You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die.

It's a book review of The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War, by Michael Gorra, and it reinforces the maddening complexity of all things Southern.

What to Do About William Faulkner, by Drew Gilpin Faust (The Atlantic)

A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it.

 ... How should we now regard this pathbreaking, Nobel Prize–winning author, who grappled with our nation’s racial tragedy in ways that at once illuminate and disturb—that reflect both startling human truths and the limitations of a white southerner born in 1897 into the stifling air of Mississippi’s closed and segregated society? In our current moment of racial reckoning, Faulkner is certainly ripe for rigorous scrutiny.

Michael Gorra, an English professor at Smith, believes Faulkner to be the most important novelist of the 20th century. In his rich, complex, and eloquent new book, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War, he makes the case for how and why to read Faulkner in the 21st by revisiting his fiction through the lens of the Civil War, “the central quarrel of our nation’s history.” Rarely an overt subject, one “not dramatized so much as invoked,” the Civil War is both “everywhere” and “nowhere” in Faulkner’s work. He cannot escape the war, its aftermath, or its meaning, and neither, Gorra insists, can we. As the formerly enslaved Ringo remarks in The Unvanquished (1938) during Reconstruction-era conflict over voting rights, “This war aint over. Hit just started good.” This is why for us, as for Jason and Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury (1929), was and again are “the saddest words.” As Gorra explains, “What was is never over.”

In setting out to explore what Faulkner can tell us about the Civil War and what the war can tell us about Faulkner, Gorra engages as both historian and literary critic. But he also writes, he confesses, as an “act of citizenship.” His book represents his own meditation on the meaning of the “forever war” of race, not just in American history and literature, but in our fraught time. What we think today about the Civil War, he believes, “serves above all to tell us what we think about ourselves, about the nature of our polity and the shape of our history.”

The core of Gorra’s book is a Civil War narrative, which he has created by untangling the war’s appearances throughout Faulkner’s fiction and rearranging them “into something like linearity.” From the layers and circularities and recurrences and reversals of Faulkner’s 19 novels and more than 100 short stories, Gorra has constructed a chronological telling of Yoknapatawpha’s war, of the incidents and characters who appear in the writer’s extended chronicle of his invented “postage stamp” world. Faulkner took liberties with the historical order of events; what he sought to depict was the “psychological truth of the Confederate home front” and the war’s aftermath. This is work, Gorra argues, that actual documents of the period would be hard-pressed to do. And that psychological truth certainly could not have been derived from study of the racist historiography of Faulkner’s era, which he insisted he never even read. Instead, this understanding is the product of what Toni Morrison once called Faulkner’s “refusal-to-look-away approach” to the burden of his region’s cruel past.

Faulkner enacts this refusal through his practice of looking again, of revisiting the same characters and stories, and through the prequels and sequels and outgrowths of those he has already told, digging deeply into the hidden and often shocking truths of the South he portrays. Gorra endeavors to unknot and clarify Faulkner’s oeuvre by reconstructing it himself, but his act of literary explication is also one of participation—a joining in the Faulknerian process. Gorra renarrates these Civil War stories as he seeks to come to terms both with America’s painful racial legacies and with William Faulkner ...

Backlash Blues.

We've been here before.

Nick Vaughn: "A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues."

And here.

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

Architectural critic Kate Wagner goes a step further. First, always read the fine print.

Kate Wagner is an architectural critic. In 2016, she founded McMansionHell, a blog that roasts the world’s ugliest houses. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and The Baffler.

Now, the doomed statuary.

The Secret History of America’s Worthless Confederate Monuments, by Kate Wagner (The New Republic)

They’re cheap, mass produced, and celebrate the Jim Crow South. So why do conservatives persist in calling them art?

What these statues represent of “our heritage and our history” has been hotly debated over the past few months, as NASCAR and even the state of Mississippi disavowed Confederate iconography. But the aesthetic resistance to their removal was summed up in Trump’s June remarks: that the statues are beautiful works of art that if destroyed would set historical preservation back years. As it happens, the true history of these monuments tells a different story: Far from “magnificent” artistic masterpieces, Trump’s vaunted statues are the Campbell’s Soup Cans of Confederate hagiography—cheap, mass-produced knockoffs designed to capture not just racism, but all its associated consumer revenue. For all the talk of their unparalleled artistry, they were about as easy to produce as the average fire hydrant.

Three oddball factoids from American history.

"Well, that was some weird shit."
-- George W. Bush, surveying Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017

Following are three weird items I've run across lately while perusing the digital archives.

1. For starters, the forgotten American president Rutherford B. Hayes is venerated in Paraguay (story at Atlas Obscura).

Maria Teresa Garozzo de Caravaca is disappointed to learn that Americans don’t share the same degree of appreciation for Hayes. “It really surprises me,” she says. “Everyone knows who Hayes is here.” His name was recently proposed for a multimillion-dollar bridge under construction over the Paraguay River. He’s appeared on stamps. There is even a soccer team in Asunción named Club Presidente Hayes, whose players are known as “Los Yankees.” On one reality-TV show, the grand prize was an all-expense-paid trip not to Disney World, but rather to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums in Fremont, Ohio.

2. Smithsonian Magazine reports: "The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension Dies at Age 90."

Irene Triplett, whose father defected from the Confederate Army and enlisted with the Union, collected $73.13 a month.

3. Dispassionate etymology does not support the theory that the word "hooker" (a prostitute or sex workers) come from the surname of the Civil War's Joseph Hooker, a Union commander who famously botched the battle at Chancellorsville. It has long been supposed that Hooker's indifference to drinking and other diversions on the part of his troops prompted the term. However, the essay here is very much worth reading.

An Exploration into Why the Word ‘Hooker’ Came to Describe Sex Workers, by Trista (History Collection)

Nick Vaughn: "A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues."

I first met Nick Vaughn in 2015 when he was younger than he is now (oddly, I haven't aged) and was running for city council in the Republican primary. Nick lost a very close race, then graduated from high school, began his studies at Hanover College, breezed through university in what seemed like a few months, and ran for office again, this time for a county council seat. Unfortunately Nick lost another  tighterthanthis primary contest, but he's plowing forward with plans for the resurrection of The Aggregate (stay tuned) ... and found time to submit this guest column.   

---

A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues

I do not like to tout my credentials because I was taught to always be humble, however I feel it is necessary to explain my educational background for clarification. Firstly, on May 1st I graduated from Hanover College with a Bachelor of Arts in History. I did not have an official focus and I took classes on many topics including The Reformation, American Revolution and early republic, and a class specifically dedicated to Abraham Lincoln’s life, legacy, and how he has been portrayed by historians and popular media throughout the years. Additionally, I wrote my required Senior Thesis on Abraham Lincoln’s sole term in Congress.

While I tried to keep a diverse schedule of classes, I always gravitated towards the classes covering the time period from 1815 to the end of Reconstruction. Of course, the Civil War lay in-between the start and end date of the period of American History I find most interesting.

Before truly diving into the subject at hand, I also want to highlight my experience as a Republican college student. Many faux-conservative, incendiary personalities would have you think that Republicans are under constant chastisement, harassment, and belittlement on a college campus. Some also would have you believe that college campuses are hollowed liberal grounds where only the Democrats, Socialists, and Communists are able to freely share thoughts and ideas.

Friends, while I cannot speak for all college campuses, this was not my experience at Hanover College. You know those faux-conservatives I mentioned? I’m sure they have a rough time at colleges like Hanover. In fact, I know some who did. This is not because of their ideology, instead it is because of their inability to craft a coherent, fact-based argument. Additionally, some were poor students. I have had plenty of disagreements with professors who hold different political beliefs than I do, however I was never punished, chastised, harassed, or belittled for being a Republican. At Hanover, you don’t survive based on your ideology, but instead on the laurels and merits of your argument.

To suggest Hanover College is a very liberal school in an attempt to discredit what we have learned and the hard work it took is dishonest and extremely disrespectful to the thousands of people who have graduated from the college.

As someone who loves history and possesses a degree in the subject, the past couple of weeks with protests across the country advocating for police reform seemed like an unlikely place I would find myself. Of course, many are pointing out the shades of similarities this year has had to the 1920s due to a pandemic, or the year 1968 due to heightened racial tensions brought on by long standing and systemic injustices.

Recently, scars from the American Civil War have begun to be reopened as protesters advocating for racial equality have (rightly) begun advocating for the removal of Confederate statues and symbols from publicly owned land. As someone who has studied the Civil War, the Union, the Confederacy, and the historiography, this seems appropriate to me. Why do we have statues and symbols dedicated to traitors who attempted to break the Union because they wanted to enslave people?

To my initial surprise, many do not agree with this sentiment. However, after remembering back to my “Readings on the American Civil War” class, a class dedicated to the study of Civil War Historiography (what historians and scholars have written about the Civil War), I recall a couple weeks where we discussed Southern Revisionism and the Lost Cause ideology.

As someone who has read Jefferson Davis’ The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which, like nearly all former Confederate traitors, attempted to rationalize the reason for the South’s attempted secession as being due to states’ rights (and as being honorable), I can tell you this distorted reality is very far from the truth.

So why do people think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols is “tearing down history?” Well, I suppose those monuments dedicated to traitors are historical in the sense that they represent a historical event, although from a perverted point of view. The argument, to me, is not whether they are historical or not, it is why do statues of traitors exist in the first place and why are people so irrationally attached to them?

There are three points I want to make in attempting to answer those questions: first, Southern Revisionism, the coming of the Second Ku Klux Klan, and groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy have spread lies so successfully about the American Civil War, that many schools across America still incorrectly teach the subject. Second, history is much more complicated and nuanced than Twitter or Facebook allow historical events to be conveyed. Third, racial undertones have turned into overtones regarding the subject as the removal of statues have been used as rallying points for the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and other traitorous and dangerous organizations.

In regards to Southern Revisionism as it relates to the KKK an infamous black and white film by D.W. Griffith (a Southern Revisionist who made propaganda films in support of the Lost Cause, white supremacy, and the KKK), The Birth of a Nation highlights the disgusting and disingenuous imagery and language used by Southern Revisionists. David W. Blights points out in his book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory that “Dixon's [Dixon wrote the book Griffith’s film was based on] vicious version of the idea that blacks had caused the Civil War by their very presence, and that Northern radicalism during Reconstruction failed to understand that freedom had ushered blacks as a race into barbarism, neatly framed the story of the rise of heroic vigilantism in the South. Reluctantly, Klansmen—white men—had to take the law into their own hands in order to save Southern white womanhood from the sexual brutality of black men. Dixon's vision captured the attitude of thousands and forged in story form a collective memory of how the war may have been lost but Reconstruction was won—by the South and a reconciled nation. Riding as masked cavalry, the Klan stopped corrupt government, prevented the anarchy of 'Negro rule' and most of all, saved white supremacy.”

Today, you see similar disingenuous remarks made on Twitter regarding the cause of the Civil War. One tweet that made my blood boil is shown here.

The supposed quote from Robert E. Lee is fake, however he has written similar things as a way to play into and prop up the Lost Cause ideology. The quote, which is one sentence in a much longer statement from Abraham Lincoln attempts to portray Lincoln as never truly being opposed to slavery and instead was focused on the preservation of the Union. The full quote, from 1862, is “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves 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.”

The main goal of the war, in Lincoln’s mind, was certainly the preservation of the Union, however it should be noted that Lincoln was opposed to slavery ever since he saw the boats carrying slaves on the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky. During his time in Congress, he introduced a resolution to end the practice in Washington D.C. The issue of slavery and Lincoln is, as I stated earlier, much too complex for a Twitter or Facebook post. Hell, it’s even too complex for this article. If you’d like to learn more about Lincoln and the issue of slavery, I recommend starting by reading my thesis (linked above) and then using the bibliography to find further reading. Additionally, the movie Lincoln is a good starting point as well.

In the AP’s article on the disparity between where someone lives and how the Civil War is taught, they point out that “Confederate sympathizers have long promoted the “Lost Cause” theory that the Southern side was heroic against impossible odds, and that slavery was not the driving force behind the war. Edward Countryman, a history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he learned that idea growing up in New York State in the 1950s.”

I want to especially point your attention to the “growing up ... in the 1950s” part of that quote. I would be being dishonest if I did not point out the obvious generational differences in the understanding of the Civil War. Not to be overly general, but the vast majority of people I know who post on Facebook about Lost Cause ideology and are opposed to the removal of Confederate statues and symbols are of a certain, older age group typically labeled “Baby Boomers.” This is because during the 50s and 60s, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Lost Cause ideology saw a resurgence and began to be taught in white schools again (or even more vigorously if not previously ended).

To be fair, both people vastly older and vastly younger have fallen victim to the Lost Cause myth, and it makes sense that more people will as Facebook and Twitter refuse to label falsehoods as such.

If there is anything you should take away from this article, I hope it is this: if you think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols, memorials to traitors who enslaved people, is tearing down history, you might want to turn off the phone and computer, and pick up a book written by a reputable historian, take a trip to a museum, watch the movie Lincoln (not Gone With the Wind), or give me a call, because I am sick and tired of the ignorance.

A good reading list on the topic:

David W. Blight, Race and Reunion
David Donald, Lincoln
Kenneth Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln
Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War
William Davis, Look Away
Gary Gallagher, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

And down came that accursed statue -- Colston in Bristol UK ... and also Castleman in Fischerland KY.

Now we're getting somewhere: "Historic scenes were witnessed in Bristol over the weekend as Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a controversial statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and rolled the memorial into the city's harbour."

More here:

BLM protesters topple statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston, by Haroon Siddique and Clea Skopeliti (The Guardian)

Statue that had long been a focal point of local anger rolled down to harbour and pushed into the water

The historian David Olusoga compared the action to the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. However, the home secretary, Bobby Caesar Priti Patel, urged the police to respond. She told Sky News: “I think that is utterly disgraceful and that speaks to the acts of public disorder that have actually now become a distraction from the cause in which people are protesting about.”

And yes, Greg Fischer at last mustered the cojones to remove an inanimate Confederate statue, even if he hasn't yet managed much for living human constituents. It might be wise to hold the applause until we're certain Fischer isn't selling the "replacement sculpture" rights to Brown-Forman to erect a bourbon bottle on the spot.

Louisville Removes Controversial Statue Of John Breckinridge Castleman (NPR)

We've been here before ...

Reconstruction: "Democracy was subverted, and the human toll, however inexact, was enormous." Bye bye, Castleman and Prentice.

Even as we foresee the Champs-Ély-Jéffrey, Berlin "contends with street names of a brutal, overlooked past."

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

All traditions must begin somewhere.

May 30, 1868: Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day (History)

By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War.

(In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.)

The composer Charles Ives' father served in the Union Army as a bandmaster.

Decoration Day According to Charles Ives (Prufrock's Dilemma)

Charles Ives wrote of his piece Decoration Day, the second of the four pieces included in his A Symphony: New England Holidays, that it “started as a brass band overture, but never got very far that way.”

Both musical and written remembrances conjure a time long past.

Ives' postface to Decoration Day reads:

In the early morning the gardens and woods around the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day's Memorial.** During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green there is felt, at times, a fervency and intensity--a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness--reflecting old Abolitionist days. It is a day as Thoreau suggests, when there is a pervading consciousness of "Nature's kinship with the lower order-man."

After the Town Hall is filled with the Spring's harvest of lilacs, daisies, and peonies, the parade is slowly formed on Main Street. First come the three Marshals on plough horses (going sideways), then the Warden and Burgesses in carriages, the Village Cornet Band, the G.A.R., two by two, the Militia (Company G), while the volunteer Fire Brigade, drawing a decorated hose-cart, with its jangling bells, brings up the rear-the inevitable swarm of small boys following. The march to Wooster Cemetery is a thing a boy never forgets. The roll of the muffled drums and "Adestes Fideles" answer for the dirge. A little girl on a fencepost waves to her father and wonders if he looked like that at Gettysburg.

After the last grave is decorated, Taps sounds out through the pines and hickories, while a last hymn is sung. The ranks are formed again, and "we all march to town" to a Yankee stimulant-Reeves inspiring Second Regiment Quickstep-though, to many a soldier, the sombre thoughts of the day underlie the tunes of the band. The march stops-and in the silence of the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the Town, and the sunset behind the West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the Day [Memos, 101-102].

** Decoration Day corresponds to the Memorial Day holiday that we currently celebrate in the United States to honor war veterans.

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.


Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

ON THE AVENUES: #VoteEwwNoMatterWho, or when being realistic means being radical.

155 years ago today in the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, a nattily attired Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to the commander of all Union armies, mud-splattered Ulysses S. Grant.

Lest there be any doubt, Grant was the genuine military genius of the two. Grant saw the whole of the strategic picture and effectively used the resources at his disposal, applying them remorselessly along the pathway to an outcome he foresaw quite clearly.

Grant was not without flaws as a human being, but he was mercifully immune from self-aggrandizing bull’s excrement. Tellingly, if reincarnated in 2020, Grant wouldn’t have a chance whatsoever of making a difference.

McLean, a wholesale grocer by trade, lived in Manassas until Bull Run, the Civil War’s first great battle in 1861. McLean’s house was used as headquarters by the rebel commander General Beauregard and damaged during the fighting, so subsequently he moved his family 120 miles west to a place he reasoned would be safer.

It was, right up until it wasn’t. Immediately upon the conclusion of the surrender conference, Union officers denuded the parlor in short order, pressing money into McLean’s hand (hundreds of dollars, in fact) as they carted away tables, chairs and bric-a-brac as souvenirs.

McLean moved away after the war, unable or unwilling to capitalize on his house’s singular legacy by converting it into a roadside tourist trap. Maybe this was because no “authentic” furniture remained, or more likely, owing to the hostility of defeated Virginians toward northern visitors.

Shortly thereafter, the utter fabrication of “Lost Cause” mythology provided the necessary value in memoriam, although too late for McLean. It is alleged that McLean conjured one quotable observation from his personal Civil War: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

Today he’d be on all the late night shows and probably practice punditry on one or more of the news channels.

---

Meanwhile, a distinctive feature of that first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 was the crowd of groupies it attracted.

Union troops bound for certain glory were accompanied on their march toward the enemy positions by wagon loads of Washington picnickers, sure of a wonderful day in the countryside watching their favorites dispense with the confederates. It all came to a premature and unpleasant end when the visiting team was ignominiously routed, sweeping the party goers along with them, straight back to the safety of the capital’s fledgling fortifications.

The victors were content to snack on the leftovers.

Indeed, war is hell, and the scene in 1861 reminds me that so are most of the elections of our lives in postwar L’America. The COVID-plagued primary in Wisconsin earlier this week was merely an extreme example of the norm. Chads are left hanging, voting is suppressed, courts are rigged; the pillage of oligarchs and evangelists proceeds as we binge-watch dystopian drama.

Like those hangers-on making for Manassas with their watercress sandwiches and cider, we keep coming to the polls in our dashing finery, hoping for a miracle of political intelligibility -- outright statesmanship obviously lies beyond the pale -- and if we’re lucky the reward is dull, plodding mediocrity, but usually our reward is garish spectacle at the expense of substance, the sheer underachievement fixed as if by constitutional mandate.

Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken, we get exactly what we vote for -- good and hard. Not unlike Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., we pay our money, take our chances and spin the DemoDisneyDixiecratic wheel of ill fortune … and every second Sunday, Biden remembers exactly how many grandchildren he has.

---

That’ll show those horrid Bernie Bros; Sanders is out, and my new "choice" is Biden's dementia versus Donald Trump's depravity.

Red or blue?

I say: #VoteEwwNoMatterWho.

“In reality (Bernie Sanders’ campaign) it gave voice to the voiceless, raised people’s sense of what’s possible through collective action, and refused to accept that exploitation and the fear of economic devastation should be the lot of millions.”

Ah, of course the soulless right-of-center “Democrats” have their answer at the ready: it’s all about being realistic, or at least as it pertains to their selective, generally white-washed version of reality.

That nasty too-damn-left Bernie was selling a bill of make-believe goods to the guileless youth, the wooly radicals, the blue-wing’s version of numb-Trump-skulls; those naïve neophytes just need to abandon their idiotic hopes and dreams, get realistic and embrace reality.

As if their lives weren’t realistic enough already.

And what exactly is being realistic in this context? It’s beating Trump, of course, even if every other office in the country from Senate to dogcatcher remains in Republican hands, just so long as we have no ambition grander than assuring money and power remain the exclusive province of two political parties, each taking their turn suckling the teat.

When the centrists wag their finger at me and pontificate about shutting up and accepting what’s realistic, it kills me as dead as Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer who lost his life at Bull Run.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing — perfectly willing — to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt …

Yes; that was different. We could debate the remainder of the pandemic about the specific circumstances of Ballou’s death as a soldier, and how they vary substantively from those of a voter in the 2020 presidential election, but to me the divergence is striking in terms of the concept of sacrifice.

Ballou was willing to make one. Most of the purported Democratic centrists dispensing holy writ about reality aren’t.

If they were, they’d not be so flippant about everyday REALITY on the part of the voiceless, who have seen in the Sanders campaign the possibility (reiterating) “of collective action, and refuse to accept that exploitation and the fear of economic devastation should be the lot of millions.”

They’d not be supporting the prevailing kakistocratic, catastrophic socio-economic “realities” with their wallets, every single day, only pausing from the endless consumerism when it’s time to denounce what Republicans are doing to wreck the system, although most of the “opposition” is as fully invested in its disproportionate excess as the MAGAtites.

When are any of the faux “left” centrists going to risk any aspect of their well-ordered existences, cease fluffing and buttressing the forces that oppress others more so than them, and make a sacrifice of any appreciable magnitude as a downpayment?

Be realistic, they repeat over and over like a mantra. Now’s not the time for pie in the sky, Roger.

Really? When the hell in human history has the time been "right" for aspiration?

How realistic was the Magna Carta, the Reformation, or our own American Revolution, even as imperfect as these milestones were?

How realistic was it to break the four-minute mile, to cure polio or route sewage underground rather than let it flow through ditches in the street?

How realistic was it for sensory-deprived Helen Keller to be an author, former slave George Washington Carver to be a scientist, or dirt-poor Abraham Lincoln to be president?

When are the centrists going to withhold assent from American-style injustice, go on strike, hit the streets -- show some effing solidarity for something and someone else apart from their own scolding virtue-signaled ostentatiousness?

Sullivan Ballou? He actually stood FOR something.

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.

Listen up, centrists. You've slain the Bernie dragon, now here’s the reality. If you want to be rid of the orange menace, it’s time to dismantle his habitat, and commence some adaptive reuse of your own decaying political worldviews.

Take your eyes off Red Bernie and listen to what he actually says … and observe who else has been listening to him. If learning is truly the objective, there’s a chance you might, and still be able to speak with people who are extremely disappointed in disgraceful timidity. You're now being paternalistic with regard to the people who suffer most, when their preference is to DO SOMETHING.

Notice I wrote "speak with," not "speak to."

Our system has been made gloriously efficient for the haves, the accumulators of capital, and the hoarders of corporate profits, but it’s not resilient at all for ordinary human beings. The coronavirus is proving this abundantly, right now. It’s bigger than The Donald. Democrats are complicit in it as well. Shouldn't one of the two political parties articulate a viable alternative in terms of programs and policies?

There’s yardage to be gained, and there’s no turning back to the halcyon days of Obama for the simple reason that they weren’t.

Sacrifice something, centrists -- anything will do -- and instead of blaming the phantasmagoric imagined Bernie Bros for your own distemper, muster the grace sufficient to credit those principled people on your left for having the hopes, dreams and cojones to be FOR something, rather than merely against, and who see power in the realism of good ideas, not capitulation to capitalism in the throes of cancer.

Ah, but I’m so forgetful. You centrists are going to need someone to blame if it doesn’t end well this November, and Bernie’s supporters can be so very easily scapegoated. After all, you're already quite proficient at the practice.

Shaddup, already. Are we on strike yet?

---

Recent columns:

April 2: ON THE AVENUES: Pandemic, pornographic, pecksniffian. Just three random words until the booze kicks in.

March 26: ON THE AVENUES: It's a tad premature to sing the healing game.

March 19: ON THE AVENUES: If it's a war, then the food service biz needs to be issued a few weapons. We need improvisation and flexibility to survive the shutdown.

March 12: ON THE AVENUES: Keep calm and carry on.

BOOKS OF MY LIFE: Confederates in the Attic, and what it says about past versus future.

I’ve been a Civil War buff since childhood, but even so, the genre of battlefield reenactments always has puzzled me.

In his entertaining book, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (published in 1998), the late Tony Horwitz considers the Civil War’s numerous legacies, including the meticulous and obsessional efforts at authenticity on the part of those engaged in bringing 19th-century military campaigns back to life.

Horwitz describes one of the participants:

"One hardcore took this method acting to a bizarre extreme. His name was Robert Lee Hodge and the soldiers pointed him out as he ambled toward us. Hodge looked as though he'd stepped from a Civil War tintype: tall, rail thin, with a long pointed beard and a butternut uniform so frayed and filthy that it clung to his lank frame like rages to a scarecrow."

When I was much younger, I had the good fortune to visit more than a few of the Civil War battlefields -- Shiloh, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, among others -- and these occasions always seemed appropriate for reflection about cataclysmic events in times long since passed. You’d think the vivid colors and immediacy of a battlefield reenactment would complete the scene, except that it never scratched the itch with me.

The very thought of reenactments being staged to observe every detail of conflict sans the indescribable pain and sure death borne of extreme human violence seems a sophomoric intrusion of sorts, something conflicting quite jarringly with any notions of sacrificial hallowed ground – assuming even these thoughts have any genuine merit in the first place.

Men and their machines come and go, but ideas live on, and perhaps it is because the reenactment genre misses this fundamental point about the power of ideas that I fail to grasp it. It’s the future that matters, as approached with accumulated experience gleaned from the past’s examples. The future is why any of us bother getting out of bed in the morning. The past is gone, and the present is a figment of conceptual imagination, one entirely ephemeral.

Concurrently, yes, the precise details of how a 150-year-old cotton tunic was sewed together have their place, as do pageantry and spectacle, but re-animated hardtack and nighttime spooning (soldiers huddling for warmth) pale in comparison to the sad fact that in the year 2020, roughly half the American populace -- generally the paler-hued ones -- seems to have willfully forgotten what the Civil War was all about, hence the word “unfinished” in the title of Horwitz’s book, itself 22 years old.

In a thoughtful 2013 essay, Horwitz suggesteds "the 150th anniversary of the Civil War is too narrow a lens through which to view the conflict."

150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War, by Tony Horwitz (The Atlantic)

... It's hard to argue with the Gettysburg Address. But in recent years, historians have rubbed much of the luster from the Civil War and questioned its sanctification. Should we consecrate a war that killed and maimed over a million Americans? Or should we question, as many have in recent conflicts, whether this was really a war of necessity that justified its appalling costs?

Convincing these people that certain foundational issues pertaining to human rights were resolved long before the advent of the internal combustion engine probably ranks as more important than reenacting battles, assuming there is a future without a further round of secession.

Acting out uniformed history? Fine.

Knowing what history is trying to tell us? Priceless.

---

The preceding was written on October 31, 2013, and I touched it up a tad to reappear six and a half years later. Confederates in the Attic is a fine book, and I recommend it heartily. It has been a while since I read it, but I'm confident the subject matter remains relevant. 

In 2013, my aim was to relate the book to a situation in our own city, this being the New Albany Bicentennial celebration of 2012-2013. Current city council president Bob Caesar was in charge of the Bicentennial. Six and a half years later, the public has not seen the financial records documenting these events. In response to public access requests, the city denied possessing them. Caesar once suggested they were in his possession, although nothing came of this. 

Here's the second half of my 2013 Confederates in the Attic digression. Ironically, the attic probably is where those records reside to this very day. 

---

Such is the critical error committed repeatedly during the past year by the cadre of well-intentioned, history-loving New Albanians who were brought together to contribute planning for this year’s Bicentennial celebration – an event that shouldn’t be occurring until 2017, anyway, since that’s when the city was incorporated … sorry, I digress.

The customary guiding lights have hoarded the process and tried to imbue the celebration with symbolism of their choosing, and yet the enduring difficulty with symbolism is the variability of the symbols themselves. They mutate incessantly, depending on one’s perspective and general vantage point.

Do you remember the centerpiece of the grand American bicentennial in 1976, when the old, tall, “masts from the past” sailing ships came into the harbor at New York?

It was a wonderful and epochal party, redolent with symbolism – flags, patriotism and Americana. The newspaper accounts agreed, but the late Randy Shilts, author of And the Band Played On, saw something else. To Shilts, the occasion of July 4, 1976, might well have been the point when Patient Zero kicked off the worldwide AIDS epidemic (this supposition has been disproved, by the way).

Wooden ships were on the water, and the future was pounding on the door. It is quite possible that owing to Ronald Reagan’s backward-looking obsession, we took far too long reacting to the scary reaper out on the stoop.

And so it is that from the very start, New Albany’s bicentennial program template was locked into a pattern so utterly predictable that Year Zero itself has been a massive yawner of an anti-climax.

Opposing ideas have not only been dismissed; they’ve been actively resisted, and it’s both sad and infuriating to contemplate the extent of an opportunity wasted. Apart from the solitary tangible gain of an over-priced, generically designed public area, variously known as Somnolent Estates, Rent Boy Park and Caesar’s Folly (the “official” designation is Bicentennial Park), we’ve been given a carpetbagger writer’s coffee table book to remember our rare old times and what seems like 4,762 occasions to watch as the selected don period costumes, dance the minuet, and recite the enumerated hagiography of the historic preservation code -- cookie-cutter events priced primarily to recoup the book’s lamentable costs.

It’s all safe, white-bread and oh-so-conservative, and fully appropriate for the buck-a-day extras at yet another Lewis & Clark expedition commemorative film, but it remains that the problem with making our bicentennial entirely about the city’s past, and not in any discernible way at all about our future, is that the situation begs a rather embarrassing question.

Why were our urban forefathers adept at city building for the times to come, but their modern-day ancestors are able to muster little more in terms of achievement than decay management?

You're thinking: Haven’t we come a long way during the past few years?

(We have. But what about the three decades before that?)

Downtown is revitalizing, isn’t it?

(If eating and drinking’s your thing, yes it is. If retail gains, residential enhancement, community engagement and two-way, calmed and completed streets interest you, then welcome to our default condition of perpetually self-flagellating stasis)

But Roger, don’t I look marvy dressed up as a Scribner?

(You needn’t ask me. I’ll be sober in the morning, but we’ll collectively experience this bicentennial hangover for the rest of our lives. You might direct your inquiry to that child slouching over there, assuming he’ll relinquish his iPhone)

And so, the safe and genteel rewriting wrought by the Coup d’Geriatrique winds its way toward the inevitable reenactment of New Year’s Eve, 1893, when a slew of white folks gathered somewhere amid Benedictine sandwiches and non-alcoholic cider, and chatted amiably about keeping the lower classes firmly in their place.

In the vacant lot where daughters once were paired and insider trading schemes consummated, the future is now. An empty liquor bottle meets pavement, drivers ignore pedestrians, and Farmers Market expansion plans are recycled by the same-way-every-single-time design suspects as Big Gulp cups flutter to the pavement.

Somewhere in the city, a dog barks.

New England Vacation Vignette 1: Civil War statuary, an officer in Providence RI and an enlisted man in South Hadley MA.

Ambrose Burnside was born in Liberty, Indiana (appropriately, in Union County) near the border with Ohio. He became a Rhode Island resident only after being stationed there while serving in the antebellum US military.

One of the most interesting things about Burnside, apart from his trademark facial whiskers (originally called burnsides, then sideburns), was the woman he didn't marry.

Prior to the Civil War, Burnside was engaged to Lottie Moon. She famously jilted him at the altar. Later during the conflict Moon and her sister became notorious Confederate spies. Eventually the sisters were captured and fell into the custody of none other than Burnside, who detained them but didn't file espionage charges.

Just before the outbreak of war Burnside succeeded in designing and patenting an innovative breech-loading carbine (the Burnside carbine). This might have brought him great wealth when wartime government orders began pouring in, except he'd been compelled to surrender the patents when thrown into debt by business reversals.

As a Civil War general Burnside occasionally was productive in a subordinate's role, but was not a top-flight officer. He was self-aware and recognized his own limitations at all levels of military command. This didn't stop Abraham Lincoln from appointing Burnside to lead the Army of the Potomac, resulting in the catastrophic Battle of Fredericksburg in late 1862.

For all this, but perhaps more so by virtue of a postwar political career as a Rhode Island governor and senator, Burnside posthumously was awarded a small park and equestrian statue in downtown Providence.

I knew nothing of this when we visited the capital, although the statue looked somewhat like Burnside from a distance. The following day I went for a stroll in South Hadley, Massachusetts and found myself somewhat entranced by this simple statue on the village green.

It reads, "This monument is erected to commemorate the loyalty and patriotism of our citizen soldiers who fought for liberty and the union in the Great Rebellion of 1861 - 1865."

In fact, "great rebellion" is a far more accurate description of the war than the terms we use today, and whether one is a pacifist or hawk, "citizen soldiers" reminds us of who did the heavy lifting and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Ambrose Burnside, officer, inventor and politician. To look at his life is to see a popular, well-liked man who knew how to play his hand, and always had a second chance waiting irrespective of how badly he'd botched the previous opportunity.

The soldier at South Hadley symbolizes the men who did the actual work, died and were maimed. Many didn't return from the Civil War, and many of the ones who did came home scarred, whether by wounds or the weight of the experience.

To me, Burnside assuredly was on the "right" side, but I'm not sure there is any better justification to leave his equestrian statue stand unmolested than the one of Confederate officer John B. Castleman at Louisville's Cherokee Triangle.

Give me the guy in South Hadley, any day.

Memorial Day 2019 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

All traditions must begin somewhere.

May 30, 1868: Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day (History)

By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War.

(In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.)

The composer Charles Ives' father served in the Union Army as a bandmaster.

Decoration Day According to Charles Ives (Prufrock's Dilemma)

Charles Ives wrote of his piece Decoration Day, the second of the four pieces included in his A Symphony: New England Holidays, that it “started as a brass band overture, but never got very far that way.”

Both musical and written remembrances conjure a time long past.

Ives' postface to Decoration Day reads:

In the early morning the gardens and woods around the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day's Memorial.** During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green there is felt, at times, a fervency and intensity--a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness--reflecting old Abolitionist days. It is a day as Thoreau suggests, when there is a pervading consciousness of "Nature's kinship with the lower order-man."

After the Town Hall is filled with the Spring's harvest of lilacs, daisies, and peonies, the parade is slowly formed on Main Street. First come the three Marshals on plough horses (going sideways), then the Warden and Burgesses in carriages, the Village Cornet Band, the G.A.R., two by two, the Militia (Company G), while the volunteer Fire Brigade, drawing a decorated hose-cart, with its jangling bells, brings up the rear-the inevitable swarm of small boys following. The march to Wooster Cemetery is a thing a boy never forgets. The roll of the muffled drums and "Adestes Fideles" answer for the dirge. A little girl on a fencepost waves to her father and wonders if he looked like that at Gettysburg.

After the last grave is decorated, Taps sounds out through the pines and hickories, while a last hymn is sung. The ranks are formed again, and "we all march to town" to a Yankee stimulant-Reeves inspiring Second Regiment Quickstep-though, to many a soldier, the sombre thoughts of the day underlie the tunes of the band. The march stops-and in the silence of the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the Town, and the sunset behind the West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the Day [Memos, 101-102].

** Decoration Day corresponds to the Memorial Day holiday that we currently celebrate in the United States to honor war veterans.

Memorial Day 2019 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2019 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2019 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2019 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Johnny Drum Private Stock is the bourbon, and Civil War drummer boys are the inspiration for a tune.

What does this ...

... have to do with this?

Maybe something, maybe nothing.

I'm the beer guy at Pints&union, conducting my latest sociological experiment into retro classics -- those neglected, heritage, legacy and "greatest beer hits," which these days are overshadowed by the ever-shifting cornucopia of newer-age craft styles.

Naturally there'll be a few of the latter thrown into the mix for good measure, even if my mission statement stays the same: We can't know where we're going without knowing where we've been.

As should be obvious by now, Pints&union is a varied establishment, and it's "about" far more than beer alone. The ambiance is unique, the kitchen is hitting on all cylinders, it's family-friendly, and the bar program features liquor, wine, champagne and cocktails to suit all tastes.

This isn't merely advertising copy. In its infancy, the pub already is displaying a mature balance of offerings, which is testimony to the forethought and planning Joe Phillips has put into it.

I'm the beer guy, but I'm also a beer guy who is forever in favor of learning more about spirits --and history. When I saw we'd started carrying a bourbon called Johnny Drum, it intrigued me, so I did a bit of research.

Johnny Drum Private Stock is 101 proof (50.5% alcohol), and part of a Willett Distillery (specifically, Kentucky Bourbon Distillers) product line. Willett has been a family-owned company since it came back to life after Prohibition. There was a period of dormancy during the 1980s after an ill-fated experiment with the production of ethanol as a motor fuel additive, and distilling on-site only resumed in 2012.

What this means in practical terms is that until recently, all of Willet's various bourbons were sourced from other distillers, something we know is fairly common in the bourbon business.*

As a beer guy, it reminds me of lambic blenders in Belgium, which acquire spontaneously-fermented ales from brewers and combine them to achieve the desired house character.

Apparently Johnny Drum was created in the 1960s at the behest of a California wholesaler. Originally it was labeled as being 15 years old, but today there is no age statement. Apparently this practice is controversial in some quarters, although it falls outside my limited aims at present.

It’s not that these whiskies aren’t aged at all, it’s simply that rather than have a specific barrel age, the whiskey is composed of a blend of variously aged whiskies, selected and blended by the distiller to evoke a consistent flavor.

As for review, I love this fellow's approach.

My friend Lew Bryson's 2015 review for Whisky Advocate also makes sense in a complementary way.

88 points
Johnny Drum Private Stock, 50.5%

Plenty of color, and the nose says it ain’t lying. Sharp warehouse oak aroma puts an edge on an authoritative nose of honey, Indian pudding, spicy hard candy, and old-fashioned root beer, the not-too-sugary kind. Fiery and bold on the tongue as oak roars from start to finish, but the sweetness builds sip-by-sip: cornbread, buckwheat honey, King syrup, and a teasy bit of citrus peel. Long finish as the oak dies down. At this price, let’s keep it our secret. Sourced whiskey.

Indian pudding?

Mention Indian pudding to a non-New Englander, and you'll likely draw a blank stare. Though it has always been staple on Thanksgiving tables in New England, and was known throughout the country well into the 20th century, the humble corn custard has largely drifted off the modern-day culinary map. Some older Yankees may harken back to memories of eating the colonial curiosity as children, but there are even more who have simply never heard of it.

Cornmeal and molasses. Got it.

The beer guy is a word guy, too, and so it should come as no surprise that this bourbon's name of Johnny Drum intrigues me as much as the contents of the bottle.

According to the bottle’s label, Johnny Drum served as a drummer boy in the year 1861 during the Confederate (Civil) War. At the end of the war, legend has it Johnny returned home to his native Kentucky, where he staked claim among a beautiful spring. Johnny learned the importance of finding a way to convert his excess corn crop into a profitable item, rather than allowing it to go to waste. As the story goes, it wasn’t long before Johnny’s determination produced an exceptional bourbon whiskey.

It's a fine explanation for the socioeconomic rationale of distilling in a free-market economy, and it would be tempting to dismiss the remainder as hokum except for the fact that there probably were several thousand drummer boys named Johnny during the American Civil War, and it's likely more than a few were nicknamed Johnny Drum out of sheer expedience.

Perhaps the best known example in popular culture of the Civil War drummer boy is the depicted in the song leading off this post, "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." Specifically, it's the version included in the 1976 commemorative bicentennial 100-LP set from New World Records called The Recorded Anthology of American Music, which itself requires an explanation.

Civil War songs: "I’m a Good Old Rebel," but assuredly not like this.

Appropriately in this sesquicentennial Civil War year, I’ve been listening to Songs of the Civil War (New World Records 80202), with liner notes by Charles Hamm. It’s always been my favorite of them all.

Hamm's liner notes tell the tale.

Track 6: The Drummer Boy of Shiloh

More than 100,000 members of the opposing armies were under sixteen, and some were as young as thirteen. The youngest boys often enlisted as drummers; their duties were to drum for drills, parades, and marches and to give various signals once a battle was in progress. A “long roll” was a signal to assemble for action, and sometimes they would “beat the rally” to instruct troops scattered in battle to reform around the colors, near the drummer. In the confusion, excitement, and panic of battle they would often put aside their drums, take up the arms of a fallen comrade, and become part of the fighting. And they were often killed. The death of any man was horrible, but even seasoned veterans were shaken and sickened by the sight of maimed and slaughtered children lying on a battlefield. Poets and songwriters commented on this aspect of the war, as they did on so many of the dramatic and horrible facets of the conflict; and if their poems and songs strike us today as maudlin and sentimental, we should at least be thankful that the conditions that prompted them are no longer part of our life—at least in the United States.

William Shakespear Hays, a Kentuckian who turned out more than three hundred songs, wrote the first successful portrait, published in Louisville in 1862, of a dying drummer boy. The style is eclectic, with echoes of Irish melody and Italian opera giving the song a flavor that by now was characteristically American—and appropriately poignant for the sad tale of the wounded boy who “prayed before he died.” Later editions, published by Blackmar & Brother in Augusta, Georgia, gave the music “as sung by the First Tennessee concert troupe, arranged for the piano forte by E. Clarke Isley. ”The song’s success caused a flood of similar pieces, including “Little Major” by Henry Clay Work,“The Drummer Boy of Antietam” by Albert Fleming, and “If I Sleep,Will Mother Come?,” the mournful saga of the drummer boy of the 1st Minnesota Regiment.

The most famous drummer boy of all was named Johnny -- Clem, not Drum, and he was a northerner, not a rebel.

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

For many years it was reputed that Clem was present for Shiloh, and may have served as (living) inspiration for the song's melodramatic mythology, but the evidence weighs strongly against it.

Clem became famous a year later.

Clem served as a drummer boy for the 22nd Michigan at the Battle of Chickamauga. He is said to have ridden an artillery caisson to the front and wielded a musket trimmed to his size. In the course of a Union retreat, he shot a Confederate colonel who had demanded his surrender. After the battle, the "Drummer Boy of Chickamauga" was promoted to sergeant, the youngest soldier ever to be a noncommissioned officer in the United States Army. Secretary of the Treasury, later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and fellow Ohioan, Salmon P. Chase, decorated him for his heroics at Chickamauga. Clem's fame for the shooting is also open for debate, despite press reports supporting the story into the early 20th century. It is possible that he wounded Col. Calvin Walker, whose 3rd Tennessee opposed the 22nd Michigan towards the end of the battle.

In October 1863, Clem was captured in Georgia by Confederate cavalrymen while detailed as a train guard. The Confederates confiscated his U.S. uniform which reportedly upset him terribly—including his cap which had three bullet holes in it. He was included in a prisoner exchange a short time later, but the Confederate newspapers used his age and celebrity status for propaganda purposes, to show "what sore straits the Yankees are driven, when they have to send their babies out to fight us." After participating with the Army of the Cumberland in many other battles, serving as a mounted orderly, he was discharged in September 1864. Clem was wounded in combat twice during the war.

Now, where was I?

Ah, yes; Johnny Drum Private Stock. To be honest, I've been so distracted by listening to Civil War music that there hasn't been time yet for a taste. Seems that in bourbon, as in other facets of life, We can't know where we're going without knowing where we've been.

But do I even have the palate yet for bourbon tasting? I guess there's only one way to learn -- and no spitting, either.

---

* Sommelier and Pints&union patron Jonathan Kiviniemi provides this "sourcing" update.

Johnny Drum is one of my favorite every day go to bourbons. Originally all sourced, it is now a blend of sourced and Willett distillate.

Everything they put out was sourced until they launched the new version of Old Bardstown a few years back. That was their first release of something 100% their own distillate (outside of a handful of 2 and 3 year rye bottlings in the Willett Family Estate line).

Since then, they've been blending their own distillate into the KBD products (Kentucky Vintage, Pure Kentucky, Johnny Drum, Rowan's Creek, Noah's Mill) and into the Pot Still bottle. Outside of the 2, 3, 4, and 5 year Estate bottlings and Old Bardstown everything is either partly or 100% sourced.

Reconstruction: "Democracy was subverted, and the human toll, however inexact, was enormous." Bye bye, Castleman and Prentice.

There can be little doubt that Southern whites engaged in post-war racial terrorism, effectively thwarting Reconstruction. I was unaware of the life story of Robert Smalls, and this is a welcome corrective.

Terrorized African-Americans Found Their Champion in Civil War Hero Robert Smalls, by Douglas Egerton (Smithsonian)

The formerly enslaved South Carolinian declared that whites had killed 53,000 African-Americans, but few took the explosive claim seriously—until now

... Fifty-three thousand dead is a staggering number—more than all the dead, wounded and missing at the Battle of Gettysburg. Even spread over the 30 years that had elapsed since Appomattox, that would be an average of 1,766 murders each year, or almost five each day, across the 11 former Confederate states.

When I first read Smalls’ speech while researching political violence in the years after the Civil War, I was stunned. Most estimates of postwar killings of African-Americans amount to about 4,000 public lynchings committed between 1877 and 1968. But what about those who were assassinated or disappeared before 1877, the year Reconstruction began to decline? How did Smalls arrive at that figure? Perhaps he simply invented it to capture the nation’s attention or to appeal to the sympathy of moderate Southern whites. But this figure, like others in his oration, was precise. He could have said “about fifty thousand” or even “more than fifty thousand,” but he didn’t. Was his number even plausible? Could it be verified? As far as I could tell, no historian had tried.

The answer matters because it captures a shifting understanding of what brought the nation’s first meaningful campaign for racial equality to a halt. Too often, the central question about the postwar period is why Reconstruction failed, which implies that the process itself was flawed in ways that contributed to its own demise. But Smalls’ death toll, if even close to accurate, adds substantial weight to the idea that Reconstruction was overthrown—by unremitting clandestine violence ...

Assuming you can read, Ta-Nehisi Coates helpfully offers "Five Books to Make You Less Stupid About the Civil War."

Antietam (September, 2016)

Earlier in the year NAC suggested we all find a book ... and watch a short video.

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

In the following video (circa 2009), historian James M. McPherson refutes the "states' rights" Confederate apologetic.

That's right, kids -- it really was slavery that ignited the American Civil War. Sorry about that faux "Lost Cause" verbiage. It's merely barroom banter after the fact.

Ta-Nehisi Coates takes the process of actual learning a step further by naming five books to read. To learn their names, give The Atlantic link a click.

Me? I've read only McPherson's, so it's time to get with the program.

Five Books to Make You Less Stupid About the Civil War, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic)

On Monday, the retired four-star general and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly asserted that “the lack of an ability to compromise lead to the Civil War.” This was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Worse, it built on a long tradition of endorsing stupidity in hopes of making Americans stupid about their own history. Stupid enjoys an unfortunate place in the highest ranks of American government these days. And while one cannot immediately affect this fact, one can choose to not hear stupid things and quietly nod along.

For the past 50 years, some of this country’s most celebrated historians have taken up the task of making Americans less stupid about the Civil War. These historians have been more effective than generally realized. It’s worth remembering that General Kelly’s remarks, which were greeted with mass howls of protests, reflected the way much of this country’s stupid-ass intellectual class once understood the Civil War. I do not contend that this improved history has solved everything. But it is a ray of light cutting through the gloom of stupid. You should run to that light. Embrace it. Bathe in it. Become it.

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

But what of Thrasher's fork?

Our lead photo is from The Baffler's elegant summary: Weekly Bafflements: What a dogshit week.

Man, what a terrible week. Just an unrelenting deluge of morally bankrupt people parroting stupid opinions. Usually we round up a few good and funny things we read this week but honestly, everything is so fucking bad right now. So, here are some statues that are better than Confederate monuments.

The statue controversy? We visited this territory just this past May.

From Berlin to Budapest to New Orleans: "Historically, Confederate symbols have appeared at times of racial discord."

 ... Symbolism matters, but at the same time, if we're determined not to learn lessons from 152 years ago, symbolism just might be the least of our concerns.

Did these lessons somehow begin with the shelling of Fort Sumter? Of course not. As NAC's junior editor Jeff Gilenwater observed last week on social media:

I've seen several mentions now saying that comparing Confederate leadership to patently racist, pro-slavery, slave owning, slave raping, slave and any "other" murdering founding father types is a false equivalency. It's not. It's the latter who brought white supremacy to these shores in the first place and used it not just as justification for their own violent, self-serving actions but as the foundation upon which this country was built. If you're still clinging to some alternative mythology, perhaps you're not ready yet for the truths we have to accept. It's somewhat understandable given several hundred years of Eurocentric storytelling, but get ready anyway.

Mythology.

Hold on to that word; I'll get there in a moment. First, I point you to Daniel Suddeath's stand-alone commentary in the Glasgow Daily Times ("You can love the South without loving its biggest mistake.")

If anyone has to explain to you why supporting a group that believed it was OK to torture and murder people for personal gain isn't a good thing to do, you have bigger problems than worrying about the future of a statue. And that goes for supporters of the Confederacy and Nazis.

At Insider Louisville, Joe Dunman addresses the Castleman equestrian statue in the Highlands, beginning in Berlin.

Commentary: The Castleman statue has stood long enough

... Missing from our tour, and from Berlin in general, are any memorials to Hitler or any of his subordinates in the Nazi regime. No dignified bronze casts of Herman Goering or Josef Goebbels, no marble statues of Heinrich Himmler or Wilhelm Keitel on horseback. No murals of brave Wehrmacht soldiers marching off to invade France or Russia.

And yet, without any of these relics, the history of the Third Reich is alive and well in Berlin and across the rest of Germany. The country has not forgotten its past. In fact, it still works daily to reconcile with it. To atone. To make sure that through a very clear memory of what happened in the past, it will never make the same horrible mistakes again.

Don't worry -- I'm working my way around to the mythology. In the following video (circa 2009), historian James M. McPherson refutes the "states' rights" Confederate apologetic.

That's right, kids -- it really was slavery that ignited the American Civil War. Sorry about that faux "Lost Cause" verbiage. It's merely barroom banter after the fact.

In 2001, McPherson's argument in the lengthy book review linked below is a detailed, fact-based, well-nigh irrefutable case for slavery as first cause of the war. It's a long read, but it effectively rests the debate, and I've highlighted the "mythology" explanation.

Southern Comfort, by James M. McPherson (The New York Review of Books)

When Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, at the end of four years of civil war, few people in either the North or the South would have dissented from his statement that slavery “was, somehow, the cause of the war.” At the war’s outset in 1861 Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, had justified secession as an act of self-defense against the incoming Lincoln administration, whose policy of excluding slavery from the territories would make “property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless,…thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars.”

The Confederate vice-president, Alexander H. Stephens, had said in a speech at Savannah on March 21, 1861, that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution” of Southern independence. The United States, said Stephens, had been founded in 1776 on the false idea that all men are created equal. The Confederacy, by contrast,

is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Unlike Lincoln, Davis and Stephens survived the war to write their memoirs. By then, slavery was gone with the wind. To salvage as much honor and respectability as they could from their lost cause, they set to work to purge it of any association with the now dead and discredited institution of human bondage. In their postwar views, both Davis and Stephens hewed to the same line: Southern states had seceded not to protect slavery, but to vindicate state sovereignty. This theme became the virgin birth theory of secession: the Confederacy was conceived not by any worldly cause, but by divine principle.

The South, Davis insisted, fought solely for “the inalienable right of a people to change their government…to withdraw from a Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered.” The “existence of African servitude,” he maintained, “was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident.” Stephens likewise declared in his convoluted style that “the War had its origin in opposing principles” not concerning slavery but rather concerning “the organic Structure of the Government…. It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other…. Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles…were finally brought into…collision with each other on the field of battle.”

Davis and Stephens set the tone for the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War during the next century and more: slavery was merely an incident; the real origin of the war that killed more than 620,000 people was a difference of opinion about the Constitution. Thus the Civil War was not a war to preserve the nation and, ultimately, to abolish slavery, but instead a war of Northern aggression against Southern constitutional rights. The superb anthology of essays, The Myth of the Lost Cause, edited by Gary Gallagher and Alan Nolan, explores all aspects of this myth. The editors intend the word “myth” to be understood not as “falsehood” but in its anthropological meaning: the collective memory of a people about their past, which sustains a belief system shaping their view of the world in which they live ...

Finally, what to do with all those empty plinths? Public art, dad.

What To Do With Baltimore's Empty Confederate Statue Plinths? by Kriston Capps (CityLab)

Put them to work, Trafalgar Square style.

Baltimore suddenly has a surfeit of empty sculptural plinths. Overnight, Mayor Catherine Pugh and a fleet of trucks removed four Confederate monuments with a quickness not seen since the Colts skipped town. While other cities fret over what to do with Lost Cause memorials that are increasingly targets of ire and vandalism, Baltimore appears to have put the issue to rest.

With the statues gone, only opportunity remains. What can the city do with those empty (and now graffiti-covered) pedestal plinths? Baltimore could do worse than to take a page from London’s Trafalgar Square.

The last word goes not to me, but to Jamil Smith.

Happy demolition, sports fans.

Suddeath: "You can love the South without loving its biggest mistake."

Daniel Suddeath and I jousted often during his tenure as News and Tribune reporter, and while our exchanges occasionally got testy, I viewed it as healthy in the main.

We barked and snarled, and kept talking. Both of us are prone to streaks of self-righteousness, which isn't always helpful when writing an essay such as the one linked here.

Speaking merely as an observer, one who toils at writing and feels like he never gets it quite right -- and who doesn't always feel obliged to practice what he preaches -- the objective is to maintain poise while in the throes of passion, making the necessary points with cool precision with just enough emotion to engage readers and keep their attention.

I believe the writer's ability to communicate in this fashion is a sign of maturity, skill and command, even when he or she occasionally decides to chuck it and go straight for the polemical jugular.

What I'm meandering around to saying is that Daniel does a damned fine job here, quite apart from the fact that I agree with his point of view.

Suddeath: Fake history, by Daniel Suddeath (Glasgow Daily Times)

There is a difference between remembering history and holding on to beliefs that were never right.

While I generally don't support removing articles of history, be they reminders of good or bad, it's hard to distinguish between those who want to keep Confederate statues in place for historical reasons versus those who would like to see our country revert to a time when it was OK to be racist, and frankly brutal and primitive to our fellow man or woman.

This paragraph is the anchor.

What's the point? What was so great about the Confederacy that it should be cherished? You can love the South without loving its biggest mistake.

Continued best wishes to Daniel in Glasgow.