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Southern view
argued well
in pointed exchange with distinguished historian Richard
Jensen on the causes of the War Between the States
Gene Kizer: "I believe
I won this debate,
but please read what was written and send me your comments.
The
entire lengthy exchange is scholarly, engaging and moves fast. It is published
verbatim herein, and on
BonnieBluePublishing.com
with no additional
comment. You be the judge."
Richard Jensen is a distinguished
historian and moderator of the online e-mail discussion group, ConservativeNet, sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A brief bio on the UIC web site states that he "is a scholar with many
books and articles; he was professor of history for over 35 years at
several schools, including the University of Illinois, Harvard, Michigan,
West Point, and Moscow State University."
His position with respect to the War Between the States
is typical of a Northern academic. It is condescending and refuses to
acknowledge that the South even had a right to a view.
The reason I
believe he was thoroughly outdebated is because, as CNET moderator, he
would not even publish my last post even though it was clearly the best
of the entire lengthy exchange
and was scholarly, well-written and right
on topic.
What prompted the exchange was a discussion thread
about the use of federal money to rebuild New Orleans, and even whether New
Orleans should be rebuilt (as incredible as that sounds). A gentleman,
John Grigg, had written in, arguing that New Orleans was important enough
at the mouth of the Mississippi to be rebuilt. Professor Jensen then added the following comment about New Orleans being "lost,"
but recovered by Abe Lincoln in 1862, which prompted my reply. Here's
Professor Jensen's CNET comment, Monday, Sept. 5, 2005, 10:15 a.m.:
(Your editor will note that it took a lot of trouble to
get New Orleans. It was a liberal Democrat--Thomas Jefferson--who bought
it in the first place. Another liberal Democrat, Andrew Jackson, kept the
Brits from seizing it. After it was temporarily lost, it was a Republican,
Abe Lincoln, who recovered it in 1862. If Lincoln had not made the effort
he could have avoided 600,000 deaths. RJ)
Gene Kizer to CNET, 1st posting
published by Richard Jensen, Monday, September 5, 2005, 2:54 p.m. under
Subject line: cnet: Rebuild New Orleans??
from Gene Kizer
gkizer@bellsouth.net
The argument about whether New Orleans will be rebuilt or not, is
ridiculous. Of course New Orleans will be rebuilt and ASAP. The moment the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gets the levee system repaired, the rebuilding of New Orleans will start. The problem was not the hurricane.
It was the levee system, so that is what must be solved early in the
rebuilding process. I admit this is a huge problem that might take years
but my Lord, this is the USA in 2005 and we can and will do it. I live in
Charleston and we have survived epidemics, floods, hurricanes, wars,
earthquakes, and there is never a doubt that the place will be rebuilt
because it is so good living here. It is worth the chance one takes doing
so.
With all due respect to our editor, New Orleans was hardly "lost" when it
was a significant part of the Southern Confederacy. Louisiana, like EVERY other Southern state, following procedures similar to the debate and ratification of the original Constitution, debated the issue of secession, elected delegates who went to conventions and voted to secede, then the convention votes were ratified by the people in every
single Southern state. New Orleans and the rest of the South wanted
independence and freedom. Lincoln's war did cost 600,000 on the
battlefield, and historians say another 400,000 or so civilian
casualties, so Lincoln's effort was more like a million dead, but
his collection of taxes was important, indeed crucial to the
"Union." Certainly not to the South who adopted a miniscule tariff
for the basic operation of a small federal government with no largesse
like Northern mercantilist corporate welfare (bounties, subsidies that
were choking the South) or internal improvements that were made in the North but paid for with Southern money. Three-fourths of the taxes
in 1860 were paid by the South through ports like New Orleans
and Charleston, yet three-fourths of the revenue was spent in the
North. Of course New Orleans and the rest of the South wanted to be free
of all that.
But back to the present: New Orleans is an American treasure and will certainly be rebuilt with a better levee system, and like all rebuilding
after hurricanes, it will be newer and stronger and even more beautiful
than before. Nobody takes the argument seriously that New Orleans won't
be rebuilt.
Gene Kizer
[ed: the editor makes one comment on neo Confederacy. The Confederate States in spring 1861 imposed the current tariff rates on all imports from the USA. That is, it imposed tariffs on what previously been untaxed
internal trade. This was by far the largest tariff increase of any kind
in American history-indeed, the largest tax increase ever.
Neo-Confederates seem unaware of it in their mistaken belief that the
Confederacy was a low tax paradise of some sort. In fact its policies
quickly destroyed most southern banks, insurance companies, and exporters before Sherman got to them. For example the Confederacy shut down all its
own cotton exports to Europe before the Union naval blockade became
effective. As for New Orleans, a central policy since the days of Washington had been full access to the Mississippi. When the Confederacy
cut off that trade war was quite inevitable, regardless of what happened
at Ft Sumter.
Richard Jensen
Gene Kizer to CNET, 2nd posting
published by Richard Jensen, Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 3:30 a.m. under Subject line: cnet: New Orleans and the Civil War
from Gene Kizer
gkizer@bellsouth.net
I want to respectfully disagree with my friend Richard Jensen on the
tariff/tax issue. It is an extremely important issue. Because of it, the
economy of the Northern states was on the verge of collapse between the
time the first seven Southern states seceded and set up the Confederate
government, and the guns of Fort Sumter (January to April, 1861). Indeed,
it is my firm belief that the imminent collapse of the Northern economy is
what caused Lincoln to start the war during the most tense situation in
our nation's history. Lincoln sent troops and military supplies to Fort
Sumter after promising for weeks that he would not. His well publicized
military convoy is what precipitated the Confederate demand for surrender,
but let me backtrack. When Richard says that the "largest tariff increase"
in U.S. history came when the Confederates imposed their tariff, he is
wrong on two fronts. First, the previously "untaxed internal trade" he
referred to was now *foreign* trade to the new Southern nation, and that new nation had every right to impose its tariff on trade with other
nations of the world. The tariff was only 10% and it was spelled out
specifically in the Confederate Constitution that it could ONLY be used
for the operation of a small federal government. It specifically prohibited internal improvements in any state paid for by the general
treasury, and it prohibited bounties and subsidies like the North had
received for decades at the expense of the South.
Which brings up my second point. Southerners were being taxed through millions of dollars in bounties and subsidies paid to Northern industry
and shipping throughout the antebellum period. The protection of Northern industry, which Southerners went along with after the Revolution because
of the feelings of patriotism and wanting to build the young nation,
became entrenched. Robert Toombs called it a "suction pump" taking the
wealth out of the South, and depositing it in the North.
In 1860, Southern cotton was king and was creating most U.S. wealth. Over 60% of U.S. exports were cotton alone. Other Southern staples created additional wealth. The most prominent economist of the time, Thomas
Prentice Kettle, wrote that the North was completely dependent on the
South, because the South was the North's captive market. The South was
more like the North's colony. Without the South, Northern factories would
have nobody to sell to and would sit idle. Panic-ridden Northern
newspapers echoed the same sentiment after March, 1861. The protectionist
North, with the Southern states out of the Union, had passed the Morrill
Tariff of 40 to 60%. This made trade a no brainer for England and other Europeans. They could ship through Southern ports and pay 10%, or they could ship through the North and pay 40-60%. The South was poised to take over almost the entire trade of the county overnight because of its
tariff. The South had always wanted a low tariff and believed in free
trade because it could buy goods from Europe a lot cheaper than Northern
goods with their high prices jacked up by protectionist tariffs, bounties
and subsidies.
Other Southern advantages included control of so much of the Mississippi River from where railroads to the West could be built. While the Northern economy was on the verge of collapse, there was total elation in the
South. Southerners were now independent like the Colonies in 1776, but for
the first time ever, they had economic independence. The English, who were the chief industrial competitors of the North, were dying to build
factories in the South and be close to plentiful Southern commodities,
especially cotton. Northerners even feared they they would not have access
to the Southern raw materials their factories needed.
So, Lincoln manufactured his own Pearl Harbor and a million people ended
up dead, but he guaranteed the ascendance of the North. . . .
Go to the rest of this exchange -
there's MUCH MORE great information to go!
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Magna est veritas et
praevalet
Great is truth, and it
prevails
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The History and Literature
of the South now 77 volumes
with
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DVDs
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Videotapes
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Audio
CDs
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Audiotapes
Go to The History and Literature of the South
The History and Literature of the
South is proud to announce the availability of
audio CDs and
audiotapes in addition
to its long-standard videotapes and DVDs.
There's even more good news: a significant
price drop. Now get any
VHS tape or DVD for
only $15.95. The new
audio CDs are $12.95 and audiotapes are $10.95.
Also, the series has been broken into 14 subject categories,
and 22 speaker categories. You save money when you buy all the volumes in a category.
Subject categories are:
Speaker categories, which include brief biographies of our 22
distinguished speakers, are:
Twelve EXCITING New Volumes!
Twelve volumes were shot this past
summer and are in the process of being edited, so the series is still at
65 volumes, though will soon be at 77.
The new volumes include two
outstanding lectures on films by Dr. Mark Winchell of Clemson. We now have
four outstanding volumes on films. The new ones are:
Volume 75
Copperhead
Cinema, Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil, and Martin Scorcese's
Gangs of New York
Volume 76
The Cause of Us All, Ronald F.
Maxwell's Gettysburg and
Gods and Generals
Also included in the twelve new volumes are three that
border on BRILLIANT original scholarship. Val Green's two talks are
riveting:
Volumes 66 and 67
Culture of the South Carolina Indians,
Parts 1 and 2
Val is a sewage engineer by trade, but, being
part Indian, has spent years and years and booked miles of travel studying
South Carolina Indians with great passion. He has tracked down and visited
exact places mentioned by people he has documented from the 1700s and
1800s. Typical is the explanation for the name of the Elloree river, and town
of Elloree. It comes from a migration of the Ell Indians of North Carolina
into South Carolina. The Indian word for river is "ree," thus Elloree.
Also, there was a mention of a trapper who paid the
enormous sum of eight deerskins for a petticoat. Val said, "Do you know
how much work you have to do to skin eight deer?" to which I said, "Yeah,
but that petticoat was Victoria's Secret to that trapper. I'm sure it was
worth it!"
Dr. Jim Kibler, long-time English professor at the
University of Georgia, gave another fascinating talk about an 1850s plant
nursery in Pomaria, South Carolina that was shipping plants all over the
world in the antebellum days. Its business was mostly destroyed by the War, but Dr. Kibler tracked down from old records many of
the plants sold in the 1850s, and he actually visited those places and
took slides of those exact plants and trees. It was fascinating to say the
least, a great slide show and talk entitled
Volume 70
Antebellum Southern Gardens,
Part 1
Dr. David Aiken of the College of Charleston and The
Citadel gave two great talks on Charleston:
Volume 68
Antebellum Charleston
Volume 69
Charleston During Reconstruction
Dr. Aiken has
recently had published through the University of South Carolina Press,
A City Laid Waste, The Capture, Sack and Destruction of the City of
Columbia, by William Gilmore Simms. Dr. Aiken edited the book and
gives an Introduction. Edgar Allan Poe said that William Gilmore Simms was
the greatest American writer of his time (the antebellum era), and Simms
was there in Columbia when Sherman burned it. Simms witnessed it all and
writes about it in A City Laid Waste.
Rounding out the twelve new volumes are excellent
talks by Dr. Thomas Fleming and Dr. Michael Hill. Fleming is one of the
top classical scholars in the country and often lectures on the influence
of the classics on the Old South. His talks were:
Volume 72
Southern Culture and the
Classical Tradition
Volume 73
The Classical Roots
of Agrarianism
Dr. Hill, whose passion is celtic history,
gives a fine talk on Scotland and its union with Great Britain:
Volume 77
A Parcel of Rogues:
Scotland and the Union of 1707
Why Black Southerners
Fought for the South in the
War Between the States
by Professor Edward C. Smith
Running Time: 1 hr., 15 mins.
Videotape
$15.95
Award-winning professor, Edward C.
Smith, is Director of American Studies at American University in Washington, DC,
Vice President of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, a Smithsonian Institution
scholar, and an authority on the participation of blacks on the Southern side in
the War Between the States. This talk, which received a THUNDEROUS standing
ovation at the end from a Southern crowd, contains an incredible amount of
information about blacks in American history including those who fought in, what
Professor Smith calls, "the first Confederacy" i.e., the American Revolution.
Rabid abolitionists, he says, were anti-slavery but definitely NOT pro-black, and even Lincoln did not believe blacks and whites could live together. Lincoln wanted to send blacks back to Africa.
Professor Smith, who is black, admits he catches hell from the PC crowd time to time, but he speaks like a true scholar who is indignant at the falsity and misconception that often pass for history in this age of political correctness. He discusses slavery and how it was dying out and likely would not have lasted another generation since there were already over 500,000 free blacks in the South, some 60,000 in Virginia alone.
He talks about the social intimacy that exists in the South between blacks and whites, which could never exist in the North or West, and he maintains that blacks fought for the "second Confederacy" in 1861, for the same reason they fought for the first one in 1776, because the South was home and they were defending and protecting their homes, just like white Southerners.
He speaks of the absolute proof of black Southerners participating with whites as soldiers in Confederate armies who, as one Yankee officer observed, were "mixed up with all the Rebel hoard."
Professor Smith speaks of black loyalty on the home front where there were wholesale avenues of escape throughout the war, and points out that most blacks stayed at home and ran the economy and protected women and children whose husbands were off on distant battlefields. He maintains that blacks had it within their power to make the War Between the States a "four-week war" had they chosen to side with the invading Yankees and sabotage, poison, rape and pillage, but of course they did not. They were steadfast in their loyalty to the South, which enabled the War for Southern Independence to be a bloody four-year contest that was only over when the entire South had been virtually destroyed.
Not only is Professor Smith fascinating and articulate, he is witty and
broke the crowd up constantly with laughter and applause. His thunderous ovation at the end was well-deserved. Pay with credit card, PayPal,
or plain-old-check in the mail.
Purchase
Why Black Southerners Fought for the
South in the War Between the States
World History DVDs
Produced
by Gene Kizer
Two-DVD/videotape set,
World War II in Europe, and
China, Japan and the Pacific War
by prominent naval historian,
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College/University of Charleston
World History, 1880 through the Cold War including World War I, and
World War II
in Europe and the Pacific, 10 DVD/videotape set by
prominent naval historian,
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the College/University of Charleston
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