderns take for granted, it is useful to think back to what used to be taught with some detail in schools, which is the agricultural basis for not only capitalism (which I explained in many previous blog posts) but also writing and counting. Thus people ascribe very strange "purposes" to the written word and to numbers, without understanding that they serve humans, and humans do not serve the written word or numbers.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
If you read articles about cylinder seals, you find that they speak almost exclusively of the more "glamorous" topics, such as deities and history, since that is, of course, what they were later used for and are of the most interest to archaeologists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seals
This is a great introduction to the beginning of agriculture in the area of Sumeria, and also the written tools I describe here in this blog.
http://www.nlcs.k12.in.us/oljrhi/brown/mesopotamia/meso.htm
But the more boring history indicates what I have explained above, which is that it was not the desire to record history that promoted writing and counting (since oral history continued very strongly after writing and counting were invented), but that the actual inventions of writing and counting centered around the essential inventory of food stuffs, both their aquisitions storage and their trade.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
American Presidency case study: FDR
I have a small case study for you about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this I want to demonstrate how accurate understanding of history must be personal but not personalized. Here is the difference.
One cannot really understand a period in history without having been there, or spoken to someone who was there. People who were on the scene in a historical period are called “contemporaries.” Sure, you will find a difference of opinion among contemporaries, but very rarely will you find a difference of opinion about the essential facts and zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Thus it is essential to obtain and preserve the personal experience of contemporaries during any historic period.
However, it is a mistake to “personalize” a historic period. By that I mean to impose a theory or belief of one’s own back in time onto a previous period. That is one of the greatest and most common intellectual mistakes of the past forty years. I saw the beginning of it in college in the early 1970’s. Another word for this phenomenon is “revisionist” history but there is a difference. Genuine revisionist history is an attempt by the current state and intellectuals to rewrite or reshape history in a way that is less embarrassing and more supportive of the current regimes, and there is a long history of that. However, that is not as serious a problem as what I am speaking of in the “personalizing” of history. Governments and their toady intellectuals may produce “revisionist” history, but scholars always maintain the facts of contemporary accounts and thus when the zeal for revisionism passes, people can pick up again with studying the actual facts of the previous times.
Personalizing of history is a far murkier, sloppier and dangerous endeavor and habit because it results from a genuine misunderstanding of how people used to live and think. People who personalize history think that the way they think now is the way people used to think and thus motivated their behavior. Here is a silly example as an analogy.
Suppose that years from now scholars try to understand why the IPOD was so popular, because it has gone out of existence. Perhaps society has changed so that everyone likes the same music and so no one has personal players and custom play lists anymore. So scholars are trying to understand why IPODS were so popular. They study the historical information and learn that there was a wide variety of tastes in music, that everyone had their own favorites, and that also the IPOD allowed the listening of one’s own music in a variety of settings. So these scholars understand by reading contemporary accounts why IPOD was so popular and how it was used even though they no longer “relate” since in that theoretical time in the future everyone likes the same songs.
Now, here is how revisionist history would work. Suppose the government has just spent millions of dollars installing public address systems that play the songs that everyone likes. They are genuinely worried about an individualistic “retro” movement whereby people are interested in marginal types of music again and thus would oppose the shared investment in the public music systems. Revisionists would not hide that people used to have IPODS but would “explain” via “spin” that people were “forced” to spend their own hard earned money on individual systems because the government did not provide public shared music systems. So one still had access to the facts and contemporary accounts, but revisionist history “explains” the facts in terms that put a more positive light on current agendas.
A personalized view of history would honestly misunderstand even the contemporary accounts that are right in front of their eyes since those moderns are no longer capable of understanding people who used to have individual taste in music. Thus they would make up totally bogus interpretations of the past usage of IPODS that are “natural” and “obvious” to how they are living at that time. They might say, for example, that “IPODS were so popular because the government at that time sent out subliminal secret messages that kept the IPOD users ensnared in IPOD use.” So they would read the playlist of someone who lived a hundred years before them and go “Yeah, sure, I bet” as the long deceased author wrote about how much he liked his own mixed playlist of rap and jazz. You could show them a thousand playlists, each different and each reflecting an individual love of music, and these people would sneer and say, “Oh, sure, the hypnosis worked really well.”
Even if they are not conspiracy theory oriented (that being one of the great fuels of erroneous personalized views of history) lack of intellectual rigor and empathy for earlier times in history can also cause erroneous personalized view of history. For example, suppose the people are all miserable and kind of bleak souls in the future (even with their shared liking of the same music, LOL). They assume that people have always been miserable and bleak. So they would figure that IPOD usage was popular because people were trying to escape that period’s “misery and bleakness.” It would never occur to them that people were not always the miserable sad sacks that they are, and thus they interpret history by imposing current feelings on the past and thus totally distorting and warping history.
By looking at FDR and what he did during the two great crises, the Recession and World War II, one can see an example of a current personalizing of his era. So I want to tell you a small story that illustrates the importance of not doing that, and instead embracing contemporary zeitgeist of the actual time as it truly was.
In the middle 1970’s I visited FDR’s home at Hyde Park.
http://www.nps.gov/hofr
It is a beautiful house in New York State on the Hudson River. There was a warmth and humanity about the house that I was able to directly compare to the other mansion we toured that day, which was the Vanderbilt mansion that was grander but colder.
FDR died April 12, 1945 so we visited his house almost thirty years after he had died and, therefore, there were many people alive who remember those times. In other words, there were many contemporaries walking around who lived during FDR’s term in office from March 4, 1933 for the twelve years until his death. His house was a popular touring spot and so we ran into many people who were there, and there is no other way to describe it, to pay homage to his memory and express their gratitude for what he had done.
As we chatted with the various others touring the house and the grounds, time after time we were told that they were there because they loved FDR and were grateful for what he had done to combat the Recession. These tourists would tell us specific stories about jobs he created that they benefited from, or other activities that helped them to keep body and soul together and survive those terrible long years of the Recession. In particular in his office, looking at his very desk, there would be a hush and often people’s eyes would tear up.
Political commentators today like to cast aspersion on how much FDR “really did” and they have a cold and clinical view of those times. They are not being scholarly because they are totally dismissive of contemporary accounts of not only the facts but the zeitgeist. Thus it would be easy for one of them to be on a talk show or to talk to an individual young person and tell their audience that FDR “really didn’t do all that much” and that “much of what he did was harmful.” That simply is not true.
I cannot emphasis enough that you cannot have an accurate view of history by looking only at a “catalog of mistakes.” Modern commentators totally dismiss zeitgeist and the reality of the ordinary people in favor of only listing “mistakes” and “overreaching” that completely misses the genius of what FDR did accomplish. This is true not only of FDR but of all historical eras and personages. Modern people think they are being all clever and skeptical by looking for warts and listing mistakes and then drawing conclusions about the goodness or effectiveness of a person or a historical era. Yet reality is the sum total of all that was being done and not just a list of what people think were shortcomings.
To use the IPOD example, suppose that future historians only reported how many people did not have IPODS. So if you looked up “IPOD” in the future Wikipedia, you would read only one entry: “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.” That is it. There is no information about what an IPOD is, how many people had one, what they used it for, and how much they valued having one. All that you found in the Wikipedia entry is the bleak and repressive statement that implies elitism and some sort of wrong done, “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.”
That is what modern pundits and would be historians have become, in both secular and most egregiously in faith history. All they report is the “problems” and the “errors” and ignore the ninety nine percent of normal life that is good and in times of crisis maintained through either secular or faith deeds. FDR is becoming the poster child for this erroneous and even sinister personalizing of history. There is no way one can truly transmit the look in the eyes of the people I saw, humble and ordinary people, who had come to Hyde Park to see the desk and the home of the President who they said “saved the country.”
I was and am still today remarkably moved by the encounters with those who loved FDR so much, those who were the “real people,” the average people, who were certain because they lived it that through his jobs creation and other programs they were able to survive. By the way, during that time I was married into a very astute family of professional historians, so this was not schmaltz. Even when they knew he had done “bad things” like “pack the Supreme Court” they knew the facts of the overall context of all the positive and essential that he had achieved. So there is no substitute for historians who have a comprehensive view of the full context of the time, both the facts and the actual experiences and perceptions of the people who lived in those times.
So to summarize, be aware that there are two problems in modern interpretations of historical times. One is deliberate and quite customary, called “revisionist history.” The other is an unconscious and thus pernicious and dangerous imposing of the cloud of emotion and distortion of the present by some onto their view of history, casting it into a mold that it simply did not occupy at all. The best cure for this is to read contemporary literature of the time as much as possible, including textbooks that were written soon after and not years later when they themselves tend to be very agenda and revisionist driven. I see this, for example, in writings about George Washington. Even if there is a glow around the older works they are more accurate factually, because in the effort to “stamp out the glow” moderns also stamp out their understanding of the times and thus a lot of the context and the facts too.
Readings from FDR’s inaugural addresses:
…Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only the by standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honestly, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the value of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relieve activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly…
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1933
When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision-to speed the time when there would be for all people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless, and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need-the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men...
Second Inaugural Address
Wednesday, January 20, 1937
One cannot really understand a period in history without having been there, or spoken to someone who was there. People who were on the scene in a historical period are called “contemporaries.” Sure, you will find a difference of opinion among contemporaries, but very rarely will you find a difference of opinion about the essential facts and zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Thus it is essential to obtain and preserve the personal experience of contemporaries during any historic period.
However, it is a mistake to “personalize” a historic period. By that I mean to impose a theory or belief of one’s own back in time onto a previous period. That is one of the greatest and most common intellectual mistakes of the past forty years. I saw the beginning of it in college in the early 1970’s. Another word for this phenomenon is “revisionist” history but there is a difference. Genuine revisionist history is an attempt by the current state and intellectuals to rewrite or reshape history in a way that is less embarrassing and more supportive of the current regimes, and there is a long history of that. However, that is not as serious a problem as what I am speaking of in the “personalizing” of history. Governments and their toady intellectuals may produce “revisionist” history, but scholars always maintain the facts of contemporary accounts and thus when the zeal for revisionism passes, people can pick up again with studying the actual facts of the previous times.
Personalizing of history is a far murkier, sloppier and dangerous endeavor and habit because it results from a genuine misunderstanding of how people used to live and think. People who personalize history think that the way they think now is the way people used to think and thus motivated their behavior. Here is a silly example as an analogy.
Suppose that years from now scholars try to understand why the IPOD was so popular, because it has gone out of existence. Perhaps society has changed so that everyone likes the same music and so no one has personal players and custom play lists anymore. So scholars are trying to understand why IPODS were so popular. They study the historical information and learn that there was a wide variety of tastes in music, that everyone had their own favorites, and that also the IPOD allowed the listening of one’s own music in a variety of settings. So these scholars understand by reading contemporary accounts why IPOD was so popular and how it was used even though they no longer “relate” since in that theoretical time in the future everyone likes the same songs.
Now, here is how revisionist history would work. Suppose the government has just spent millions of dollars installing public address systems that play the songs that everyone likes. They are genuinely worried about an individualistic “retro” movement whereby people are interested in marginal types of music again and thus would oppose the shared investment in the public music systems. Revisionists would not hide that people used to have IPODS but would “explain” via “spin” that people were “forced” to spend their own hard earned money on individual systems because the government did not provide public shared music systems. So one still had access to the facts and contemporary accounts, but revisionist history “explains” the facts in terms that put a more positive light on current agendas.
A personalized view of history would honestly misunderstand even the contemporary accounts that are right in front of their eyes since those moderns are no longer capable of understanding people who used to have individual taste in music. Thus they would make up totally bogus interpretations of the past usage of IPODS that are “natural” and “obvious” to how they are living at that time. They might say, for example, that “IPODS were so popular because the government at that time sent out subliminal secret messages that kept the IPOD users ensnared in IPOD use.” So they would read the playlist of someone who lived a hundred years before them and go “Yeah, sure, I bet” as the long deceased author wrote about how much he liked his own mixed playlist of rap and jazz. You could show them a thousand playlists, each different and each reflecting an individual love of music, and these people would sneer and say, “Oh, sure, the hypnosis worked really well.”
Even if they are not conspiracy theory oriented (that being one of the great fuels of erroneous personalized views of history) lack of intellectual rigor and empathy for earlier times in history can also cause erroneous personalized view of history. For example, suppose the people are all miserable and kind of bleak souls in the future (even with their shared liking of the same music, LOL). They assume that people have always been miserable and bleak. So they would figure that IPOD usage was popular because people were trying to escape that period’s “misery and bleakness.” It would never occur to them that people were not always the miserable sad sacks that they are, and thus they interpret history by imposing current feelings on the past and thus totally distorting and warping history.
By looking at FDR and what he did during the two great crises, the Recession and World War II, one can see an example of a current personalizing of his era. So I want to tell you a small story that illustrates the importance of not doing that, and instead embracing contemporary zeitgeist of the actual time as it truly was.
In the middle 1970’s I visited FDR’s home at Hyde Park.
http://www.nps.gov/hofr
It is a beautiful house in New York State on the Hudson River. There was a warmth and humanity about the house that I was able to directly compare to the other mansion we toured that day, which was the Vanderbilt mansion that was grander but colder.
FDR died April 12, 1945 so we visited his house almost thirty years after he had died and, therefore, there were many people alive who remember those times. In other words, there were many contemporaries walking around who lived during FDR’s term in office from March 4, 1933 for the twelve years until his death. His house was a popular touring spot and so we ran into many people who were there, and there is no other way to describe it, to pay homage to his memory and express their gratitude for what he had done.
As we chatted with the various others touring the house and the grounds, time after time we were told that they were there because they loved FDR and were grateful for what he had done to combat the Recession. These tourists would tell us specific stories about jobs he created that they benefited from, or other activities that helped them to keep body and soul together and survive those terrible long years of the Recession. In particular in his office, looking at his very desk, there would be a hush and often people’s eyes would tear up.
Political commentators today like to cast aspersion on how much FDR “really did” and they have a cold and clinical view of those times. They are not being scholarly because they are totally dismissive of contemporary accounts of not only the facts but the zeitgeist. Thus it would be easy for one of them to be on a talk show or to talk to an individual young person and tell their audience that FDR “really didn’t do all that much” and that “much of what he did was harmful.” That simply is not true.
I cannot emphasis enough that you cannot have an accurate view of history by looking only at a “catalog of mistakes.” Modern commentators totally dismiss zeitgeist and the reality of the ordinary people in favor of only listing “mistakes” and “overreaching” that completely misses the genius of what FDR did accomplish. This is true not only of FDR but of all historical eras and personages. Modern people think they are being all clever and skeptical by looking for warts and listing mistakes and then drawing conclusions about the goodness or effectiveness of a person or a historical era. Yet reality is the sum total of all that was being done and not just a list of what people think were shortcomings.
To use the IPOD example, suppose that future historians only reported how many people did not have IPODS. So if you looked up “IPOD” in the future Wikipedia, you would read only one entry: “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.” That is it. There is no information about what an IPOD is, how many people had one, what they used it for, and how much they valued having one. All that you found in the Wikipedia entry is the bleak and repressive statement that implies elitism and some sort of wrong done, “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.”
That is what modern pundits and would be historians have become, in both secular and most egregiously in faith history. All they report is the “problems” and the “errors” and ignore the ninety nine percent of normal life that is good and in times of crisis maintained through either secular or faith deeds. FDR is becoming the poster child for this erroneous and even sinister personalizing of history. There is no way one can truly transmit the look in the eyes of the people I saw, humble and ordinary people, who had come to Hyde Park to see the desk and the home of the President who they said “saved the country.”
I was and am still today remarkably moved by the encounters with those who loved FDR so much, those who were the “real people,” the average people, who were certain because they lived it that through his jobs creation and other programs they were able to survive. By the way, during that time I was married into a very astute family of professional historians, so this was not schmaltz. Even when they knew he had done “bad things” like “pack the Supreme Court” they knew the facts of the overall context of all the positive and essential that he had achieved. So there is no substitute for historians who have a comprehensive view of the full context of the time, both the facts and the actual experiences and perceptions of the people who lived in those times.
So to summarize, be aware that there are two problems in modern interpretations of historical times. One is deliberate and quite customary, called “revisionist history.” The other is an unconscious and thus pernicious and dangerous imposing of the cloud of emotion and distortion of the present by some onto their view of history, casting it into a mold that it simply did not occupy at all. The best cure for this is to read contemporary literature of the time as much as possible, including textbooks that were written soon after and not years later when they themselves tend to be very agenda and revisionist driven. I see this, for example, in writings about George Washington. Even if there is a glow around the older works they are more accurate factually, because in the effort to “stamp out the glow” moderns also stamp out their understanding of the times and thus a lot of the context and the facts too.
Readings from FDR’s inaugural addresses:
…Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only the by standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honestly, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the value of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relieve activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly…
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1933
When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision-to speed the time when there would be for all people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless, and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need-the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men...
Second Inaugural Address
Wednesday, January 20, 1937
Well, if you think about it, it is not too difficult to see many parallels between what FDR said and the great financial crisis and damage to the economy and self esteem of the workers and the homeowner (to say nothing of the homeless and the jobless) today.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Another thought about American Presidents
I have the feeling that many readers enjoyed my blogging about the religion of the American Presidents and why certain faiths are so represented historically. I also have the feeling that by grouping the Presidents in sets of ten, showing that we have had four sets of tens Presidents, plus four, that readers, especially the young, have a better feeling for the span of our history as a country. It is both a mature nation and a very young one.
I've always been a visual learner myself and teacher. I find that grouping information in certain ways helps give a quick and rich insight into what might otherwise be obscured by a lot of detailed text. For example, let's look at the grouping of ten Presidents in sequence again for another couple of insights.
If ten Presidents had only one four year term, a group of ten Presidents in a row represents only forty years. If a few of them have two four year terms that bumps the span of ten Presidents to forty eight or fifty two years. Think about that: a group of ten Presidents is well within a lifespan of an observer. Traditionally the phrase "one generation" refers to thirty years. So a group of ten Presidents could be thought of that way, in terms of generations, but isn't the idea that it's between forty and sixty years kind of interesting? It makes it more real because now you can imagine someone who lives a good long life as seeing over a fourth of the Presidents that we have ever had in our history. That helps you to understand how young our country really is, and it is far too soon and inappropriate to feel all old and jaded about the USA. I like that President Obama seems to view it that way too.
I've mentioned this before on my blog but now in this context this small story from my own family is even more interesting. My grandparents on my dad's side owned a small hotel in upstate New York, near the border with Canada. Thus it was a real country inn kind of place but the way it used to be not the quaint image people have today. Thus is was a saloon, a place to get home cooked meals, and lodging for my family and rooms for those who needed, for example, the single elderly.
Think about this. When my dad was a young man in the hotel there was a Civil War veteran who lived there, who went by the name "Pappy." Yep, you read that right. My father (who was born in 1903) personally knew a Civil War veteran and that veteran lived in my grandparents hotel, since he was a single and elderly gentleman. My dad died when I was a young child, so I did not have a chance to have conversations about such things, but my cousin who was much older than me told me about Pappy. I think that my cousin also met Pappy, but I'm not sure as Pappy would have had to have lived to quite a long age. However, what is significant is that between me and my father, one generation, we reach back to someone of the time of Lincoln and the Civil War. How cool is that?
This gives you another way to look at history, doesn't it? It shows that even though a struggle for something so crucial as Civil Rights seems to take so long, with decades of sweat and blood, on the other hand such a radical and amazing change as we have seen can take place in three generational jumps: Pappy, my father, me. Lincoln was the 16Th President. Thus Pappy to my father to me spans Presidents 16 to now President Obama, who is number 44.
So young people, do not think that your parents and your grandparents are boring and have nothing interesting to tell. Ask them to tell you about the earliest President they remember, for example, and try to get some stories from them. So many of my father's generation the "World War II" generation have died and it's sad that many of their kids and grand kids just were not interested in history or their family stories. I think that President Obama is stirring more relevance, pride and interest in American history and that's one of the implications of his presidency I find thrilling and very hopeful for rejuvenating the American spirit.
Again, think about my example... I was born during President "Ike" Eisenhower's first term so I remember him as President very well. While of course I was not yet born when his predecessor President Truman was in office, I remember him as having been current and just recently stepped down from the Presidency so he was a figure of great stability and honor along with "Ike." So just in my relative youth (ha) I have memory of (Truman), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush...one of those "group of ten" Presidents, twelve if you count Truman and now President Obama!
I remember Eisenhower governing and I remember, and even watched part of, the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate. My dad, a Catholic, lived to see Kennedy win and become President, but my dad died of a heart attack well before President Kennedy was assassinated. So I've been alive for and very aware of our Presidents and national and world events for just about one fourth of the Presidents our country have had!
Just think, my dad was born during the 26Th President, Theodore Roosevelt's, first term. So my dad would have been alive for and witnessed Presidents number 26 through 35, and would have obviously seen a lot more if he had not died at an early age of chronic heart ailments. But think about it: my dad was born just "ten Presidents" after Abraham Lincoln!
See. memorizing lists of Presidents is boring. But thinking about who was President and what the issues were during the time of your grandparents and parents is VERY interesting!
So even though much of the schooling in history is dismal in our schools (and thus I try to plug in some key information for you all whenever I think of something pertinent and interesting) you can make it interesting for yourselves by just sitting down with an almanac or the Internet, of course, and look up the Presidents that correspond to the lives of your family members. Then it would be fun to ask them what they thought and what they remember about each of the earliest ones.
It's not only educational but it is reassuring.
Of course it all goes back to Washington. Regular readers know that he is my favorite President because he was the first to walk the talk. President Washington had to become in reality what was needed, first as the Commander of the Revolutionary Army and then in the new role of President. As time goes on the wonder and marvel of what Washington did only grows, it does not diminish.
Washington's birthday is February 22. Lincoln's birthday is February 12.
I remember when each day was a separate national holiday, before they became mashed together into "President's Day."
I wish they were still two separate holidays, and I think with the election of President Obama you can see why. One was the father of our country, who took the impossible dream and made it honorable and real and his birthday should be celebrated with that in mind. The other fought the great Civil War, held the Union together and emancipated the slaves. Are these not two separate wonderful glowing deeds and men in our country? Should not our kids learn about them and celebrate them on their actual birthdays as national heroes and role models?
Instead President's Day is just a long weekend, a mashing together of "something about the presidents" and endless advertisements for automobiles and their "President's Day sales!"
It was really different when I was young and the days were celebrated separately. Just a little story here. In the 1950's if you did well on a school paper you would get either a sticker, a star or a rubber stamp on the top of your paper. The rubber stamps were of holiday themes, and thus included one stamp of Washington's famous profile for Washington's Birthday and another of Lincoln's profile for Lincoln's Birthday, and kids were thrilled to get one of those stamps on their paper! Kids really cared about and role modeled Washington and Lincoln, they were NOT boring. We loved Lincoln and I'm speaking as someone who grew up in a rural white community.
I blame the schools, society's rampant commercialization, and the secularization of our nation for the degrading of our education of our kids in the Presidency and in particular those two icons and heroes of our nation, Washington and Lincoln. Sigh. Remember, when you "purge" teaching about any history that mentions religion or God you are basically whiting out of discussion and textbooks half of factual human events. Look at how I had to explain why each President was of certain faiths because that is no longer taught in schools.
Anyway, I hope that you have found this more grist for thought! I've listened all day to the Inauguration activities and am very excited and hopeful. (I totally do not understand the "blah" attitude of some news personalities who were not "Obama supporters," I mean, duh, why are they not excited?) I have always been no matter who wins because that is the American way, to "give the new guy a fair shake" to use a classic expression. The snarky partisanship is so wearying and depressive and it really ought to stop. Like I said, I remember when no matter which candidate you voted for, you were still excited and supportive when one of them won and became President, even if he "wasn't your guy." That is one of the sad things about how this country's spirit has changed. I hope that people will regain that fairness and unity of American support for their President. Lord knows I've supported all the Presidents in spirit and dignity even when they have done the most dreadful things!
I've always been a visual learner myself and teacher. I find that grouping information in certain ways helps give a quick and rich insight into what might otherwise be obscured by a lot of detailed text. For example, let's look at the grouping of ten Presidents in sequence again for another couple of insights.
If ten Presidents had only one four year term, a group of ten Presidents in a row represents only forty years. If a few of them have two four year terms that bumps the span of ten Presidents to forty eight or fifty two years. Think about that: a group of ten Presidents is well within a lifespan of an observer. Traditionally the phrase "one generation" refers to thirty years. So a group of ten Presidents could be thought of that way, in terms of generations, but isn't the idea that it's between forty and sixty years kind of interesting? It makes it more real because now you can imagine someone who lives a good long life as seeing over a fourth of the Presidents that we have ever had in our history. That helps you to understand how young our country really is, and it is far too soon and inappropriate to feel all old and jaded about the USA. I like that President Obama seems to view it that way too.
I've mentioned this before on my blog but now in this context this small story from my own family is even more interesting. My grandparents on my dad's side owned a small hotel in upstate New York, near the border with Canada. Thus it was a real country inn kind of place but the way it used to be not the quaint image people have today. Thus is was a saloon, a place to get home cooked meals, and lodging for my family and rooms for those who needed, for example, the single elderly.
Think about this. When my dad was a young man in the hotel there was a Civil War veteran who lived there, who went by the name "Pappy." Yep, you read that right. My father (who was born in 1903) personally knew a Civil War veteran and that veteran lived in my grandparents hotel, since he was a single and elderly gentleman. My dad died when I was a young child, so I did not have a chance to have conversations about such things, but my cousin who was much older than me told me about Pappy. I think that my cousin also met Pappy, but I'm not sure as Pappy would have had to have lived to quite a long age. However, what is significant is that between me and my father, one generation, we reach back to someone of the time of Lincoln and the Civil War. How cool is that?
This gives you another way to look at history, doesn't it? It shows that even though a struggle for something so crucial as Civil Rights seems to take so long, with decades of sweat and blood, on the other hand such a radical and amazing change as we have seen can take place in three generational jumps: Pappy, my father, me. Lincoln was the 16Th President. Thus Pappy to my father to me spans Presidents 16 to now President Obama, who is number 44.
So young people, do not think that your parents and your grandparents are boring and have nothing interesting to tell. Ask them to tell you about the earliest President they remember, for example, and try to get some stories from them. So many of my father's generation the "World War II" generation have died and it's sad that many of their kids and grand kids just were not interested in history or their family stories. I think that President Obama is stirring more relevance, pride and interest in American history and that's one of the implications of his presidency I find thrilling and very hopeful for rejuvenating the American spirit.
Again, think about my example... I was born during President "Ike" Eisenhower's first term so I remember him as President very well. While of course I was not yet born when his predecessor President Truman was in office, I remember him as having been current and just recently stepped down from the Presidency so he was a figure of great stability and honor along with "Ike." So just in my relative youth (ha) I have memory of (Truman), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush...one of those "group of ten" Presidents, twelve if you count Truman and now President Obama!
I remember Eisenhower governing and I remember, and even watched part of, the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate. My dad, a Catholic, lived to see Kennedy win and become President, but my dad died of a heart attack well before President Kennedy was assassinated. So I've been alive for and very aware of our Presidents and national and world events for just about one fourth of the Presidents our country have had!
Just think, my dad was born during the 26Th President, Theodore Roosevelt's, first term. So my dad would have been alive for and witnessed Presidents number 26 through 35, and would have obviously seen a lot more if he had not died at an early age of chronic heart ailments. But think about it: my dad was born just "ten Presidents" after Abraham Lincoln!
See. memorizing lists of Presidents is boring. But thinking about who was President and what the issues were during the time of your grandparents and parents is VERY interesting!
So even though much of the schooling in history is dismal in our schools (and thus I try to plug in some key information for you all whenever I think of something pertinent and interesting) you can make it interesting for yourselves by just sitting down with an almanac or the Internet, of course, and look up the Presidents that correspond to the lives of your family members. Then it would be fun to ask them what they thought and what they remember about each of the earliest ones.
It's not only educational but it is reassuring.
Of course it all goes back to Washington. Regular readers know that he is my favorite President because he was the first to walk the talk. President Washington had to become in reality what was needed, first as the Commander of the Revolutionary Army and then in the new role of President. As time goes on the wonder and marvel of what Washington did only grows, it does not diminish.
Washington's birthday is February 22. Lincoln's birthday is February 12.
I remember when each day was a separate national holiday, before they became mashed together into "President's Day."
I wish they were still two separate holidays, and I think with the election of President Obama you can see why. One was the father of our country, who took the impossible dream and made it honorable and real and his birthday should be celebrated with that in mind. The other fought the great Civil War, held the Union together and emancipated the slaves. Are these not two separate wonderful glowing deeds and men in our country? Should not our kids learn about them and celebrate them on their actual birthdays as national heroes and role models?
Instead President's Day is just a long weekend, a mashing together of "something about the presidents" and endless advertisements for automobiles and their "President's Day sales!"
It was really different when I was young and the days were celebrated separately. Just a little story here. In the 1950's if you did well on a school paper you would get either a sticker, a star or a rubber stamp on the top of your paper. The rubber stamps were of holiday themes, and thus included one stamp of Washington's famous profile for Washington's Birthday and another of Lincoln's profile for Lincoln's Birthday, and kids were thrilled to get one of those stamps on their paper! Kids really cared about and role modeled Washington and Lincoln, they were NOT boring. We loved Lincoln and I'm speaking as someone who grew up in a rural white community.
I blame the schools, society's rampant commercialization, and the secularization of our nation for the degrading of our education of our kids in the Presidency and in particular those two icons and heroes of our nation, Washington and Lincoln. Sigh. Remember, when you "purge" teaching about any history that mentions religion or God you are basically whiting out of discussion and textbooks half of factual human events. Look at how I had to explain why each President was of certain faiths because that is no longer taught in schools.
Anyway, I hope that you have found this more grist for thought! I've listened all day to the Inauguration activities and am very excited and hopeful. (I totally do not understand the "blah" attitude of some news personalities who were not "Obama supporters," I mean, duh, why are they not excited?) I have always been no matter who wins because that is the American way, to "give the new guy a fair shake" to use a classic expression. The snarky partisanship is so wearying and depressive and it really ought to stop. Like I said, I remember when no matter which candidate you voted for, you were still excited and supportive when one of them won and became President, even if he "wasn't your guy." That is one of the sad things about how this country's spirit has changed. I hope that people will regain that fairness and unity of American support for their President. Lord knows I've supported all the Presidents in spirit and dignity even when they have done the most dreadful things!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Understanding time and war, a poem
This is by Carl Sandburg, my favorite poet. In order to preserve the spacing, since I'm too computer deficient to format properly on this blog, I've added the grass special effects, LOL.
Austerlitz and Waterloo were bloody battles during the Napoleonic Wars, Gettysburg a bloody battle in the American Civil War, and Ypres and Verdun bloody battles of World War I.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -
///////////////////I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
///////////////////What place is this?
///////////////////Where are we now?
///////////////////I am the grass.
///////////////////Let me work.
Austerlitz and Waterloo were bloody battles during the Napoleonic Wars, Gettysburg a bloody battle in the American Civil War, and Ypres and Verdun bloody battles of World War I.
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -
///////////////////I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
///////////////////What place is this?
///////////////////Where are we now?
///////////////////I am the grass.
///////////////////Let me work.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
History: more about Lincoln by Ulysses Grant
Here is another fascinating excerpt from the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. The time of this excerpt is when he is the General of the Union Army, and hoping to deliver the final defeat of the Army of the Confederacy, led by General Robert E. Lee. They were in the midst of the Appomattox Campaign in Virginia, and had just had a great victory at Petersburg, south of the as yet not fallen Confederate capitol Richmond. Here is what he wrote.
Mr. Lincoln was at City Point at the time, and had been for some days. I would have let him know what I contemplated doing, only while I felt a strong conviction that the move was going to be successful, yet it might not prove so; and then I would have only added another to the many disappointments he had been suffering of the past three years. But when we started out he saw that we were moving for a purpose, and bidding us Godspeed, remained there to hear the result.
The next morning after the capture of Petersburg, I telegraphed Mr. Lincoln asking him to ride out there and see me, while I would await his arrival. I had started all the troops out early in the morning, so that after the National army left Petersburg there was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal in the streets. There was absolutely no one there, except my staff officers and, possibly, a small escort of cavalry. We had selected the piazza of a deserted house, and occupied it until the President arrived.
About the first thing that Mr. Lincoln said to me, after warm congratulations for the victory, and thanks both to myself and to the army which had accomplished it, was: “Do you know, general, that I have had a sort of a sneaking idea for some days that you intended to do something like this.” Our movements had been concealed up to this point, I no longer had any object in concealing from the President all my movements, and the objects I had in view. He remained for some days near City Point, and I communicated with him frequently and fully by telegraph.
Mr. Lincoln knew that it had been arranged for Sherman to join me at a fixed time, to co-operate in the destruction of Lee’s army. I told him that I had been very anxious to have the Eastern armies vanquish their old enemy who had so long resisted all their repeated and gallant attempts to subdue them or drive them from their capital. The Western armies had been the main successful until they had conquered all the territory from the Mississippi River to the State of North Carolina, and were now almost ready to knock at the back door of Richmond, asking admittance. I said to him that if the Western armies should be even upon the field, operating against Richmond and Lee, the credit would be given to them for the capture, by politicians and non-combatants from the section of country which those troops hailed from. It might lead to disagreeable bickering between members of Congress of the East and those of the West in some of their debates. Western members might be throwing it up to the members of the East that in the suppression of the rebellion they were not able to capture an army, or accomplish much in the way of contributing toward that end, but had to wait until the Western armies had conquered all the territory south and west of them, and then come on to help them capture the only army they had been engaged with. [Note: Imagine that! Grant records how the Union armies provided by the states were in competition to be the greater contributors to the effort in the War against slavery, vying between the Western states and the Eastern states to be allowed to be the captors of at least one of the Confederate armies on the field.]
Mr. Lincoln said he saw that now, but had never thought of it before, because his anxiety was so great that he did not care where the aid came from so the work was done.
The Army of the Potomac has every reason to be proud of its four years’ record in the suppression of the rebellion. The army it had to fight was the protection to the capital of a people which was attempting to found a nation upon the territory of the United States. Its loss would be the loss of the cause. Every energy, therefore, was put forth by the Confederacy to protect and maintain their capital. Everything else would go if it went. Lee’s army had to be strengthened to enable it to maintain its position, no matter what territory was wrested from the South in another quarter.
I never expected any such bickering as I have indicated, between the soldiers of the two sections; and fortunately, there has been one between the politicians. Possibly I am the only one who thought of the liability of such a state of things in advance.
When our conversation was at an end Mr. Lincoln mounted his horse and started on his return to City Point, while I and my staff started to join the army, now a good many miles in advance. Up to this time I had not received the report of the capture of Richmond.
Soon after I left President Lincoln I received a dispatch from General Weitzel which notified me that he had taken possession of Richmond at about 8:15 o’clock in the morning of that day, the 3d, and that he had found the city on fire in two places.
Mr. Lincoln was at City Point at the time, and had been for some days. I would have let him know what I contemplated doing, only while I felt a strong conviction that the move was going to be successful, yet it might not prove so; and then I would have only added another to the many disappointments he had been suffering of the past three years. But when we started out he saw that we were moving for a purpose, and bidding us Godspeed, remained there to hear the result.
The next morning after the capture of Petersburg, I telegraphed Mr. Lincoln asking him to ride out there and see me, while I would await his arrival. I had started all the troops out early in the morning, so that after the National army left Petersburg there was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal in the streets. There was absolutely no one there, except my staff officers and, possibly, a small escort of cavalry. We had selected the piazza of a deserted house, and occupied it until the President arrived.
About the first thing that Mr. Lincoln said to me, after warm congratulations for the victory, and thanks both to myself and to the army which had accomplished it, was: “Do you know, general, that I have had a sort of a sneaking idea for some days that you intended to do something like this.” Our movements had been concealed up to this point, I no longer had any object in concealing from the President all my movements, and the objects I had in view. He remained for some days near City Point, and I communicated with him frequently and fully by telegraph.
Mr. Lincoln knew that it had been arranged for Sherman to join me at a fixed time, to co-operate in the destruction of Lee’s army. I told him that I had been very anxious to have the Eastern armies vanquish their old enemy who had so long resisted all their repeated and gallant attempts to subdue them or drive them from their capital. The Western armies had been the main successful until they had conquered all the territory from the Mississippi River to the State of North Carolina, and were now almost ready to knock at the back door of Richmond, asking admittance. I said to him that if the Western armies should be even upon the field, operating against Richmond and Lee, the credit would be given to them for the capture, by politicians and non-combatants from the section of country which those troops hailed from. It might lead to disagreeable bickering between members of Congress of the East and those of the West in some of their debates. Western members might be throwing it up to the members of the East that in the suppression of the rebellion they were not able to capture an army, or accomplish much in the way of contributing toward that end, but had to wait until the Western armies had conquered all the territory south and west of them, and then come on to help them capture the only army they had been engaged with. [Note: Imagine that! Grant records how the Union armies provided by the states were in competition to be the greater contributors to the effort in the War against slavery, vying between the Western states and the Eastern states to be allowed to be the captors of at least one of the Confederate armies on the field.]
Mr. Lincoln said he saw that now, but had never thought of it before, because his anxiety was so great that he did not care where the aid came from so the work was done.
The Army of the Potomac has every reason to be proud of its four years’ record in the suppression of the rebellion. The army it had to fight was the protection to the capital of a people which was attempting to found a nation upon the territory of the United States. Its loss would be the loss of the cause. Every energy, therefore, was put forth by the Confederacy to protect and maintain their capital. Everything else would go if it went. Lee’s army had to be strengthened to enable it to maintain its position, no matter what territory was wrested from the South in another quarter.
I never expected any such bickering as I have indicated, between the soldiers of the two sections; and fortunately, there has been one between the politicians. Possibly I am the only one who thought of the liability of such a state of things in advance.
When our conversation was at an end Mr. Lincoln mounted his horse and started on his return to City Point, while I and my staff started to join the army, now a good many miles in advance. Up to this time I had not received the report of the capture of Richmond.
Soon after I left President Lincoln I received a dispatch from General Weitzel which notified me that he had taken possession of Richmond at about 8:15 o’clock in the morning of that day, the 3d, and that he had found the city on fire in two places.
History: San Francisco as seen by U. Grant
The Christmas season is in addition to being our very holy event a time of family and reminiscing. So I thought I’d turn to the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, former general and President of the United States, for some of his own words about what life was like in the USA during his time.
Early in his Army career, he was stationed in many places in the US, including in what were the frontier areas, including what was known as the “Wild West,” and many other places. Here is what he observed about the city of San Francisco when he first arrived there in 1852.
By the last of August the cholera had so abated that it was deemed safe to start. The disease did not break out again on the way to California, and we reached San Francisco early in September.
San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines by Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf-there was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852-was alive with people crowding to meet the minders as they came down to sell their “dust” and to “have a time.” Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding houses or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on the alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means, in the hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents had been able to support them during their minority, and to give them good educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853 there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the class described. All thought that fortunes were to be picked up, without effort, in the gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of whom now fill unknown graved; others died wrecks of their former selves, and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts. Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist.
Grant was stationed in various places along the Pacific coast until a year later he returned to San Francisco in order to catch a boat to go to Humboldt Bay in order to assume a new command to which he had been promoted (company captain).
There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast take the place filled by white pine on the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and the balance of the world.
I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been but one wharf in front of the city in 1852-Long Wharf. In 1853 the town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of the wharf when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor, with doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the streets, the eye was regaled, on every block near the water front, by the sight of players at faro. Often broken places were found in the street, large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in the early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard from since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write, found watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco Bay.
Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger scale in the city lots. These were sold “On Change,” much as stocks are now sold on Wall Street. Cash, at the time of purchase, was always paid by the broker; but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the rate of two or three cent, a month on the difference, besides commissions. The sand hills, some of them almost inaccessible to foot-passengers, were surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots-a vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices, but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and so did many such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final crash came. As the city grew, the sand hills back of the town furnished material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in 1854. Gambling house had disappeared from public view. The city had become staid and orderly.
My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage of that bill and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West.
In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support.
As I’ve commented before, I think the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is a national treasure, not only for his details of his meetings with Lincoln and of his part in restoring union in the Civil War, but for his very interesting recounting of the details of life as it was lived one hundred and fifty years ago. I hope that you have found this excerpt interesting. It gives perspective of how cities evolve, which is interesting to urban planners, no?
Early in his Army career, he was stationed in many places in the US, including in what were the frontier areas, including what was known as the “Wild West,” and many other places. Here is what he observed about the city of San Francisco when he first arrived there in 1852.
By the last of August the cholera had so abated that it was deemed safe to start. The disease did not break out again on the way to California, and we reached San Francisco early in September.
San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines by Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf-there was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852-was alive with people crowding to meet the minders as they came down to sell their “dust” and to “have a time.” Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding houses or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on the alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means, in the hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents had been able to support them during their minority, and to give them good educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853 there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the class described. All thought that fortunes were to be picked up, without effort, in the gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of whom now fill unknown graved; others died wrecks of their former selves, and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts. Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist.
Grant was stationed in various places along the Pacific coast until a year later he returned to San Francisco in order to catch a boat to go to Humboldt Bay in order to assume a new command to which he had been promoted (company captain).
There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast take the place filled by white pine on the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and the balance of the world.
I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been but one wharf in front of the city in 1852-Long Wharf. In 1853 the town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of the wharf when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor, with doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the streets, the eye was regaled, on every block near the water front, by the sight of players at faro. Often broken places were found in the street, large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in the early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard from since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write, found watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco Bay.
Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger scale in the city lots. These were sold “On Change,” much as stocks are now sold on Wall Street. Cash, at the time of purchase, was always paid by the broker; but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the rate of two or three cent, a month on the difference, besides commissions. The sand hills, some of them almost inaccessible to foot-passengers, were surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots-a vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices, but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and so did many such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final crash came. As the city grew, the sand hills back of the town furnished material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in 1854. Gambling house had disappeared from public view. The city had become staid and orderly.
My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage of that bill and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West.
In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support.
As I’ve commented before, I think the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is a national treasure, not only for his details of his meetings with Lincoln and of his part in restoring union in the Civil War, but for his very interesting recounting of the details of life as it was lived one hundred and fifty years ago. I hope that you have found this excerpt interesting. It gives perspective of how cities evolve, which is interesting to urban planners, no?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Lessons from history (4 of series)
Today I want to focus on teaching those of you who have not heard about it another form of oppression/slavery that many of you may not have learned about in school. It had a crucial input into the birth of the United States and much of our psyche regarding freedom. "Back when I was in school" this was a huge topic in history and social studies class. One cannot really understand the foundation of the United States, nor can one truly be informed on the subject of slavery, if one does not understand being "pressed" or impressment.
To put it simply, being pressed means being grabbed off of the street or out of your home, place of business, farm, bar-wherever you may be-by a gang who drags you away and forces you to serve in the British Navy. I am not exaggerating at all. If a town heard of a press gang coming they fled for their lives. Women were left wondering where their sons or husbands went, as they would vanish into thin air, as the men were found and dragged off to serve. Press gangs carried clubs and chains.
Pressing became a government policy under Queen Elizabeth I. (They don't show that tacky side of her in the romanticized modern movies, do they).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
snip
It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of King Glaude I. The Royal Navy impressed many British merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other nations.
snip
The first act legalizing this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "an act touching politick considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. The Recruiting Act 1703 was an act passed "for the increase of seamen and better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the Coal Trade".
Some apologists try to characterize pressing as being focused on those who were already able bodies seamen. However, that is not true (though clearly experience was preferred), as the very act is called "vagabond," which is an oppressive elitist name used by the upper class to describe ruffians who seemed to have no fixed abode (such as the poor).
There is a notorious event of impressment in America, before the American War of Revolution, and this was therefore a topic that future Americans, as British subjects, were very familiar with and suffered from and resented deeply. Pressing was another reason for the American Revolution and one of the two direct reasons for the little remembered but very important War of 1812 (America had to fight Britain again, from 1812-5. It was during that war that the White House was burned during the office of President Madison). Here is a description of the pre-Revolutionary War use of impressment in America:
snip
As a result of the doubt over the legality of impressment in American waters, parliament passed a new law in 1746, stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but not in America, leading to a riot in Boston the following year, and continued with the colonies, particularly New England.
snip
One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns, and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all. Four hundred of these were "retained in the service."
Notice that free Afro-Americans and slaves were pressed right along with the colonists. This is an example of how the press gangs would go systematically through an entire city and press whoever they desired.
So impressment was another example of where Americans became furious over the trampling of their rights. Remember, being pressed into the British Navy meant that you went to sea to serve for years, a virtual prisoner. This was fodder for declaring independence and fighting the War of Revolution. Since Afro-Americans, free or not, were pressed along with the whites, Afro-Americans understood that the War of Revolution was in their interest too.
The British learned from that and later during the War of 1812 in order to undermine American forces and economy, the British offered slaves pressment and other routes to escape slavery. This is well documented in the War of 1812 article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
This is important for you to understand because it shows how nations and cultures have been on the right side of being against slavery, and the wrong side of supporting slavery, for reasons other than ethics, justice and morality. The British continued to press their own citizens and foreigners, thus being one of the two triggers of the War of 1812, and so they continued to have a stance of social injustice, yet shrewdly realized that they could cause havoc in America by giving the slaves routes to escape.
So here is a description of impressment and its role in causing the War of 1812.
During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. While non-British subjects weren't impressed, Britain didn't recognize naturalised American citizenship, and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British" — as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens. While not directly mentioned as a reason for the declaration of war in the War of 1812, impressment caused serious diplomatic tension, and helped to turn American public opinion against Britain.
In other words, even though America had been free of colonial rule by Britain for several decades, and Britain had conceded defeat, the British still considered any American abroad "fair game" since they did not recognize American citizenship! When it came to pressing the rules against pressing foreigners was interpreted by the British to not apply to Americans.
Another custom of the time to man the many war and trade ships required was to capture combatant or other ships and then force the entire crew to serve. So when a ship was captured, the ship was rapidly turned into a ship of the fleet, its treasure or goods seized, and often its homeland sailors forced to be prisoners or to serve in the army or navy.
Thus even though the Patriots had won America's freedom in the Revolutionary War, they had to fight what is often called the "second war of Revolution" because the British blockaded American ships, disrupting trade and impressed anyone they got their hands on that they thought could serve on their ships. This meant going into war, since that was the reason Britain was blockading and pressing Americans, to drain resources in order to fight Napoleon in France.
And so America declared war on Britain because Britain was, essentially, strangling essential American trade between America and Europe plus Britain refused to recognize American citizenship, as in refusing to obey Britain's own law against impressing foreigners. Thus Americans had to fight their revolution all over again from 1812-5, only three American Presidents after George Washington himself.
I hope that you have found this interesting. I wanted to teach this topic for a few reasons:
1) Students and Americans in general should understand that true freedom is rarely won and kept as the result of one war, one declaration. The birth of this country and its continuity was by no means as easy as I think many people who have not been exposed to this history believe.
2) Slavery, while the most egregious of all human rights violations, should be understood in the context of a time when very few people had real rights, and slavery of one form or another could fall on just about anyone, and may only have been one ocean voyage, or one day walking down the street of New York, away. Only the highest rank people were ransomed in capture; the rest were imprisoned or forced to serve in the military. With all due respect, I think many young Afro-Americans today think that society then was as simple as free/slave, have/have not. As I demonstrated above, anyone who was not an aristocrat could have risked, both in Britain and in colonial America, being swept from your starving family and forced to go to sea, just by being declared a "vagabond" or the "navy needs you" or "we don't recognize American citizenship." America, despite the horrible wound of slavery, still came into being as a shocking example of freedom and rights at a time when that concept was virtually unknown and unrecognized in the world.
3) Studying the American Revolution, the years immediately after, and the War of 1812, one has a much clearer understanding of what difficult work it is to have genuine peace. All of the Founding Fathers deserve golden crowns for how they steered America between the continuing difficulty of Britain and France's wars, trying to be neutral and keep the peace, yet the war is often brought (repeatedly) to one's own doorstep. I can just imagine some people today, if they were "transported in time" back to the years before 1812 going "What! Another war! You warmongers!" Yet, remember, Britain blocked all of America's essential trade with Europe and also refused to recognize American citizenship and hence their rights as foreigners, causing impressment and other wrongs. Yes, the USA had to fight again for their own identity, for their freedom and their own declared rights, and their rights even under foreign law.
This is one of the important lessons to discern a "just war." A war when one's own sovereignty (the right to be an independent country) is threatened and denied, and one's citizens oppressed or murdered, is a just war. Other wars must be identified as what they are, which is maybe just, maybe not, since if they do not involve one's sovereignty, then it may be a war of convenience, a war of going after some resources, or that very slippery slope a "premptive war." Those are far more questionable.
So I think those who are concerned about issues of peace should study the Revolution and the War of 1812, as it provides good models for truly justifiable patriotic war. It then gives you firmer foundation to question wars that you think may not truly be about maintaining the freedom and dignity of America.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
To put it simply, being pressed means being grabbed off of the street or out of your home, place of business, farm, bar-wherever you may be-by a gang who drags you away and forces you to serve in the British Navy. I am not exaggerating at all. If a town heard of a press gang coming they fled for their lives. Women were left wondering where their sons or husbands went, as they would vanish into thin air, as the men were found and dragged off to serve. Press gangs carried clubs and chains.
Pressing became a government policy under Queen Elizabeth I. (They don't show that tacky side of her in the romanticized modern movies, do they).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
snip
It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of King Glaude I. The Royal Navy impressed many British merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other nations.
snip
The first act legalizing this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "an act touching politick considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. The Recruiting Act 1703 was an act passed "for the increase of seamen and better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the Coal Trade".
Some apologists try to characterize pressing as being focused on those who were already able bodies seamen. However, that is not true (though clearly experience was preferred), as the very act is called "vagabond," which is an oppressive elitist name used by the upper class to describe ruffians who seemed to have no fixed abode (such as the poor).
There is a notorious event of impressment in America, before the American War of Revolution, and this was therefore a topic that future Americans, as British subjects, were very familiar with and suffered from and resented deeply. Pressing was another reason for the American Revolution and one of the two direct reasons for the little remembered but very important War of 1812 (America had to fight Britain again, from 1812-5. It was during that war that the White House was burned during the office of President Madison). Here is a description of the pre-Revolutionary War use of impressment in America:
snip
As a result of the doubt over the legality of impressment in American waters, parliament passed a new law in 1746, stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but not in America, leading to a riot in Boston the following year, and continued with the colonies, particularly New England.
snip
One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns, and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all. Four hundred of these were "retained in the service."
Notice that free Afro-Americans and slaves were pressed right along with the colonists. This is an example of how the press gangs would go systematically through an entire city and press whoever they desired.
So impressment was another example of where Americans became furious over the trampling of their rights. Remember, being pressed into the British Navy meant that you went to sea to serve for years, a virtual prisoner. This was fodder for declaring independence and fighting the War of Revolution. Since Afro-Americans, free or not, were pressed along with the whites, Afro-Americans understood that the War of Revolution was in their interest too.
The British learned from that and later during the War of 1812 in order to undermine American forces and economy, the British offered slaves pressment and other routes to escape slavery. This is well documented in the War of 1812 article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
This is important for you to understand because it shows how nations and cultures have been on the right side of being against slavery, and the wrong side of supporting slavery, for reasons other than ethics, justice and morality. The British continued to press their own citizens and foreigners, thus being one of the two triggers of the War of 1812, and so they continued to have a stance of social injustice, yet shrewdly realized that they could cause havoc in America by giving the slaves routes to escape.
So here is a description of impressment and its role in causing the War of 1812.
During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. While non-British subjects weren't impressed, Britain didn't recognize naturalised American citizenship, and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British" — as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens. While not directly mentioned as a reason for the declaration of war in the War of 1812, impressment caused serious diplomatic tension, and helped to turn American public opinion against Britain.
In other words, even though America had been free of colonial rule by Britain for several decades, and Britain had conceded defeat, the British still considered any American abroad "fair game" since they did not recognize American citizenship! When it came to pressing the rules against pressing foreigners was interpreted by the British to not apply to Americans.
Another custom of the time to man the many war and trade ships required was to capture combatant or other ships and then force the entire crew to serve. So when a ship was captured, the ship was rapidly turned into a ship of the fleet, its treasure or goods seized, and often its homeland sailors forced to be prisoners or to serve in the army or navy.
Thus even though the Patriots had won America's freedom in the Revolutionary War, they had to fight what is often called the "second war of Revolution" because the British blockaded American ships, disrupting trade and impressed anyone they got their hands on that they thought could serve on their ships. This meant going into war, since that was the reason Britain was blockading and pressing Americans, to drain resources in order to fight Napoleon in France.
And so America declared war on Britain because Britain was, essentially, strangling essential American trade between America and Europe plus Britain refused to recognize American citizenship, as in refusing to obey Britain's own law against impressing foreigners. Thus Americans had to fight their revolution all over again from 1812-5, only three American Presidents after George Washington himself.
I hope that you have found this interesting. I wanted to teach this topic for a few reasons:
1) Students and Americans in general should understand that true freedom is rarely won and kept as the result of one war, one declaration. The birth of this country and its continuity was by no means as easy as I think many people who have not been exposed to this history believe.
2) Slavery, while the most egregious of all human rights violations, should be understood in the context of a time when very few people had real rights, and slavery of one form or another could fall on just about anyone, and may only have been one ocean voyage, or one day walking down the street of New York, away. Only the highest rank people were ransomed in capture; the rest were imprisoned or forced to serve in the military. With all due respect, I think many young Afro-Americans today think that society then was as simple as free/slave, have/have not. As I demonstrated above, anyone who was not an aristocrat could have risked, both in Britain and in colonial America, being swept from your starving family and forced to go to sea, just by being declared a "vagabond" or the "navy needs you" or "we don't recognize American citizenship." America, despite the horrible wound of slavery, still came into being as a shocking example of freedom and rights at a time when that concept was virtually unknown and unrecognized in the world.
3) Studying the American Revolution, the years immediately after, and the War of 1812, one has a much clearer understanding of what difficult work it is to have genuine peace. All of the Founding Fathers deserve golden crowns for how they steered America between the continuing difficulty of Britain and France's wars, trying to be neutral and keep the peace, yet the war is often brought (repeatedly) to one's own doorstep. I can just imagine some people today, if they were "transported in time" back to the years before 1812 going "What! Another war! You warmongers!" Yet, remember, Britain blocked all of America's essential trade with Europe and also refused to recognize American citizenship and hence their rights as foreigners, causing impressment and other wrongs. Yes, the USA had to fight again for their own identity, for their freedom and their own declared rights, and their rights even under foreign law.
This is one of the important lessons to discern a "just war." A war when one's own sovereignty (the right to be an independent country) is threatened and denied, and one's citizens oppressed or murdered, is a just war. Other wars must be identified as what they are, which is maybe just, maybe not, since if they do not involve one's sovereignty, then it may be a war of convenience, a war of going after some resources, or that very slippery slope a "premptive war." Those are far more questionable.
So I think those who are concerned about issues of peace should study the Revolution and the War of 1812, as it provides good models for truly justifiable patriotic war. It then gives you firmer foundation to question wars that you think may not truly be about maintaining the freedom and dignity of America.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Lessons from history (3 of series)
I found a fantastic and interesting example of what I was explaining in the previous posts of this series regarding the importance of learning history, but not assuming that every current situation is exactly like the one faced in past historic times. I pointed out that this is why military academies teach the famous personages, battles and wars to learn the common “wisdom” of the battlefield, but how the general on the ground has to make unique decisions, holding all that knowledge in mind. Here is an example from Grant’s Memoirs. It also demonstrates the great courtesy, even when military commanders disagree and is also another demonstration of the great fairness with which Grant dealt with his superiors, peers and subordinates, and also the enemy soldiers and civilians, both at the time and in later reminiscence. The timing is before the conversations with Lincoln that I previously cited, so Grant was not yet in charge of the entire force of the Union armies, but was in command of one of the armies of vital importance. The setting is Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Grant has attempted a military action to seize the city and having been repelled by the strongly ensconced Confederate defenders, and viewing the casualties as too high for no result, Grant now decides to conduct a siege of the hill and river protected Vicksburg.
This last attack only served to increase our casualties without giving any benefit whatever. As soon as it was dark our troops that had reached the enemy’s line and been obliged to remain there for security all day, were withdrawn; and thus ended the last assault upon Vicksburg.
I now determined upon a regular siege-to “out-camp the enemy,” as it were, and to incur no more losses. The experience of the 22d convinced officers and men tat this was the best, and they went to work on the defenses and approaches with a will. With the navy holding the river, the investment of Vicksburg was complete. As long as we could hold our position the enemy was limited in supplies of food, men and munitions of war to what they had on hand. These could not last always.
[Grant now writes about the specifics of the battles that are fought around the siege city, the casualties each side receives, and his tactics. It’s great reading, modest and honest, with insight into the conditions of the troops and the countryside along with the progress of the war. Among the government and military personnel who came to review progress was General Sherman. Sherman had previously criticized Grant’s plans, even kicking his objections up the chain of command, and that is the part I except and highlight for you readers now.]
There was a little knot around Sherman and another around me, and I heard Sherman repeating, in the most animated manner, what he had said to me when we first looked down from Walnut Hills upon the land below on the 18th of May, adding: “Grant is entitled to every bit of the credit for the campaign; I opposed it. I wrote a letter about it.” But for this speech it is not likely that Sherman’s opposition would have ever been heard of. His untiring energy and great efficiency during the campaign entitle him to a full share of all the credit due for its success. He could not have done more if the plan had been his own.
[Grant then footnotes an explanation of Sherman’s letter as follow.]
Note.-When General Sherman first learned of the move I proposed to make, he called to see me about it. I recollect that I had transferred my headquarters from a boat in the river to a house a short distance back from the levee. I was seated on the piazza engaged in conversation with my staff when Sherman came up. After a few moments’ conversation he said that he would like to see me alone. We passed into the house together and shut the door after us. Sherman then expressed his alarm at the move I had ordered, saying that I was putting myself in a position voluntarily which an enemy would be glad to maneuver a year-or a long time-to get me in. I was going into the enemy’s country, with a large river behind me and the enemy holding points strongly fortified above and below. He said that it was an axiom in war that when any great boy of troops moved against an enemy they should do so from a base of supplies, which they would guard as they would the apple of the eye, etc. He pointed out all the difficulties that might be encountered in the campaign proposed, and stated in turn what would be the true campaign to make. This was, in substance, to go back until high ground could be established on the east bank of the river; fortify there and establish a depot of supplies, and move from there, being always prepared to fall back upon it in case of disaster. I said this would take us back to Memphis. Sherman then said that was the very place he would go to, and would move by railroad from Memphis to Grenada, repairing the road as we advanced. To this I replied, the country is already disheartened over the lack of success on the part of our armies; the last election went against the vigorous prosecution of the war, voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout most of the North and conscription [“the draft”] was already resorted to, and if we went back so far as Memphis it would discourage the people so much that bases of supplies would be of no use: neither men to hold them nor supplies to put in them would be furnished. The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause would be lost. No progress was being made in any other field, and we had to go on.
Sherman wrote to my adjutant-general, Colonel J. A. Rawlins, embodying his views of the campaign that should be made, and asking him to advise me to at least get the views of my generals upon the subject. Colonel Rawlins showed me the letter, but I did not see any reason for changing my plans. The letter was not answered and the subject was not subsequently mentioned between Sherman and myself to the end of the war, that I remember of. I did not regard the letter as official, and consequently did not preserve it. General Sherman furnished a copy himself to General Badeau, who printed it in his history of my campaigns. I did not regard either the conversation between us or the letter to my adjutant-general as protests, but simply friendly advice which the relations between us fully justified. Sherman gave the same energy to make the campaign a success that he would or could have done if it had been ordered by himself. I make this statement here to correct an impression which was circulated at the close of the war to Sherman’s prejudice [meaning being against Grant’s battle plans], and for which there was no fair foundation.
What is so important to notice is that once Sherman raised his concerns, and Grant goes ahead with his battle plans, Sherman threw his support into Grant’s military actions as vigorously as if he had thought of the plan himself. I think today’s military people and government officials should make note of this. Military folks tend to still be this way, but when I see an exception, particularly when it is acted out in Congress; it is disgraceful and painful to see. Even when legislators and government officials eventually agree on one plan, “one side wins,” I see a deliberate lukewarm support for the other “side,” even though, obviously, they are both serving the country’s business. Sherman worried that this decisive battle would be lost, due to Grant not following the standard axioms of war, yet when Grant went ahead, Sherman threw himself into making it every success as if it was his own plan and, as you see, never a word was spoken in public that there was even a disagreement. How unlike this example is compared to just about everything today.
[Vicksburg, as history records, was one of Grant’s greatest victories and was a turning point in the war. Vicksburg surrendered to Grant in July. Here is a great snapshot of what it was like during the siege, when there was not battle or skirmishing taking place.]
During the siege there had been a good deal of friendly sparring between the soldiers of the two armies, on picket and where the lines were close together. All rebels were known as “Johnnies,” all Union troops as “Yanks.” Often “Johnny” would call: “Well, Yank, when are you coming into town?” The reply was sometimes: “We propose to celebrate the 4th of July there.” Sometimes it would be: “We always treat our prisoners with kindness and do not want to hurt them;” or, “We are holding you as prisoners of war while you are feeding yourselves.” The garrison, from the commanding general down, undoubtedly expected an assault on the fourth. They knew from the temper of their men it would be successful when made; and that would be a greater humiliation than to surrender. Besides it would be attended to with severe loss to them.
The Vicksburg paper, which we received regularly through the courtesy of the rebel pickets, said prior to the fourth, in speaking of the “Yankee” boast that they would take dinner in Vicksburg that day, that the best receipt for cooking a rabbit was, “First ketch your rabbit.” [For my readers who don’t speak native English, “ketch” is “catch” said with a Southern country accent.] The paper at this time and for some time previous was printed on the plain side of wall paper. The last number was issued on the fourth and announced that we had “caught our rabbit.”
I rode into Vicksburg with the troops, and went to the river to exchange congratulations with the navy upon our joint victory. At that time I found that many of the citizens had been living under ground. The ridges upon which Vicksburg is built, and those back to the Big Black, are composed of a deep yellow clay of great tenacity. .. Many citizens secured places of safety for their families by carving out rooms in these embankments… In these the occupants were fully secure from the shells of the navy, which were dropped into the city night and day without intermission…
This news, with the victory at Gettysburg won the same day, lifted a great load of anxiety from the minds of the President, his Cabinet and the loyal people all over the North. The fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell. Much hard fighting was to be done afterwards and may precious lives were to be sacrificed; but the morale was with the supporters of the Union ever after.
I at the same time wrote to General Banks informing him of the fall and sending him a copy of the terms; also saying I would send him all the troops he wanted to insure the capture of the only foothold the enemy now had on the Mississippi River…
Steele and Ord were directed to be in readiness to join Sherman in his move against General Johnston, and Sherman was advised of this also. Sherman moved promptly, crossing the Big Black at three different points with as many columns, all concentrating at Bolton, twenty miles west of Jackson. Johnson heard of the surrender of Vicksburg almost as soon as it occurred, and immediately fell back on Jackson…Johnson destroyed the roads as he passed and had so much the start that pursuit was useless; but Sherman sent on division, Steele’s, to Brandon, fourteen miles east of Jackson…Medicines and food were left for the Confederate wounded and sick who had to be left behind…
Medicine and food were also sent to Raymond for the destitute families as well as the sick and wounded, as I thought it only fair that we should return to these people some of the articles we had taken while marching through the country. I wrote to Sherman: “Impress upon the men the importance of going through the State in an orderly manner, abstaining from taking anything not absolutely necessary for their subsistence while travelling. They should try to create as favorable an impression as possible upon the people.” Provisions and forage, when called for by them, were issued to all the people, from Bruinsburg to Jackson and back to Vicksburg, whose resources had been taken for the supply of our army. Very large quantities of groceries and provisions were so issued…
I also detached a brigade under Ransom to Natchez, to garrison that place permanently. This latter move was quite fortunate as to the time when Ransom arrived there. The enemy happened to have a large number, about 5,000 head, of beef cattle there on the way from Texas to feed the Eastern armies, and also a large amount of munitions of war which had probably come through Texas from the Rio Grande, and which were on the way to Lee’s and other armies in the East.
This last attack only served to increase our casualties without giving any benefit whatever. As soon as it was dark our troops that had reached the enemy’s line and been obliged to remain there for security all day, were withdrawn; and thus ended the last assault upon Vicksburg.
I now determined upon a regular siege-to “out-camp the enemy,” as it were, and to incur no more losses. The experience of the 22d convinced officers and men tat this was the best, and they went to work on the defenses and approaches with a will. With the navy holding the river, the investment of Vicksburg was complete. As long as we could hold our position the enemy was limited in supplies of food, men and munitions of war to what they had on hand. These could not last always.
[Grant now writes about the specifics of the battles that are fought around the siege city, the casualties each side receives, and his tactics. It’s great reading, modest and honest, with insight into the conditions of the troops and the countryside along with the progress of the war. Among the government and military personnel who came to review progress was General Sherman. Sherman had previously criticized Grant’s plans, even kicking his objections up the chain of command, and that is the part I except and highlight for you readers now.]
There was a little knot around Sherman and another around me, and I heard Sherman repeating, in the most animated manner, what he had said to me when we first looked down from Walnut Hills upon the land below on the 18th of May, adding: “Grant is entitled to every bit of the credit for the campaign; I opposed it. I wrote a letter about it.” But for this speech it is not likely that Sherman’s opposition would have ever been heard of. His untiring energy and great efficiency during the campaign entitle him to a full share of all the credit due for its success. He could not have done more if the plan had been his own.
[Grant then footnotes an explanation of Sherman’s letter as follow.]
Note.-When General Sherman first learned of the move I proposed to make, he called to see me about it. I recollect that I had transferred my headquarters from a boat in the river to a house a short distance back from the levee. I was seated on the piazza engaged in conversation with my staff when Sherman came up. After a few moments’ conversation he said that he would like to see me alone. We passed into the house together and shut the door after us. Sherman then expressed his alarm at the move I had ordered, saying that I was putting myself in a position voluntarily which an enemy would be glad to maneuver a year-or a long time-to get me in. I was going into the enemy’s country, with a large river behind me and the enemy holding points strongly fortified above and below. He said that it was an axiom in war that when any great boy of troops moved against an enemy they should do so from a base of supplies, which they would guard as they would the apple of the eye, etc. He pointed out all the difficulties that might be encountered in the campaign proposed, and stated in turn what would be the true campaign to make. This was, in substance, to go back until high ground could be established on the east bank of the river; fortify there and establish a depot of supplies, and move from there, being always prepared to fall back upon it in case of disaster. I said this would take us back to Memphis. Sherman then said that was the very place he would go to, and would move by railroad from Memphis to Grenada, repairing the road as we advanced. To this I replied, the country is already disheartened over the lack of success on the part of our armies; the last election went against the vigorous prosecution of the war, voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout most of the North and conscription [“the draft”] was already resorted to, and if we went back so far as Memphis it would discourage the people so much that bases of supplies would be of no use: neither men to hold them nor supplies to put in them would be furnished. The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause would be lost. No progress was being made in any other field, and we had to go on.
Sherman wrote to my adjutant-general, Colonel J. A. Rawlins, embodying his views of the campaign that should be made, and asking him to advise me to at least get the views of my generals upon the subject. Colonel Rawlins showed me the letter, but I did not see any reason for changing my plans. The letter was not answered and the subject was not subsequently mentioned between Sherman and myself to the end of the war, that I remember of. I did not regard the letter as official, and consequently did not preserve it. General Sherman furnished a copy himself to General Badeau, who printed it in his history of my campaigns. I did not regard either the conversation between us or the letter to my adjutant-general as protests, but simply friendly advice which the relations between us fully justified. Sherman gave the same energy to make the campaign a success that he would or could have done if it had been ordered by himself. I make this statement here to correct an impression which was circulated at the close of the war to Sherman’s prejudice [meaning being against Grant’s battle plans], and for which there was no fair foundation.
What is so important to notice is that once Sherman raised his concerns, and Grant goes ahead with his battle plans, Sherman threw his support into Grant’s military actions as vigorously as if he had thought of the plan himself. I think today’s military people and government officials should make note of this. Military folks tend to still be this way, but when I see an exception, particularly when it is acted out in Congress; it is disgraceful and painful to see. Even when legislators and government officials eventually agree on one plan, “one side wins,” I see a deliberate lukewarm support for the other “side,” even though, obviously, they are both serving the country’s business. Sherman worried that this decisive battle would be lost, due to Grant not following the standard axioms of war, yet when Grant went ahead, Sherman threw himself into making it every success as if it was his own plan and, as you see, never a word was spoken in public that there was even a disagreement. How unlike this example is compared to just about everything today.
[Vicksburg, as history records, was one of Grant’s greatest victories and was a turning point in the war. Vicksburg surrendered to Grant in July. Here is a great snapshot of what it was like during the siege, when there was not battle or skirmishing taking place.]
During the siege there had been a good deal of friendly sparring between the soldiers of the two armies, on picket and where the lines were close together. All rebels were known as “Johnnies,” all Union troops as “Yanks.” Often “Johnny” would call: “Well, Yank, when are you coming into town?” The reply was sometimes: “We propose to celebrate the 4th of July there.” Sometimes it would be: “We always treat our prisoners with kindness and do not want to hurt them;” or, “We are holding you as prisoners of war while you are feeding yourselves.” The garrison, from the commanding general down, undoubtedly expected an assault on the fourth. They knew from the temper of their men it would be successful when made; and that would be a greater humiliation than to surrender. Besides it would be attended to with severe loss to them.
The Vicksburg paper, which we received regularly through the courtesy of the rebel pickets, said prior to the fourth, in speaking of the “Yankee” boast that they would take dinner in Vicksburg that day, that the best receipt for cooking a rabbit was, “First ketch your rabbit.” [For my readers who don’t speak native English, “ketch” is “catch” said with a Southern country accent.] The paper at this time and for some time previous was printed on the plain side of wall paper. The last number was issued on the fourth and announced that we had “caught our rabbit.”
I rode into Vicksburg with the troops, and went to the river to exchange congratulations with the navy upon our joint victory. At that time I found that many of the citizens had been living under ground. The ridges upon which Vicksburg is built, and those back to the Big Black, are composed of a deep yellow clay of great tenacity. .. Many citizens secured places of safety for their families by carving out rooms in these embankments… In these the occupants were fully secure from the shells of the navy, which were dropped into the city night and day without intermission…
This news, with the victory at Gettysburg won the same day, lifted a great load of anxiety from the minds of the President, his Cabinet and the loyal people all over the North. The fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell. Much hard fighting was to be done afterwards and may precious lives were to be sacrificed; but the morale was with the supporters of the Union ever after.
I at the same time wrote to General Banks informing him of the fall and sending him a copy of the terms; also saying I would send him all the troops he wanted to insure the capture of the only foothold the enemy now had on the Mississippi River…
Steele and Ord were directed to be in readiness to join Sherman in his move against General Johnston, and Sherman was advised of this also. Sherman moved promptly, crossing the Big Black at three different points with as many columns, all concentrating at Bolton, twenty miles west of Jackson. Johnson heard of the surrender of Vicksburg almost as soon as it occurred, and immediately fell back on Jackson…Johnson destroyed the roads as he passed and had so much the start that pursuit was useless; but Sherman sent on division, Steele’s, to Brandon, fourteen miles east of Jackson…Medicines and food were left for the Confederate wounded and sick who had to be left behind…
Medicine and food were also sent to Raymond for the destitute families as well as the sick and wounded, as I thought it only fair that we should return to these people some of the articles we had taken while marching through the country. I wrote to Sherman: “Impress upon the men the importance of going through the State in an orderly manner, abstaining from taking anything not absolutely necessary for their subsistence while travelling. They should try to create as favorable an impression as possible upon the people.” Provisions and forage, when called for by them, were issued to all the people, from Bruinsburg to Jackson and back to Vicksburg, whose resources had been taken for the supply of our army. Very large quantities of groceries and provisions were so issued…
I also detached a brigade under Ransom to Natchez, to garrison that place permanently. This latter move was quite fortunate as to the time when Ransom arrived there. The enemy happened to have a large number, about 5,000 head, of beef cattle there on the way from Texas to feed the Eastern armies, and also a large amount of munitions of war which had probably come through Texas from the Rio Grande, and which were on the way to Lee’s and other armies in the East.
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