Tag: American History

Why Not Diplomacy?

Yes more history!

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This is for all those readers that are interested in the American Civil War.

Most people know the major players and the major engagements…..but what about before the first shots were fired in South Carolina?

Since I am a student of conflict and ways to try and avoid a disastrous war…..people have asked me why there was no diplomacy to try and avoid the deadly conflict…

Well there was diplomacy but it is just not interesting enough for the history books….plus it is not as romantic as the idea of a ‘noble cause’…..

Here is the look at diplomatic attempts during the war…..

February 2, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his Irish valet sneaked out of Washington City and took a steamboat down to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The next day he met with three representatives of the Confederacy to discuss ending the Civil War. The Hampton Roads Peace Conference, as it’s known, is notable not for what was accomplished – nothing was – but for how, when, and why it took place at all.

In February, 1865, the Confederacy was clearly on the brink of collapse. The rebel armies were dogged but much diminished. General William Tecumseh Sherman had sacked Atlanta and was leaving a trail of devastation through Georgia. Ulysses S. Grant had Robert E. Lee pinned down at Petersburg, a rail center that was Richmond’s last defense. A Union naval blockade had cut off all supplies. Everyone knew the end was a few months away at best.

With the war all but won, why would Lincoln go out of his way, literally, to parley with the enemy? The simplest answer is that he was looking already to the postwar future, and how best to deal with the insurgents. Many hardliners in his Republican Party and his Cabinet thought they knew the answer: utterly crush the rebels militarily, hang their leaders, free all their slaves, confiscate their other property, and subjugate the South as a conquered, occupied enemy.

Lincoln believed that was no way to heal the nation. With the weight of more than half a million war dead on his soul, he “wanted to end the war quickly, peacefully if possible, not only to save lives, money, and property but also to build a stronger foundation for reconstruction,” writes James B. Conroy, author of a detailed book about the conference, Our One Common Country. “If the Confederacy could be persuaded to return to the Union voluntarily, enticed by reasonable concessions, the stage would be set for a more amicable, productive future than a military conquest could produce.”

https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/conflict-resolution/the-road-not-taken/

Diplomacy is never a wasted energy….but did little during the American Civil War….

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Those American Wars

Most Americans learn of those wars fought on American soil….wars like the French and Indian War, revolution, the War of 1812….but have you ever heard of the Conojocular War?

Probably not.

The year is 1736 and Pennsylvania and Maryland are at odds over settlers….

The colonial governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland became embroiled in the dispute when settlers from each colony started crossing the Susquehanna River back and forth and creating settlements in what was perceived to be each other’s territory.  Questions about legal claims to the land, private ownership deeds, land taxes, and law enforcement in the disputed areas precipitated violence.

The first violence consisted of an incident where 2 Pennsylvanians taking a ferry across the river attacked the ferryman, Thomas Cresap (hence the name, Cresap’s War). Maryland had been infringing on the west side of the river into Pennsylvania territory based on a self serving interpretation of the charters for each colony.  Cresap had been given 500 acres by the Maryland government in land claimed by Pennsylvania.

Much of the conflict centered on Cresap, an obvious opportunist that engaged in bullying and thuggery among the settlers, using ruffians as his gang and rewarding them with land.

May 25, 1738: “Conojocular War” Between Pennsylvania and Maryland is Ended

Something your American History class left out…..and it is not the only historical event that is sadly under taught.

Americans have always been at odds with their neighboring states…..and the conflict continues today.

Class Dismissed!

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Closing Thought–22Jun21

The whitewashing of American history….this time it is Texas (of all states) with the launch of the “1836 Project”….

WE all know revised story of the Alamo and the fight for independence of Texas from Mexico….mostly popularized by the lies of Hollywood and our educational system….now Texas will go a step further….

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law establishing the so-called “1836 Project,” which the Republican official said “promotes patriotic education and ensures future generations understand Texas values.”

“To keep Texas the best state in the nation, we can never forget why our state is so exceptional,” Abbott tweeted. “Together, we’ll keep our rich history alive.”

As Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out: “Of course, if they actually did talk about the reasons Texas declared independence from Mexico, it would be a very radical course.”

Although Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, its government continued to allow U.S. settlers to bring enslaved people into the country. As U.S. immigrants began to outnumber the non-Indigenous population of Spanish origin, the Mexican government attempted to reassert its control, including its prohibition on slavery. When Mexico’s ruler, Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, sent an army to reestablish his authority in 1835, U.S. settlers revolted and by 1836 had created an independent, slaveholding republic—Texas.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/08/progressives-warn-more-gop-whitewashing-history-abbott-launches-1836-project

The real reason for this insurrection is seldom told in the education of our children….only a revised edition and Hollywood is also to blame for the lack of knowledge.

Not to worry….Texas is NOT alone in the revisionism….

“Promoting Education Not Indoctrination Act” was introduced in the Ohio legislature by Sarah Fowler Arthur, a first-term representative from the overwhelmingly white district of northeastern Ohio that includes both the rustbelt lake towns of Ashtabula and Conneaut and the Cleveland suburb of Chardon. Like many other bills now making their way to law in red states across America, H.B. 327 would outlaw the teaching of what its proponents label as “critical race theory” which they define as the idea that the “United States is fundamentally racist or sexist” or that anyone “is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Unlike similar measures in other G.O.P. controlled states, H.B. 327 very specifically applies its prohibitions to Ohio’s large public university system, threatening any institution that allows such teaching with a reduction of one quarter of its state funding.

Anti-Critical Race Theory and Neo-McCarthyism

Again…not to worry…these types of bullsh*t history will not go away any time soon….

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Our Dirty Little Wars

And the history lesson continues…..

America is fighting dirty little wars all over the globe…..and it is nothing new!

Our history is choked full of dirty little wars….a long history…..

Americans in combat, from colo­nial times to the present day, have almost always faced unexpected enemies—foes from different cultures who fought in unfa­miliar ways. Those intercultural contests also very often produced asymmetric warfare, simply because the enemy brought to bear different modes of recruitment, equipment, engagement, notions of acceptable conduct, and crucially, different definitions of success or victory.

Such wars and such foes usually contradicted expectations and assumptions about combat, and generated a different medley of experiences, sometimes with traumatizing effects.

Duncan Cameron, a British soldier fighting at Monongahela in 1755, later recalled the extremity of that battle, deeming it “the most shocking I was ever in”— this from a man who had already served in the horrendous battles of Cartagena, Dettingen, Culloden and Fontenoy. Fontenoy, fought between the British and French armies, was one of the bloodiest until World War I. As many as 18,000 men out of 100,000 who fought on both sides were killed or wounded on that single day in 1745. Yet, for Cameron, Monongahela proved worse, not because of the sheer number of men killed or wounded but because of its unsettling nature.

War, Cameron learned, wasn’t just in front of you or waiting for you at the top of a hill marked by an enemy standard. It was everywhere and nowhere. It was the strange primeval forest of the New World, the enemies’ ululating war cries, the flickering of deadly shadows moving and firing among the trees, combined with the agonized pleas of the wounded and dying men, some scalped, whom the living abandoned on the battlefield or along the retreat route. A terrifying four-hour battle against invisible irregulars had rendered two-thirds of the British force casualties and mortally wounded its commander, Major General Edward Braddock.

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2021/05/16/dirty-little-wars-americas-long-history-of-fighting-asymmetrical-conflicts/

And yet with all that history of asymmetrical warfare….the US seems to always be caught off guard and the handling of these foes seems to be a lesson we have to re-learn with every conflict.

“When will we ever learn?”

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Who Was The First West Point Grad To Die In Combat?

First some sad news on this holiday……

Two people died and an estimated 20 to 25 people were injured in a shooting outside a banquet hall in South Florida, police said. The gunfire erupted early Sunday at the El Mula Banquet Hall in northwest Miami-Dade County, near Hialeah, police told news outlets. The banquet hall had been rented out for a concert. Three people got out of an SUV and opened fire on the crowd outside, police director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III said. Authorities believe the shooting was targeted, per the AP.

200 mass shootings so far for 2021……A situation that has become all too common in this country…..and yet few care.

It is Memorial Day…that time when we remember all those that gave their all in service of the country.

Best*}Memorial Day Pictures / Memorial Day Pics - Happy Mothers Day | Memorial day quotes, Memorial day thank you, Memorial day pictures

For that reason I would like to present a warrior who was the first West Point grad to die in combat….

Cadet of the Military Academy, June 15, 1808, to Mar. 1, 1811, when he was graduated and promoted in the Army to Ensign, 1st Infantry, Mar. 1, 1811.

Served: on the Northwestern Frontier, 1811-1812; and in the War of 1812-1815 with Great Britain, being engaged in Captain Heald’s desperate engagement near Ft. Chicago, Ill., Aug. 15, 1812, with a vastly superior force of savages, two of whom he slew in a hand-to-hand fight, but, while upon his knees as he had fallen faint from his bleeding wounds, still wielding his sword, he was himself killed in combat, Aug. 15, 1812: Aged 28.

George Ronan was the first West Point graduate to be killed in action. Because many of the American dead and wounded were civilians, the engagement is usually referred to, certainly in Chicago itself, as the Fort Dearborn Massacre, but it did not occur at the fort, rather some distance south of it; the fort had been evacuated and the Army was trying to lead the civilian inhabitants to safety in Indiana, when they were ambushed. The sites of both fort and massacre are within the present city limits of Chicago.

https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp

Remember those that gave their all for the country….a moment of silence would be nice….

Memorial Day is a day to seek peace | The Seattle Times

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Those Humiliating Surrenders

The weekend and what better time to throw some history at you?

The one thing that every commander hopes he/she never has to perform….a total surrender to the enemy….there have been ten surrenders that were extremely embarrassing and humiliating…..

On April 13, 1861, the US Army installation known as Fort Sumter located at Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, surrendered to the rebellious forces of the fledgling Confederate States of America after a bombardment. The next day, the fort was surrendered to the Confederates with no men killed on either side. While the armed forces of the United States have been overwhelmingly successful over the course of many wars and conflicts, there have been those inevitable times with failure has resulted in the humiliating surrender of American military personnel and/or installations or ships. Today we address some of the most humiliating such incidents. Feel free to nominate other such incidents that we could have included on our list. (There is no significance to the order in which the incidents are listed.)

1. Fort Sumter, 1861.

Fort Sumter was built in response to the War of 1812 as part of the effort to protect the American coast against foreign invaders.  It was not really completed when South Carolina became the first state to secede in 1860, although the fort was fairly imposing at it was.  The garrison of 85 Union soldiers were faced by about 600 Confederates, and the prospect of constant bombardment with no way of reinforcing the fort or replying in a meaningful way.  The supplies of food were also dwindling.  An attempt to resupply the fort by an unarmed merchant ship was stopped by Confederate shore batteries.  After a day of bombardment, Major Robert Anderson saw no reason to get his men killed with no hope of victory and surrendered his fort.  The Battle of Fort Sumter is usually regarded as the first battle of the American Civil War, an inauspicious beginning for the Union.

10 Most Humiliating American Surrenders

Any thoughts?

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Diplomacy Is A Must!

Since 1904 a major tool of the US foreign policy has been what has become to be known as ‘gunboat diplomacy’…..

Good old TR gave us this idea……

Gunboat diplomacy is an aggressive foreign policy applied with the use of highly-visible displays of military—usually naval—power to imply a threat of warfare as a means of forcing cooperation. The term is typically equated with the “Big Stick” ideology of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and the globetrotting voyage of his “Great White Fleet” in 1909.

The concept of gunboat diplomacy emerged during the late nineteenth-century period of imperialism, when the Western powers—the United States and Europe—competed to establish colonial trading empires in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Whenever conventional diplomacy failed, fleets of the larger nations’ warships would suddenly appear maneuvering off the coasts of the smaller, uncooperative countries. In many cases, the veiled threat of these “peaceful” shows of military force was enough to bring about capitulation without bloodshed.

The fleet of “Black Ships” commanded by U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry is a classic example of this early period of gunboat diplomacy. In July 1853, Perry sailed his fleet of four solid black warships into Japan’s Tokyo Bay. Without a navy of its own, Japan quickly agreed to open its ports to trade with the West for the first time in over 200 years.

https://www.thoughtco.com/gunboat-diplomacy-4774988

The US has been in one war after another….both big and little…..since those days.

War sucks needed funds out of the treasury and for what?

What we need now is diplomacy not war.

Diplomacy?

Diplomacy has probably existed for as long as civilisation has. The easiest way to understand it is to start by seeing it as a system of structured communication between two or more parties. Records of regular contact via envoys travelling between neighbouring civilisations date back at least 2500 years. They lacked many of the characteristics and commonalities of modern diplomacy such as embassies, international law and professional diplomatic services. Yet, it should be underlined that political communities, however they may have been organised, have usually found ways to communicate during peacetime, and have established a wide range of practices for doing so. The benefits are clear when you consider that diplomacy can promote exchanges that enhance trade, culture, wealth and knowledge.

For those looking for a quick definition, diplomacy can be defined as a process between actors (diplomats, usually representing a state) who exist within a system (international relations) and engage in private and public dialogue (diplomacy) to pursue their objectives in a peaceful manner.

Diplomacy is not foreign policy and must be distinguished from it. It may be helpful to perceive diplomacy as part of foreign policy. When a nation-state makes foreign policy it does so for its own national interests. And, these interests are shaped by a wide range of factors. In basic terms, a state’s foreign policy has two key ingredients; its actions and its strategies for achieving its goals. The interaction one state has with another is considered the act of its foreign policy. This act typically takes place via interactions between government personnel through diplomacy. To interact without diplomacy would typically limit a state’s foreign policy actions to conflict (usually war, but also via economic sanctions) or espionage. In that sense, diplomacy is an essential tool required to operate successfully in today’s international system.

“Clearly what is needed is diplomacy and negotiations on contested matters,” linguist and historian Noam Chomsky tells Truthout, “and real cooperation on such crucial issues as global warming, arms control, future pandemics — all very severe crises that know no borders. Whether Biden’s hawkish foreign policy team will have the wisdom to move in these directions is, for now, at best unclear — at worst, frightening. Absent significant popular pressures, prospects do not look good.”

I have been watching Biden’s turn in foreign policy and so far I have seen NOTHING that would lead to a more peaceful existence for the people of this planet.

The time is now….but DC turns its back on the possibility for a peaceful world…..and the reason is cash.

It is more about filling re-election coffers with money more than the benefits to humanity.

All I am saying is give peace a chance (thanx to John Lennon)….

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Lies….Lies….Lies

That time again….a history lesson….(eyes rolling and heavy sighs)

There is so much misinformation and outright lies in this country……and thanx to social media like Facebook it just keeps getting worse and worse.

But this lying is not a new thing because of social media…..no lying is as American as apple pie…..

American history is full of lies and misinformation….

A few weeks ago, someone going as “R. Tillman” spent a chunk of change to place a small add in The New York Times saying that “LYING IS UN-AMERICAN.”

I had to laugh. Mr. or Ms. Tillman was likely thinking of Donald Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen and perhaps of some other among many thousands of fibs told by the record-setting dissembler Trump.

I don’t like lies or (I am guessing) Trump any more than R. Tillman but who is he or she trying to kid?

Lying is as American as cherry pie.

Which reminds me, the story that young George Washington broke down and told his father he cut down a cherry tree “because I cannot tell a lie” is a lie. It was made up by the early Washington biographer Mason Lock Weems for the fifth edition of his popular volume The Life of Washington (1806).

Here’s another lie: “George Washington was a great man.” Not true. He was a vicious killer of Native Americans known to the Iroquois as Conoctocaurious, meaning “Town Taker,” “Burner of Towns,” and “Town Destroyer.” In 1779, during the American War for Independence, Washington ordered and organized the Sullivan Campaign, which carried out the genocidal destruction of 40 Iroquois villages in New York.

Lying is as American as Cherry Pie

I know this is not what your 8th grade teacher had to say……but that teacher was a revisionist that wanted to put lipstick on a pig.

You may breath now….the lesson is over.

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Notorious Pardons

I have written several times about the presidential pardons that Trump issued….most were close allies or people that would benefit him in some way or another.

But Trump is not alone…history is full of notorious pardons by our presidents.

It all began back in 1794 and the Whiskey Rebels……this article is from Time that list some historic pardons…..

In an event that would lead to the first pardon in U.S. history, Congress enacted a steep tax on spirits in 1791 to help pay down the national debt, and hard-hit small producers protested by taking to the streets in western Pennsylvania. They quickly formed a multi-state armed rebellion and President George Washington called in 13,000 troops to quell the opposition. Intent on emphasizing federalist power, the government charged the whiskey rebel leaders with treason against the U.S., although many were released due to a lack of evidence.

Virginia Governor Henry Lee, on Washington’s behalf, issued a general pardon for those who had participated “in the wicked and unhappy tumults and disturbances lately existing,” even though some of the rebels had not even been indicted. Only a few men had trials and two were convicted of treason (which meant death by hanging). Eventually, Washington pardoned those who had treason convictions and indictments. It was the first pardon in American history that overturned a criminal conviction, and the first time under the young U.S. Constitution that the federal government wielded military force to quell its own citizens.

(read on and learn)

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1862257_1862325_1862313,00.html

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“Tailgunner Joe” Get Physical

With all the years of division and media BS….all that brings my favorite bad guy from the 1950s….Sen Joe “Tailgunner” McCarthy……

How many know who “Tailgunner Joe” is?

Joseph McCarthy, in full Joseph Raymond McCarthy, (born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.—died May 2, 1957, Bethesda, Maryland), American politician who served in the U.S. Senate (1947–57), representing Wisconsin, and who lent his name to the term McCarthyism. He dominated the U.S. political climate in the early 1950s through his sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles. In 1954, in a rare move, McCarthy’s Senate colleagues officially censured him for unbecoming conduct.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-McCarthy

It was a simpler time when according to some there were Commies in every closet in America (somethings do not change…after 70 years some lunatics still see them where none exist….kinda like those reptilian aliens that are here now)

At one point Tailgunner decided it would be prudent to attack a reporter….

It may seem unimaginable these days, but a U.S. Senator once assaulted a prominent newspaper columnist at an exclusive club in Washington, D.C.

The brief but violent confrontation between Joe McCarthy and columnist Drew Pearson took place December 12, 1950, at the end of a dinner at the Sulgrave Club, which occupies a Gilded Age Beaux Arts mansion on DuPont Circle.

I recount this episode in my book, Getting It Wrong— in a chapter puncturing the myth about CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and his half-hour television report on McCarthy in March 1954. The myth has it that Murrow confronted and single-handedly took down McCarthy, the Red-baiting Republican senator from Wisconsin.

I note in Getting It Wrong that “the evidence is overwhelming” that Murrow’s television report on McCarthy “had no such decisive effect, that Murrow in fact was very late in confronting McCarthy, that he did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years.”

Notable among those journalists was Pearson, a veteran, Washington-based syndicated columnist and radio commentator who, long before Murrow’s show, raised pointed and repeated challenges to McCarthy’s claims that communists had infiltrated high positions in the State Department, the Army, and other American institutions.

Remembering when Joe McCarthy beat up a columnist

It amazes me that this sort of thing does not happen more often…..the only one I can think of right now is that GOP representative that threatened to throw a reporter off an balcony a few years ago.

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