Regular readers know that I am a deep admirer of not only President Lincoln but also Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant who also became President. Read about this exchange of letters between Grant of the North and Lee of the South. This was in 1864 when there was some political interaction regarding possibilities of peace between Lincoln and the Confederacy, but they fell through due to the South's insistence on retaining slaves. Meanwhile on the battlefield there were also negotiations:
The Confederate answer came from General Lee a few weeks later. He proposed to Grant an exchange of prisoners captured by each side in a Union attack and Confederate counterattack ten miles southeast of Richmond on September 28-30. Several black regiments participated, and some of their men were captured. Grant agreed to the exchange so long as the black soldiers were included. But Lee replied that "Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subject of exchange and were not included in my proposition." That was unfortunate, responded Grant, because the U.S. "Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers." Lee's refusal to honor this obligation therefore "induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask." (p. 248).
From "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" by James M. McPherson, The Penguin Press, 2008.
Showing posts with label Ulysses Grant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulysses Grant. Show all posts
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
More about freed slaves burying Union dead
Here is more about the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring and reburying with dignity the remains of the Union soldiers.
First, here is the background of the battle depicted in the picture. This is from the book “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White, Jr:
Lincoln could see the cost of the battle in the streets of Washington as the wounded arrived throughout the day and night. Attorney General Edward Bates wrote in his diary on May 15, 1864, “For the last 8 or 10 days, the most terrible battles of the war have occurred in Virginia. The carnage has been unexampled.” After so much bloodshed, questions began to rise about the price of victory. Grant and Meade had suffered [my emphasis in bold letters here:] SIXTY THOUSAND CASUALTIES IN ONE MONTH OF FIGHTING, almost the size of Lee’s entire army. [My comment: again, compare that the USA has lost three to four thousand troops in all of Iraq and Afghanistan; the Union army lost sixty thousand in one month in the war against slavery].
The carnage increased as Grant attacked the crossroads called Cold Harbor at the beginning of June. Lee, for whom Grant had increasing respect, was turning this war into a war of attrition, and so Grant decided to mount a massive assault. On the morning of June 3, 1864, hundreds of troops pinned their names and addresses to their uniforms in a premonition of what lay ahead. In the next hours, Union soldiers charged forward and were met by a withering hail of bullets. Grant lost 7,000 men, while Lee, fighting from trenches, suffered 1,500 casualties. At the end of the day Grant stopped the attack, admitting defeat. The Union army learned that day what European armies would learn a half a century later in World War I: the deadly horrors of trench warfare. General George Mead wrote to his wife, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened, and is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee’s army is not Tennessee and Bragg’s army.”
The public began to turn against Grant, but Lincoln did not. The president told Noah Brooks, “I wish when you write and speak to people you would do all you can to correct the impression that the war in Virginia will end right off victoriously.” He continued, “To me the most trying thing in al this war is that people are too sanguine; they expect too much at once.” Lincoln, who would not make predictions, told Brooks, “As God is my judge, I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year” (p. 632).
So I went back to the bookstore today after lunch and bought the book where I had seen this tremendously moving photograph that I described in the previous day’s blogging. The book is “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James M. McPherson. Here is the caption to the two photographs that I described:
The grim harvest of war is illustrated by these two photographs. The one on the left was taken at Gettysburg on July 5, 1863, two days after the battle, showing the bloated corpses of Union soldiers killed there. The other photograph depicts freed slaves after the war disinterring the remains of Union soldiers who had been killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, for the reburial in the national military cemetery established there. Those killed at Gettysburg were also reinterred in one of the first such cemeteries, where on November 19, 1863, Lincoln consecrated “these honored dead” and resolved that they “shall not have died in vain.” Seventy-two national cemeteries were ultimately created as the final resting places for Union soldiers who died in the Civil War-and also for later veterans of the U.S. armed forces. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (photographs located between pages 174-175).
Thus by cross referencing two books I found a description of the dreadful battle and Union soldiers toll with the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring the Union bodies and taking them to the new national cemeteries for honorable burial.
The photograph shows four freed slaves in the background digging with shovels into the ground to unearth the bodies. In the foreground a freed slave is crouched next to a simple stretcher upon which they have been piling the remains of the Union soldiers. There are five skulls visible among a pile of their bones and uniforms, and a leg with a boot dangles over the side. It is a remarkable and unforgettable photograph, one of the many treasures of the Library of Congress.
So there are two things we can think about. One is that in Washington, as President Obama was inaugurated, we all thought of how Washington was built by slaves. But we should also remember that Abraham Lincoln saw a constant inflow of the dead and wounded Union soldiers on that very same ground, who had fought and died to free the slaves. In one Virginia battle the dead Union soldiers were piled five deep.
I am making much of this point because young Afro-Americans have grown up only knowing one side of the equation, those who considered them less than human, less than objects and chattel. However, I believe that the self esteem of young Afro-Americans would have been raised if they understood the magnitude of the other side, which is that there were 600,000 Union casualties, dead and wounded, as the Union soldiers fought for the freedom of the slaves. To feel that no one but Abraham Lincoln cared about your ancestors is to forget that hundreds of thousands of people cared with their lives.
So my second thing that you can think about is that those who live near or pass by Cold Harbor, Virginia can stop and contemplate a real moment of history and Afro-American pride. That is in knowing that the Union soldiers who died by the thousand were not left to rot on the battlefield, but were disinterred by the freed slaves and buried in places of honor established by Lincoln and the government. That is something I’d want to tell my children about, and I guess I am now.
While researching this item I came across this passage from the book “Tried by War:”
When the news of Richmond’s fall reached the North, wild celebrations broke out. Lincoln felt the same way, but his response was more restrained. He met with Grant in Petersburg on April 3 and discussed the pursuit of Lee, which would bring him to bay at Appomattox six days later. Meanwhile Lincoln returned to Adm. David D. Porter’s flagship USS Malvern, anchored in the James River, and told Porter: “Thank God I have lived to see this! It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”
Porter was dubious about taking the president to see the still-burning enemy capital two days after it fell. But Lincoln insisted, so they went. With an escort of just ten sailors, he walked the streets while thousands of freed slaves crowded to see the Moses they believed had led them to freedom. “I know that I am free,” shouted one woman, “for I have seen father Abraham and felt him.” To one black man who fell on his knees before him, an embarrassed Lincoln said: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” The president was profoundly moved by these encounters (p. 261).
By the way, notice that this reference to who and who is not God is on page 261. I’ve written before about how the media is infested with Antichrist obsessed people with weak mental and moral capabilities, who manipulate significant text in even textbooks to occur on what they consider a mystical number of the Antichrist and the beast, 126, 261 and 621. You can read more about this subliminal pushing of occult Antichrist agenda by following the labels I include on this post. It has ruined my enjoyment of media, such as books, for many years now. If I were Afro-American I would also be embarrassed and enraged to be pawns in these dispensationalist and cultists’ manipulation, by the way. It’s quite an insult to be used that way when Afro-Americans have traditionally been the most faithful to pure Christianity and their God. Lincoln would be mortified that his words and deeds have been exploited by those who manipulate for occult purposes.
I have in front of me the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I have quoted from before. I will close this blogging with the first note that he wrote to Robert E. Lee after the fall of Richmond. In a future blog posting I might group all the correspondence together so you can read and enjoy it as I have. I include it because General Grant was quite stoic about the incredible loss of life, and it is here as he urges Lee to surrender (which Lee rejects) that Grant refers to the carnage.
Headquarters Armies of the U.S., 5 P.M., April 7, 1865
General R. E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that position of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U.S. GRANT,
Lieut.-General
First, here is the background of the battle depicted in the picture. This is from the book “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White, Jr:
Lincoln could see the cost of the battle in the streets of Washington as the wounded arrived throughout the day and night. Attorney General Edward Bates wrote in his diary on May 15, 1864, “For the last 8 or 10 days, the most terrible battles of the war have occurred in Virginia. The carnage has been unexampled.” After so much bloodshed, questions began to rise about the price of victory. Grant and Meade had suffered [my emphasis in bold letters here:] SIXTY THOUSAND CASUALTIES IN ONE MONTH OF FIGHTING, almost the size of Lee’s entire army. [My comment: again, compare that the USA has lost three to four thousand troops in all of Iraq and Afghanistan; the Union army lost sixty thousand in one month in the war against slavery].
The carnage increased as Grant attacked the crossroads called Cold Harbor at the beginning of June. Lee, for whom Grant had increasing respect, was turning this war into a war of attrition, and so Grant decided to mount a massive assault. On the morning of June 3, 1864, hundreds of troops pinned their names and addresses to their uniforms in a premonition of what lay ahead. In the next hours, Union soldiers charged forward and were met by a withering hail of bullets. Grant lost 7,000 men, while Lee, fighting from trenches, suffered 1,500 casualties. At the end of the day Grant stopped the attack, admitting defeat. The Union army learned that day what European armies would learn a half a century later in World War I: the deadly horrors of trench warfare. General George Mead wrote to his wife, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened, and is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee’s army is not Tennessee and Bragg’s army.”
The public began to turn against Grant, but Lincoln did not. The president told Noah Brooks, “I wish when you write and speak to people you would do all you can to correct the impression that the war in Virginia will end right off victoriously.” He continued, “To me the most trying thing in al this war is that people are too sanguine; they expect too much at once.” Lincoln, who would not make predictions, told Brooks, “As God is my judge, I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year” (p. 632).
So I went back to the bookstore today after lunch and bought the book where I had seen this tremendously moving photograph that I described in the previous day’s blogging. The book is “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James M. McPherson. Here is the caption to the two photographs that I described:
The grim harvest of war is illustrated by these two photographs. The one on the left was taken at Gettysburg on July 5, 1863, two days after the battle, showing the bloated corpses of Union soldiers killed there. The other photograph depicts freed slaves after the war disinterring the remains of Union soldiers who had been killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, for the reburial in the national military cemetery established there. Those killed at Gettysburg were also reinterred in one of the first such cemeteries, where on November 19, 1863, Lincoln consecrated “these honored dead” and resolved that they “shall not have died in vain.” Seventy-two national cemeteries were ultimately created as the final resting places for Union soldiers who died in the Civil War-and also for later veterans of the U.S. armed forces. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (photographs located between pages 174-175).
Thus by cross referencing two books I found a description of the dreadful battle and Union soldiers toll with the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring the Union bodies and taking them to the new national cemeteries for honorable burial.
The photograph shows four freed slaves in the background digging with shovels into the ground to unearth the bodies. In the foreground a freed slave is crouched next to a simple stretcher upon which they have been piling the remains of the Union soldiers. There are five skulls visible among a pile of their bones and uniforms, and a leg with a boot dangles over the side. It is a remarkable and unforgettable photograph, one of the many treasures of the Library of Congress.
So there are two things we can think about. One is that in Washington, as President Obama was inaugurated, we all thought of how Washington was built by slaves. But we should also remember that Abraham Lincoln saw a constant inflow of the dead and wounded Union soldiers on that very same ground, who had fought and died to free the slaves. In one Virginia battle the dead Union soldiers were piled five deep.
I am making much of this point because young Afro-Americans have grown up only knowing one side of the equation, those who considered them less than human, less than objects and chattel. However, I believe that the self esteem of young Afro-Americans would have been raised if they understood the magnitude of the other side, which is that there were 600,000 Union casualties, dead and wounded, as the Union soldiers fought for the freedom of the slaves. To feel that no one but Abraham Lincoln cared about your ancestors is to forget that hundreds of thousands of people cared with their lives.
So my second thing that you can think about is that those who live near or pass by Cold Harbor, Virginia can stop and contemplate a real moment of history and Afro-American pride. That is in knowing that the Union soldiers who died by the thousand were not left to rot on the battlefield, but were disinterred by the freed slaves and buried in places of honor established by Lincoln and the government. That is something I’d want to tell my children about, and I guess I am now.
http://www.cem.va.gov/CEM/cems/nchp/coldharbor.asp
While researching this item I came across this passage from the book “Tried by War:”
When the news of Richmond’s fall reached the North, wild celebrations broke out. Lincoln felt the same way, but his response was more restrained. He met with Grant in Petersburg on April 3 and discussed the pursuit of Lee, which would bring him to bay at Appomattox six days later. Meanwhile Lincoln returned to Adm. David D. Porter’s flagship USS Malvern, anchored in the James River, and told Porter: “Thank God I have lived to see this! It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”
Porter was dubious about taking the president to see the still-burning enemy capital two days after it fell. But Lincoln insisted, so they went. With an escort of just ten sailors, he walked the streets while thousands of freed slaves crowded to see the Moses they believed had led them to freedom. “I know that I am free,” shouted one woman, “for I have seen father Abraham and felt him.” To one black man who fell on his knees before him, an embarrassed Lincoln said: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” The president was profoundly moved by these encounters (p. 261).
By the way, notice that this reference to who and who is not God is on page 261. I’ve written before about how the media is infested with Antichrist obsessed people with weak mental and moral capabilities, who manipulate significant text in even textbooks to occur on what they consider a mystical number of the Antichrist and the beast, 126, 261 and 621. You can read more about this subliminal pushing of occult Antichrist agenda by following the labels I include on this post. It has ruined my enjoyment of media, such as books, for many years now. If I were Afro-American I would also be embarrassed and enraged to be pawns in these dispensationalist and cultists’ manipulation, by the way. It’s quite an insult to be used that way when Afro-Americans have traditionally been the most faithful to pure Christianity and their God. Lincoln would be mortified that his words and deeds have been exploited by those who manipulate for occult purposes.
I have in front of me the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I have quoted from before. I will close this blogging with the first note that he wrote to Robert E. Lee after the fall of Richmond. In a future blog posting I might group all the correspondence together so you can read and enjoy it as I have. I include it because General Grant was quite stoic about the incredible loss of life, and it is here as he urges Lee to surrender (which Lee rejects) that Grant refers to the carnage.
Headquarters Armies of the U.S., 5 P.M., April 7, 1865
General R. E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that position of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U.S. GRANT,
Lieut.-General
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Read this: from Grant's first inaugural address
President Ulysses S. Grant
First Inaugural Address
Thursday, March 4, 1869
...The country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding Administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained.
This requires security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country, without regard to local prejudice. All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement.
A great debt has been contracted in securing to us and our posterity the Union. The payment of this, principal and interest, as well as the return to a specie basis as soon as it can be accomplished without material detriment to the debtor class or to the country at large, must be provided for. To protect the national honor, every dollar of Governmental indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this should be added a faithful collection of the revenue, a strict accountability to the Treasury for every dollar collected, and the greatest practicable retrenchment in expenditure in every department of Government...
Doesn't alot of this sound familiar to us today?
Like Washington, Grant had to be the military commander, then the President (after Johnson who took over when Lincoln was assassinated) after a difficult war and, in Grant's case, the country was left in huge debt due to the cost of the Civil War. Further, Johnson undid a lot of the progress toward emancipation and equality achieved by the efforts of Lincoln and the blood of the Civil War, so Grant had to put good will and equality back on track also. He is another under appreciated American President.
Anyway, I thought with our financial crisis and focus on equality and so forth that you'd find a very interesting parallel in his words and our times.
First Inaugural Address
Thursday, March 4, 1869
...The country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding Administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained.
This requires security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country, without regard to local prejudice. All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement.
A great debt has been contracted in securing to us and our posterity the Union. The payment of this, principal and interest, as well as the return to a specie basis as soon as it can be accomplished without material detriment to the debtor class or to the country at large, must be provided for. To protect the national honor, every dollar of Governmental indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this should be added a faithful collection of the revenue, a strict accountability to the Treasury for every dollar collected, and the greatest practicable retrenchment in expenditure in every department of Government...
Doesn't alot of this sound familiar to us today?
Like Washington, Grant had to be the military commander, then the President (after Johnson who took over when Lincoln was assassinated) after a difficult war and, in Grant's case, the country was left in huge debt due to the cost of the Civil War. Further, Johnson undid a lot of the progress toward emancipation and equality achieved by the efforts of Lincoln and the blood of the Civil War, so Grant had to put good will and equality back on track also. He is another under appreciated American President.
Anyway, I thought with our financial crisis and focus on equality and so forth that you'd find a very interesting parallel in his words and our times.
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?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Capitalism/financial crisis with history excerpt
Today I want to explain a kind of catch bag of economic concepts. While I am fully aware of professional terminology such as “the fundamentals” and “money velocity,” I’m not going to use them for the reasons I’ve explained previously, which is they are definitions used to describe warped and skewed capitalism, not genuine capitalism as it first emerged in its true form. I had the misfortune of working with highly paid and arrogant bank economists and I observed first hand that their education, and subsequent “Unreal Greed Street” job experience, hardened their misunderstanding of the origins of their own profession. Also, I obviously am not trying to train the people who read my blog to do more of the same of what has not only not worked, but was incorrectly crafted in the first place. However, I mention my background so that I can reach out to economists who genuinely do wish to do well and help the country-and all of the people and also, by implication, those in the world who depend upon the health of the USA to ensure their own. There are so many well formed ideas that I have, and so much background information that I would need to convey, that this is why I decided to lightly touch on a number of topics rather than go in depth in any one of them today. I know both the financial experts will get what I am saying nonetheless, as will those who have been following what I’m teaching as concerned citizens. I especially want at this time to reach out to local governments (states, cities, towns, counties, parishes and so forth) in order to help them cope and be heartened that there is a reasonable approach to solving our problems, one that is still firmly grounded in the Constitution.
So here I will introduce and explain a number of topics, in no particular order, just as they occur to me today, having been on my mind for many years.
The first is to understand money (in the form of currency, not theoretical measures of wealth) and how to properly assess the best uses of it. The trouble with money, and let’s use the American example of the dollar bill, is that like I’ve explained previously, people jump too quickly to thinking about some end goal without considering how the dollar bill has made its way there. Think of a dollar bill in an analogy (you knew one was coming, didn’t you?) Let’s think of a given dollar bill as an old fashioned antibiotic, such as penicillin. I’m not selecting penicillin as a hidden symbol of the dollar bill being less effective or out of favor, but because penicillin was the world changing discovery that first allowed humans to treat themselves successfully against infection. Likewise the use of standardization of currency was a wonderful development that allowed humans to do many things they could not otherwise do. Also I’m not implying that only the sick need a dollar bill, LOL, (though it seems like only the sick are the money managers, but that is a whole other problem!) I want to use the analogy so everyone can understand how a dose of money works its benefit throughout the economy and just as importantly, how it does not work as a magic cure all for every situation.
When doing some important financial planning task, such as trying to stimulate a local economy, there is a concept of looking at how quickly a dollar bill moves within that area, and whether it stays in that area, and how many hands touch and presumably benefit from it. This is a wise concept but one that has been totally misapplied and has become misunderstood. Would be economic planners sometimes think that if a dollar touches, let’s say ten local merchants, that it has done more “good” for the “local economy” than a dollar that touches two or three local merchants. But that is not always true. Using the penicillin analogy, if the penicillin touches ten local merchants, but only one of them was sick, what was the benefit of that? It’s almost as though the genuinely sick merchant was lucky to get a touch of the penicillin dollar bill. Suppose the dollar bill that touched “only” two or three merchants, however, was targeted to touch those that who were genuinely sick. Therefore the analogous penicillin dollar bill proved the wiser investment where it touched “only” two or three genuinely “sick” merchants than the dollar bill who touched ten merchants, only one of whom was “sick.” Economists, local planners and the hidden money plutocrats and mandarins who pull the strings behind the scenes both innocently and deliberately misunderstand this concept and abuse it accordingly. So my first lesson is that money that does not touch the right hands and settle in the right places does not perform its function.
Now, before I hear the howls of those who accuse me of wanting to “redistribute wealth,” you are totally wrong and I am not saying that. I am telling you how to invest your money properly, not trying to take it away from you. I have seen over the decades people make what they think are both wise and compassionate investment and charitable donations, and who might as well have burned the money in the parking lot, because they did not understand what I have just explained. I’m not trying to “redistribute your wealth,” I’m trying to be the wise investment planner that you never had as your partner. So whenever one assesses a dose of penicillin dollar bill, do not be tempted by visions of that dollar bill going from let’s say gas station to grocery store to bank account to paycheck to buying some home furnishing and compare it to some other use of the dollar bill and immediately conclude that since the first use, to use a baseball analogy, “touched five bases” that it is automatically more “stimulating” to the community that let’s say a dollar bill that went into a much need school repair. In the latter case, that dollar bill might only have moved “once,” from the payer hands to the contractor payee (and to keep the comparison pure, let’s assume the contractor sent the earned dollar out of state and had brought supplies in from out of state), nonetheless that dollar bill might have had a cascading economic benefit that was as if one hundred dollar bills “magically” appeared. The wise penicillin dollar bill might have kept a few more kids in school who might have dropped out and turned to crime, it might have stimulated more after school scholarly or sports activities for a dozen other kids, it might have avoided some insurance payout due to decaying school conditions, and thus avoided a future loss, etc. I know for a fact that hardly anyone understands and uses that concept of measuring a penicillin dollar impact on a local community or in fact in any given fiscal problem. Instead they retreat to the standard talking points, which over time they have come to believe, which are, to list just a few, “trickle down,” “keep the money local,” “stimulate local business,” “give back to the community” and so forth. Thus both the left and the right totally misunderstand how to properly gauge and manage the best impact of any penicillin dollar in either their personal planning or their community, or national, fiscal spending.
I’m reminded of one of President Grant’s stories from his memoirs and will repeat it here because you will see how that mindset crept into society as it happened. Here Grant sees himself as the average educated white man who understands money (this was in the beginning of his Army career), so please do not read this with the usual prickliness about racism, but consider that he thought he was actually observing an ignorant practice by the local Native Americans. That is one of the problems with today (I first observed it in my Ivy League university in 1971-5), which is that people refuse to read any further and learn from historical literature if they think the author was, despite the context of the times, “racist” or “sexist.” So if you want to own your own mind you need to learn to read without wincing and prejudging the observations that people made during certain times in history, period.
OK, so think about the penicillin dollar when you read this.
When I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson’s Bay Company had held the Northwest with their trading posts for many years before the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.
Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his purchase, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.
Now, here is what Grant meant by saying the Indians would pay for each item. Suppose you went to the grocery store to buy milk, bread, meat, a carrot and an apple. You let the check out clerk total your purchases and you pay once the total, receiving change. However, the Indians would have the clerk ring up the bread, and then pay for the bread, ring up the milk, and then pay for the milk, ring up the meat, and then pay for the meat and so forth for the five full separate transactions. Grant said it was because they did not trust the clerk to add up the total correctly, but you know, do you not see now, that it was more than that. The Indians maintained control and value judgment over each item piece by piece. The value of each individual item was not hidden in the total. It’s not that they just didn’t trust the adding up of the total (and I bet they had good reason to not trust in many situations!) Even if someone could prove that the clerk was always honest and that the total was the same as each price individually, they still would have stuck to the individual payment of individual items. This is because despite being “ignorant” they instinctively understood both a benefit and danger of capitalism. The benefit of capitalism was money they could trust (even though the slugs were not minted by the government, they were based on the gold standard) and so they readily accepted as wise that development of capitalism, which was a trustworthy standard means of exchange of a precious metal. However, they instinctively recognized that a danger of capitalism was the tyranny of the “sum total” mentality. When one manages money using sum totals, the meaning and wisdom of individual purchases is hidden and indeed lost. We all experience this feeling ourselves when we “throw a few things in the grocery cart” and then find a higher price than we expected at checkout, just because we no longer pay attention to either the individual item’s merits of purchase or the running sum total. Now, imagine an entire people, and entire world, that only looks at sum totals of millions of individual decisions, never analyzing the impact or the wisdom of any one of them. That is what I call the tyranny of the sum total.
So I’ve introduced to you here two concepts that it is important that everyone genuinely understand. One is the need to examine alternatives when deciding how each “dollar bill” is used in order to truly discern the best usage, and not to implicitly assume that frequent rotation through a lot of hands is “good” when in fact it is often what I call a “shallow” use of money. Money that is used shallowly is flash money, usually paid for transitory goods and services that is usually justified as “adding salaries to the community” yet does not “stick” to any place in the community where it can genuinely generate on its own “new dollars,” almost out of thin air. The second concept is the tyranny of the sum total, which we see everywhere from the problem of the bloated and still ineffective Federal budget, all the way down to a business man or woman accepting a plan from one of their staff that is “bottom line” and has not been examined not just for accuracy but more importantly for more substantial individual choices of expenditure and alternatives that could be more meaningful.
It is critical that today’s money managers, no matter how great or small your budget or investment pool, look at each item, rather than the sum total, and act as though you had never heard of such a thing, and need to be persuaded anew that this is a necessary or wise usage of funds. That’s the third concept that I want to introduce which I call “what if” financial analysis. It’s different from the concept of “valuation,” the “value chain” or “value analysis” because it constantly questions the chain of production and assumptions itself, rather than valuing the pieces of production that one takes for granted and never questions. People are incredible creatures of habit and easily slip into both information overload and what we call in the vernacular “being on auto pilot” in our decision making. A lot of this is not malicious, but those who have ruined the economy are guilty of this kind of thinking themselves and at the same time exploiting it in others. Here are some examples so you know what I mean.
The entire problem of providing social services and welfare is an example of sides that hardened into two alternatives (“provide welfare” or “make them work”) and the result is a horrible and at times dastardly mess. This is the tyranny of sum total thinking that totally lacks “line by line” “what if” thinking. Welfare is an example of “one miserable disaster fits all” sum total planning. I don’t need to list how many ways welfare as it is constructed today has failed individuals and society as a whole, especially the children. Yet whenever someone mentions that welfare is the nightmare that it seems as though we will never wake up from, the “other side” can’t wait to jump in and have a hardness of heart that is shocking. Both sides are “wrong” because both are enslaved to sum total mentality combined with a lack of visionary and genuinely well intentioned “what if” analysis of real alternatives within the system. It would take me about one hour to list ten different scenarios for providing necessary services for the needy, tailored to the actual context of the needy that we are discussing (their community setting, for example) rather than assuming that throwing penicillin dollars, to go back to our analogy, hits the right hands. Yes, in one hour I could give people a list of at least ten alternatives that they could select from that would address a particular welfare based problem or case study. Yet no one even tries to come up with a third alternative these days, they just fall into arguing their two sides, each atop an ignorant sum total tyranny. Welfare as it is structured today is a disaster, and so is the touted “put them to work” “alternative.” I cannot believe how willfully ignorant humans seem to have become and what miserable failures everyone has become at analysis and problem solving based on both wisdom and compassion.
I have just paused for a minute in order to resist slipping into one of my rants about the freak show society. What triggered it was what a woeful spectacle “job creation” has turned into, and I dearly hope and pray that with the new administration they recognize that meaningful jobs are not just the means of getting a paycheck for producing more garbage to throw into society as the “product.” In other words, I totally support the vision that the new administration seems to have of real jobs related to infrastructure and schools, for example, rather than enabling shake your money maker entertainment “jobs.” Entertainment is a vital sector of the economy and you might be surprised to hear that I do not oppose entertainment such as casinos, on principle. But the incredibly shallow output of much of American “entertainment industry” rather than infrastructure entertainment, such as Boys and Girls clubs or local sports and music programs is shocking. So when one argues that people need to “get a job,” its more than just a job because in this economic crisis, those who can make these decisions at the federal, local, corporate, agency and individual levels must make some wise decisions based on alternatives, for once. Here is an example.
Suppose that I have one hundred penicillin dollar bills, and I want to create a business so I can earn a good living, create some jobs and help the community. I decide to manufacture violent video games because it will “provide the poor with good jobs.” Huh?
That’s not free market, despite the fact that both the left and the right will argue that, saying “Well, if the public didn’t want violent videos they would not buy them.” Yeah, but you could have thought about creating a business that is genuinely “free market.” How about if I had used the one hundred penicillin dollar bills to open a Boys and Girls after school club where they could apprentice making video games under ethical teachers? I could have generated salaries (the teachers), made money (by selling the supplies), and gotten dozens if not hundreds of local kids to learn skills (video making and also business and creative skills) and best of all, THAT is free market. After all, suppose you had a thousand students in your business lifetime. Many would not go into that career but it was character building. Some might have become young entrepreneurs themselves in civic areas since you did not bind them to just learning the lowest common denominator of product. For example, one of your students might have developed an idea for a video game that teaches local kids how to discover areas of pollution in their community and how to be a genuine activist! A few might go on to make violent video games, LOL, but that is free market in truth, not brainwashing. Maybe you would not be a video game millionaire. But see, that’s the problem with the mindset today. I referred to that in earlier blog postings as being the “make a killing” mentality instead of the “make a good living” mentality that capitalism is genuinely founded upon, and needs as its basis, not greed, or it is doomed to dismal, crushing moral and fiscal failure.
I’m just painting a vivid example but one that is not too far off of the mark.
I’ll say “it’s a wrap” on this particularly posting, having introduced three economic concepts, and there’s of course much more, but these are essential to reorienting the thinking that is killing this country. I hope that you have found this helpful. To summarize:
1. Always analyze the flow of dollars and do not assume anything about the benefit of any particular dollar volume, location or frequency without examining purported benefits and alternatives thoroughly, especially looking for dollar usage that beneficially “sticks” and generates new dollars.
2. Beware of the tyranny of the sum total and wherever possible examine each item, questioning if a better usage or placement of dollars is possible on that “line by line” basis. Use "what if" analysis to generate alternatives for even what one thinks are obvious inherent portions of investment.
3. Genuine free market means the open ended creation of both jobs and skill sets that are wisely discerned and targeted for maximum benefit and both economic and civic worthiness.
So here I will introduce and explain a number of topics, in no particular order, just as they occur to me today, having been on my mind for many years.
The first is to understand money (in the form of currency, not theoretical measures of wealth) and how to properly assess the best uses of it. The trouble with money, and let’s use the American example of the dollar bill, is that like I’ve explained previously, people jump too quickly to thinking about some end goal without considering how the dollar bill has made its way there. Think of a dollar bill in an analogy (you knew one was coming, didn’t you?) Let’s think of a given dollar bill as an old fashioned antibiotic, such as penicillin. I’m not selecting penicillin as a hidden symbol of the dollar bill being less effective or out of favor, but because penicillin was the world changing discovery that first allowed humans to treat themselves successfully against infection. Likewise the use of standardization of currency was a wonderful development that allowed humans to do many things they could not otherwise do. Also I’m not implying that only the sick need a dollar bill, LOL, (though it seems like only the sick are the money managers, but that is a whole other problem!) I want to use the analogy so everyone can understand how a dose of money works its benefit throughout the economy and just as importantly, how it does not work as a magic cure all for every situation.
When doing some important financial planning task, such as trying to stimulate a local economy, there is a concept of looking at how quickly a dollar bill moves within that area, and whether it stays in that area, and how many hands touch and presumably benefit from it. This is a wise concept but one that has been totally misapplied and has become misunderstood. Would be economic planners sometimes think that if a dollar touches, let’s say ten local merchants, that it has done more “good” for the “local economy” than a dollar that touches two or three local merchants. But that is not always true. Using the penicillin analogy, if the penicillin touches ten local merchants, but only one of them was sick, what was the benefit of that? It’s almost as though the genuinely sick merchant was lucky to get a touch of the penicillin dollar bill. Suppose the dollar bill that touched “only” two or three merchants, however, was targeted to touch those that who were genuinely sick. Therefore the analogous penicillin dollar bill proved the wiser investment where it touched “only” two or three genuinely “sick” merchants than the dollar bill who touched ten merchants, only one of whom was “sick.” Economists, local planners and the hidden money plutocrats and mandarins who pull the strings behind the scenes both innocently and deliberately misunderstand this concept and abuse it accordingly. So my first lesson is that money that does not touch the right hands and settle in the right places does not perform its function.
Now, before I hear the howls of those who accuse me of wanting to “redistribute wealth,” you are totally wrong and I am not saying that. I am telling you how to invest your money properly, not trying to take it away from you. I have seen over the decades people make what they think are both wise and compassionate investment and charitable donations, and who might as well have burned the money in the parking lot, because they did not understand what I have just explained. I’m not trying to “redistribute your wealth,” I’m trying to be the wise investment planner that you never had as your partner. So whenever one assesses a dose of penicillin dollar bill, do not be tempted by visions of that dollar bill going from let’s say gas station to grocery store to bank account to paycheck to buying some home furnishing and compare it to some other use of the dollar bill and immediately conclude that since the first use, to use a baseball analogy, “touched five bases” that it is automatically more “stimulating” to the community that let’s say a dollar bill that went into a much need school repair. In the latter case, that dollar bill might only have moved “once,” from the payer hands to the contractor payee (and to keep the comparison pure, let’s assume the contractor sent the earned dollar out of state and had brought supplies in from out of state), nonetheless that dollar bill might have had a cascading economic benefit that was as if one hundred dollar bills “magically” appeared. The wise penicillin dollar bill might have kept a few more kids in school who might have dropped out and turned to crime, it might have stimulated more after school scholarly or sports activities for a dozen other kids, it might have avoided some insurance payout due to decaying school conditions, and thus avoided a future loss, etc. I know for a fact that hardly anyone understands and uses that concept of measuring a penicillin dollar impact on a local community or in fact in any given fiscal problem. Instead they retreat to the standard talking points, which over time they have come to believe, which are, to list just a few, “trickle down,” “keep the money local,” “stimulate local business,” “give back to the community” and so forth. Thus both the left and the right totally misunderstand how to properly gauge and manage the best impact of any penicillin dollar in either their personal planning or their community, or national, fiscal spending.
I’m reminded of one of President Grant’s stories from his memoirs and will repeat it here because you will see how that mindset crept into society as it happened. Here Grant sees himself as the average educated white man who understands money (this was in the beginning of his Army career), so please do not read this with the usual prickliness about racism, but consider that he thought he was actually observing an ignorant practice by the local Native Americans. That is one of the problems with today (I first observed it in my Ivy League university in 1971-5), which is that people refuse to read any further and learn from historical literature if they think the author was, despite the context of the times, “racist” or “sexist.” So if you want to own your own mind you need to learn to read without wincing and prejudging the observations that people made during certain times in history, period.
OK, so think about the penicillin dollar when you read this.
When I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson’s Bay Company had held the Northwest with their trading posts for many years before the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.
Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his purchase, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.
Now, here is what Grant meant by saying the Indians would pay for each item. Suppose you went to the grocery store to buy milk, bread, meat, a carrot and an apple. You let the check out clerk total your purchases and you pay once the total, receiving change. However, the Indians would have the clerk ring up the bread, and then pay for the bread, ring up the milk, and then pay for the milk, ring up the meat, and then pay for the meat and so forth for the five full separate transactions. Grant said it was because they did not trust the clerk to add up the total correctly, but you know, do you not see now, that it was more than that. The Indians maintained control and value judgment over each item piece by piece. The value of each individual item was not hidden in the total. It’s not that they just didn’t trust the adding up of the total (and I bet they had good reason to not trust in many situations!) Even if someone could prove that the clerk was always honest and that the total was the same as each price individually, they still would have stuck to the individual payment of individual items. This is because despite being “ignorant” they instinctively understood both a benefit and danger of capitalism. The benefit of capitalism was money they could trust (even though the slugs were not minted by the government, they were based on the gold standard) and so they readily accepted as wise that development of capitalism, which was a trustworthy standard means of exchange of a precious metal. However, they instinctively recognized that a danger of capitalism was the tyranny of the “sum total” mentality. When one manages money using sum totals, the meaning and wisdom of individual purchases is hidden and indeed lost. We all experience this feeling ourselves when we “throw a few things in the grocery cart” and then find a higher price than we expected at checkout, just because we no longer pay attention to either the individual item’s merits of purchase or the running sum total. Now, imagine an entire people, and entire world, that only looks at sum totals of millions of individual decisions, never analyzing the impact or the wisdom of any one of them. That is what I call the tyranny of the sum total.
So I’ve introduced to you here two concepts that it is important that everyone genuinely understand. One is the need to examine alternatives when deciding how each “dollar bill” is used in order to truly discern the best usage, and not to implicitly assume that frequent rotation through a lot of hands is “good” when in fact it is often what I call a “shallow” use of money. Money that is used shallowly is flash money, usually paid for transitory goods and services that is usually justified as “adding salaries to the community” yet does not “stick” to any place in the community where it can genuinely generate on its own “new dollars,” almost out of thin air. The second concept is the tyranny of the sum total, which we see everywhere from the problem of the bloated and still ineffective Federal budget, all the way down to a business man or woman accepting a plan from one of their staff that is “bottom line” and has not been examined not just for accuracy but more importantly for more substantial individual choices of expenditure and alternatives that could be more meaningful.
It is critical that today’s money managers, no matter how great or small your budget or investment pool, look at each item, rather than the sum total, and act as though you had never heard of such a thing, and need to be persuaded anew that this is a necessary or wise usage of funds. That’s the third concept that I want to introduce which I call “what if” financial analysis. It’s different from the concept of “valuation,” the “value chain” or “value analysis” because it constantly questions the chain of production and assumptions itself, rather than valuing the pieces of production that one takes for granted and never questions. People are incredible creatures of habit and easily slip into both information overload and what we call in the vernacular “being on auto pilot” in our decision making. A lot of this is not malicious, but those who have ruined the economy are guilty of this kind of thinking themselves and at the same time exploiting it in others. Here are some examples so you know what I mean.
The entire problem of providing social services and welfare is an example of sides that hardened into two alternatives (“provide welfare” or “make them work”) and the result is a horrible and at times dastardly mess. This is the tyranny of sum total thinking that totally lacks “line by line” “what if” thinking. Welfare is an example of “one miserable disaster fits all” sum total planning. I don’t need to list how many ways welfare as it is constructed today has failed individuals and society as a whole, especially the children. Yet whenever someone mentions that welfare is the nightmare that it seems as though we will never wake up from, the “other side” can’t wait to jump in and have a hardness of heart that is shocking. Both sides are “wrong” because both are enslaved to sum total mentality combined with a lack of visionary and genuinely well intentioned “what if” analysis of real alternatives within the system. It would take me about one hour to list ten different scenarios for providing necessary services for the needy, tailored to the actual context of the needy that we are discussing (their community setting, for example) rather than assuming that throwing penicillin dollars, to go back to our analogy, hits the right hands. Yes, in one hour I could give people a list of at least ten alternatives that they could select from that would address a particular welfare based problem or case study. Yet no one even tries to come up with a third alternative these days, they just fall into arguing their two sides, each atop an ignorant sum total tyranny. Welfare as it is structured today is a disaster, and so is the touted “put them to work” “alternative.” I cannot believe how willfully ignorant humans seem to have become and what miserable failures everyone has become at analysis and problem solving based on both wisdom and compassion.
I have just paused for a minute in order to resist slipping into one of my rants about the freak show society. What triggered it was what a woeful spectacle “job creation” has turned into, and I dearly hope and pray that with the new administration they recognize that meaningful jobs are not just the means of getting a paycheck for producing more garbage to throw into society as the “product.” In other words, I totally support the vision that the new administration seems to have of real jobs related to infrastructure and schools, for example, rather than enabling shake your money maker entertainment “jobs.” Entertainment is a vital sector of the economy and you might be surprised to hear that I do not oppose entertainment such as casinos, on principle. But the incredibly shallow output of much of American “entertainment industry” rather than infrastructure entertainment, such as Boys and Girls clubs or local sports and music programs is shocking. So when one argues that people need to “get a job,” its more than just a job because in this economic crisis, those who can make these decisions at the federal, local, corporate, agency and individual levels must make some wise decisions based on alternatives, for once. Here is an example.
Suppose that I have one hundred penicillin dollar bills, and I want to create a business so I can earn a good living, create some jobs and help the community. I decide to manufacture violent video games because it will “provide the poor with good jobs.” Huh?
That’s not free market, despite the fact that both the left and the right will argue that, saying “Well, if the public didn’t want violent videos they would not buy them.” Yeah, but you could have thought about creating a business that is genuinely “free market.” How about if I had used the one hundred penicillin dollar bills to open a Boys and Girls after school club where they could apprentice making video games under ethical teachers? I could have generated salaries (the teachers), made money (by selling the supplies), and gotten dozens if not hundreds of local kids to learn skills (video making and also business and creative skills) and best of all, THAT is free market. After all, suppose you had a thousand students in your business lifetime. Many would not go into that career but it was character building. Some might have become young entrepreneurs themselves in civic areas since you did not bind them to just learning the lowest common denominator of product. For example, one of your students might have developed an idea for a video game that teaches local kids how to discover areas of pollution in their community and how to be a genuine activist! A few might go on to make violent video games, LOL, but that is free market in truth, not brainwashing. Maybe you would not be a video game millionaire. But see, that’s the problem with the mindset today. I referred to that in earlier blog postings as being the “make a killing” mentality instead of the “make a good living” mentality that capitalism is genuinely founded upon, and needs as its basis, not greed, or it is doomed to dismal, crushing moral and fiscal failure.
I’m just painting a vivid example but one that is not too far off of the mark.
I’ll say “it’s a wrap” on this particularly posting, having introduced three economic concepts, and there’s of course much more, but these are essential to reorienting the thinking that is killing this country. I hope that you have found this helpful. To summarize:
1. Always analyze the flow of dollars and do not assume anything about the benefit of any particular dollar volume, location or frequency without examining purported benefits and alternatives thoroughly, especially looking for dollar usage that beneficially “sticks” and generates new dollars.
2. Beware of the tyranny of the sum total and wherever possible examine each item, questioning if a better usage or placement of dollars is possible on that “line by line” basis. Use "what if" analysis to generate alternatives for even what one thinks are obvious inherent portions of investment.
3. Genuine free market means the open ended creation of both jobs and skill sets that are wisely discerned and targeted for maximum benefit and both economic and civic worthiness.
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.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Lessons from history (2 of a series)
Here is another great excerpt from the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. I’m piecing together several sections from the same event.
On the last of January, 1865, peace commissioners from the so-called Confederate States presented themselves on our lines around Petersburg, and were immediately conducted to my headquarters at City Point. They proved to be Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, Judge Campbell, Assistant-Secretary of War, and R. M. T. Hunter, formerly United States Senator and then a member of the Confederate Senate….
I was instructed to retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he would designate, should come to meet them. They remained several days as guests on board the boat…
I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a particular admirer of Mr. Stephens. I had always supposed that he was a very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be. When he got down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woolen overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during the rebellion. The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had ever seen, even in Canada. The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an average-sized man. He took this off when he reached the cabin of the boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and out of it…
Right here I might relate an anecdote of Mr. Lincoln. It was on the occasion of his visit to me just after he had talked with the peace commissioners at Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephen’s. I replied that I had.
“Well,” said he, “did you see him take it off?” I said yes.
“Well,” said he, “didn’t you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?”
Long afterwards I told this story to the Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln.
[Here I will explain the simile, in case some of my readers are unfamiliar with the term. Lincoln was referring to the process of removing the husk from an ear of corn. The process of removing the husk is called shucking. So Lincoln was making a droll agricultural reference by comparing the giant coat that Stephens used, and when he removed it revealing his very small stature, with shucking the husk off from an ear of corn, to find a very small ear inside. It’s a great story, especially when one reads with what good humor Mr. Stephens took hearing about it. Also I am always thrilled to read a historic corn reference!
To keep continuity of that event, I had skipped over what Grant wrote about Lincoln’s reaction to the peace commission. Here it is, and very moving reading it most certainly is.]
After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to meet the President and a member of the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln met them there and had an interview of short duration. It was not a great while after they met that the President visited me at City Point. He spoke of his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would recognize, first: that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, and second: that slavery must be abolished. If they were willing to concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were willing to live with us in the Union and be one people. He always showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition-and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get away from the cares and anxieties of the capital.
On the last of January, 1865, peace commissioners from the so-called Confederate States presented themselves on our lines around Petersburg, and were immediately conducted to my headquarters at City Point. They proved to be Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, Judge Campbell, Assistant-Secretary of War, and R. M. T. Hunter, formerly United States Senator and then a member of the Confederate Senate….
I was instructed to retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he would designate, should come to meet them. They remained several days as guests on board the boat…
I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a particular admirer of Mr. Stephens. I had always supposed that he was a very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be. When he got down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woolen overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during the rebellion. The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had ever seen, even in Canada. The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an average-sized man. He took this off when he reached the cabin of the boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and out of it…
Right here I might relate an anecdote of Mr. Lincoln. It was on the occasion of his visit to me just after he had talked with the peace commissioners at Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephen’s. I replied that I had.
“Well,” said he, “did you see him take it off?” I said yes.
“Well,” said he, “didn’t you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?”
Long afterwards I told this story to the Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln.
[Here I will explain the simile, in case some of my readers are unfamiliar with the term. Lincoln was referring to the process of removing the husk from an ear of corn. The process of removing the husk is called shucking. So Lincoln was making a droll agricultural reference by comparing the giant coat that Stephens used, and when he removed it revealing his very small stature, with shucking the husk off from an ear of corn, to find a very small ear inside. It’s a great story, especially when one reads with what good humor Mr. Stephens took hearing about it. Also I am always thrilled to read a historic corn reference!
To keep continuity of that event, I had skipped over what Grant wrote about Lincoln’s reaction to the peace commission. Here it is, and very moving reading it most certainly is.]
After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to meet the President and a member of the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln met them there and had an interview of short duration. It was not a great while after they met that the President visited me at City Point. He spoke of his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would recognize, first: that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, and second: that slavery must be abolished. If they were willing to concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were willing to live with us in the Union and be one people. He always showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition-and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get away from the cares and anxieties of the capital.
Lessons from the study of history (1 of a series)
This evening I want to write some thoughts about “what history teaches us.” It is a very important and even an enjoyable topic, but not for the reasons that so many moderns seem to believe these days. As usual I’ve selected a huge topic, but will, thankfully, use a specific example to round out the points I wish to make. To set the tone, let me say that one of the most irritating and incorrect shibboleths used today is the saying “Those who do not understand (or know) their history are doomed to repeat it.” Hardly a day goes by that some talk show commentator doesn’t feel oh so wise when he or she says this. Here are the problems with the belief that underlies that statement.
First of all, humans on a day to day boring basis need to either learn from past mistakes or repeat them. That is a proper context, the problem of learning, as my brother would say to his children “the easy way or the hard way.” If someone text messages and causes an accident, one would hope that the person learns not to text message while driving again, and to pull off into a parking area of one must. This is an example of “those who do not understand not to text message while driving because you might cause an accident are doomed to risk possibly causing another accident at some point in their driving life.” However, one could not immediately write an epic history or philosophical book that discusses “Humans learned that texting while driving is dangerous and thus, oh you people of the future, do not ever put any distracting activity in your automobiles of the future again.” How can one anticipate a country’s stance toward a human activity and foible, and use of a technology, twenty or one hundred years in advance? You can’t because you cannot anticipate the circumstances. For example, maybe a car is invented where you can sit there and text all you want like a fiend while driving and never cause an accident! I’m just making up a slightly silly analogy, but it’s a solidly accurate analogy and very useful.
So trying to shove history down people’s throats so that they “learn to never make THAT mistake again” is just plain stupid. History is important so that one can learn 1) what actually happened 2) what people actually thought, did and believed at the time 3) the circumstances and 4) as a contribution to modern day wisdom and ability to problem solve. The first three reasons are all part of what the TV character Inspector Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” History is about learning facts, and facts do include what people alive at the time thought and felt, in other words, their perceptions. When you understand the facts of history, including the perceptions of the contemporary participants, you can synthesize all the facts into an addition to your individual and societal wisdom. Being wise has many advantages. The first is that one tends to be more optimistic and be strong of heart because you understand what has happened before, and how people got through it, and how you can retain hope, even in dire circumstances, today. The second advantage of wisdom is that you are not mislead by false theories of what is actually happening today, and as both the Bible and secular literature warn that in times of trouble rumors and false prophets are rampant. When one has a solid grounding in factual history and adds that to one’s lode of wisdom, one can discern truth from falsehood or exaggeration much more clearly. The third advantage of wisdom is that you understand a wider range of possibilities of solutions to present day problems. You think of things that you and your contemporaries who are ignorant of history might never have thought about. The fourth advantage of wisdom is that you consciously or unconsciously emulate the wise leaders who have gone before you. Remember, the great virtuous figures in history became “wise” the same way as everyone else: through education and experience, including making mistakes.
Military instructors all understand what I’ve just described, and that is why key historical figures and their battles are studied in military academies. They study them so that they add 1) facts and 2) wisdom to their collective and individual skills. They do not study military history because they think that someday they may have to defend the Alamo again, and this time they “won’t get it wrong.” History and the ordinary people who comprise history is a moving target; people, life and society change. Circumstances change and society changes. For example, the Holocaust is the premier justification for the saying that I am criticizing, “Those who don’t learn from their past are doomed to repeat it.” Huh? No disrespect, but the Holocaust happened in a time before fax machines, cell phones, computers and satellite imagery. That is just one example of how precisely “the same thing” can never happen again, just from the sheer change in technology, if not in the improvement in people’s hearts. Yet we can photograph the Sudan and Darfur, and the conflict in the Congo, over and over again, and the suffering continues, just to give two examples. The idea that history needs to be studied to “prevent” the “same mistake” from “repeating” is New Age stinking thinking. History needs to be studied so that people have a common basis for the facts, so that they understand human nature and response to circumstances more clearly, and thus they can add to their wisdom that they then apply as judicious to current situations and problems that they face.
So now I will give my specific example. This afternoon I drove to the book store “Barnes and Nobles” and was gratified to find that they had (at a discounted price) a copy of one of my favorite books that I have sorely missed, because my original copy is in storage many miles away. The book is “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.” Regular readers know that my favorite secular history figure is George Washington, and of course it goes without saying that Abraham Lincoln has always been close to my heart. Like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant was also first a general and then a United States President. Grant led the Army of the North, the Union Army, against the Army of the South, the Confederacy, during the American Civil War, known as the War against Slavery. Unlike George Washington, who lived in the USA as it was one hundred years before Grant’s time, Grant did not come from a landed and well to do background and instead, even after being President, was in desperate poverty. He wrote his memoirs as he was very ill and toward the end, dying, so that his family would have some income, particularly after he was gone, and he died one week after completion of them. Thus this book has come to be known as a masterpiece of American literature because it truly has no grandiose agenda, no fudging of facts or perceptions in order to look more grand or clever. Grant has left all of us a treasure of “what it was like” and “just the facts, ma’am” of a pivotal time in the history of the United States. If you want to be instantly transported into that crucial time in US and indeed global history, and be inside the mind of a truly great man (of the “ordinary man who steps up to the challenge” ilk, as was Washington), all you need to do is open this book. I tend not to read these types of books cover to cover and then put them away. I tend to turn to them regularly and just read a section. For example, I have (in storage) first editions of Washington’s letters to Congress during the War of Revolution and I would enjoy just reading one letter every once in a while to be transported in terms of perspective and the facts to the time of the Revolution, to the mind of George Washington. No student of history needs to be told of the poverty and hard conditions of the Patriot Army that Washington commanded, and how he had to beg for every scrap of arms, food and clothing from the Continental Congress. It is facts and perspective like that which anyone can read at will, reading the words of the Father of our Country as he desperately needs gunpowder as New York City is about to fall. That is history. That is why people need to learn and love history, and why students should not be impoverished of learning genuine, not agenda ridden, history in their classrooms.
By the way, I want to make another point. I am not “drawn” to certain historical figures for any of the usual flaky reasons that New Age “thinkers” (such as it is) posit about themselves and others. I don’t find historical figures interesting because 1) I think they’ve reincarnated (no one is reincarnated, as you ought to all confess to right now) 2) I have a “lesson” or “unfulfilled karma” that I’m just blindly reaching out toward 3) I’m “taking sides or making a statement” about who I am interested in or not. For example, yes, Lincoln and Grant are the Union figures. But I have and always will have a great personal and professional affection for General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy. For a long time I enjoyed reading about the Tudors of England but that sure as hell did not mean that I was applauding or “reminiscing” about Catholic killing Protestant upstarts. As I’ve reported before, I have an even handed interest and affection toward all people of all nations and cultures, one that has been sorely tried and abused, however. Unfortunately that type of New Age stinking thinking has permeated our children’s schools where historical figures are ignored, diminished or skewed because of deliberate, and in some cases unconscious, imposition of New Age “values” and “dirty eyeglasses” (looking at the negative instead of the opposite, which is wearing “rose colored glasses”), as it were, on the ordinary people and facts of history. Honestly, I don’t know how this country or the world will survive if faith and reasoning based on facts does not return to the classroom and to day to day decision making.
So for my example, here is what I turned to read in Grant’s book this evening. I wondered, “What was it like the first time that he met President Abraham Lincoln?” I looked in the table of contents and found the event, which was when Grant was promoted to lieutenant general. Here is that excerpt from Grant’s memoirs.
From Chapter Fifteen, section “First Interview with President Lincoln.” The event described here took place in 1864.
The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant-general of the army had passed through Congress and became a law on the 26 of February. My nomination had been sent to the senate on the 1st of March and confirmed the next day (the 2nd). I was ordered to Washington on the 3d to receive my commission, and started the day following that. The commission was handed to me on the 9th. It was delivered to me at the Executive Mansion by President Lincoln in the presence of his Cabinet, my eldest son, those of my staff who were with me and a few other visitors.
The President in presenting my commission read from a paper-stating, however, as a preliminary, and prior to the delivery of it, that he had drawn that up on paper, knowing my disinclination to speak in public, and handed me a copy in advance so that I might prepare a few lines in reply. The President said:
“General Grant, the nation’s appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance upon you for what remains to be done in the existing great struggle, are now presented, with this commission constituting you lieutenant-general in the Army of the United States. With this high honor, devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add, that, with what I here speak for the nation, goes my own hearty personal concurrence.”
To this I replied: “Mr. President, I accept the commission, with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought in so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and I know that if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men.”
On the 10th I visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station; then returned to Washington, and pushed west at once to make my arrangements for turning over the commands there and giving general directions for the preparations to be made for the spring campaign.
Is this not a marvelous treasure, just this half of a page from Grant’s Memoirs? Stripped of what moderns would put in it of agenda and blabbing about the unimportant, it reveals many truths, both facts and perspectives. I’m sure most of you noticed what I am about to point out, but I know some of my readers are not from the USA and so I’d like to make plain some of the things I find gratifying in this excerpt.
The first is the promptness of Congress in acting in a non-partisan way to in ONE DAY approve Grant’s commission. In modern times, would not big mouth and big ego senators and representatives insist on blabbing away their opinion of both Grant and the conduct of the war? That is not to say they did not do that in the course of their normal business. But here in the middle of the Civil War, they kept separate the necessary swift actions, such as Grant’s commission, from being combined with thirst for both attention and perhaps necessary argument about the war. So Grant has preserved totally unintentionally a time that would be wonderful to see in that one respect again, when an action is conceived and completed in a matter of days.
The second is that Grant explains that even though President Lincoln and he had never met, Lincoln knew that Grant did not glorify in public speaking. This is not to say that Grant was a poor orator, but that he was a modest military man who preferred not to make speeches! Lincoln knew this about Grant in advance and in thoughtfulness of Grant’s feelings, wrote down his comments and gave Grant a copy so that Grant could compose in his mind while listening to the President what he would say in reply. That is a courtesy and more importantly a supportive thoughtfulness that is a role model that Lincoln is providing and that Grant has preserved for us to recall and to ponder. Notice too that on this occasion Lincoln invokes God; there is no escaping the heartfelt faith that all of our country’s leaders had and expressed as threads throughout all of their discourse and actions. But, of course, we know that in omitting from our schools study of the Founding Fathers and the great leaders as expressed in their own words that there is a deliberate resultant censoring of the name of God and expression of the presence and role of their faith in historical events from our students’ eyes and ears.
The third point that really stands out is the focus by both of them on the commission as a burden of responsibility, not as a glory, a “promotion” or an ego fulfilling award. This was not a change in title; this was the combining of responsibility for the Army and the placing it in the hands of General Grant. Both Lincoln and Grant focused their remarks on the gravity of that responsibility, and the confidence of the people of the nation in Grant. These were not empty words of false modesty, but preservation of the words that two men each carrying a great burden expressed at such a momentous time. Remember, they were not saying these words for “TV” or for “the public,” but they were saying what they genuinely felt according to the gravity of the situation.
The fourth point is that Grant turns all credit immediately on the troops. He calls the armies that are assembled to fight for the Union “noble” and he means it. That is in stark contrast to some today who do not speak up more clearly and sincerely in giving the armed services personnel their credit and respect. By contrast it’s just about the first words out of Grant’s mouth based on his heartfelt feelings (remember, this was a private event and no poseur self consciousness existed back then, for even newspapers had small circulation and delay in reporting events). People said what they meant and when they gave credit they meant it.
The fifth point is that Grant in turn gives all credit and glory to God, using a term that was common traditionally, which is Providence. Grant credits the troops and concludes with saying that if the Union is successful it is because of God’s will because God’s will leads both individuals and nations. Again, remember this is Grant’s ad hoc words of acceptance of the commission and once again we are treated to reading that people said what they honestly and strongly believed. Faith in God was in our nation as common, shared, strong and ever present as the air that we breathe.
I suspect that people enjoy reading all they can about what President Abraham Lincoln was really like. Paging through just now I found another meeting between the men and more “gold” for both facts and enjoyment. Maybe I’ll make a series of these excerpts for those of you who can’t get a hold of the book and would like to read some of the more interesting things that I find to share.
First of all, humans on a day to day boring basis need to either learn from past mistakes or repeat them. That is a proper context, the problem of learning, as my brother would say to his children “the easy way or the hard way.” If someone text messages and causes an accident, one would hope that the person learns not to text message while driving again, and to pull off into a parking area of one must. This is an example of “those who do not understand not to text message while driving because you might cause an accident are doomed to risk possibly causing another accident at some point in their driving life.” However, one could not immediately write an epic history or philosophical book that discusses “Humans learned that texting while driving is dangerous and thus, oh you people of the future, do not ever put any distracting activity in your automobiles of the future again.” How can one anticipate a country’s stance toward a human activity and foible, and use of a technology, twenty or one hundred years in advance? You can’t because you cannot anticipate the circumstances. For example, maybe a car is invented where you can sit there and text all you want like a fiend while driving and never cause an accident! I’m just making up a slightly silly analogy, but it’s a solidly accurate analogy and very useful.
So trying to shove history down people’s throats so that they “learn to never make THAT mistake again” is just plain stupid. History is important so that one can learn 1) what actually happened 2) what people actually thought, did and believed at the time 3) the circumstances and 4) as a contribution to modern day wisdom and ability to problem solve. The first three reasons are all part of what the TV character Inspector Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” History is about learning facts, and facts do include what people alive at the time thought and felt, in other words, their perceptions. When you understand the facts of history, including the perceptions of the contemporary participants, you can synthesize all the facts into an addition to your individual and societal wisdom. Being wise has many advantages. The first is that one tends to be more optimistic and be strong of heart because you understand what has happened before, and how people got through it, and how you can retain hope, even in dire circumstances, today. The second advantage of wisdom is that you are not mislead by false theories of what is actually happening today, and as both the Bible and secular literature warn that in times of trouble rumors and false prophets are rampant. When one has a solid grounding in factual history and adds that to one’s lode of wisdom, one can discern truth from falsehood or exaggeration much more clearly. The third advantage of wisdom is that you understand a wider range of possibilities of solutions to present day problems. You think of things that you and your contemporaries who are ignorant of history might never have thought about. The fourth advantage of wisdom is that you consciously or unconsciously emulate the wise leaders who have gone before you. Remember, the great virtuous figures in history became “wise” the same way as everyone else: through education and experience, including making mistakes.
Military instructors all understand what I’ve just described, and that is why key historical figures and their battles are studied in military academies. They study them so that they add 1) facts and 2) wisdom to their collective and individual skills. They do not study military history because they think that someday they may have to defend the Alamo again, and this time they “won’t get it wrong.” History and the ordinary people who comprise history is a moving target; people, life and society change. Circumstances change and society changes. For example, the Holocaust is the premier justification for the saying that I am criticizing, “Those who don’t learn from their past are doomed to repeat it.” Huh? No disrespect, but the Holocaust happened in a time before fax machines, cell phones, computers and satellite imagery. That is just one example of how precisely “the same thing” can never happen again, just from the sheer change in technology, if not in the improvement in people’s hearts. Yet we can photograph the Sudan and Darfur, and the conflict in the Congo, over and over again, and the suffering continues, just to give two examples. The idea that history needs to be studied to “prevent” the “same mistake” from “repeating” is New Age stinking thinking. History needs to be studied so that people have a common basis for the facts, so that they understand human nature and response to circumstances more clearly, and thus they can add to their wisdom that they then apply as judicious to current situations and problems that they face.
So now I will give my specific example. This afternoon I drove to the book store “Barnes and Nobles” and was gratified to find that they had (at a discounted price) a copy of one of my favorite books that I have sorely missed, because my original copy is in storage many miles away. The book is “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.” Regular readers know that my favorite secular history figure is George Washington, and of course it goes without saying that Abraham Lincoln has always been close to my heart. Like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant was also first a general and then a United States President. Grant led the Army of the North, the Union Army, against the Army of the South, the Confederacy, during the American Civil War, known as the War against Slavery. Unlike George Washington, who lived in the USA as it was one hundred years before Grant’s time, Grant did not come from a landed and well to do background and instead, even after being President, was in desperate poverty. He wrote his memoirs as he was very ill and toward the end, dying, so that his family would have some income, particularly after he was gone, and he died one week after completion of them. Thus this book has come to be known as a masterpiece of American literature because it truly has no grandiose agenda, no fudging of facts or perceptions in order to look more grand or clever. Grant has left all of us a treasure of “what it was like” and “just the facts, ma’am” of a pivotal time in the history of the United States. If you want to be instantly transported into that crucial time in US and indeed global history, and be inside the mind of a truly great man (of the “ordinary man who steps up to the challenge” ilk, as was Washington), all you need to do is open this book. I tend not to read these types of books cover to cover and then put them away. I tend to turn to them regularly and just read a section. For example, I have (in storage) first editions of Washington’s letters to Congress during the War of Revolution and I would enjoy just reading one letter every once in a while to be transported in terms of perspective and the facts to the time of the Revolution, to the mind of George Washington. No student of history needs to be told of the poverty and hard conditions of the Patriot Army that Washington commanded, and how he had to beg for every scrap of arms, food and clothing from the Continental Congress. It is facts and perspective like that which anyone can read at will, reading the words of the Father of our Country as he desperately needs gunpowder as New York City is about to fall. That is history. That is why people need to learn and love history, and why students should not be impoverished of learning genuine, not agenda ridden, history in their classrooms.
By the way, I want to make another point. I am not “drawn” to certain historical figures for any of the usual flaky reasons that New Age “thinkers” (such as it is) posit about themselves and others. I don’t find historical figures interesting because 1) I think they’ve reincarnated (no one is reincarnated, as you ought to all confess to right now) 2) I have a “lesson” or “unfulfilled karma” that I’m just blindly reaching out toward 3) I’m “taking sides or making a statement” about who I am interested in or not. For example, yes, Lincoln and Grant are the Union figures. But I have and always will have a great personal and professional affection for General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy. For a long time I enjoyed reading about the Tudors of England but that sure as hell did not mean that I was applauding or “reminiscing” about Catholic killing Protestant upstarts. As I’ve reported before, I have an even handed interest and affection toward all people of all nations and cultures, one that has been sorely tried and abused, however. Unfortunately that type of New Age stinking thinking has permeated our children’s schools where historical figures are ignored, diminished or skewed because of deliberate, and in some cases unconscious, imposition of New Age “values” and “dirty eyeglasses” (looking at the negative instead of the opposite, which is wearing “rose colored glasses”), as it were, on the ordinary people and facts of history. Honestly, I don’t know how this country or the world will survive if faith and reasoning based on facts does not return to the classroom and to day to day decision making.
So for my example, here is what I turned to read in Grant’s book this evening. I wondered, “What was it like the first time that he met President Abraham Lincoln?” I looked in the table of contents and found the event, which was when Grant was promoted to lieutenant general. Here is that excerpt from Grant’s memoirs.
From Chapter Fifteen, section “First Interview with President Lincoln.” The event described here took place in 1864.
The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant-general of the army had passed through Congress and became a law on the 26 of February. My nomination had been sent to the senate on the 1st of March and confirmed the next day (the 2nd). I was ordered to Washington on the 3d to receive my commission, and started the day following that. The commission was handed to me on the 9th. It was delivered to me at the Executive Mansion by President Lincoln in the presence of his Cabinet, my eldest son, those of my staff who were with me and a few other visitors.
The President in presenting my commission read from a paper-stating, however, as a preliminary, and prior to the delivery of it, that he had drawn that up on paper, knowing my disinclination to speak in public, and handed me a copy in advance so that I might prepare a few lines in reply. The President said:
“General Grant, the nation’s appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance upon you for what remains to be done in the existing great struggle, are now presented, with this commission constituting you lieutenant-general in the Army of the United States. With this high honor, devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add, that, with what I here speak for the nation, goes my own hearty personal concurrence.”
To this I replied: “Mr. President, I accept the commission, with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought in so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and I know that if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men.”
On the 10th I visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station; then returned to Washington, and pushed west at once to make my arrangements for turning over the commands there and giving general directions for the preparations to be made for the spring campaign.
Is this not a marvelous treasure, just this half of a page from Grant’s Memoirs? Stripped of what moderns would put in it of agenda and blabbing about the unimportant, it reveals many truths, both facts and perspectives. I’m sure most of you noticed what I am about to point out, but I know some of my readers are not from the USA and so I’d like to make plain some of the things I find gratifying in this excerpt.
The first is the promptness of Congress in acting in a non-partisan way to in ONE DAY approve Grant’s commission. In modern times, would not big mouth and big ego senators and representatives insist on blabbing away their opinion of both Grant and the conduct of the war? That is not to say they did not do that in the course of their normal business. But here in the middle of the Civil War, they kept separate the necessary swift actions, such as Grant’s commission, from being combined with thirst for both attention and perhaps necessary argument about the war. So Grant has preserved totally unintentionally a time that would be wonderful to see in that one respect again, when an action is conceived and completed in a matter of days.
The second is that Grant explains that even though President Lincoln and he had never met, Lincoln knew that Grant did not glorify in public speaking. This is not to say that Grant was a poor orator, but that he was a modest military man who preferred not to make speeches! Lincoln knew this about Grant in advance and in thoughtfulness of Grant’s feelings, wrote down his comments and gave Grant a copy so that Grant could compose in his mind while listening to the President what he would say in reply. That is a courtesy and more importantly a supportive thoughtfulness that is a role model that Lincoln is providing and that Grant has preserved for us to recall and to ponder. Notice too that on this occasion Lincoln invokes God; there is no escaping the heartfelt faith that all of our country’s leaders had and expressed as threads throughout all of their discourse and actions. But, of course, we know that in omitting from our schools study of the Founding Fathers and the great leaders as expressed in their own words that there is a deliberate resultant censoring of the name of God and expression of the presence and role of their faith in historical events from our students’ eyes and ears.
The third point that really stands out is the focus by both of them on the commission as a burden of responsibility, not as a glory, a “promotion” or an ego fulfilling award. This was not a change in title; this was the combining of responsibility for the Army and the placing it in the hands of General Grant. Both Lincoln and Grant focused their remarks on the gravity of that responsibility, and the confidence of the people of the nation in Grant. These were not empty words of false modesty, but preservation of the words that two men each carrying a great burden expressed at such a momentous time. Remember, they were not saying these words for “TV” or for “the public,” but they were saying what they genuinely felt according to the gravity of the situation.
The fourth point is that Grant turns all credit immediately on the troops. He calls the armies that are assembled to fight for the Union “noble” and he means it. That is in stark contrast to some today who do not speak up more clearly and sincerely in giving the armed services personnel their credit and respect. By contrast it’s just about the first words out of Grant’s mouth based on his heartfelt feelings (remember, this was a private event and no poseur self consciousness existed back then, for even newspapers had small circulation and delay in reporting events). People said what they meant and when they gave credit they meant it.
The fifth point is that Grant in turn gives all credit and glory to God, using a term that was common traditionally, which is Providence. Grant credits the troops and concludes with saying that if the Union is successful it is because of God’s will because God’s will leads both individuals and nations. Again, remember this is Grant’s ad hoc words of acceptance of the commission and once again we are treated to reading that people said what they honestly and strongly believed. Faith in God was in our nation as common, shared, strong and ever present as the air that we breathe.
I suspect that people enjoy reading all they can about what President Abraham Lincoln was really like. Paging through just now I found another meeting between the men and more “gold” for both facts and enjoyment. Maybe I’ll make a series of these excerpts for those of you who can’t get a hold of the book and would like to read some of the more interesting things that I find to share.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Thoughts re American Civil War & my fav Grant
Like any normal human I find myself interested in certain chapters of American and world history, and not so interested in other topics. That's how sane people are; they have interests, hobbies and curiosity about some things and not so much about others.
The American Civil War was not an area that I tended to do much reading about or tourism of important scenes from the war. That's not because I was not a supporter of the war; to the contrary, I have always been an ardent supporter of the Union's cause, both to keep the union of the USA together and to defeat slavery. But to me this was familiar territory, and not because "I'm a reincarnated bozo from the Civil War era." It was familiar to me because in the 1950's and 1960's it was still taught in the schools with great scholarly detail in both history classes and in English (the literature part) classes. Kids of my era were pretty educated in the Civil War, so it did not have a mystique that would pique a collecting, traveling or lore interest. Further, a Civil War vet actually lived in my grandparents' hotel. While that was before my time by a few years, it shows that when I was growing up there was actually only one generation removed from people who remembered the Civil War first hand. It was the same for many Afro-Americans in those days whose parents would know family members who remembered slavery and the War to end it first hand.
But like most well educated Americans at that time I did have a "hero" from that time, being Ulysses Grant, commander of the Union army and later two term President. I admired Grant and was interested in him the same way one of my favorite historical figures is George Washington. I admire people who have incredible greatness of calling thrust upon them and who respond in an admirable way. These are not people who are "entitled" to "glory" or "responsibility." They are people who through patriotism, fortitude, faith and a particular set of skills find themselves with the huge responsibility of the country's very well being and existence placed upon their shoulders. It is for that reason that I've always admired General Grant. Further, he made very forceful actions to protect the rights and lives of the freed slaves; he did not drop his interest in their well being after achieving the necessary military victories. He was ahead of his time (and under appreciated).
Grant wrote a tour de force book, his "Memoirs," which I highly recommend. I have a copy in storage and picked it up several times to finally read, but didn't get the chance as yet. You can read a very excellent and balanced summary of Grant on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_Grant
When I got my first car in college and did some bird watching and camping, there was exactly one place that I wanted to visit regarding the Civil War, however, and so I followed the map and found it. It is the courthouse at Appomattox where General Lee surrendered to General Grant. That I just wanted to see. On the way there I was touched by the small signs along roadsides marking where a certain number of Confederate or Union soldiers were buried.
The American Civil War was not an area that I tended to do much reading about or tourism of important scenes from the war. That's not because I was not a supporter of the war; to the contrary, I have always been an ardent supporter of the Union's cause, both to keep the union of the USA together and to defeat slavery. But to me this was familiar territory, and not because "I'm a reincarnated bozo from the Civil War era." It was familiar to me because in the 1950's and 1960's it was still taught in the schools with great scholarly detail in both history classes and in English (the literature part) classes. Kids of my era were pretty educated in the Civil War, so it did not have a mystique that would pique a collecting, traveling or lore interest. Further, a Civil War vet actually lived in my grandparents' hotel. While that was before my time by a few years, it shows that when I was growing up there was actually only one generation removed from people who remembered the Civil War first hand. It was the same for many Afro-Americans in those days whose parents would know family members who remembered slavery and the War to end it first hand.
But like most well educated Americans at that time I did have a "hero" from that time, being Ulysses Grant, commander of the Union army and later two term President. I admired Grant and was interested in him the same way one of my favorite historical figures is George Washington. I admire people who have incredible greatness of calling thrust upon them and who respond in an admirable way. These are not people who are "entitled" to "glory" or "responsibility." They are people who through patriotism, fortitude, faith and a particular set of skills find themselves with the huge responsibility of the country's very well being and existence placed upon their shoulders. It is for that reason that I've always admired General Grant. Further, he made very forceful actions to protect the rights and lives of the freed slaves; he did not drop his interest in their well being after achieving the necessary military victories. He was ahead of his time (and under appreciated).
Grant wrote a tour de force book, his "Memoirs," which I highly recommend. I have a copy in storage and picked it up several times to finally read, but didn't get the chance as yet. You can read a very excellent and balanced summary of Grant on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_Grant
When I got my first car in college and did some bird watching and camping, there was exactly one place that I wanted to visit regarding the Civil War, however, and so I followed the map and found it. It is the courthouse at Appomattox where General Lee surrendered to General Grant. That I just wanted to see. On the way there I was touched by the small signs along roadsides marking where a certain number of Confederate or Union soldiers were buried.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appomattox_Court_House
I knew several Civil War enthusiasts. That's cool. Like I said, to each his own about what chapters of history they are interested in. But what really turns me off are the many freaks who are interested because they believe in reincarnation, and not only claim those roles for themselves but assign them to others. As regular readers know, New Age reincarnation believers disgust me and make me puke. I can't wait until it is my time in heaven and there are none of them in sight or smell, since belief in reincarnation is refuted and forbidden by God. (Again, I have no quarrel with those of legitimate traditional faiths whose belief includes reincarnation. But they are not to live as if they "know" who "they really are" and who "you really are." That is abomination under any faith).For years I have seen a moron who likes to walk or drive past me acting out his belief that he is reincarnated Grant. Nothing puts a sane, clean and sober person more off another person than a malicious retard who defies God and assigns recycled sausage souls to his or her self and to others. That has done a huge part in eliminating my interest in any historical era or figure. These scum buckets drool over every book I buy or historic site I visit thinking "Oooh, maybe she's 'remembering' who we 'really are.'" It makes me sick how they probably cackled with glee when I bought a garnet cross shaped pin that was owned by a relative of Lincoln's. No, but God's going to remind YOU who you really are when you die and are judged unworthy for claiming souls of people while not even tending to the authentic one that you have been given.
Anyway, I hope you young readers of my blog will give American history another chance and do some reading on figures like General Grant. You'll really enjoy it if you think in terms of the enormous challenges that these people met with honor, especially in the context of the times. Ken Burns did a marvelous job with his "Civil War" series on PBS. You'll also enjoy it if you have not been contaminated by your sick parents or their friends into thinking that you need to study the historic figures to know 'who you really are.' You really are yourself, asshats: one soul, one life, one God you are responsible to, that's it.
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