America's Caesar

[Pat Young]

How 'bout that. You found an old book by Howell Cobb. I wonder if it is available for free on internet somewhere. A thoughtful examination of race relations circa 1856, no doubt . A Lost Causer before the Cause was Lost. Cobb was an influential Southern leader from my neck of the woods:
Schooled at Franklin College (UGA), Speaker of the house, Governor of GA, Sec of Treasury under Buchanan. He presided over the Montgomery convention that drafted the Confederate constitution. Defender of Macon and Columbus at the end. Survived the war and died in New York City, 1868.

I did not find an old book by Cobb. I offered it as part of the publisher's program of pro-slavery books along with the publisher's sympathetic descriptions of their contents.

 

[AndyHall]

The Negro: The Southerner's Problem
$15.00

by Thomas Nelson Page

Thomas Nelson Page wrote popular stories in the late 19th century, many of them featuring "faithful slaves" or what white southerners euphemistically referred to as "old-time Negroes." One of these stories, "Marse Chan," (1884) about a slave who follows his young master off the fight in the war, was cited specifically as embodying the idea and narrative behind the African American figure on the Confederate Monument at Arlington in 1914.

 

[diane]

I have pasted some descriptions of its books from the publisher on this thread. Clearly not just a Lost Cause publisher, but a proudly racist one as well.

Somebody finally noticed the publishing house has a certain policy/message/agenda. They also have some interesting old writings that are perfectly good but I'd buy those same books elsewhere. This outfit doesn't need my two bits!

 

[Pat Young]

Thomas Nelson Page wrote popular stories in the late 19th century, many of them featuring "faithful slaves" or what white southerners euphemistically referred to as "old-time Negroes." One of these stories, "Marse Chan," (1884) about the slave who follows his young master off the fight in the war, was cited specifically as embodying the idea and narrative behind the African American figure on the Confederate Monument at Arlington.

I am sure the character development is amazing .

 

[E_just_E]

This reminds of this:

(which is actually a highly recommended book for everyone interested in the assassination, its planning and the aftermath)

 

[E_just_E]

How 'bout that. You found an old book by Howell Cobb. I wonder if it is available for free on internet somewhere. .

Here

Self-published nevertheless... Pretty interesting read, if you can stomach. Interesting dogmatic positions and interpretations. Totally burn on a stake material a few centuries before.

 

[ForeverFree]

Beginning with the usurpations of Abraham Lincoln, this book explains the so-called emergency powers of the President of the United States. The author draws heavily from a wealth of rare political literature as well as long-forgotten government documents to paint an unsettling picture of American history.

http://confederatereprint.com/product_info.php?products_id=272

View attachment 54052

TSS,

I'm curious to know, how much research have you done into the actions of Jeff Davis during the war, and what would you say about the state of the literature - or lack thereof - of Davis' actions?

During the war Davis and the Confederate government:
o suspended the right of habeas corpus
o instituted a draft to force men to fight
o instituted the "tax in kind" on April 24, 1863. This new tax took 10 percent of all agricultural products and livestock raised for slaughter. Anyone who did not deliver his 10 percent faced a 50 percent penalty.
o instituted impressment policies in which food, livestock, or farm equipment could be seized in exchange for Confederate (worthless) IOUs.
o instituted impressment policies which took slave labor property and employed for use by the Confederate military, thus exposing that property to disease, injury, or even death, due to hazardous working conditions.

Overall, the Confederacy may well have been more injurious to individual rights and liberties, and more invasive of a federal government than the Union. Do the sources you review consider this at all? Could it be that both the Confederacy and the Union had to resort to difficult war time measures to achieve victory for their respective sides? Or do your sources simply criticize Lincoln, seeking to gain no real perspective on the powers used by governments during wartime, and to ignore the actions (abuses?) of the Confederate States?

- Alan

 

[DanF]

You guys know Lincoln's still dead, right?

To the SWM's he can never be dead enough.

 

[DanF]

Here is how the same publisher describes its book on the KKK:

The Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan
$19.00

by Stanley F. Horn
originally published in 1935
paperback; 450 pages
This volume is a fascinating chronicle of the formation and growth of the infamous KKK following the War Between the States. Conceived in the minds of six former Confederate soldiers as "a hilarious social club" with no other purpose than their own amusement, the Klan quickly evolved into an institution of "Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism" and spread throughout the Southern States to counter the aggression against their people by unscrupulous Carpetbaggers and their vicious Union League cohorts. According to its published prescription, the Klan existed "to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal," and to "aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity to the laws of the land." Such illustrious figures as Generals John Brown Gordon of Georgia and Nathan Bedford Forrest of Tennessee were leaders in the Invisible Empire, the latter calling for its disbandment in 1871 when its purpose had been fulfilled.

What no "kaptain Klan" super hero comic?

 

[DanF]

So what kind of Caeser, allows a Presidental election in the middle of a civil war, and at the height of his power? Author might want to rethink his definitions....

All this talk of Lincoln as Caeser is really depressing. Think of the lost possibilities caused by his untimely death, surely this American Caeser would have had the defeated Jefferson Davis garrotted just as vercingetorix was!

 

[IcarusPhoenix]

No, back to actual history, if you dare.

Can someone really go back to a place they've never been?

 

[Pat Young]

TSS,

I'm curious to know, how much research have you done into the actions of Jeff Davis during the war, and what would you say about the state of the literature - or lack thereof - of Davis' actions?

During the war Davis and the Confederate government:
o suspended the right of habeas corpus
o instituted a draft to force men to fight
o instituted the "tax in kind" on April 24, 1863. This new tax took 10 percent of all agricultural products and livestock raised for slaughter. Anyone who did not deliver his 10 percent faced a 50 percent penalty.
o instituted impressment policies in which food, livestock, or farm equipment could be seized in exchange for Confederate (worthless) IOUs.
o instituted impressment policies which took slave labor property and employed for use by the Confederate military, thus exposing that property to disease, injury, or even death, due to hazardous working conditions.

Overall, the Confederacy may well have been more injurious to individual rights and liberties, and more invasive of a federal government than the Union. Do the sources you review consider this at all? Could it be that both the Confederacy and the Union had to resort to difficult war time measures to achieve victory for their respective sides? Or do your sources simply criticize Lincoln, seeking to gain no real perspective on the powers used by governments during wartime, and to ignore the actions (abuses?) of the Confederate States?

- Alan

I have written a bit about abuses by the Lincoln administration of civilian rights. They were real. Some of them set unfortunate precedents.

However, Lincoln should not only be compared to Davis, but also to the status quo leaders of other countries involved in civil wars. Overall, he comes off well by comparison.

 

[TheSecretSix]

How 'bout that. You found an old book by Howell Cobb. I wonder if it is available for free on internet somewhere. A thoughtful examination of race relations circa 1856, no doubt . A Lost Causer before the Cause was Lost. Cobb was an influential Southern leader from my neck of the woods:
Schooled at Franklin College (UGA), Speaker of the house, Governor of GA, Sec of Treasury under Buchanan. He presided over the Montgomery convention that drafted the Confederate constitution. Defender of Macon and Columbus at the end. Survived the war and died in New York City, 1868.

Cobb, Georgia??

 

[ForeverFree]

I have written a bit about abuses by the Lincoln administration of civilian rights. They were real. Some of them set unfortunate precedents.

However, Lincoln should not only be compared to Davis, but also to the status quo leaders of other countries involved in civil wars. Overall, he comes off well by comparison.

I have often referred to a point made by the historian Stephanie McCurry a few years ago. In June 2011 she attended a conference in Israel in which civil wars throughout history were discussed. She notes in the October 2012 issue of Civil War Times:

The level of barbarity and violence reached in the United States pales even in comparison to the other major example of a civil conflict fought conventionally. In the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), there were, in addition to 300,00 battlefield deaths, at least 200,000 extrajudicial killings of civilians-including the purposeful killing of many women and children behind the lines. Three-quarters of them were killed by Franco's forces in mass executions... More than half a million refugees were forced into exile, and many died in French concentration camps... There is little in the American record to compare to this systematic targeting, terrorizing and exterminating of civilians for purposes of political repression...

It is a sad truth that the civil wars of our own time constantly force the Civil War into new perspective. Observers of recent genocidal wars in Africa or Yugoslavia are unimpressed with the violence of the American war. What strikes them most is the level of restraint observed by Union troops in their treatment of enemy soldiers and civilians. What other country, they ask, adopted rules of war in the midst of the fighting? Indeed. It is one of the most impressive and - yes - unique features of our war; that the Lincoln administration was willing to bind itself to a set of regulations limiting the latitude of the Union army in its operations, including in occupied territory and guerrilla warfare. It says something profound.

There are real limits to this view, more than we are yet aware. For the record holds abundant evidence of one kind of violence to which we have yet to do justice: the torture, rape, and murder of enslaved men, women and children by both armies, but especially Confederate forces. While the Spanish have undertaken a belated accounting, in the United States there has been no such effort to estimate the extrajudicial dead. We know of Fort Pillow and other massacres of black POWs. But this number must pale in comparison to the number of noncombatant slaves killed. Official and personal records are littered with casual references: to slaves, including children, beaten to death on plantations, runaways hanged, male slaves executed, insurrections repressed by mass execution, and to torture, mutilation and murder by Southern "scouts," even after the surrender... For these war dead there has been no accounting.
​

Now, knowing that our own Civil War wasn't "as bad" for civilians as other wars, is not going to soothe the memory of the war for those who suffered through it, or their descendants. I don't know if people are going to be consoled by the fact that things could have been worse than they were. But it is something to think about.

- Alan

 

[TheSecretSix]

TSS,

I'm curious to know, how much research have you done into the actions of Jeff Davis during the war, and what would you say about the state of the literature - or lack thereof - of Davis' actions?

During the war Davis and the Confederate government:
o suspended the right of habeas corpus
o instituted a draft to force men to fight
o instituted the "tax in kind" on April 24, 1863. This new tax took 10 percent of all agricultural products and livestock raised for slaughter. Anyone who did not deliver his 10 percent faced a 50 percent penalty.
o instituted impressment policies in which food, livestock, or farm equipment could be seized in exchange for Confederate (worthless) IOUs.
o instituted impressment policies which took slave labor property and employed for use by the Confederate military, thus exposing that property to disease, injury, or even death, due to hazardous working conditions.

Overall, the Confederacy may well have been more injurious to individual rights and liberties, and more invasive of a federal government than the Union. Do the sources you review consider this at all? Could it be that both the Confederacy and the Union had to resort to difficult war time measures to achieve victory for their respective sides? Or do your sources simply criticize Lincoln, seeking to gain no real perspective on the powers used by governments during wartime, and to ignore the actions (abuses?) of the Confederate States?

- Alan

Okay, and which side made all of that necessary? Which side forced the hand of the other? Empire historically wins, this is true... but is it right? Killing in war is necessary, yes, but is it ever Christian? Desperate times and measures do not equate to a peacetime plan of government. The North would have yellow fringes on its flag forever, signifying what, exactly? Decoration, or outright military control?

 

[TheSecretSix]

All this talk of Lincoln as Caeser is really depressing. Think of the lost possibilities caused by his untimely death, surely this American Caeser would have had the defeated Jefferson Davis garrotted just as vercingetorix was!

Caesar. The word is Caesar.

 

[TheSecretSix]

I looked at the website linked to. At the bottom of the page for the book Secret wants us to buy it has a box labelled "Customers who bought this product also purchased." Here are two of the liberty loving books that they bought along with the sites' descriptions of their content:

The Philosophy and Practice of Slavery in the United States
$15.00

by William A. Smith
originally published in 1856
paperback; 328 pages

This book discusses the subject of domestic slavery in the United States from a uniquely philosophical standpoint. The author, a professor of Moral Philosophy, criticizes the egalitarian proposition that all men are born equal, showing that they instead differ greatly in moral and intellectual capacity and that the restraining nature of the government under which they live will increase or diminish in proportion to their ability to restrain their own passions.

A Scriptural Examination of Slavery
$11.00

by Howell Cobb
originally published in 1856
paperback; 141 pages

The author of this book presents two propositions in the investigation of the institution of slavery as it existed in the United States: 1. African slavery is a punishment inflicted by God upon enslaved peoples or nations for their wickedness; and, 2. Slavery in this country was the Providentially-arranged means whereby Africa is to be lifted from her deep degradation to a state of civil and religious liberty.

Thank you for those. I will check those out when I have time.

 

[rpkennedy]

Okay, and which side made all of that necessary? Which side forced the hand of the other? Empire historically wins, this is true... but is it right? Killing in war is necessary, yes, but is it ever Christian? Desperate times and measures do not equate to a peacetime plan of government. The North would have yellow fringes on its flag forever, signifying what, exactly? Decoration, or outright military control?

Considering one side unilaterally seceded and proceeded to steal anything not nailed down and then bombarding a military facility, one side absolutely made the war necessary.

According to most churches, yes, killing in war and in self-defense is not the same as murder which is what many theologians believe is the real meaning behind the commandment.

R

 

[TheSecretSix]

I have pasted some descriptions of its books from the publisher on this thread. Clearly not just a Lost Cause publisher, but a proudly racist one as well.

Racist. Mmmh. A Good Old Civil War Term...

 

[Dave Wilma]

Comparing Lincoln to Caesar is a bit of a stretch, much too far for me.