Every school child in America accepts the myth that we fought the American Revolution to be free and untaxed. Well, we did fight it to be untaxed. Americans were absolutely outraged when England suggested that we contribute our share to pay for the armies and ships Britain sent to this continent to defend us against the French and their Indian allies.
We immediately turned to our old enemy, France (as the French very well knew we would), for help in not paying our taxes to England. (Poetic justice was served when we broke our treaty with France and left her, bankrupt and ripe for her own rather ghastly revolution, to fight England alone—while we made a separate peace on excellent terms.)
But taxes weren’t really the major issue. Certainly not for the New Englanders who basically started the whole thing. The completely non-mythological question was: who will control the Trade Routes To China? That question bedeviled Europeans ever since the Pope ran his Line of Demarcation across the hemisphere back in the 1490s.
The British tried to block us from the Pacific by turning the eastern Mississippi Valley over to Quebec in 1767. (That one act alone made war inevitable.) The Spanish could see it coming and began to settle Northern California with urgency the same decade.
But we fought. We got everybody who hated England to fight. France and Spain tried to invade England herself—only bad winds stopped them. Gibraltar was besieged for years. The League of Armed Neutrality made life miserable for England all over the globe—Holland, Prussia, Sweden and Russia. England quickly found herself up to her naval in alligators.
Finally the British quit—having lost another army to Washington and his French troops, artillery, and fleet (remember Lieutenant General, Commander in Chief of His Catholic Majesty’s Armed Forces in the New World?). They gave us most of what we wanted and backed out of the war.
(The one major war aim we failed to achieve was Canada. We had invaded in 1775—you can still see American cannon balls in old Quebec. We would invade again in 1812, but we would never succeed in getting it.)
But as soon as the British blockade of Boston harbor was lifted in 1783, the American ship, Star of India, set sail for China. By 1790, an American captain was plying the west coast of Spanish/British/Russian America identifying which ports we would need to control the Pacific. As we achieved our fiscal aims, we kept teaching the myths to our kids.
(We have the ports we identified today—San Diego and San Francisco , and Seattle (all obtained in the 1840s)—as a result of a successful war in which we stripped Mexico of half its territory and a near war with Britain that cost her half the Oregon territory. Two obviously victorious wars for us—when you think of all the resources in the territories involved and how much money having ports on the Pacific has made us, very victorious indeed.)
Those wars—the Revolution, 1812 (which got us everything we were promised in1783 but the British reneged on), the Mexican War and the dispute over Oregon were victorious wars or near wars indeed. Each made us money. Each is shrouded in myth.
Most of our 19th Century wars cost a relatively minimal investment in men, materiel and money—and won us almost immediately a substantial profit.
(In the Civil War we invested risked and lost much more. It was a unique war—issues of future growth and national policy failed to be settled any other way than with “blood and iron”. It caused real damage—but in the end we made more than it cost us. It too has to be rated as a won war.)
We have become so enamored of our own mythology—“No taxation without representation”, “free the impressed seamen”, “remember the Alamo”—in which pro-slavery Texans fought fiercely to overturn the Mexican constitution and make Texas a slave state—“Fifty-four forty or fight” and “His truth is Marching on”—that we have forgotten how to evaluate war in any rational way.
That has hurt us in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has made the question of whether or not we “won” in either case almost completely meaningless. Like the people who watched the value of their 401Ks plummet like a rock, we may well have to pay for that failure to see clearly.
More tomorrow on the myths that blinker us.
Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
War and Myth I
People need to believe that wars are fought for some noble, even spiritual, cause. This is especially true if you are dealing with someone who has invested a son, a husband or some other relative or friend in the war in question.
The French with their wonderful, if somewhat cynical acuity, understood this perfectly when they created the Foreign Legion back in the 1840s. They were about to embark on a series of colonial wars in North Africa.
They had good and sufficient reason to do so—Algerian pirates, “Barbary pirates—named after the red bearded Muslim admiral who created them in the Sixteenth Century—had made shipping along the southern coast of France a misery for centuries.
Fleet units of several “Christian” nations had been stationed along North African shores for almost as long. We had a squadron there from 1800 to the 1840s ourselves. The French were finally ready to end it—and pick up any goodies lying around at the same time.
But the French knew that “colonial wars” (like Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) are a hard sell to the mothers of dead soldiers. It gets very messy when parents of maimed and wounded troops can vote. So the French created a foreign force with no mothers in France to grieve. Very, very smart.
American mothers are no different. During the Civil War, can you imagine how many American moms would have urged their sons to go down and fight to help New York bankers gain financial hegemony over the rest of the United States?
No, no, no, it would never work. So we created the mythology that we were fighting to free the slaves, a much more noble cause to die for. Problem: only a tiny percentage of northerners had ANY interest in that happening at all). When reality hit myth after the war, we backed out in a hurry and allowed southerners to impose Jim Crow laws that more accurately reflected what the nation felt.
But the myth worked for recruitment purposes.
It was more true that we were fighting to preserve the Union. After all, how could we compete with Britain and other industrialized nations if we split in two? But it still sounded better to sing, “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free … .”
The Civil War made us money. Up until that war, we were basically a commodity producing economy—our biggest national source of income in 1860 was cotton. The war allowed industry and banking to develop. By the 1870s we were one of the largest industrial producers and exporters in the world—flooding European markets with admittedly shoddy goods.
(Both Japan and China would take a page out of that book in the Twentieth Century. Vietnam and Korea are coming on fast. At a dollar a day wages in the 1800s, we made ‘em cheap and dirty.)
So—we invested in the Civil War, and we WON it. The agricultural South and West would never have an effective veto over the economy again. At least if you’re from the industrialized part of the US, you won it.
But our history books prefer Julia War Howe’s version of events. It was all about “grapes of wrath”, “trampling”, and “terrible swift swords”—fighting to make men free. Certainly sounds better. But it flies in the face of a century of actual history.
Let’s look at a few more myths tomorrow.
The French with their wonderful, if somewhat cynical acuity, understood this perfectly when they created the Foreign Legion back in the 1840s. They were about to embark on a series of colonial wars in North Africa.
They had good and sufficient reason to do so—Algerian pirates, “Barbary pirates—named after the red bearded Muslim admiral who created them in the Sixteenth Century—had made shipping along the southern coast of France a misery for centuries.
Fleet units of several “Christian” nations had been stationed along North African shores for almost as long. We had a squadron there from 1800 to the 1840s ourselves. The French were finally ready to end it—and pick up any goodies lying around at the same time.
But the French knew that “colonial wars” (like Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) are a hard sell to the mothers of dead soldiers. It gets very messy when parents of maimed and wounded troops can vote. So the French created a foreign force with no mothers in France to grieve. Very, very smart.
American mothers are no different. During the Civil War, can you imagine how many American moms would have urged their sons to go down and fight to help New York bankers gain financial hegemony over the rest of the United States?
No, no, no, it would never work. So we created the mythology that we were fighting to free the slaves, a much more noble cause to die for. Problem: only a tiny percentage of northerners had ANY interest in that happening at all). When reality hit myth after the war, we backed out in a hurry and allowed southerners to impose Jim Crow laws that more accurately reflected what the nation felt.
But the myth worked for recruitment purposes.
It was more true that we were fighting to preserve the Union. After all, how could we compete with Britain and other industrialized nations if we split in two? But it still sounded better to sing, “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free … .”
The Civil War made us money. Up until that war, we were basically a commodity producing economy—our biggest national source of income in 1860 was cotton. The war allowed industry and banking to develop. By the 1870s we were one of the largest industrial producers and exporters in the world—flooding European markets with admittedly shoddy goods.
(Both Japan and China would take a page out of that book in the Twentieth Century. Vietnam and Korea are coming on fast. At a dollar a day wages in the 1800s, we made ‘em cheap and dirty.)
So—we invested in the Civil War, and we WON it. The agricultural South and West would never have an effective veto over the economy again. At least if you’re from the industrialized part of the US, you won it.
But our history books prefer Julia War Howe’s version of events. It was all about “grapes of wrath”, “trampling”, and “terrible swift swords”—fighting to make men free. Certainly sounds better. But it flies in the face of a century of actual history.
Let’s look at a few more myths tomorrow.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Lincoln--We Are Still Coming, Father Abraham
Today is Lincoln’s birthday. It used to be a holiday—until the old Confederacy made it clear that celebrating it would be like asking Jews to celebrate Waffen SS Day. So we’ve combined it with Washington’s Birthday, and now we have “President’s Day”.
Lincoln is still worthy of his own day. Even if most of us honor—or loath—him for all the wrong reasons. He preserved the Union, yet he was as much a sectionalist as Robert E. Lee. In this government hating era, we must remember that he was—above all—a brilliant politician.
He “emancipated” the slaves, almost literally over his own dead body. He told us in his First Inaugural Address that his primary interest was to preserve the Union—to that end he would free “some of the slaves, all of the slaves or none of the slaves”.
He fully understood that ending slavery was high on the list of very, very few Northerners. His famed Emancipation Proclamation was strictly an appeal to the anti-slavery sentiments of the British electorate—to keep England from entering the war on the Confederacy’s side. It was carefully crafted to free no actual slaves whatsoever.
Throughout much of the war he had to calculate every move based on keeping Europe at bay while imposing what they felt was an illegal blockade on an independent Confederacy. England remained a serious threat until the Russian Navy arrived and parked itself in New York harbor throughout the winter of 1863-4. By late winter we were strong enough to make a serious threat of war ourselves—and England backed off.
But Britain and the Confederacy were only two of Lincoln’s major problems. New York—and its big banks—may have been his biggest. A very good argument can be made that, for both North and South, the largest war issue may have been New York’s desire to impose financial hegemony over the entire federal union.
From the outset, the outsider from the western farm states, had to battle to keep the New Yorkers in his cabinet at bay. His war aims and their war aims were quite different. In the end it can be argued that the New York banking and business interests won the war—and Wall Street became the dominant American power base (don’t forget, during the Cold War, the Communist block always spoke of the enemy as being—not America or Washington—but Wall Street).
Lincoln steadfastly rejected Seward’s appeal for open war with our chief commercial rival, Great Britain, but he was forced to move toward Seward’s radical abolitionism when he lost most other support for the war. It was a constant see-saw.
He never forgot that Prairie states like Illinois had historically depended on their uneasy political alliance with the Plantation South to defend their interests against the eastern banks. In a last desperate move to protect western farmers, Lincoln offered the South an opportunity to lay down its arms, re-enter Congress and vote down the 13th Amendment.
A secret conference was held, no agreement was reached—and a month later Lee surrendered. A week after that Lincoln was dead, and with him went the last obstacle to New York control over American finance. (The South, incidentally, had no sane reason to kill Lincoln—he was their last hope in defeat, and many southerners at the time recognized it.)
So much for the political Lincoln—who accomplished his primary goal to pass on to his successor a United States with as many stars in its flag as it had when he took office. Despite Britain, despite the Confederacy; even despite New York City. His primary monument is a flag with fifty stars on it.
(Think of World War I or II with two mutually hostile Americas carrying on their animosity by taking different sides. Life would be unimaginably different for the entire planet without Lincoln.)
But it is as a symbol—as he had already become during the Civil War—that Lincoln is most remembered and loved or hated. The Northern Armies marched singing, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”. That can be more important than reality. Let’s look at the symbol, the iconic Lincoln tomorrow.
Lincoln is still worthy of his own day. Even if most of us honor—or loath—him for all the wrong reasons. He preserved the Union, yet he was as much a sectionalist as Robert E. Lee. In this government hating era, we must remember that he was—above all—a brilliant politician.
He “emancipated” the slaves, almost literally over his own dead body. He told us in his First Inaugural Address that his primary interest was to preserve the Union—to that end he would free “some of the slaves, all of the slaves or none of the slaves”.
He fully understood that ending slavery was high on the list of very, very few Northerners. His famed Emancipation Proclamation was strictly an appeal to the anti-slavery sentiments of the British electorate—to keep England from entering the war on the Confederacy’s side. It was carefully crafted to free no actual slaves whatsoever.
Throughout much of the war he had to calculate every move based on keeping Europe at bay while imposing what they felt was an illegal blockade on an independent Confederacy. England remained a serious threat until the Russian Navy arrived and parked itself in New York harbor throughout the winter of 1863-4. By late winter we were strong enough to make a serious threat of war ourselves—and England backed off.
But Britain and the Confederacy were only two of Lincoln’s major problems. New York—and its big banks—may have been his biggest. A very good argument can be made that, for both North and South, the largest war issue may have been New York’s desire to impose financial hegemony over the entire federal union.
From the outset, the outsider from the western farm states, had to battle to keep the New Yorkers in his cabinet at bay. His war aims and their war aims were quite different. In the end it can be argued that the New York banking and business interests won the war—and Wall Street became the dominant American power base (don’t forget, during the Cold War, the Communist block always spoke of the enemy as being—not America or Washington—but Wall Street).
Lincoln steadfastly rejected Seward’s appeal for open war with our chief commercial rival, Great Britain, but he was forced to move toward Seward’s radical abolitionism when he lost most other support for the war. It was a constant see-saw.
He never forgot that Prairie states like Illinois had historically depended on their uneasy political alliance with the Plantation South to defend their interests against the eastern banks. In a last desperate move to protect western farmers, Lincoln offered the South an opportunity to lay down its arms, re-enter Congress and vote down the 13th Amendment.
A secret conference was held, no agreement was reached—and a month later Lee surrendered. A week after that Lincoln was dead, and with him went the last obstacle to New York control over American finance. (The South, incidentally, had no sane reason to kill Lincoln—he was their last hope in defeat, and many southerners at the time recognized it.)
So much for the political Lincoln—who accomplished his primary goal to pass on to his successor a United States with as many stars in its flag as it had when he took office. Despite Britain, despite the Confederacy; even despite New York City. His primary monument is a flag with fifty stars on it.
(Think of World War I or II with two mutually hostile Americas carrying on their animosity by taking different sides. Life would be unimaginably different for the entire planet without Lincoln.)
But it is as a symbol—as he had already become during the Civil War—that Lincoln is most remembered and loved or hated. The Northern Armies marched singing, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”. That can be more important than reality. Let’s look at the symbol, the iconic Lincoln tomorrow.
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