“The Calamity of Appomattox”, H.L. Mencken,

Stark Young, to whom I'm related by marriage, wrote of a similar class of people who came in after the war, more or less allied with the carpetbaggers, and began foreclosing on the properties owned by the planter class. Young was of course planter class himself and wrote nostalgically about the McGhee home he spent so much time in during the 1880s and 90s. I have a photo of his Auntee, Sallie Starks, taken when she was about 16, and one of his mother, judging by the resemblance to him.
 
yes, Frost said "Good fences make Good Neighbors" , with almost as much sincerity as Mencken's Mercury column. Mencken was known for sending up those subjects he turned his pen to... He sniped at every sacred cow he was aware of. In this instance, he was "supporting" the Lost Cause with condemnation. He would no more have thought the South capable of surviving independently than Mark Twain would have. Both grew up in Border States. Both saw the aftermath of the war in a post-slave society setting. Mencken's Maryland was still a share-cropper economy, surviving as the Banker of the South and as the hub of the B+O RAIL empire. That hub only survived by Jefferson Davis commanding TJJackson NOT to destroy the rail crossings over the Potomac. Not much chance that Mencken WASN'T tongue- in-cheek on this essay...his background was militating against it.
 
that aristocratic impulse would have fashioned the Confederacy if the fortunes of war had run the other way. Whatever the defects of the new commonwealth below the Potomac, it would have at least been a commonwealth founded upon a concept of human inequality

I think we can all agree on that.
 
It might not have produced any more Washingtons, Madisons, Jeffersons, Calhouns and Randolphs of Roanoke, but it would certainly not have yielded itself to the Heflins, Caraways, Bilbos and Tillmans.
The rise of such bounders was a natural and inevitable consequence of the military disaster.
I doubt that a Confederate victory would have avoided the rise of the Jim Crow elite.
 
I doubt that a Confederate victory would have avoided the rise of the Jim Crow elite.

A Confederate victory certainly wouldn't have led to any late 20th century ideals of racial inclusiveness, but with a victory, there wouldn't have a Radical Reconstruction with it's the bitter aftermath of racial distrust that absolutely ensured the rise of a Jim Crow elite in its harshest manifestation.
 
Mencken's writings on politics should never be taken too seriously. Outrageous statements were his stock in trade. His skill lay in the ability to articulate a seemingly sensible rationale for the outrageous.

He did genuinely hate the redneck populists like Ben Tillman and Theodore Bilbo (and William Jennings Bryan, among others). But the hatred seems to have have been aesthetic in origin, since Mencken was deeply conservative and shared many of the racial prejudices of the rednecks. Had the Southern "aristocrats" of his era been more successful in politics, he would have been lampooning them for their pettiness and their pretensions.
 
Mencken developed into a bit of crank in his old age. The 1948 election was the last presidential campaign that he covered as a journalist, and he came out squarely in favor of Strom Thurmond and the States Rights Party. So, as much as he disliked the redneck populists' style, he also had a deeply felt sympathy for their racial politics.
 
Mencken's writings on politics should never be taken too seriously. Outrageous statements were his stock in trade. His skill lay in the ability to articulate a seemingly sensible rationale for the outrageous.

He did genuinely hate the redneck populists like Ben Tillman and Theodore Bilbo (and William Jennings Bryan, among others). But the hatred seems to have have been aesthetic in origin, since Mencken was deeply conservative and shared many of the racial prejudices of the rednecks. Had the Southern "aristocrats" of his era been more successful in politics, he would have been lampooning them for their pettiness and their pretensions.
He was a very literate insult comedian.
 
Painful though some of his words were, Mencken was a son of the Baltimore Elite and knew well how a Society rationalizes the evils it does when that Society doesn't wish to RECOGNIZE those evils As evils. Many of the Confederate Memorials in Maryland were raised in his lifetime, and not in the immediate aftermath of the Late Rebellion. This man DID come, after all, from the town which shed the War's FIRST blood, and which prompted the Fortification of Federal Hill, whose guns all pointed AT Baltimore. Split personalities, anyone?
In States such as Maryland, where I resided for many years, the Past haunts the Future in many unexpected ways. Mencken was more than aware of this. I suspect he may not have described himself as a warrior for Civil Rights, in the way that Langston Hughes might have, but Mencken would have been convinced that you cannot face and deal with the Future with your head Squarely in the Past. I suspect too that his "Booboisee" lived closer to Baltimore than he liked.
 
I truly hope someone, in the summer of 1945, fed Mencken back this little ditty from his rant--"In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished."
I find nothing insightful or accurate in his diatribe. It is pure guile, pure hatred of cause and country, and a "what if" to be both deplored and rebutted by reasonable rhetoricians.
 
A snip from the Menckenhouse.org on Mencken. I read a biography on the man, but can not recall the title at the moment, a mercurial character to say the least. And fascinating for his contradictions.

“The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.” The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Mencken believed, were sacred documents. “I know of no other man,” Mencken once said, “who believes in liberty more than I do.” His belief fueled his fight for civil liberties for all men, regardless of race. As early as 1917 he addressed the concerns for African-Americans. His articles against lynching on the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the 1930s resulted in a boycott of Baltimore goods and threats against his life. Even so, he worked closely with the NAACP to help promote the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. His continuing fight for equality is evidenced in his articles against segregation, prompting Clarence M. Mitchell [1911-1984], Washington Bureau Director of the NAACP to tell his sons that Mencken was on the side of the black man. When Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to let Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution enter the United States, Mencken was one of the first journalists to denounce that action, stating that the United States should open its doors.

His impassioned defense of the First Amendment, in favor of freedom of speech was woven throughout his career. His defense of this basic right is evident in his series of reports from the Scopes Monkey Trial, where a school teacher was arrested for teaching the theory of evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. The state wanted to make it a crime to teach anything other than the biblical account of human creation. Mencken despised the effort of any group, whether ministers, reformers, or politicians, to force their way of thinking on society. There were many journalists covering “The Trial of the Century,” but Mencken’s articles were syndicated and quoted throughout the country.

http://www.menckenhouse.org/wordpress/about-h-l-mencken/
 
Painful though some of his words were, Mencken was a son of the Baltimore Elite and knew well how a Society rationalizes the evils it does when that Society doesn't wish to RECOGNIZE those evils As evils. Many of the Confederate Memorials in Maryland were raised in his lifetime, and not in the immediate aftermath of the Late Rebellion. This man DID come, after all, from the town which shed the War's FIRST blood, and which prompted the Fortification of Federal Hill, whose guns all pointed AT Baltimore. Split personalities, anyone?
In States such as Maryland, where I resided for many years, the Past haunts the Future in many unexpected ways. Mencken was more than aware of this. I suspect he may not have described himself as a warrior for Civil Rights, in the way that Langston Hughes might have, but Mencken would have been convinced that you cannot face and deal with the Future with your head Squarely in the Past. I suspect too that his "Booboisee" lived closer to Baltimore than he liked.

Yes, as somebody who lives in Baltimore, it is very true that the city is conflicted about its place in the War. The Anglo elite was largely pro-Confederate at the time, and there was a pro-Confederate tint to the Anglo middle class and working class sectors. The immigrant Irish and Germans were more pro-union. In any event, the lines were not clearly drawn anywhere and it was a confusing mix.

A lot of the pro-Confederate feeling has disappeared since the 1980s, when the Baltimore became a majority African-American city. Mencken would be very uncomfortable here today. Some of the comments in this thread are pretty generous in their estimation of Mencken, and many today would view him as a racist Nazi sympathizer.
 
Mencken would be very uncomfortable here today. Some of the comments in this thread are pretty generous in their estimation of Mencken, and many today would view him as a racist Nazi sympathizer.

Well Bruce I did mention(not that you were speaking of me) his fascinating contradictions, I just didn't go into explaining that even though he was recognized by the NAACP, he was in private a conscious bigot and an elitist whom had little sympathy for those immediately about him, if he did not view you as equal.

And this is the bio that I read The Skeptic, by Terry Teachout, great book.

517qTwBwQsL._AC_US218_.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/dp/006050529X/?tag=civilwartalkc-20
 
Well Bruce I did mention(not that you were speaking of me) his fascinating contradictions, I just didn't go into explaining that even though he was recognized by the NAACP, he was in private a conscious bigot and an elitist whom had little sympathy for those immediately about him, if he did not view you as equal.

And this is the bio that I read The Skeptic, by Terry Teachout, great book.


I wasn't trying to single out any single post.

'The Skeptic' is a good title for a Mencken book. He was quick to skewer politicians and writers he disliked, but he didn't seem to have a very coherent intellectual perspective to offer as an alternative. He was sort of a national 'cranky old uncle' who was quick with the acerbic comments, but couldn't really defend his own idiosyncratic conservatism very well.
 
I wasn't trying to single out any single post.

'The Skeptic' is a good title for a Mencken book. He was quick to skewer politicians and writers he disliked, but he didn't seem to have a very coherent intellectual perspective to offer as an alternative. He was sort of a national 'cranky old uncle' who was quick with the acerbic comments, but couldn't really defend his own idiosyncratic conservatism very well.

Agreed Bruce. And you just reminded me of a Commentary article about Mencken that I found about him that I was going to post but forgot about.

While I do not agree with all his points, the writer gives a very good overall description of Mencken and captures him well. And for those who don't wish to invest the time to read the book it serves well for someone looking for a better understanding of the man and his contradictions. But it ain't short.

JOSEPH EPSTEIN / APR. 1, 1977

I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men got their likes and dislikes from Mencken.
The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926, and thus this passage came to be written at a time when H. L. Mencken, two years into his ten-year stint (1924-34) of editing the American Mercury, was at the zenith of his fame. People with intellectual interests of an age to remember the American Mercury recall even today the special excitement with which they awaited each new monthly issue. Writers who felt spiritually at odds with what they took to be the reigning values of the day bowed down to the magazine, manuscripts in hand, as the Mecca from which their own true values were most stentoriously cried. Agnostic in spirit, catholic in interest, and urbane in outlook, the American Mercury never presented its readers any problem in discovering precisely where it stood. It was against the genteel tradition in literature; it was against Prohibition and puritanism generally in social life; it was against the banal pretensions of organized religion, of politicians, and of businessmen. As Hilton Kramer has neatly put it, during the 1920’s H. L. Mencken “served his readers as a sort of intellectual counterpart to the neighborhood bootlegger.”

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/rediscovering-mencken/

btw @Bruce Vail if you get the time to read it, I'd like to know what you think of the article. OBJ
 
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Given the idiosyncrasies of his times and his place, I don't find that surprising. I was already fully formed when I first came to live in Maryland, back in the early seventies. From what I remember, Mencken would still have fit in with the local philosophies fairly well. These days, hed probably be a bit of a shock to the locals, and seem a bit like a dinosaur. But He reflected a good bit of what I reme.ber best of those days.... one's private opinions might well differ from those one espoused publically and worked toward making realities. Mencken was pretty publically opposed to lynchings, jim crow attitudes, bad politics leading the way to bad legislation, the Klan and its ilk, and much else we now consider pretty evil. Whether he expressed his real feelings or not, he did help to drive those public expressions forward. Thus, it probably isn't a big thing to make of what things he said privately. Many of the older people I knew then were STILL LAMENTING the construction of the Bay Bridge that eliminated the steam ferry from Baltimore to Tolchester, and the destruction of Carlin's Park and Gwynn Oak Amusement Parks....and their reasoning was VERY race and class oriented, and VERY untrue. I think that was Mencken's entire point.....WAR is easy....prejudice is easy....CHANGE is HARD. Honestly? If we had not had our Civil War, we would not have had our Mencken.[/QUOTE]
 
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