I just caught part of an interview with Diane Sawyer concerning a documentary she is involved in. It is entitled “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains”. I haven’t seen the documentary yet, so I can’t vouch for its quality, but Sawyer, who is from Kentucky, had some interesting observations. Also, she ended the interview by rather plaintively asking the interviewer not to forget the children of the mountains, and that air of having to plead a case that ought to be obvious troubles me. There is true poverty in Appalachia, and there has been for generations, and I bring this up in this context because the children of Appalachia have been left with nowhere to go. What was good about Appalachian culture has been more or less gutted over the past thirty years, until I can’t even recognize my own culture anymore, and this was done, it seems, with the idea that doing so would help to achieve racial equality. I have to confess that the idea that racial equality could be achieved by demeaning the men and women of an entire area is not an idea that I can fully grasp. The results of this type of thinking are being seen now. If the goal is to help black men and women in the South and in Appalachia–which is certainly one of my goals and a goal of my family, and has been through several generations–then you have to help both black men and women and white men and women in these areas out of poverty. Bobby Kennedy knew that. Reverend Jackson knew that in the 1980s when he came to West Virginia to speak to both the black and white citizens of the area. President Obama knows it, too. It is the Democratic party that forgot it, and let the old coalitions dissolve.

Thanks again, Kevin. I am including a link to the website of a group of Indigenous men and women who are circulating a petition asking that a formal apology be issued by the government to the Native descendants of the boarding schools that I referenced above. This is a very painful issue for Indigenous men and women. The goal is 5,000 signatures. There will also be a “Journey of Forgiveness” this year, that will cover thousands of miles and end in Washington, as the sites of the old boarding schools are visited, and revisited. It is an oppotunity for tremendous healing for everyone, and again, I thank you for letting your readers know about it.

The site is the following:

http://www.whitebison.org

Sherree, — Our collective memory is clearly biased against white Southerners when it comes to race and violence. We tend to overlook the fact, for example, that some of the worst racial riots occurred in northern cities following various migrations from the South, which led to job competition in urban centers.

To clarify: when I said that black men and women were “pawns” for the North and the South, what I meant was that, in many respects, both white Northerners (outside of the abolitionists) and white Southerners saw black men and women as pawns to further their own goals. Black men and women themselves never were, are not now, and never will be pawns for anyone, and that is my point, in essence. White Northerners and white Southerners, then and now, seem much more interested in promoting themselves and their preferred view of history, than they do in understanding that the Civil War was a national tragedy that involved everyone, and a tragedy that can only be resolved when we finally realize that everyone was involved. As far as the impact of the Civil War on the nations indigenous to this land? With the slavery question “settled”, the nation looked West, and Indigenous men and women were in the way of westward expansion. Yes, this is the history of our nation from the beginning, and there were “uprisings” during the Civil War itself. (I put the word uprising in quotes, because the use of this word depends upon your point of view. To an Indigenous man or woman, taking back land that was taken from them was not an uprising, but an act of justice) But after the war, the idea of possibly exterminating Indigenous men and women seemed to take hold and gain ground. That is not to say that before the war that the idea of the extermination of Indigenous men and women was not prevalent as well, because it obviously was. It is just that after the war, the possibility of actually implementing that idea presented itself, and the US army was ruthless in that pursuit. In addition, outside of the efforts of brave individuals who spoke out against the treatment of Indigenous men and women, the nation seemed quite content to let the army do whatever it had to do to open the West for expansion. The descendants of the Indigenous men and women who faced the army before and after the Civil War are quite clear on this point, and they have their own history to tell–a history that does not simply include the history of their ancestors as an “event” in the white man’s history, as one historian phrased it.

My point is that racism was not confined to the South, then or now, and the emancipationist view of history often seems to imply that it was, thus absolving the nation of responsibility for our racist past, outside of white Southerners–an underlying assumption that informs our entire national narrative. The abuse of black men and women in the South is well documented. The abuse of black men and women in other areas of the country, less so (by white men and women, that is) The abuse of Indigenous men and women in the US and in Canada has been almost completely hidden, until now. Just as the NAACP and the men and women who worked in the civil rights movement–and often died because of it–brought to national attention the abuses of black men and women in the South, and thus helped to stop those abuses, murders, and humiliations, now, we will soon have a chance as a nation to support the descendants of Indigenous men and women in bringing the abuses they have suffered to light, and in asking our government for a formal apology for the policy that led to the sending of Indigenous children to boarding schools that were established after the “Indian” wars were “won”, and the last Native American was shipped off to a reservation. The prototype for boarding schools in the US and Canada was the Carlisle Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In these boarding schools (known as residential schools in Canada) Indigenous children were forced to give up their language and their culture and many were physically and sexually abused. This abuse is intergenerational and contributes today to alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide in Native communities. The Canadian government recently issued a formal apology to First Nations’ men and women. I hope everyone will support Native men and women in the US in this effort, as it is time now to face yet another national tragedy and seek justice for the victims of it. I feel confident that President Obama will understand this. I hope this helps to clarify my position. Thanks, Kevin.

FYI, on a semi-related note, there is a thoroughly enjoyable, informative and surprising article in the February 12 issue of Salon.com, titled “How Would Lincoln Vote Today?”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/02/12/lincoln_bicentennial/

This is at best only half-true. I agree regarding the Abolitionists. But when William Garrison closed the “Liberator” in 1865, he felt it had completed its mission.

The black men who joined the Union army played a role in gaining their own liberty. And, while Jim Crow laws were horribly oppressive, it is quite easy to see that black people had far more power over their own lives (in terms of having better educational opportunity, ownership of property and stable families) than before the war.

The view that the Civil War was just about a bunch of Yankee capitalists trying to centralise government and enrich themselves is an old trope, and quite discredited.

There were Indian Wars before, during and after the Civil War and I do not see what connection Sherree is trying to make. The “Trail of Tears” preceded the war by 30 years, and one of the largest Inidan uprisings (in Minnesota) happened in 1863.

The only book I have read about the Republican party is Foner’s “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”, and it always puzzled me how the Republicans so quickly lost the middle one. It seems to me to be a complex question, but I always felt that the Great Depression of the 1870s was decisive, and Kevin is on to something. I must read some of the other books mentioned.

It doesn’t matter which university you attended, or even if you never went to a university. You are a true intellectual, seeking the truth.

I would like to expand upon my comment yesterday, with your continued patience, because I believe you are onto something that could help break the gridlock of discussions within the academic community concerning the Civil War–discussions that are truly important, since what happens in academia ends up in the streets, sooner or later, and affects everyone’s life.

Parts of the emancipationist theory of the Civil War did indeed become a myth in order to counter the lost cause myth of the South. This was a necessary myth, though, that was needed to dislodge the nation from over a century’s worth of living a false history that had disastrous results for black men and women. The lost cause myth does not hold up under inspection. It is simply false. The emancipationist theory does hold up, and could arguably continue to hold up, if the history of the Civil War stopped in 1865, say. It is what happened after the war and Reconstruction that seems to prove that the Civil War was indeed a brother’s war, and that those brothers–and the women who were their wives, sisters, and daughters–were concerned about the history and progress of the white man and little more, except for the courage and bravery of individuals on either side. The problem with discussing this, is that some lost cause adherent always seems to pop up and shut the conversation down. I agree with a comment that you made some time ago. Proponents of the lost cause have had their say, now it is time for others to speak. I am including a quote from quite an eloquent speaker concerning what the decimation of the buffalo really meant–an eye witness to that destruction, Sitting Bull of the Lakota, great Hunkpapa medicine man and warrior–a destruction and legacy that led to the descendants of the nations indigenous to this land, living to this day on reservations that a Cherokee friend of mine, who was born on a reservation and who served two tours in Vietnam to serve his country, calls, “POW camps”. Thanks, Kevin, for all that you do.

From a documentary by Galafilms, Montreal:

“If the American Army understood one thing about the Plains Indians, it was their dependence on the buffalo. Physically and spiritually, the buffalo sustained Sioux tribes. The supply seemed endless. By the first half of the 19th century, there were millions upon millions of buffalo roaming the Plains. The herds were so massive that observers often remarked they had seen a dark solid mass of buffalo as far as the eye could see.”

War on the Buffalo

“By the mid-1880s the U.S. government was determined to drive all native peoples onto reservations and open up the west for U.S. expansion and settlement. Military attacks on tribal encampments had been going on for years, but the Plains Indians were not easily defeated in battle. It became clear that as long as millions of buffalo roamed the Plains, the U.S. government would not be able to control the warrior tribes of the west. The government needed no official documents to outline its national policy: exterminate the buffalo. ”

“A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell … a death-wind for my people.”

Sitting Bull

A cold wind that was a death wind. It is time to listen. The great voices from the past know the story. Truly, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were the experts on the Civil War, as were Sitting Bull, and all of the great warrior chiefs who faced the US army–Sitting Bull of the Lakota, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces, Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache–the experts on its aftermath.

No I did not have the pleasure of studying under Dr. Gienapp. I attended the less prestigious institutions of higher learning