The U. S. Army under the command of Douglas MacArthur was picked apart first by the Korean People's Army of Kim Il Sung and driven to a small defensivThe U. S. Army under the command of Douglas MacArthur was picked apart first by the Korean People's Army of Kim Il Sung and driven to a small defensive perimeter of Pusan and later following the U.S. amphibious landing at Inchon behind the lines of the Korean advance. After Inchon, once the Korean People's Army was later taken out of the picture by the U.S. advance to the far northern border of Korea, the U.S. forces were rolled back to below the final demarcation line by a Chinese volunteer army nearly completely disadvantaged in firepower, air support, armor, and artillery. The shape, size and minute details of the U.S. leadership failures in this war attributable wholly to MacArthur's personal style (arrogance, egotism, personal favoritism, and thoroughgoing lack of respect for the enemy) and the resulting dysfunctional generalship are presented without any but complete condemnation of the great WWII commander. Depiction of the individual valor of the poorly-served men on the front lines and the resourcefulness of those in support was something new from Halberstam. There are deeply affecting recollections by those who fought alongside them, of men who fought with distinction, were known to have been captured, and were never seen again. The events described occur within the first 10 months of the war, which was to last another two years. There is an extensive portion of the book on the post-WWII political atmosphere and how the "loss of China" led to a skewed version of reality that was self-destructive in U. S. attempts to defeat communism on the battlefield. Halberstam died before the book was completely finished. The book lacks the presence in any way of the people of Korea for whose welfare this war was supposed to be fought. This book doesn't get the imprint of a major U.S. publishing house without a plentiful helping of standard U.S. anti-communist rhetoric. Halberstam understood the assignment in that regard. "We don't want another 'Best and the Brightest'", which was lacking in that essential element. Those in charge on the battlefield for the U.S. could be described as representing the antithesis of that earlier title, except for General Ridgway, who took over when Truman finally cashiered MacArthur over his increasingly insolent public words toward the President despite his multiple, costly failures after his one brilliant stroke of the Inchon landing. But other than having more of a judicious and considered character and not being MacArthur, little is laid out that would put him among U. S. war generals of distinction. The fact that thereby his leadership led to the U. S. military being able to "stop the bleeding" will have to suffice for his legacy....more
There are many things in the Library of America four-volume anthology (with most included writings never intended for publication) that are either notThere are many things in the Library of America four-volume anthology (with most included writings never intended for publication) that are either not found readily or anywhere else. Frederick Douglass voices what later events would demonstrate: an ambiguous and less than fully committed high command of the Federal forces in facing the southern rebels.
There is an excerpt in unexpurgated form of a longer Atlantic Monthly article by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the celebrated author's meeting with the President in tones disrespectful of Lincoln especially his physical aspect (possibly because the eminent man of letters was kept waiting while the President was finishing his breakfast). "Uncouth, coarse shabby" and a variety of innuendoes are delivered in a condescending tone. Even Dickens was kinder in his description of American "rustics", a profile the New England Mayflower blue blood Hawthorne clearly sought to emphasize in describing Lincoln.
The insolence of the top U.S. General George McClellan to President Lincoln and the latter’s forbearance of it is depicted. A southern general’s witness to the failings--and critically so--early in the war of the celebrated and much admired (in general histories) of the Civil War, “stonewall� Jackson.
The story of a Union foot soldier badly wounded and disfigured prior to a chaotic retreat and his horrific sufferings in the disorder, relying for his survival on little more than those he met from his own state or hasty attentions from army doctors he randomly encountered is the most memorable episode of this volume.
Just as the government begins to realize and exploit the violation, to the south’s growing dismay, of their cherished sanctity of property, in particular of “human property�, here is McClellan moralizing in admonitory tone to Lincoln over restricting the terms and scope of the conflict to the field of battle. The Union capture of southern sea islands illustrates this. Slaves had near places to flee to thereby, often ready to provide the Union forces with useful intelligence, in addition to the obvious drain on the south’s labor force and leading to initiatives by local union generals to detourning this “contraband� labor force to military purposes. This incited the rebel assembly to pass a resolution calling for the death penalty for any Union Army personnel found with escaped slaves. “Total war� was to follow later. That might have begun with the Union General Pope in 1962 ordering Union troops to supply their needs by confiscation from civilians in the south, i.e., living off the land.
After major Union defeats, in an exchange of letters there is John Temple, the Prime Minister of Britain and his foreign secretary John Russell discussing whether to offer mediation to the U. S. government and the rebels as a path to recognizing the rebels and the possible involvement of France (all three pro-rebel) and considering and rejecting the idea of including Russia (pro-US) for appearances. After the Union victory of Antietam, and the Emancipation Proclamation that followed it, support for the rebels would not be discussed again, but would take other forms.
Two deeply-affecting chapters were essays by the ex-slave Harriet Jacobs aiding escaped slaves who were housed at a former slave pen where rebel war prisoners were also housed, within speaking distance of each other(!). There is Louisa May Alcott writing of her nursing of badly wounded Union and rebel soldiers, among whom were a variety of contagious diseases including typhus, which she eventually contracted.
The recollection of a free black cooper in Fredericksburg Virginia, recorded as oral history many years later when the bent and aged man was still making barrels, is filled with graphic and colorfully detailed anecdotes of civilians under shelling and observations of rebel soldiers. None of “stonewall� Jackson’s men had shoes, only pieces of leather tied to their feet, front and back. “They was nasty and dirty, and their clothes was dreadful�, he said. This is in line with many such observations of them in these volumes. Of course, there are battle narratives for battle narrative buffs, but the true richness of these compilations is represented by all else that is presented.
This volume begins with Frederick Douglass projecting the future of freed slaves and ends with a politician lobbying Lincoln to negotiate with some “southern gentlemen of the first respectability� under the condition he retract the Emancipation Proclamation. Fitting how this juxtaposition represents the two sides in that second year....more
This four-volume set of, letters, news reports, oral histories, diaries, dispatches and documents, is the adult version (not in a prurient sense, but This four-volume set of, letters, news reports, oral histories, diaries, dispatches and documents, is the adult version (not in a prurient sense, but frank, stark attempts at truth as each source saw it as to personal testimonies) of the Civil War, not solely the version redolent with the glow of “American Greatness� as taught in school. This volume on the Cilvil War’s final year and all three others in the series have three editors, a strength of this and all the Library of America anthologies of U. S. history: the reader is not confined to the writing (the ideological agendas, attitudes, style, prejudices or other peculiarities) of a single author on for example the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Suffrage or the Vietnam War as exist in the American. This book and the one on the first year are the two best, for the unique variety of both voices and events and that several themes are covered from multiple points of views or perspectives.
In 1864, two men, a northern newspaperman and a Union officer were able to arrange a meeting with Jefferson Davis, the rebel leader, in his stronghold, Richmond, Virginia to discuss peace. In a discussion of north-south differences that necessitated splitting the United States, Jefferson Davis claims that slavery was not an essential element among differences that caused the war. A colossal, brazen lie from he who was so schooled and adept at making protection of slavery the glue that held his Democratic Party together pre-1860, and then when secession was at question, the glue that insured a critical mass and contiguous set of states acted to secede. Such cohesion over slavery and not states-rights was the basis of the rebel leadership claiming non-seceding states as members of “the confederacy�, allotting seats to most such states in their assembly. After speaking with Jefferson Davis, the two union men afterward stopped in at a hospital for Federal war prisoners before returning to the outside world. That prisoner exchanges were ended by the Union because former slaves being enlisted in the U.S. forces were being executed or bound back into slavery upon being captured led to terrible conditions in southern prison camps.
The rebel junta with a council of ‘men of distinction� had deleted the Welfare Clause (“…promote the general welfare…�) in making their copy-and-paste, rebel version of the U.S. Constitution, meaningfully, as it turns out: In this volume and a previous one, widespread protests by family members of rebel soldiers over food shortages turned into bread riots. The earlier two such uprisings described in this book occurred in Richmond, the rebel stronghold. In the latter Jefferson Davis had to appear on a balcony to call for calm. Nothing is said of what he did if anything to alleviate these grievances. The later such prominent high food price/food shortage protest occurred throughout North Carolina and led to a peace movement in that state and then its own secessionist movement. Well-stocked rebel junta private warehouses existed in the midst of deprivation of every need. Also in this volume, related to this widespread disaffection or not, members of a volunteer North Carolina Unionist brigade were captured by the rebels and executed. In a chapter from still further along in the war the desertion of 1100 rebel troops in one week were reported as mostly those of North Carolina origin. In the fall of Richmond in 1865 rebel regime stocks of essentials were broken into, revealing why the population was half-starved, poorly clothed and the rebel army was ragtag and shoeless. Burning all buildings and destroying all weaponry in the stronghold city that once housed the junta and supplied its armed formations was the last act of the pro-slavery junta.
Speaking of summary killings of Unionist southern troops, the Ft Pillow massacre also occurred in 1864, most notoriously involving the wanton slaughter of black soldiers and their white commanders along with a Tennessee Unionist cavalry formation that was present at Ft Pillow. Two prominent mid-20th Century historians have placed quotes around “massacre�, with little explanation. In this volume, there are a number of different sources relating what happened. The most jarring is a version that includes describing two black soldiers shot and buried in shallow graves during the massacre later dug themselves out! Union soldiers making the black people dance with gunfire and laughing as they do.
In this volume and all the others there is a unique depth and breadth of many sides and many elements of social and military conflict from what the war entailed by embarking on it. A sampling: a remarkable incident of freed slaves allowed to punish their overseer. The ruin and devastation brought on the chief source of their livelihood and wealth, agriculture, by the south provoking war over the form of labor that a relative few used, slavery. The effects of the rebel authorities late-in-the war press-ganging previously exempt men by seizing them off the street or entrapping them, with a not unexpected consequence, and corruption and graft. The southern states, already threadbare in every way, could least afford such problems.
This volume also presents the discourses on emerging issues that collectively and individually freed slaves and other black people were seeing that demanded action: calling for what would obviously be their due based on the founding documents of the U.S.A. These include being paid at all for working for the war effort, receiving adequate aid to families with men away fighting or at labor with the military, the soldiers being paid equally to whites, demanding responsible government, demanding the vote, and lastly, warning of the evil consequences should the rebel faction be permitted to return to governing the southern states, much less back into the national government!
Lee, chief rebel commander after surrendering to General Grant, gave the overwhelming numbers and resources of the U.S. Government as the reason he had surrendered. Lee only later told the truth of why he was defeated to the by-then fugitive Jefferson Davis: a declining (long in development) and then total collapse of morale among the rebel formations. Truth is shared only between or among confederates (in the sense of partners-in-crime) in a criminal organization.
This series four-volume series describes a legitimate government fighting an armed rebellion that attempts to assume the appearance of a legitimate government while only its armed formations suggested one. Holding an election for a leader only after a junta had seized power, formed armed forces and started a war didn’t constitute something resembling a legitimate State that any other State was bound to respect unless respect is solely to furtively favor its schemes by looking the other way or listening to them. The faction directing the rebellion brought ruin on what they proclaimed as their own, special people, and extended the war well past the point it was meaningful with the magnitude of devastation to its economy and then tried to prolong it even in the face of a terminal loss of morale and ever-dwindling manpower and widespread privations suffered by southern civilians. Seizing power, holding it and defeating attempts to end its existence-the rebellion failed in this- only then could a government legitimate at some level exist. As no nation was bound to respect the southern rebellion as a legitimate “Government� having a real Constitution, a Congress a President or even Generals, why is any historian bound to apply terms that suggest legitimacy?
The four Civil War volumes of the Library of America came at some point in their respective annual issuings with a set four interesting original map sheets (all in one envelope) of two battlefields per year for those wanting to closely follow the battle narratives. If one could read only a single multi-volume history (and there are many) of the Civil War it should be this. ...more
A smattering preview. An abundance of southern lady essays. One such author continually repeats illusory rumors and reports of rebel success and hopesA smattering preview. An abundance of southern lady essays. One such author continually repeats illusory rumors and reports of rebel success and hopes. Loss, disaster and a bad ending is all that is being indicated by events in reality.
Near the beginning of this volume there are presented 32 pages of the words of a “copperhead� (pro-rebel) northern politician. I looked for some possible hidden gems in the unusually lengthy chapter, and found none.
On the other hand, this particular editor presents more selections that illustrate the racism expressed seemingly more on the Union side in this volume (and the final one, by another editor), mostly when dealing with “contrabands�- refugee former slaves.
One very short chapter is prefaced by the editor referring to upland regions of some seceded states as “disaffected by the war and resistant to conscription�. These are given as eastern Tennessee, western N. Carolina, northwestern Georgia and northern Alabama. These areas were against secession from the outset and were not slaveholding regions, and even though the selection is a letter written from Forsyth, Missouri, a town bordering the Ozarks of Arkansas, describing dispossessed Unionist Arkansans fleeing yet another pro-Union area of a seceded state, western Arkansas, not listed along with the other Unionist southern regions here.
Harriet Jacobs reports improved conditions over the previous year for black refugees from slavery, and a white religious group that helped and one that focused on their morals negatively above all else, and the reverence by the refugees had for Union military men that was rewarded often with abuse. A subsequent entry by another aid-worker in a letter describes the desperate condition of ex-slave refugees: exhausted, badly wounded, infirm, diseased, without clothing. There is black victim of a near-fatal beating by Union soldiers. There is described a 39-year-old man with his master’s name carved on his forehead and carrying, says the writer, five instruments with which he was tortured in slavery which are described. Finally, there is the seemingly essential comment on their lack of morals.
Francis Lieber appears, discussing essential loyalty to a national government, dismissing and deriding southern sectionalism, the U.S. concept of states (their arbitrary origin) within The United States, and the idea there is “southern culture�. Reparations seem far from achievable, but Lieber specifies yet another white politician that inadvertently provided support for it: the pro-slavery ideologue Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina in a quote Lieber provides. There’s also a whiff of manifest destiny here from Lieber that made Domenico Losurdo mention Lieber often in his book “Liberalism� alongside others of similar thinking about European supremacy. I don’t think one will find Union General David Hunter in the great Statuary Hall of the U. S. capitol Rotunda, but he belongs there for the toughly-worded counterthreat he issues to the rebel slaveowner junta leader Jefferson Davis for the latter proclaiming trial and a possible death penalty for Union military that organized or trained former slaves. This was in addition to his earlier unilaterally proclaimed emancipation and then arming of slaves in the captured southern area where he was military government administrator.
The most expressive writing in this and other volumes is by the Union officer Samuel Fiske using a pen name for an Illinois newspaper. He writes in this volume of passing along the Potomac River with his unit headed north to the gathering major battle in Pennsylvania and finding numerous still-unburied and partially buried Union soldiers scattered among the springtime vegetation of the two Bull Run battlefields. The full paragraph describing the macabre scene is probably the eeriest passage found among the four volumes of this Library of America series.
Henry Adams, son and private secretary of the Charles Francis Adams, Minister of the U. S. Legation to Britain writes of privately relishing the effect of the “bucket of cold water thrown in the faces� of the British “upas�, the ruling class, by news of the dual Union victories of July 4, 1863 at Vicksburg cutting the rebel-held territories in half and near the town of Gettysburg ending the threat for good of any rebel incursion into non-slave states. The literal response of the British at a social soiree in London the night to the news were cold looks and silence. There had been an obstinate assumption as truth what they were being told by the Times of London of U. S. weakness and imminent failure.
The most one would ever want to know about the next major episode of the Civil War is by a witness to the massacre, sacking and burning of Lawrence Kansas by a rebel guerilla band led by a man named Quantrill. Richard Cordley described how the Federal authorities learned of rebel intentions to attack the town through undercover work but tragically kept it secret even while making preparations for it. The Quantrill gang was said to very likely have spies in the town, given the evident familiarity with it during the attack and with where notables could be found. A special wanton ferocity was applied by the gang to killing the “colored people� of Lawrence. Hollywood action movies were made about Quantrill and his gang that left out the massacre. In response to the slaughter, areas of Missouri bordering Kansas were cleared of inhabitants by the Union army.
There is presented a condensed version of how Charles Francis Adams in September 1863 forcefully and firmly ended British attempts to oversee the building of two ironclad ships the rebels intended to use as weapons of mass destruction against U. S. ports which would have prolonged the war with consequences that might have led to intended European recognition of the slavery junta regime. Previously three rebel attack vessels had been built in Britain and had been allowed to leave in the face of U. S. protests and went on to destroy U. S. shipping. A U.S. threat of war he presented to Britain once and for all ended active British hopes to aid this “confederacy�. This was also the final episode of the Adamses long history of successful confrontations with the British Empire by causing it to back down from devious tactics it had used in its strategy to benefit the rebel junta that began with treating it like a nation.
Later in 1863 two events that presage the climactic course of the Civil War, one a remarkable behind-the-scenes account of General Grant’s down-time before a great battle that seemed least to present the possibility of, but most called for, a decisive victory. That victory would open the heart of rebel-controlled territory to Union invasion. The other is a letter by General Meade about his final failure. This failure of command would lead to his replacement by General Grant as the overall commander of Union forces. The insights provided into the respective characters of the two are representative of the value of this series....more
This slim volume, without an ISBN, presents a sketch of the little-known (except in Russia) attempt by Stalin to implement contested, secret-ballot elThis slim volume, without an ISBN, presents a sketch of the little-known (except in Russia) attempt by Stalin to implement contested, secret-ballot elections under universal suffrage for inclusion in a new constitution for the Soviet Union in thew mid-30s. The obstacles facing Stalin in realizing the initiative would be better understood by reading some of Furr’s earlier books, such as “Yezhov vs Stalin� in which there are four chapters discussing the attempted democratization by Stalin and those closest to him. The party in its revolutionary configuration (soviets or councils at national and various local levels), had been the sole power in governing the country. Through a dictatorship of the proletariat, the Bolsheviks had accomplished collectivization and capitalism had been eliminated, so there was no longer a proletariat as defined (workers under capitalist exploitation or production relations), a socialist state had been created. As a consequence of reaching this stage Stalin had concluded that the Party needed to cede the sole power of governance to the masses and restrict its purpose to its original one: agitation and propaganda. In addition, Stalin had previously reached an understanding with the Church. In recognition of this “sea change�, a commission of the Party, tasked with creating a new constitution, made recommendations that included open, uncontested elections within the Party. In an interview given to Roy Howard of the Scripps-Howard newspapers in Moscow in 1936, Stalin (by executive decision) announced secret-ballot contested elections under universal suffrage as a remedy for growing bureaucratization and backwardness.
“You think that there will be no election contests. But there will be, and I foresee very lively election campaigns. There are not a few institutions in our country which work badly. Cases occur when this or that local government body fails to see the multifarious requirements of the toilers of town and country. Have you built a good school or not? Have you improved housing conditions? Are you a bureaucrat? Have you helped to make our labor more effective and our lives more cultured? Such will be the criteria with which millions of electors will measure the fitness of candidates, reject the unsuitable, expunge their names from candidates� lists, and promote and nominate the best. Yes, election campaigns will be lively, they will be conducted around numerous, very acute problems, principally of a practical nature, of first class importance for the people. Our new electoral system will tighten up all institutions and organizations and compel them to improve their work. Universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage in the US.S.R. will be a whip in the hands of the population against the organs of government which work badly. In my opinion our new Soviet constitution will be the most democratic constitution in the world.�
The elections were to include non-party association members, (‘it’s a worker’s and toilers country�). Former Whites and Kulaks-already freed, would be restored to voter eligibility. Contested would be the government’s responsiveness to the needs of the “workers and toilers� facing a variety of issues of growing concern in the Soviet Union. These included apparent corruption, authoritarianism and incompetence. Stalin saw that advancement in the Soviet government was too often not related to either technical competence or supervisory skills but skills in party politics. Stalin and those closest to him reasoned that technically trained and educated should run the country under the watchful eyes of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The party was not to direct the legislative or executive branches of the Soviet Union. For Stalin, the struggles now became against other members of the party: party secretaries at regional and local levels. Contested elections would be referenda on the work of the central and regional party leaders. Long-term party leaders, who had created the country feared being turned out or demoted. Lavrentiy Beria prominently sought to combat bureaucratization and elements in the party opposed to contested elections. Khrushchev was one such opponent, apparently says Grover Furr, a factor that was possibly a motive for Beria‘s later murder by Khrushchev. Beria after he was later appointed NKVD chief would end the repressions that were criminally applied by the NKVD chief in 1934 after the murder of Sergei Kirov. This assassination of the party leader of Leningrad marked the onset of events that were to greatly affect the democratic initiative led by Stalin. The NKVD, led by the first of two chiefs who later confessed to being conspirators against the USSR, deported 12,000 people from Leningrad after the murder of Kirov. This was the beginning of “the terror� that would peak under the succeeding NKVD chief, Yezhov. Chief prosecutor of the Soviet Union Andre Vyshinski in 1936: the NKVD would no longer have sole power of deportation, only prosecutors. Hundreds of thousands were to be reenfranchised under central committee control. Thus, these two allies of Stalin, Beria and Vyshinsky, rendered as paragons of pure evil in western historiography actually provided clemency to the convicted and wrongly accused, “rehabilitations�.
Furr has previously focused on Khrushchev’s lies about Stalin and the multiple, broad conspiracies against the Revolution. The failed struggles for democratization discussed in greater detail here by Furr than ever before were surely known to Mao Zhedong before the Cultural Revolution. It would seem impossible that he didn’t learn from them. The history of this period is presented as numbered passages in chronological order. In "Yezhov and Stalin", Furr quotes Andrei Zhdanov who seemed to be what we would call Stalin's "primary point-man" on democratization, saying things that Mao was either heavily influenced by or was naturally also thinking about empowering the masses and containing the expansion of party bureaucratic hegemony. Mariupol was renamed Zhdanov until the USSR was dissolved. I hope they rename it in his honor once again....more
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