Chapters 6-9
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2017 12:03 pm
"The Intimately Oppressed" is a good title choice for the chapter on the rights and status of women up until about 1850. Zinn doesn't explicitly claim that there is myth about U. S. women in this era of history that we've been taught to accept. He doesn't claim that in the U.S., women were subjugated more than European women. It might even appear by the record of meetings of and demonstrations by women's rights organizations that women here were more able to make themselves heard and to gain momentum for their cause. It's hard to compare women's movements in different countries, but in the U.S. women received full voting rights a little before women in Britain did and long before French women did.
"As Long as the Grass Grows or Water Runs" and "We take Nothing by Conquest, by God" (chapters 7-8) are ironic titles both relating to the European assault on the Indian populations. Here it's not apparent that Zinn does anything but recount the history already known of the deceitfulness and aggression of the Americans. Toward the middle of the 19th Century this all became justified by the racist doctrine of Manifest Destiny. What a lot of destructive nonsense has come out of the so-called scientific notion of the hierarchy of the races.
The Mexican War is detailed in Chap. 8 as well. I sometimes think of this imperialist war when the immigration issue comes up. The territory into which the illegal immigrants cross was stolen from their ancestors 170 years ago.
Zinn does a good job with later slavery and Reconstruction (Chap. 9). It's hard to argue with his contention that the moral cause of anti-slavery never had much sway over the business and finance interests of the North. The North--and President Lincoln--were more invested in the military advantage of ending slavery, and after the South was defeated it became clear that upholding the rights the former slaves had gained wasn't a priority. Making profits was. One of the interesting what-ifs concerns Lincoln's actions had he not been assassinated. Would we now remember him as a champion of black people (as he was to them in 1865), or would he have not resisted the powerful forces that wanted to let the South revert to a racial caste system for the sake of better business relations? As Zinn points out: "The North...did not have to undergo a revolution in its thinking to accept the subordination of the Negro. When the Civil War ended, nineteen of the twenty-four northern states did not allow blacks to vote. By 1900, all the southern states, in new constitutions and new statutes, had written into law the disfranchisement and segregation of Negroes, and a New York Times editorial said: 'Northern men . . . no longer denounce the suppression of the Negro vote. . . . The necessity of it under the supreme law of self-preservation is candidly recognized.'
While not written into law in the North, the counterpart in racist thought and practice was there."
"As Long as the Grass Grows or Water Runs" and "We take Nothing by Conquest, by God" (chapters 7-8) are ironic titles both relating to the European assault on the Indian populations. Here it's not apparent that Zinn does anything but recount the history already known of the deceitfulness and aggression of the Americans. Toward the middle of the 19th Century this all became justified by the racist doctrine of Manifest Destiny. What a lot of destructive nonsense has come out of the so-called scientific notion of the hierarchy of the races.
The Mexican War is detailed in Chap. 8 as well. I sometimes think of this imperialist war when the immigration issue comes up. The territory into which the illegal immigrants cross was stolen from their ancestors 170 years ago.
Zinn does a good job with later slavery and Reconstruction (Chap. 9). It's hard to argue with his contention that the moral cause of anti-slavery never had much sway over the business and finance interests of the North. The North--and President Lincoln--were more invested in the military advantage of ending slavery, and after the South was defeated it became clear that upholding the rights the former slaves had gained wasn't a priority. Making profits was. One of the interesting what-ifs concerns Lincoln's actions had he not been assassinated. Would we now remember him as a champion of black people (as he was to them in 1865), or would he have not resisted the powerful forces that wanted to let the South revert to a racial caste system for the sake of better business relations? As Zinn points out: "The North...did not have to undergo a revolution in its thinking to accept the subordination of the Negro. When the Civil War ended, nineteen of the twenty-four northern states did not allow blacks to vote. By 1900, all the southern states, in new constitutions and new statutes, had written into law the disfranchisement and segregation of Negroes, and a New York Times editorial said: 'Northern men . . . no longer denounce the suppression of the Negro vote. . . . The necessity of it under the supreme law of self-preservation is candidly recognized.'
While not written into law in the North, the counterpart in racist thought and practice was there."