I can has history?

I found a website that lets you write captions for image macros, so I decided it was high time us history junkies jumped on the Internet meme bandwagon.  

If you’ve never heard of such phenomena as Ceiling Cat or Philosoraptor, then you probably won’t get any of this.  Serves you right for not wasting enough time online.

 

Was the Emancipation Proclamation a moderate measure or a radical one?

My answer to the above question is “yes.”  Obama recently used Lincoln’s proclamation as an example of effective compromise.  I think he might have overstated the case, since Lincoln acted pretty dramatically within the bounds of what he thought he could realistically do.  I explain this position in a post over at the Lincoln Institute blog.  Read it and feel free to disagree vehemently.

He thought his life was done

…until Past in the Present gave him the hope he needed to carry on.

A spammer left this in response to the post about the Oneida Indians movie:

I want to express my thanks to you just for rescuing me from this type of instance. Right after looking out throughout the the web and meeting strategies that were not productive, I thought my life was done. Existing devoid of the strategies to the difficulties you have solved all through your good website is a crucial case, as well as the kind which may have negatively affected my entire career if I hadn’t come across your blog post. Your good expertise and kindness in playing with a lot of stuff was precious. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t come across such a stuff like this. It’s possible to now relish my future. Thank you so much for the skilled and sensible guide. I won’t hesitate to suggest your web blog to anybody who desires assistance about this situation.

My friend, you’re quite welcome.  It’s long been my hope that my blog would allow readers who were at the end of their rope to meet strategies that are productive.  I’m glad I was able to prolong your life and avert any negative impact your career might have suffered in the absence of strategies to any relevant difficulties, the lack of which is indeed a crucial case.  I will endeavor to continue playing with a lot of stuff kindly and exhibiting my good expertise, and to do these things in a precious manner.  I hope you enjoy relishing the future which, in my small way, I’ve helped make possible.

Granted, I have no idea what this has to do with a movie about Oneida Indians in the Revolutionary War, but still.  As the Talmud says, “And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”  That’s what I’m doing here, folks.  Saving the world, one spammer at a time.

Thomas DiLorenzo takes issue with somebody. . .but who, exactly?

That’s the question I ponder at a new piece I’ve written for the Abraham Lincoln Institute blog.  See what you think, and feel free to add your comments over at that site.

I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to pitch in over at the Institute blog, both as a contributor and editor.  Let me take this opportunity to ask that you make it one of your regular online stops if you’re a history blog reader, and to add it to your blogroll if you’re a history blog writer.  In the near future we’ll be posting some interviews with Lincoln scholars and other material of interest, so check it out.

Psychic commenters

An irate reader sent a number of nasty e-mails to Gordon Belt, claiming that he was out to tarnish John Sevier’s reputation.  This surprised me, because I’ve been following Gordon’s fine series of posts on Sevier, and for the life of me I can’t recall a single instance in which he’s said anything particularly derogatory about Nolichucky Jack.

Sevier possessed an undeniable personal courage, he was a skilled practitioner of partisan warfare, his contributions to the American victory in the Revolution were substantial, his role in the founding of Tennessee was the equal of anyone else’s, and the respect he earned as a leader of men (and one didn’t become a leader of men on the frontier unless one earned a good deal of respect) indicates a level of charisma rare in any time or place.  But he was a human being.  He put on his pants (or knee breeches, I suppose) one leg at a time like the rest of us.  The John Sevier you’ll find in Gordon’s posts is neither a marble demigod nor a scoundrel.  He’s a fascinating and complex character, and all indications are that this is basically what the historical John Sevier was.

But what really surprised me was the fact that Gordon’s correspondent accused him of using history to promote an “ideological agenda.”  Mind-reading of this sort—assuming that someone presenting an argument with which you disagree must be doing so for sinister reasons—is all too common in the blogosphere.  If you’re blogging, sooner or later you can expect to have somebody attempt to gaze into your soul and reveal some nefarious motive of which you yourself were unaware.  It’s happened to me a few times.  I once wrote a post about the accuracy of a children’s book about the Civil War set not too far from my hometown, and one lady subsequently informed me that I had a “progressive presentism agenda,” based solely on the fact that I mentioned two other bloggers.  I kid you not.

One of the problems with this instant online mind-reading is the fact that most people aren’t cut out to be psychics.  The lady I just referred to, for example, managed to get my political inclinations completely wrong, which sort of torpedoes the whole ideological motive thing.  You’re not likely to try to further a progressive agenda when you don’t put much stock in progressivism.

The other problem is that it doesn’t address the actual argument being presented.  Let’s pretend for a moment that I am a “presentist progressive,” and that my motive for discussing the use of regional geography and history in a kids’ book was to further some agenda. Would it have any bearing on the accuracy of my statements about the details in the book?  The question of whether or not I’m a flaming liberal doesn’t affect whether or not I was correct in stating that Fern Lake didn’t exist in 1863, or that there really is a cave near the saddle of Cumberland Gap.

Motive and bias can indeed affect interpretation, but these aren’t matters of interpretation. They’re matters of simple fact, and a fact is a fact regardless of who’s stating it.  Accusations of underlying motive aren’t helpful in such cases.  It reminds me of something Orwell wrote about Communist propaganda during the Spanish Civil War: “It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson or bigamy.  The point that is really at issue remains untouched.”

A hearty thank-you to Adam

…over at Miniature History of the American Revolution, for his very kind words about this blog.  It’s much appreciated.

I always look forward to seeing new posts at MHAR.  Ever since I got interested in military history, I’ve wished that I had the artistic talent to undertake substantial miniature projects.  There’s something really captivating about reconstructing a moment in time in three dimensions.

Plug for a new Lincoln blog

Allow me to direct your attention to a brand-new Lincoln blog where I’ll be posting regularly from now on in addition to my usual shenanigans here.

Lincoln Memorial University recently launched a new venture called the Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy.  Its goal is to provide a forum for Lincoln scholars to present their work, connect them with people who are interested in applying historical insights to present-day problems, and present the results of these efforts to the public.  The Institute has already inaugurated a lecture series and is collaborating with other institutions on a variety of projects to increase understanding of Lincoln and his legacy.

Dr. Charles Hubbard, who is the Institute’s first executive director, is also a former boss and professor of mine who’s developed an interest in online media as a venue for public history.  He’s allowed me to collaborate with him in setting up and maintaining a blog for the Institute, which you can access at the following address: http://lincolninstitute.wordpress.com/.  I’ll be blogging there on a regular basis, and we’ll also have guest posts from Lincoln scholars popping up from time to time.

We’ll be exploring developments in Lincoln historiography and public history, providing updates on Lincoln-related happenings at LMU, posting interviews with historians who specialize in Lincoln and the Civil War, and highlighting material from the collections of LMU’s Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum.

If you read history blogs, I hope you’ll either subscribe to the new site via e-mail or make it one of your regular online stops.  And if you’re a history blogger, I hope you’ll add it to your blogroll and let your readers know about it.

I’ll still be blogging here at Past in the Present as usual, too.  Since the other site is an institutional blog, though, I’ll be trying to act a little more professional over there.  (No Dark Knight clips, in other words.)  And it should probably go without saying that whatever views I express over here at my personal blog are mine alone, and not those of LMU, the Institute, Dr. Hubbard, or anyone else, but I’ll say it anyway.

I’ll see you there.  (And here too, I hope.)

On this 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War

…let us pause for a moment to consider the true underlying cause of the conflict, which of course is the nefarious Jesuit Order’s ongoing attempt to control the world.

Conspiracy theorist Eric Jon Phelps (whose distinctive views on the American Revolution we’ve noted here before) tackled this very issue in a recent online missive.  Here’s what he had to say:

In VAIII I cover the Jesuit Order’s control of both the North and the South during the “Civil War,” or rather “the War Between the States,” or better yet, “the War of Northern Aggression.”  The Jesuits controlled Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and Robert E. Lee (with their conscious assent).  The Order also controlled Abraham Lincoln and the “Radical Red/Black” Republican Party (although Lincoln underwent a true conversion to Jesus Christ after Gettysburg and then began to oppose his Jesuit masters).  Both ex-priest Charles Chiniquy and General Thomas Harris (a Baptist-Calvinist) missed the Jesuit connection to the North.

I’d always assumed the Vatican had something to do with it, but even I was surprised to hear that both the North and the South were under Jesuit control. As somebody who’s been probed by aliens on no less than three occasions, I guess I should have known better.

Phelps further explains that the Vatican—and I swear I’m not making any of this up—started the slave trade, instigated slave revolts, inspired the abolitionist movement, brought on the War of 1812, engineered the Missouri Compromise, stopped the black colonization movement, split the Democratic party in 1860, sabotaged the Confederates at Gettysburg, stopped Meade’s pursuit of Lee, implemented the Union’s hard war policy, set off the New York draft riots, and masterminded the Fourteenth Amendment.

Those Jesuits got around, didn’t they?

And did you know that Lee and Longstreet deliberately threw the Battle of Gettysburg?  Or that Lee and A. P. Hill conspired to have Stonewall Jackson knocked off?  That right there is the kind of thing your history books will leave out.

Phelps then switches gears, explaining his belief in “white predominance,” which refers to “predominance in intellectual capacities as reflected in culture, the arts, sciences and nations.” Other races, he maintains, have “obviously lower cultures,” and the important thing is that “White raced-peoples must be preserved.”  Accordingly, he urges, “we must observe racial separation as mandated by the Word of God when the Lord created the races to keep mankind separate.”

But he’s quick to point out that he avoids the phrase “white supremacy,” and with good reason. “Since this term conjures up the ideas of the White KKK and the White Nazis,” he states, “I do not use this term.”  See, if he started using terms like “white supremacy,” people might mistake him for some sort of racist kook, instead of the mild-mannered advocate of white intellectual predominance and racial separation that he actually is.

Is the Internet great, or what?

Tweeting the home front

LeRae Umfleet of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources has set up a Twitter account and accompanying blog that will run throughout the Civil War Sesquicentennial.  Each tweet will be a snippet of first-person testimony from a Tar Heel State civilian who experienced the war on the home front, with a fuller excerpt in the matching blog entry.  Looks interesting.

Blogging public history and the Civil War

A new blog called “Interpreting the Civil War” debuted this month, and it sounds right up my alley:

“…I think our blog title sums us up pretty well. Interpreting The Civil War – Connecting Civil War to the American Public describes a great deal what this blog is going to focus on, and what we’re all about. Basically, our blog is going to discuss public history mainly through the lens of the Civil War.”

With the Sesquicentennial underway, these guys won’t be lacking for material. Head on over to the site and have a look.