RikWriter, magellan01, keep your criticisms of Zinn on the content of what Zinn has to say, and refrain from attacking the intelligence or integrity of people who suggest reading Zinn. You’re edging towards the line, but don’t actually cross it.
Agree with this. Guin, if you don’t want to consider Olentzero’s opinion, you don’t have to, but don’t try to prevent him from offering it.
Everyone, remember that you’re in Cafe Society, not the Pit, and keep your language civil and refrain from personal insults.
That sounds like Zinn was a bit optimistic about the results of slave rebellion. I consider Nat Turner & John Brown real American heroes, but a slave revolt could have gone several strange ways. Utter collapse of the any freedom movement or subversion by northern whites were just two of the more likely.
Never underestimate the willpower and energy of slaves who have just successfully liberated themselves. Not to say that it couldn’t have gone any number of strange ways, but Blacks radicalized by their experiences in fighting for self-emancipation coupled with the radical political tendencies already existing among whites (Marxists fought for the Union in the Civil War) could have made for a powerful movement from below. Note also that Zinn said “might get out of hand”, not ‘would’. It’s clear he isn’t arguing that a radical challenge to capitalism in the US was the only possible outcome.
The book 1491, by Charles Mann (which I’m presently reading) is an interesting (if messy) take on the Indian populations of North, Central and South America and their often misunderstood or ignored contributions to the way the country (and continents) developed. Yeah, it’s a broad canvass, but very interesting.
I’m not sure a one-volume comprehensive history of the USA exists. Such a tome will necessarily omit way more than it will include, and much of history is in the details.
Jefferson was, at one point, a strong proponent of freeing the slaves… until a slave rebellion changed his mind.
(I can cite this when I get home. It’s in the Great Upheaval.) I doubt severely that a slave rebellion would have had… any result that wouldn’t have wound up in a horribly tragic fashion with most of the black citizens of America dead. (I give you Haiti and Toussaint Louverture as a second example. God, what a horror that was. It could have gone so well, too. )
I will second Morrison’s Growth of the American Republic. And the Penguin History.
Random trivia: It is true that Lincoln was no fan of freeing the slaves. You’ve heard the ‘If I could keep the country whole by freeing them or not freeing them’ quote?
That was only true until he met Frederick Douglass, whereupon he became convinced that a black man could be the equal of any white man, changing his mind entirely.
After that, emancipation was not just a political tool, but a personal conviction.
The problem here is that Frederick Douglass didn’t meet Lincoln until the summer of 1863, apparently on 10 Aug, almost a year after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (Sep 1862) and several months after the full Proclamation went into effect (1 Jan 1863). Whether it became a personal conviction or not after Lincoln met with Douglass is irrelevant, because the political tools (for what they were worth outside of propaganda value) had already been put into use. In fact the “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave” quote is from August of 1862, right before the preliminary Proclamation; in that same letter he differentiates between his view of his official duty as President (saving the Union) and his personal wish (“that all men, everywhere, could be free”). According to James McPherson in his collection of essays “Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution”, Lincoln had already set his sights on emancipation by the time he wrote this letter, but that in no way automatically means that the decision was borne purely by personal conviction. Had Lincoln not been convinced by events that the abolition of slavery was by then an absolutely necessary measure, there would have been no Emancipation Proclamation.
Entirely correct, Olentzero. At that point, he was doing it because it was the expedient thing, and possibly the morally correct thing, but not because he believed, personally, in equality.
This is why it’s trivia. The fact that he did come to believe, summer-fall 1863, is interesting, and might shed some light on his later actions.
That a black man could be the equal of a white man. Not just some human, but lesser being. Hey, it was the 1860s, a friendship between a black man and the President is a hell of a thing.
Jefferson: In his Notes on the State of Virginia, he denounced slavery, on both moral and economic terms. But then, he refused to have his name attached to it, and he refused to let it have wide circulation. Also, he kept slaves. He drafted a law for gradual emancipation, but never introduced it. He wrote a tirade against slavery in the Declaration… then didn’t complain when it was removed.
Sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have put it like that. But as stated, he was biased in favor of Zinn, and I wanted to hear why people had a PROBLEM with it. I wasn’t saying he couldn’t comment on it – just that I wanted someone ELSE’S perspective.