Tag Archives: history

06.18.24
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JUNETEENTH/TWO IMPORTANT TITLES

John Swanson Jacobs, son of Harriet Jacobs both of whom escaped slavery, is now available in a rediscovered narrative titled A TRUE STORY OF SLAVERY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNED BY SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS.

The book goes far beyond Jacob’s bondage and escape there from to crystallize his views on the very government and the US Constitution that allowed the institution to continue and thrive through the end of the Civil War. Jacob’s SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS are clearly defined by his narrative as the white American oligarchy that that allowed and supported slavery’s existence. In his own words, Jacobs holds all American citizens, North and South accountable for writing -absolute rule over an unfree people- into the democratic charter. Jacob’s narrative is one of the very few first hand accounts of slavery that survive, including his mother’s Harriet Jacob’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL and also the NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMErICAN SLAVE. Before leaving America for Australia and then a life at sea he briefly joined the lecture circuit with Frederick Douglas. The book also includes a biography of Jacobs by Jonathan Schroeder titled NO LONGER YOURS.

Another important Juneteenth volume is Matthew Stewart’s AN EMANCIPATION OF THE MIND RADICAL PHILOSOPHY, THE WAR OVER SLAVERY, AND THE REFOUNDING OF AMERICA.

This volume is a highly charged analysis of how government, the white oligarchy, American’s prominent religious denominations and the economics of the plantation/cotton economy forced and kept four million human beings in bondage. In the effort to dominate the national political system the slaveholders were able to count on the antidemocratic aspects of the US Constitution: The overrepresentation of the small states in the Senate and the Electoral College; the growing power of the unelected judiciary: and the absence on meaningful checks on the corruption of state governments.

Of great interest to this reader was the influence of German revolutionaries, progressives and intellectuals upon the American abolitionist movement. They called themselves the 48ERS, having been among the some 10,000 Germans emigrating to America during that period. They included Friedrich Knapp, Ludwig Feuerbach, journalist Ottilie Assign, August Willich, Carl Schurz and many others. There were some 10,000 German immigrants living in the Ohio Valley by the start of the Civil War whose abolitionist views were made well known to President Lincoln.

Two volumes written over 250 years apart, one by an escaped slave the other by a modern day historian zero in on the same underlying issues that allowed slavery to exist and in some cases remain a threat to American democracy to this very day. I can think of two more timely reads.

05.23.24
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AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY/DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN

Anderson Cooper gave the perfect description of Doris Kearns Goodwin when he called her a national treasure. His quote appears on the dust cover of Kearns Goodwin’s new book AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY, A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE 1960S.

Richard Goodwin while in his twenties and early thirties was a speechwriter and inner circle advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and then later to Robert F. Kennedy. For years, all of Goodwin’s personal papers of the era sat collected in some thirty boxes stored in the Kearns Goodwin home at Concord, Massachusetts. In their later years after over 40 years of marriage Richard in his 80s and Kearns in her seventies decided it was time to open the boxes and write his personal history. By this time Kearns had established herself as among the most prestigious of presidential Pulitzer Prize winning historians. ( Search Gordons GoodReads).

What is remarkable about this book is the insiders look behind the scenes of the personalities and the inner workings of the campaigns and administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Added to the narrative is the disruptive force of Robert Kennedy and how Richard Goodwin navigated his mixed loyalties. Those loyalties of course spilled over into the Kearns/Goodwin love story, she being an ardent loyalist of Johnson and Richard having left the Johnson inner circle for Bobby Kennedy’s ill fated primary campaign against LBJ.

The reader learns of the beginnings of the Peace Corps ( an off the cuff-JFK speech in Michigan), the LBJ Great Society the inside strategy of the Voting Rights Act, The Civil Rights Act and LBJ’s famous joint session of Congress speech in which Goodwin co-opted Martin Luther King’s We shall overcome. Insight into the transition from the Kennedy to the Johnson administration after JFK’s death evoke a combination of anger and empathy. The Robert Kennedy personality for all of its strength and weaknesses is on abundant display.

A remarkable aspect of AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY is the lesson learned of how great writers and politicians learn how complicated and controversial legislation can be properly packaged and themed to insure success. Kennedy, Goodwin and LBJ were a brilliant combination in fulfilling this task.

As readers of Gordons Good Reads surely know I too elevate Doris Kearns Goodwin as a National Treasure. AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY IS a must read for those interested in American political history of the 1960S.

04.28.24
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SECOND AMERICAN REPUBLIC/MANISHA SINHA

The title is exactly what this academic work entails. What became of Lincoln’s vision of a unified American Republic following the initial Republic’s dismemberment during the Civil War? The years are 1860-1920. A very broad survey of a period when the philosophy of today’s political parties were reversed.

Manisha Sinha, Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut has written a scholarly detailed description of how Lincoln’s dream of Reconstruction was eviscerated in a cascading series of events that returned the defeated South into a post-war era of subservision of any and all rights gained by the Slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Sinha also places the Abolitionist movement in the North under a microscope and delves into the conflicts that developed between Abolitionists and Suffragettes as to who should be granted the right to vote.

From the day he took the Oath of Office following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson began a step by step premeditated campaign to restore The Lost Clause in the American South. For a brief period there was hope. The right to vote by black majorities in many regions saw former slaves elected to local and state offices. However this success, unprotected by the eventual withdrawal of federal troops and the political destruction of the Freedmen’s Bureau led to lawless revenge by the former plantation aristocracy. Sinha’s narrative details the horrors of the Black Codes, Lynchings, Poll Taxes, Jim Crow, and inmate leased labor that prevailed throughout the south.

The Rise and Fall is more than a deep review of Reconstruction. The narrative carries forward to Manifest Destiny and the Westward Expansion which led to the devastating impact upon Native Americans in the in the new territories. It is a general survey of politics, self interests, the Lost Cause, the impact upon labor during the industrial revolution, failed policies and racism in America from 1860-1920, long before the modern day Civil Rights Movement began. It is the perfect prelude to that forthcoming era.

This is an extremely complicated era in American History and Manisha Sinha does a brilliant job in enlightening the reader. An important addition to one’s library of American History.