Two Views of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

So You Think Your Life Was Wasted — Part Three (8)

This is a continuation of the very productive sessions I had one day in March, four years ago. This particular conversation took place at first with Claude Bowers, whose book The Tragic Era dealt with Reconstruction from a position of total sympathy with the white South of the day, then with Joseph Smallwood, perhaps a past life, who was one of the Union soldiers who counted the destruction of slavery among the results that mitigated the terrible suffering and dislocation that war caused.

Thursday March 9, 2006

(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.

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Carl Jung : Where are Your Symbols?

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

So You Think Your Life Was Wasted – Part Three (7)

[I had been discussing Reconstruction with Claude Bowers, author of The Tragic Era, whose take on things differed considerably from mine. And I had been sending out the transcriptions day by day to a list of friends. Then one day I got a massive shock: There I was talking to Carl Jung.]

Thursday March 9, 2006

9 a.m. All right, Mr. Bowers.  Hard to really get going this morning. All right, shoot.

You can see from your emails [received] that the material is meeting response. This ought to suggest to you that a significant part of your national story is going untold. That is, if any one point of view is systematically suppressed for whatever reason, tensions build up – for the unconscious knows and the conscious does not, and it is a great drain of energy to maintain a state of not-knowing if you once invest in so doing. This is a major source of much of the craziness in your politics and public life. It is particularly disruptive when not one stream but many are being suppressed, for this means that different rivers of consciousness – call it that for the moment – suppress different parts while others elevate precisely those parts (suppressing others that they themselves do not wish to see). Hence your rivers of consciousness – that is, your factions, your ideologies – do not describe the same world, and meaningful exchange and compromise become ever less possible.

Continue reading Carl Jung : Where are Your Symbols?

So You Think Your Life Was Wasted – Section Three (6)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

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.”

Continue reading So You Think Your Life Was Wasted – Section Three (6)

So You Think Your Life Was Wasted – Section Three (5)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Claude Bowers on Reconstruction, racism, and the problems of our times.

Monday March 6, 2006

Last night, for no reason I could have named, I found on my shelves Claude Bowers’ book about the reconstruction era, The Tragic Era, that I have carried around for years but never yet read.

Friends, my suspicion is that this is what we might call a benevolent set-up. First Joseph on Lincoln and the Civil War, now Bowers on how the victory was hijacked. Yes?

Continue reading So You Think Your Life Was Wasted – Section Three (5)