DWill wrote:I was thinking about the Southern argument that the CW was about state rights, not slavery. I'm pretty sure that slavery was the key point of conflict, but was state rights just something the South cooked up for cover? I don't think that is true, either. All of us need to be willing to take an empathetic look at the other side.

• What were the state rights that Southerners were defending against Northern aggression? The right to own slaves.
• Southerners also claimed they were defending their economy against Northern aggression. What parts of their economy needed to be defended militarily? The immense capital value of slave ownership and the profits that produced.
• Southerners further claimed (and some still do) that they were just defending their "heritage." Although the Southern heritage certainly is significant, what part of it required the incalculable loss in blood and treasure to defend? (Insert your answer here.)
• Do you see a pattern behind these euphemisms "cooked up for cover?"
• We must understand history, but we do not necessarily have to consider all sides of every situation with empathy.

If you have doubts whether the Civil War was about slavery, here's a 5 minute video explainer. It's a presentation by Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (I'm sure you'll agree from that position, as an authority on US military history, he should know what he's talking about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4

LanDroid wrote:

DWill wrote:I was thinking about the Southern argument that the CW was about state rights, not slavery. I'm pretty sure that slavery was the key point of conflict, but was state rights just something the South cooked up for cover? I don't think that is true, either. All of us need to be willing to take an empathetic look at the other side.

• What were the state rights that Southerners were defending against Northern aggression? The right to own slaves.
• Southerners also claimed they were defending their economy against Northern aggression. What parts of their economy needed to be defended militarily? The immense capital value of slave ownership and the profits that produced.
• Southerners further claimed (and some still do) that they were just defending their "heritage." Although the Southern heritage certainly is significant, what part of it required the incalculable loss in blood and treasure to defend? (Insert your answer here.)
• Do you see a pattern behind these euphemisms "cooked up for cover?"
• We must understand history, but we do not necessarily have to consider all sides of every situation with empathy.

If you have doubts whether the Civil War was about slavery, here's a 5 minute video explainer. It's a presentation by Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (I'm sure you'll agree from that position, as an authority on US military history, he should know what he's talking about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?vCW =pcy7qV-BGF4

What I have doubts about is that you can say it was this way or that way, exclusively, for the South, meaning for everyone in the South; and that there was no history about state rights previous to its discussion immediately before the war. Of course state rights had a history, going back at least as far as the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, Federalist and Republican. State rights were not invoked only regarding the issue of slavery. Aren't we supposed to be studying history for some of the nuances, rather than insisting only on summary judgments? In any event, for me if we tease out the nuance history is a lot more interesting.

I have no doubt that the South seceded finally because of the threat to its peculiar institution. It was by far the most significant state rights issue for the wealthy political class of the south.

I haven't gotten to the Civil War chapter of the book, and I agree that slavery was the key issue. But couldn't you also point to tariffs that were protecting industries of the North, when the South relied on raw material production and so they were bearing the cost of the tariffs? And obviously protecting slavery was part of protecting the Southern economy.

Of course, to shoot for balance you also have to consider the complicity of the North in slavery and the racism of the North.

DWill wrote:What I have doubts about is that you can say it was this way or that way, exclusively, for the South, meaning for everyone in the South; and that there was no history about state rights previous to its discussion immediately before the war. Of course state rights had a history, going back at least as far as the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, Federalist and Republican. State rights were not invoked only regarding the issue of slavery. Aren't we supposed to be studying history for some of the nuances, rather than insisting only on summary judgments? In any event, for me if we tease out the nuance history is a lot more interesting.

I don't know where you got that, I didn't say anything like it. Of course states rights controversies go back to the beginning. As I recall the Constitution strengthened the federal government because the states were so strong under the articles of confederation that not much got done. Sounds like we are actually in agreement on states rights...

So, then, to redirect: did the Civil War change the balance of federalism vs republicanism in the US? In what direction did it change, and was this change good for the health of the state? At what point is the Federal Government overreaching? And what point should a state not be bullied by the union?

For example, California has decided to adhere to the standards put forth by the Paris Accords, and the EPA has begun to clamour to make it illegal for the state to do so. How does this situation fit into your assessment of how the federalism vs republicanism relationship is, and then again how you imagine it should be?

capricorn152244 wrote:So, then, to redirect: did the Civil War change the balance of federalism vs republicanism in the US? In what direction did it change, and was this change good for the health of the state? At what point is the Federal Government overreaching? And what point should a state not be bullied by the union?

Lincoln successfully sold the resistance to "The Slave Power" as a matter of holding a democratic nation together. Like the Mayflower Compact it insisted that the consent of the governed did not extend to withdrawing if they did not like the decisions of the majority.

Common defense requires acceptance of unity at a fundamental level. Lincoln foresaw that if the nation did not commit to common governance then they were not committed to common defense. The flip side of his penetrating vision is that if the nation so oppresses some individuals that they feel the need to resist it, a system of rule of law must include protection of each from that oppression. These principles come in direct conflict when one part of the society bases its way of life on depriving others of their freedom, aka slavery, and those who are thus oppressing others feel the need to keep a larger nation from depriving them of the ability to do so.

The Gettysburg Address ties together these two strands of his thinking. Can a nation dedicated to each being created equal long endure on the earth? Only if it experiences a rebirth of freedom, freedom which is for all. Union by consent requires equal rights.

capricorn152244 wrote:For example, California has decided to adhere to the standards put forth by the Paris Accords, and the EPA has begun to clamour to make it illegal for the state to do so. How does this situation fit into your assessment of how the federalism vs republicanism relationship is, and then again how you imagine it should be?

I don't think it is too bold to require that the reasoning be examined in each case. If California is acting on behalf of all states, then the federal government has no business telling it that it may not do so. And if the federal government is refusing to examine the policy decisions behind each position, but merely exercising naked power, then the power is not legitimate.

I think the state/federal tension is a lot like the executive/legislative/judicial tension. Only a scoundrel focuses on what the powers have been set out to be without considering the reasons behind them and the reasons for checks and balances. The facts of a particular case ought to be fit into a framework with those reasons understood.

LanDroid wrote:

DWill wrote:What I have doubts about is that you can say it was this way or that way, exclusively, for the South, meaning for everyone in the South; and that there was no history about state rights previous to its discussion immediately before the war. Of course state rights had a history, going back at least as far as the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, Federalist and Republican. State rights were not invoked only regarding the issue of slavery. Aren't we supposed to be studying history for some of the nuances, rather than insisting only on summary judgments? In any event, for me if we tease out the nuance history is a lot more interesting.

I don't know where you got that, I didn't say anything like it. Of course states rights controversies go back to the beginning. As I recall the Constitution strengthened the federal government because the states were so strong under the articles of confederation that not much got done. Sounds like we are actually in agreement on states rights...

All right, sorry if I went off half-cocked.

DWill wrote: You're the one who might be wading into history teaching, not me, and I think that's a good thing. I might go nuts with internal debating before I could ever broker this subject with 25 adolescents. Needing to take into account the differences between freshmen and seniors, intellectually, plus the variations of learning styles, literacy, and analytic ability within a grade--I wish you luck and success if you do it. History seems the most difficult of subjects to me. I can understand why teachers want to make it rather cut-and-dried, just the facts, ma'am. I'm not set against that approach entirely, either. How does anyone get into her head the basic outline of what happened, so that she doesn't end up completely clueless telling Jay Leno that Churchill was a great Civil War general?

I admit to a certain trepidation about the human and social side of bringing kids along. But the facts vs. interpretation dilemmas are manageable, said the economics teacher. The idea is to get kids curious about facts based on the larger themes, so that they have their own desire to learn the facts and one is not just using leverage to cram facts in. There should be some balance between embarrassment if they declare that Churchill was a great Civil War general, on one hand, and willingness to learn new facts to fill in the questions they have generated.

The hierarchy of learning objectives (aka Bloom's taxonomy) helps structure how to think about these things. Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. Each relies to some extent on the ones below it, and engagement with the higher level activities helps to motivate acquisition at the lower levels. For example, analysis is more fun if there is evaluation at stake. Application of knowledge is interesting in the context of the demands of synthesis, e.g. arrange a puppet show to explain how the world appeared to Joan of Arc.

DWill wrote: With my fuzzy use of the word 'interpretation' I think I had in mind moral interpretation, which BH seems to avoid pretty well since it hardly mentions individuals at all and floats above moral judgment.

Hmm. Interesting. Though Jared Diamond specializes in using cases, whether Cortez or Easter Island, to illustrate his Big History themes. I like to mix in a little moral judgment because students stand in many different relations to that, and the moral implications of Easter Island destroying its civilization by choosing conflict over cooperation are fascinating. Even though we don't know the names of Easter Islanders at the time of the demise, we can fill in character types and understand what roles they might have played in the drama.

DWill wrote:What troubled me most about Zinn was the lack of context, the implication that America's flaws were unusual aberrations in societies and showed America as being worse by comparison. History should be taught comparatively. There, I've got something to stand on (for now).

I agree with you about that flaw. The critical approach tends to believe it is upholding an absolute moral standard, independent of the times or the issues at stake. In doing so, of course, it falls into the trap of claiming moral omniscience, since it pretends to know how the principles involved will play out over the time to come. Will equality turn out to be a pipe dream? Will socialism lead to totalitarian oppression? How can anyone think they know the answers to such questions.

A narrative claiming that Americans were uniquely virtuous in choosing self-government and rejecting domination by nobles is fairly naive, but students should have some idea that what was done in the provinces so far from the British Parliamentary debate was incredibly significant in historical perspective.

DWill wrote: How about trying on this as a distinction to guide teaching: is history class to be about historiography or history? I'm thinking that in a basic sense historiography increases with the age and intellectual ability of the students. Earlier on it is mostly about what we think we know of the facts.

I think that's right. Children need a basic "lay of the land" feel for what they learn about, based on a rough factual sketch and a few strands of interpretation. I still remember in third grade the enrichment teacher teaching us about Napoleon using the 1812 overture. When she asked what we knew about Napoleon I volunteered that he was sort of like Hitler, and she cautioned us that Napoleon remains a hero to many French people. That's a kind of digestible framework that doesn't get into the horrors of the Holocaust but does give a sense that military defeat and conquest are not the final word, one way or another, about virtue.

Having finally finished the first chapter, I want to pause to appreciate it. For one thing, I am impressed at how little of this I knew, and inclined to agree with the author that slanted presentation of history is responsible. Not just to cheer for Wilson the internationalist and keep Hellen Keller clean of socialism, but also to create "heros" who never seem to actually look at another side of things but simply take on the bad guys (or their personal challenges) and show their pluck.

I fear he may have exaggerated some aspects in order to make the case that individuals matter in the contingent path of history. Who doesn't think that Franklin Roosevelt or Earl Warren or Joe McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover influenced the path of history? Yet Wilson hardly created American racism and "Birth of a Nation" would most likely have done fine without his support.

I would have liked to hear more about the interventions in the Western Hemisphere - the Mexican Revolution was hardly neutral - but he certainly succeeded in making the case that textbooks brushed out the interesting side of the process. It also piqued my curiosity about the role of parties. We tend to think of pro-authoritarian intervention as an Eisenhower-era Republican program motivated in part by big business investments in Latin America. But Wilson was a Democrat. True that he was an alternative to William Jennings Bryan, the leader of the Democrats before Wilson, and that he tended to side with business with the exception of trust-busting. Dunno, really, what was up there.