Past and future

Thursday March 9, 2006

Books as weapons

(6:30 p.m.) I don’t mean to quarrel, Mr. Bowers, but the final taste your book leaves in my mouth is one of partisanship. All the nobility on one side, rascality the only motive on the other side. It is overdone, and ultimately doesn’t wash. This book looks to have been written at least in part for partisan purposes, not as a testimonial. It is somewhere between history, journalism, and propaganda.

Say that is so, it will not find itself alone on the shelf! As I said, books are written to be tools or weapons, not as monuments.

Well, I think it might have had a longer life had it been balanced.

And with the Republicans still in charge of the national government – which in context meant the manufacturing and financial interests of whom the Republican Party was the wholly owned subsidiary – where was the corresponding fairness that would have balanced the picture? Does it occur to you, sometimes excess balances excess, and moderation does not.

Evidently my place is not in politics.

Nor in warfare, and this is no slight upon you. The world has a crying need for gentle souls who shrink from landing blows for fear of the damage and pain they would thereby inflict. What do you think it was that was killing Lincoln right along, before the assassination plot succeeded? He would not hurt a fly, and yet he was placed so that by his inaction he would cause more hurt than his action, yet his entire being revolted against the necessity.

Surely it is less hurtful to shade a picture than to starve a nation of workmen, and women, and children.

I understand what you are saying. It amounts to “this is war.” But I agree with Eric Sevareid, I think it was, who said “the chief cause of problems is solutions.” So the chief cause of outrages is revenge. Yet I can see your point too.

The ability to see many sides of an issue is valuable and can be of great use to a people. But it is not a characteristic of political leadership.

Joseph’s reaction

Okay, enough of this. I am glad to have read your book, and I suppose it is a corrective to Joseph’s views, somewhat. Joseph? Continue reading Bowers vs. Smallwood

[I sent this post out to my friends feeling particularly vulnerable, for reasons that will appear.]

Not being particularly fond of the idea of being laughed at, I still don’t see any choice but to send this out, as either one tells the truth about one’s experiences, or one does not. But this process sure leaves me feeling naked.

Thursday March 9, 2006

9 a.m. All right, Mr. Bowers. I was thinking about your point of view – being now within a couple of chapters of the end – and I still don’t entirely agree with you. For instance, I think some form of compensation was owed slaves and slave-owner alike, though I can see why Unionists would ask bitterly why they should give any of their tax money to pay the families who had caused the rebellion and the war. You know Emerson’s response to a proposal that the slave owners should be compensated. He agreed:

But who is the owner?

The slave is owner

And ever was. Pay him.

It seems to me appropriate to take the lands of the slaveholders and divide them among their slaves – not just their slaves, but taking the total pool, dividing it among the total pool of ex-slave families. It would have been a horrible mess to untangle, but worse than what resulted? And the shareowners need not have been left with nothing. In fact, perhaps some form or compensated emancipation could have compulsorily bought the land – thus giving the slave owners something for the capital in slaves they were losing – and giving homesteads to the black families out of that land. If we could give homesteads to white immigrants, why not to black ex-slaves some of whose ancestors had been there two hundred years? I think that your denying any such adjustment is merely taking one side of an argument and ignoring the other. Continue reading Carl Jung on the work we must do on ourselves

[Wednesday March 8, 2006]

Revolutions

(11:40) I was thinking about what at first seemed obvious – politics follows your interest – and realize it isn’t as simple as it first appeared. I am sort of residually a Democrat. I don’t like them much but I detest so much of the Republican rhetoric and adventurism. But if I were to decide which party to belong to (assuming I had to choose either one!) and wanted to decide it on my economic interests, I don’t know where I should be! I believe the Republicans are ruining the economy, so I can’t see any advantage to me of being with the party that is presiding over ruin – but I don’t see that the Democrats have actually done anything different even when they had power, so where are we? We need a new party but I find it hard to believe that will solve anything.

You are learning. Look at what you just derived simply from asking yourself which party lay closer to your economic interests. Your time has been overshadowed by its own version of the bloody flag – social issues. Abortion, the flag controversies, all the social controversies that have polarized you into units not primarily rooted in your economic interests. Civil Rights among them, I would remind you. This serves certain background groups very well, as they would be seriously outnumbered if people were voting their economic interests. Continue reading Claude Bowers on Revolution

Wednesday March 8, 2006

All right, Mr. Bowers, since I’m not doing the work I ought to be doing, let’s resume. I’m half through your book and the comparisons between the Radical Republicans of 1865 on and those of 1995 on are just startling! Stolen elections, blatant disregard of law to get what they wanted, ideological agenda (at least when Thad Stevens was alive; less so afterwards), a huge phony impeachment trial – though they expected to win the one in 1868 – and then giant, massive, unprecedented corruption. Unprecedented for Washington, which is saying something! And perhaps the longest-lived effect, the turning over of government and economy to the monopolies that developed from war contracts.

Our case is different because the slavery and Civil Rights issues are settled, but I seem to see an analogy in the ideology that sees “faith based” – meaning right-wing Christian – groups as being under social attack and needing government support. And behind it all, what Joseph Smallwood would call “hog-ism.”

Racism and class discrimination

I see, also, that your arguments and your impact are blunted by your racism – even if it was the racism of your day. So negroes were to sit with whites on public accommodations. Shameful! So they were to have equal access to theaters, etc. Horrible! We just don’t see it that way and you can’t expect us to.

Nor did I expect you to. But it was worth while to make the attempt. How far you can stretch your sympathies is a matter for your own concern. Let me say this on the subject of racism and then let us drop the subject – unless new questions come up – for some disagreements cannot be bridged. Continue reading Claude Bowers on racism and politics

[Monday March 6, 2006]

Reconstruction

(12:45) Well, Mr. Bowers, your chapter two on Andrew Johnson was very interesting and the most favorable portrait of him I have ever read, by far. And he seems to have shared Joseph Smallwood’s idealization of the common worker and smallholder. But your chapter three, “With Chase Among The Ruins,” makes a very mixed impression. On the one hand, an interesting portrait of slick, conniving Salmon P. Chase, who Lincoln put on the court mostly to get his vote for certain wartime measures – can’t remember offhand which – that were sure to come before the Supreme Court sooner or later. Chase seems to have been a slimy article, for sure, and certainly his intolerance and narrow-sightedness is clear enough in this picture, given that we can trust the picture as drawn.

But it is precisely in your approving quotation of contemporary mimicry and ridicule of the speech of the freed slaves that you leave yourself open to interpretations of racism. How would you like your pronunciation mocked? It is cruel, and your selection of evidence cuts two ways. On the one hand the difficulties are made clear. On the other hand, you show no side of the issues but that of the white southern society. A reader coming to your book new to the subject might think that no one favored negro franchise but corrupt politicians; and that no negro (soldiers, say) could possibly have advanced to the point of deserving it; or that black as well as white might justly fear powerlessness and seek to have the vote to protect themselves even if they couldn’t spell CAT. Continue reading Claude Bowers on Reconstruction