tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post4290125275967237989..comments2023-11-03T01:07:27.013-07:00Comments on THE rEPUBLICAN OBSERVER: Alexander V. Marriotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-83386573269105295132011-11-09T20:32:26.449-08:002011-11-09T20:32:26.449-08:00HAHAHA, all three of those broad fields have been ...HAHAHA, all three of those broad fields have been heavily written about. It can be hard to isolate a topic to do some original research and writing about. My recommendation is to go with what interests you and then read the secondary books that are considered THE BOOKS on the topic. Then read some of the recent works from the last five years--both books and journal articles. Take notes on all of it, and you're sure to find unexamined questions or methodoligical problems or faulty theorizing that you can exploit in a research project. Of course, always keep your head in the primary sources and as you're reading the secondary stuff, you're going to notice familiar sources being used in ways you don't necessarily agree with. You're also going to find things in the primary materials that haven't been used--or been used very little or in a different context--that seem more important to whatever motivating questions interest you about the historical topic. A person with a good mind, a keen eye, and a respect for the sources can never fail to develop a topic in any subject in history--even something like the American civil war or Abraham Lincoln, which each have tens of thousands of books published about them.Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-16343558747211081662011-11-08T13:32:00.415-08:002011-11-08T13:32:00.415-08:00well I was thinking of the Civil War Era, but I th...well I was thinking of the Civil War Era, but I think this might have been exhausted, I also thought of the cold war era, which I think has already been exhausted, so I have narrowed my focus down to the Civil Rights eraMikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-27610542607350308292011-11-08T10:57:11.829-08:002011-11-08T10:57:11.829-08:00Before I can properly attempt an answer, what topi...Before I can properly attempt an answer, what topic/period are you referring to? We've jumped in and out of a few here.Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-12656197554625953612011-11-07T23:31:27.027-08:002011-11-07T23:31:27.027-08:00Just a side question Alexander, regarding studying...Just a side question Alexander, regarding studying history. I was wondering what, in your opinion, are interesting topics or themes to explore in American history for a masters thesis course in this subject.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-88070765972164139512011-11-06T19:21:18.599-08:002011-11-06T19:21:18.599-08:00Yes, the conspiratorial non-sense surrounding FDR ...Yes, the conspiratorial non-sense surrounding FDR and the attack on Pearl Harbor is disgusting. The oil embargo was a response to the fact--as you point out--that Japan had launched a completely unprovoked and fraudulent invasion of China. The war that ensued included horrendous atrocities--the rape of Nanking merely being the most prominent and well-publicized because many of its would-be victims ran into the part of the city where Western diplomats lived and were protected. According to the Ron Paul's of the world, a foreign policy that recognized this as the most naked sort of aggression and cut off the supply of a resource Japan could easily enough supply peacefully (i.e. through trade) but which was essential to their war machine is an unforgiveable provocation that justifies a Japanese attack on the United States for which we ought to have felt guilty over. It's moral equivalence of the worst and most degrading sort and, ipso facto, reason to ignore such people.Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-48867902635139923322011-11-06T19:13:04.150-08:002011-11-06T19:13:04.150-08:00thank you for all this info Alexander. It sounds l...thank you for all this info Alexander. It sounds like the guy was a product of the enlightenment much like the USA at its founding and the rest of the founders. Truly a very good/great president he was.<br /><br />something else which I forgot to allude to is their critique of pearl harbour, particularly the fact that FDR put an oil embargo on Japan while conveniently forgetting that Japan invaded China, which was an ally of the USA back then. It seems their disgust with FDR (which is understandable) has actually completely blinded them.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-54262152099822059902011-11-06T14:59:37.873-08:002011-11-06T14:59:37.873-08:00What amazes me in the Woods, Paul, Wilson, DiLoren...What amazes me in the Woods, Paul, Wilson, DiLorenzo, etc. critique of Lincoln is that they pillory him for his well-known moderation (he was never an immediatist on abolition until after four years of civil war the institution was dead anyway) on slavery and race, but then accuse him of being some manner of radical opportunist who trampled laws underfoot like it was going out of style. It's a lame and confused critique and ignores several important contexts--the most important of which is the existence of a terrible civil war in the country and the very real dangers that existed to the existence of the government and the republic it represented. It also ignores Lincoln's attempts during the war to offer moderates and rebels alternatives to total uncompensated abolition which they rejected repeatedly. Lincoln only abandoned compensated emancipation and colonization of freed slaves abroad when it became clear that those for whom these concessions were designed were not at all interested in any compromises. Lincoln was also a great politician who wanted to make sure that no one could credibly accuse him of unrelenting belligerency and of being unwilling to negotiate--but there was no meeting of the minds because even in the border states, most slaveholders were simply not interested in the British model of compensated emancipation. Either, might I add, were the West Indian planters in the British Empire. They fought the decision for compensated emancipation tooth and nail and the final vote was very close. But they had no choice but to acquiesce in the final decision because rebelling, on islands where the slaves heavily outnumbered them, was completely out of the question. In the United States, not only did the slaves rarely outnumber the non-slaves in any particular state, but Lincoln and the Republicans weren't even proposing a plan of abolition--compensated or otherwise--and yet the Confederates rebelled simply for fear that Republican postmasters would allow the free dissemination of the ideas that slavery was morally outrageous and that they would not be able to take their slaves to New Mexico, Kansas, or South Dakota. Lincoln, in hindsight, did not keep a firm enough hand on some of the Generals in the North who went after Copperhead Democratic critics, but given the historical context and the very real situation he faced, he was quite measured and the overwhelming majority of Northerners concurred (not to mention the 100,000 men from the Confederate controlled states who joined the Union armies).Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-36219173809159491712011-11-06T14:59:25.487-08:002011-11-06T14:59:25.487-08:00This letter is often quoted to prove the conclusio...This letter is often quoted to prove the conclusion that Lincoln--and by extension, everyone else--thought the war was simply for the Union and that slavery, as such, was a means to an end. But, of course, Lincoln did not start the Civil War--the Confederates, who purported to withdraw legally from the government FOR the explicit defense of the morality of slavery seized federal property and fired the first shots--first on an unarmed supply ship trying to bring food to the garrison at Fort Sumter and then on the fort itself. Lincoln had always made clear that outside the context of a war that, while he thought there could be no moral defense of slavery, legally it was a local state-wide institution the Federal government could not touch. But the Federal government had, historically, and under Lincoln would resume preventing the spread of slavery to the territories of the United States. To avoid Civil War--a calamity that could destroy the entire republic--he was prepared to make all manner of concessions to the South that in the minds of most people merely affirmed what everyone at the time thought was the case, i.e. that the Federal Government could not abolish a local institution in the states where it was established, like slavery. But the Confederates rejected these concessions because the only concessions they truly wanted were the recognition of an imaginary right to take slavery anywhere in the country outside of states that legally recognized it--and they also, it should be noted, wanted the Northern States to close down abolition presses and newspapers and prevent the spread of abolition literature as an affront against their "way of life" and a means of promoting slave insurrection. Lincoln's letter to Greeley, published as the Union was on the ropes militarily and still trying to make sure that Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland remained loyal, made sure that everyone remained aware that Lincoln was not a wild-eyed radical on the issue of slavery in the states. But, his position was clear, if the rebellion continued, congress and the President were within their rights to confiscate the property of rebels. The preliminary proclamation issued in September was a warning that, if the rebels continued in that posture past the 1st of the year, 1863, the government would declare their slave property forfeit (which is why the document famously does not free slaves in loyal areas of Louisiana and the states of Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, etc--Lincoln was still trying to persuade these states to accept a compensated emancipation plan, which they stubbornly refused and consequently saw the institution wiped out without compensation when the 13th amendment was ratified).Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-22396865593361810862011-11-06T14:59:05.172-08:002011-11-06T14:59:05.172-08:00Yes, the reasons for that range from a set of legi...Yes, the reasons for that range from a set of legitimate contemporaneous criticisms leveled at Lincoln which culminated in the case of Ex Parte Milligan (1866)[http://supreme.justia.com/us/71/2/case.html] to what is, essentially, a continuous rehash of the criticisms leveled at Republicans and Lincoln by radical Democrats in the North during the war and which became the line of attack from unreconstructed ex-Confederates in the South after the war--most notably in the memoirs of Jefferson Davis. But, in order to separate the Davis and pro-Confederate critique from the stain of promoting slavery, modern Lincoln critics of this stripe--and Ron Paul is certainly one of them--must assail Lincoln's motives on the slavery issue. And to do that--they focus on a number of things, not the least of which is Lincoln's letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley in August 1862 (just as Lincoln was preparing to issue the preliminary emancipation proclamation following the victory at Antietam in September). The letter can be viewed here [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d4233400))], but I quote the relevant portion now for convenience sake: "I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save th ise Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."Alexander V. Marriotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781689609653626889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5110398.post-60235387291158441092011-11-05T22:53:45.444-07:002011-11-05T22:53:45.444-07:00Thanks for this blog post Alexander and thanks to ...Thanks for this blog post Alexander and thanks to alluding to ron paul. What I noticed from this sort of crowd is that they also hate lincoln quite alot and use the quote on protecting the union as a reason to suggest that the civil war was not about slaveryMikenoreply@blogger.com