Archiving Links - Ta-Nehisi Coates and the American Civil War
I'm really enjoying Ta-Nehisi Coates blogs about the American Civil War. Its such a huge time suck for me, second only to the time suck that is ASOIAF fandom.
TNC, as I'll call him from now on, is a senior editor at Atlantic Magazine. He has been writing about his autodidactic exploration of the American Civil War for 3 years now. He writes about primary sources, the ACW and its impact on current affairs, runs a Civil War online reading group, as well as mods the comment section. The commentariat is great - smart, witty, on the point, and above all, polite. What every commentariat should be, but falls short. Favorite things about his ACW blogging:
1. His exploration of ACW is outside of academia. His journey becomes his readers journey, he's not a guide so much as a really brainy fellow traveler. There's a lot of interaction between Coates and his commentators and the education goes both ways.
2. He condemns judging the past through modern sensibilities."The disease of presentism, looking up the past from the strict moral, legal, cultural, political and economic context of our time, is a constant problem."
3. He gives credit to a man's end as much as his beginning. This is important to me given the lefty disdain for Lincoln as a racist and political opportunist. At the end of his life, Lincoln wasn't a racist, perhaps even by modern standards. I learned from TNC's blogging that a lot of Northern people became radicalized by the war and the atrocities they saw in the South. Many people (Lincoln, Grant, Longstreet - a CSA general!) came very far in a short amount of time.
4. He doesn't use hierarchy as the sole way to understand freedom and individuals. I'm burned out by social justice internet circles and their jargon.
5. He stresses that the ACW is about slavery, not the "brother against brother" Southern view promulgated by historians like Shelby Foote. And that it lasted 250 years, rather than 4.
If there is such a thing as an African-American people--and I believe there is--then it must be said that that for 250 years, that people lived in a state of war. The period between 1860 and 1865 are but the final years of that war, during which as Lincoln put it:
...all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.
It is a privilege to view the Civil War merely as four violent years, as opposed to the final liberating act in a two and half century-long saga of horrific violence, a privilege that black people have never enjoyed, and truthfully that no one in this country should indulge.
No historical period was studied as extensively in my compulsory education as the American Civil War. If my entire compulsory education in the social studies was condensed to a single year, then about 6 months out of that year would be devoted the ACW and the events that lead up to it. It was enough so that when I hear comments like The ACW wasn't about slavery it was about States' Rights, I can say read the South Carolina declaration of secession which mentions slavery as the cause of secession or if it was about States' Rights then why did the South pass the Fugitive Slave Act? But that's hardly nuanced or particularly deep. By the time someone mentions Brazil or Northern wage slavery or the South willing to give up slavery towards the end of the war, I'm left with my behind showing. I really don't have a good comprehensive view on the ACW and most of my reading on subject has been of fictional sources (I love Gore Vidal's Lincoln btw). Coates' and the community he's built at the Atlantic is really great at illuminating this time period for me.
Here is TNC's list of Civil War fundamentals (or as he says leveling up at Warlock alt - TNC's a Dungeons and Dragons nerd). I'm slowly going through them.
1) Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. The single resource book. TNC mods a book group for it and other Civil War books that still active (though they finished this book 2 years ago and have moved on to discussing other ACW books). I like reading a chapter, then going to the book group to read everybody else's reaction even though I can't participate. Link here
2) David Blight's free podcast about the Civil war. Link here. TNC recommends that you listen to this while doing other things in your life. "Don't try to pay attention. Do your gaming or housecleaning or whatever. Don't take notes or any shit like that. Just listen. I doubt you will have to try."
3) Ken Burns' The Civil War documentary. Streaming on Netflix. Watch it. Words fail...
One of the things that came into focus while I've been lurking on TNC's Civil War blogs is the fallacy of that old bromide "History is written by the victors." When it comes to the ACW, that's not particularly accurate. A better statement is that "History is written by the literate." (which is a well, duh, moment). So much of the Civil War is now seen through two lens:
1) Lost Cause lens of Shelby Foote (who is a fantastic writer btw and has a voice that is like "molasses on hominy" - simply beautiful). But he does mythologize Robert E. Lee and the whole "brother against brother" narrative.
2) The narrative of Howard Zinn who bangs about the war being "more than slavery," or that it was about agrarianism versus industrialism, or that it shouldn't have been fought at all. This is the narrative that equates Northern wage slavery with Southern chattel slavery. This is the narrative that places the onus of not fighting the war solely on the North rather than the South who waged it not only to protect slavery in the CSA but to extend it to Central and South America.
I went to high school and college in California, so there's no regional bias for #1, other than what's been absorbed from the Ken Burns' documentary and Hollywood movies that endorse Confederate victimhood. The narrative I hear from the kids I went to high school and college with, from my Ron Paul supporting Libertarian friends (Paul parrots Zinn's rhetoric) is firmly entrenched in camp #2. Its frankly embarrassing after reading all this material TNC has gathered. As TNC says: "Before I dipped into this I had a vague sense that the War was about slavery. Nothing prepared me for how much it was about slavery--and explicitly about slavery. Nothing prepared me for how much the Confederates agitated for War. Nothing prepared for how much money there was in slavery."
TCN blogs for the Atlantic about a wide range of subjects. I've enjoyed his articles on current politics, hip-hop, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton (he says reading about bounded society helps him understand slave society), Dungeons and Dragons, etc. He's my internet crush. But the Civil War posts are the best, and links to them can be found here
Some of my favorites:
Here's one that very meaty. A primary source article with no editoralization. Gut-wrenching when you read in between the lines, realizing (1) how capricious the notion of white supremacy was to slaveholders (2) the torture of children (3) these men were selling their own children, their own siblings, and fighting for the right to keep them in bondage. One Drop
And here's one that's lighthearted. A primary source article that contains a letter from Lincoln. Made me giggle as Lincoln unwittingly sketches himself as Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice.
And here's one that I love because TNC's such a nerd and has a mancrush on US Grant. There's several posts about his mancrush. But I think this one is my favorite, because TNC applauds Grant's mastery of "the quiet dis." Made me chuckle because I really hate shrill, rude people who hurl invectives to argue their case. Quiet Dis
Lastly, a thought-provoking essay written for the Atlantic's 150th Civil War commemorative issue about why black people seldom study the Civil War. I'm not black and a descendent of slaves like TNC, but I am a POC, so his comments resonated with me and my own reluctance to engage with the study of the Civil War and especially Civil War battlegrounds.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/why-do-so-few-blacks-study-the-civil-war/308831/
TNC, as I'll call him from now on, is a senior editor at Atlantic Magazine. He has been writing about his autodidactic exploration of the American Civil War for 3 years now. He writes about primary sources, the ACW and its impact on current affairs, runs a Civil War online reading group, as well as mods the comment section. The commentariat is great - smart, witty, on the point, and above all, polite. What every commentariat should be, but falls short. Favorite things about his ACW blogging:
1. His exploration of ACW is outside of academia. His journey becomes his readers journey, he's not a guide so much as a really brainy fellow traveler. There's a lot of interaction between Coates and his commentators and the education goes both ways.
2. He condemns judging the past through modern sensibilities."The disease of presentism, looking up the past from the strict moral, legal, cultural, political and economic context of our time, is a constant problem."
3. He gives credit to a man's end as much as his beginning. This is important to me given the lefty disdain for Lincoln as a racist and political opportunist. At the end of his life, Lincoln wasn't a racist, perhaps even by modern standards. I learned from TNC's blogging that a lot of Northern people became radicalized by the war and the atrocities they saw in the South. Many people (Lincoln, Grant, Longstreet - a CSA general!) came very far in a short amount of time.
4. He doesn't use hierarchy as the sole way to understand freedom and individuals. I'm burned out by social justice internet circles and their jargon.
5. He stresses that the ACW is about slavery, not the "brother against brother" Southern view promulgated by historians like Shelby Foote. And that it lasted 250 years, rather than 4.
If there is such a thing as an African-American people--and I believe there is--then it must be said that that for 250 years, that people lived in a state of war. The period between 1860 and 1865 are but the final years of that war, during which as Lincoln put it:
...all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.
It is a privilege to view the Civil War merely as four violent years, as opposed to the final liberating act in a two and half century-long saga of horrific violence, a privilege that black people have never enjoyed, and truthfully that no one in this country should indulge.
No historical period was studied as extensively in my compulsory education as the American Civil War. If my entire compulsory education in the social studies was condensed to a single year, then about 6 months out of that year would be devoted the ACW and the events that lead up to it. It was enough so that when I hear comments like The ACW wasn't about slavery it was about States' Rights, I can say read the South Carolina declaration of secession which mentions slavery as the cause of secession or if it was about States' Rights then why did the South pass the Fugitive Slave Act? But that's hardly nuanced or particularly deep. By the time someone mentions Brazil or Northern wage slavery or the South willing to give up slavery towards the end of the war, I'm left with my behind showing. I really don't have a good comprehensive view on the ACW and most of my reading on subject has been of fictional sources (I love Gore Vidal's Lincoln btw). Coates' and the community he's built at the Atlantic is really great at illuminating this time period for me.
Here is TNC's list of Civil War fundamentals (or as he says leveling up at Warlock alt - TNC's a Dungeons and Dragons nerd). I'm slowly going through them.
1) Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. The single resource book. TNC mods a book group for it and other Civil War books that still active (though they finished this book 2 years ago and have moved on to discussing other ACW books). I like reading a chapter, then going to the book group to read everybody else's reaction even though I can't participate. Link here
2) David Blight's free podcast about the Civil war. Link here. TNC recommends that you listen to this while doing other things in your life. "Don't try to pay attention. Do your gaming or housecleaning or whatever. Don't take notes or any shit like that. Just listen. I doubt you will have to try."
3) Ken Burns' The Civil War documentary. Streaming on Netflix. Watch it. Words fail...
One of the things that came into focus while I've been lurking on TNC's Civil War blogs is the fallacy of that old bromide "History is written by the victors." When it comes to the ACW, that's not particularly accurate. A better statement is that "History is written by the literate." (which is a well, duh, moment). So much of the Civil War is now seen through two lens:
1) Lost Cause lens of Shelby Foote (who is a fantastic writer btw and has a voice that is like "molasses on hominy" - simply beautiful). But he does mythologize Robert E. Lee and the whole "brother against brother" narrative.
2) The narrative of Howard Zinn who bangs about the war being "more than slavery," or that it was about agrarianism versus industrialism, or that it shouldn't have been fought at all. This is the narrative that equates Northern wage slavery with Southern chattel slavery. This is the narrative that places the onus of not fighting the war solely on the North rather than the South who waged it not only to protect slavery in the CSA but to extend it to Central and South America.
I went to high school and college in California, so there's no regional bias for #1, other than what's been absorbed from the Ken Burns' documentary and Hollywood movies that endorse Confederate victimhood. The narrative I hear from the kids I went to high school and college with, from my Ron Paul supporting Libertarian friends (Paul parrots Zinn's rhetoric) is firmly entrenched in camp #2. Its frankly embarrassing after reading all this material TNC has gathered. As TNC says: "Before I dipped into this I had a vague sense that the War was about slavery. Nothing prepared me for how much it was about slavery--and explicitly about slavery. Nothing prepared me for how much the Confederates agitated for War. Nothing prepared for how much money there was in slavery."
TCN blogs for the Atlantic about a wide range of subjects. I've enjoyed his articles on current politics, hip-hop, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton (he says reading about bounded society helps him understand slave society), Dungeons and Dragons, etc. He's my internet crush. But the Civil War posts are the best, and links to them can be found here
Some of my favorites:
Here's one that very meaty. A primary source article with no editoralization. Gut-wrenching when you read in between the lines, realizing (1) how capricious the notion of white supremacy was to slaveholders (2) the torture of children (3) these men were selling their own children, their own siblings, and fighting for the right to keep them in bondage. One Drop
And here's one that's lighthearted. A primary source article that contains a letter from Lincoln. Made me giggle as Lincoln unwittingly sketches himself as Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice.
And here's one that I love because TNC's such a nerd and has a mancrush on US Grant. There's several posts about his mancrush. But I think this one is my favorite, because TNC applauds Grant's mastery of "the quiet dis." Made me chuckle because I really hate shrill, rude people who hurl invectives to argue their case. Quiet Dis
Lastly, a thought-provoking essay written for the Atlantic's 150th Civil War commemorative issue about why black people seldom study the Civil War. I'm not black and a descendent of slaves like TNC, but I am a POC, so his comments resonated with me and my own reluctance to engage with the study of the Civil War and especially Civil War battlegrounds.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/why-do-so-few-blacks-study-the-civil-war/308831/