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Re: Strange Fruit / Rich Man's War
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Will Dockery
Sep 20, 2011, 2:24:25 PM9/20/11
to
David George <dafyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In alt.arts.poetry.comments:
>
> > it won't be a stylish venue
> > but the work will be fresh and genu
>
> > and you'll look neat upon the seat
> > as the bowl quickly fills with ... .
>
> David George, gotta run for a while put wanted to add this before I
> go, while I have it on copy-paste mode:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.dylan/msg/b3d95326d4cfcb5a?h...
> Again, I'll point out that it goes deeper than "White vs. Black" on
> racism, but really racism was manufatured, a fakery, created by the
> rich plantation owners of the South in the years just before the Civil
> War, to keep poor whites & black slaves from forming a possible, &
> natural, solidarity. While racism thrived afterwards, the whole issue
> is a matter of the hate being a /manipulation/ of the rich
> intellectuals against the naive poor people. This book, "Rich Man's
> War", makes it all very clear, from somewhat censored historical
> facts: "Rich Man's War:
> Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower
> Chattahoochee Valley
> By David Williams
> Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998. $34.95
>
> Reviewed by Thandeka
>
> The importance of David Williams's new book, Rich
> Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the
> Lower Chattahoochee Valley, cannot be overestimated.
>
> [...]
>
> Williams accomplishes this stunning feat by studying
> the socioeconomic factors in the South that led first
> to the Civil War and then to the defeat of the
> Confederacy, focusing primarily on the thriving
> industrial center of Columbus, Georgia, and its
> surrounding area, which by 1860 was producing almost a
> quarter million cotton bales annually. During the
> war, this area became a center for war-related
> industries because it was deep in the southern
> heartland, far from major theaters of combat; had rail
> connections to every major city in the South; and was
> at the head of navigation on the Chattahoochee River.
> Williams, who grew up in the area, uses photographs
> and family history in the book, as well as archival
> material. The result is a vivid depiction of the life
> and times of a people who called the Civil War "a rich
> man's war and a poor man's fight."
>
> Williams begins by retelling how the southern planter
> class created the white race for purposes of class
> exploitation. Until then in Colonial America,
> people's race was defined by their class, and there
> was no distinction in law or custom between European
> and African servants, all of whom were known as
> "slaves." Not surprisingly, these bondservants lived,
> loved, worked, and rebelled against their upper-class
> oppressors together.
>
> [...]
>
> But under the planters' new race laws, race was
> defined by genealogy. Masters and servants who could
> claim that all their ancestors came from Europe became
> members of the white race. In truth, of course, the
> "poor whites" continued to be viewed as an alien race
> by the elite. As one Georgia planter wrote a friend,
> "Not one in ten [poor whites] is. . . . a whit
> superior to a negro." Privately called "white trash"
> by the elite, the poor whites were publicly embraced
> as racial kin by the planters, 3.7 percent of the
> population who owned 58 percent of the region's slaves
> and were dead set on keeping their exploited workers
> divided by racial contempt. Because the antebellum
> South's pervasive class exploitation depended on
> fabricated white racial pride, any challenge to racial
> solidarity among whites threatened to reveal the
> hidden class system. Here lay the path to revolution.
>
> Thus it's not surprising that writer Hinton Rowan
> Helper's 1857 book The Impending Crisis of the South,
> which exposed the race-class link, was publicly
> burned; a Methodist minister spent a year in jail for
> simply owning it; and three Southerners were hanged
> for reading it. Here is some of what Helper said:
> "The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters
> of the blacks. . . . but they are also the oracles and
> arbiters of all nonslaveholding whites, whose freedom
> is merely nominal, and whose unparalleled illiteracy
> and degradation is purposely and fiendishly
> perpetuated." According to Williams, this work sold
> more copies than any other nonfiction book of the era
> and was called by one historian "the most important
> single book, in terms of its political impact, that
> has ever been published in the United States."
>
> [...]
>
> Having set the scene, Williams gives his account of
> how most poorer southern whites dealt with the "rich
> man's war." He begins this section of the book by
> reminding us that Georgia's very decision to secede
> from the Union was never put to a popular vote.
> Rather, it was made by secession delegates, 87 percent
> of them slaveholders in a state where only 37 percent
> of the electorate owned slaves. These delegates knew
> better than to heed antisecessionist delegates' plea
> to submit the decision to the electorate for final
> determination. After all, more than half the South's
> white population, three-quarters of whom owned no
> slaves, opposed secession.
>
> Next Williams details the Confed-eracy's corrupt
> impressment system. Georgia was one of the first
> Confederate states to legislate the right to
> confiscate, or impress, private property for the war.
> Not surprisingly, corruption ran rampant among
> impressment officers, of whom one Georgian said, "They
> devastate the country as much as the enemy." Another
> Georgian predicted that the widespread corruption
> would "ultimately alienate the affections of the
> people from the government." It did.
>
> [...]
>
> To add insult to injury, planters continued growing
> cotton (rather than food) and traded with the North as
> poorer whites and the army faced starvation. Williams
> also tells us that all too often, funds that should
> have been distributed to indigent families wound up in
> the pockets of corrupt officials. Not surprisingly,
> by 1863, food riots were breaking out all over the
> South, led by the starving wives left behind as their
> starving husbands, sons, and fathers died for the rich
> men and their slaves.
>
> And always, the racial degradation of the poor white
> continued. As Williams reminds us, most of the South's
> higher-ranking officers came from the slaveholding
> class and treated those under their command like
> slaves. One soldier thus complained in a letter home,
> "A soldier is worse than any negro on [the]
> Chattahoochee river. He has no privileges whatever.
> He is under worse task-masters than any negro."
> Soldiers were also punished like slaves, says
> Williams: "whipped, tied up by the thumbs, bucked and
> gagged, branded, or even shot."
>
> [...]
>
> Thus did the desertions begin. By September 1864, two
> thirds of Confederate soldiers were absent without
> leave. One hundred thousand went over to serve in the
> Union armies. Thousands more formed anti-Confederate
> guerrilla bands, of which one historian wrote that
> they were "no longer committed to the Confederacy, not
> quite committed to the Union that supplied them arms
> and supplies, but fully committed to survival." These
> bands, Williams tells us, "raided plantations,
> attacked army supply depots, and drove off impressment
> and conscription officers. . . . One Confederate
> loyalist, a veteran of the Virginia campaigns, said he
> felt more uneasy at home than he ever did when he
> followed Stonewall Jackson against the Yankees."
>
> Meanwhile, Williams writes, "One prominent antiwar
> resident of Barbour County held a dinner honoring
> fifty-seven local deserters. Though a subpoena was
> issued against the host, the sheriff refused to
> deliver it." The draft was by now difficult to
> enforce, nor did disgrace attach to either desertion
> or evasion. Indeed, Williams concludes that the
> Confederacy would have collapsed from within if there
> hadn't been a Union victory.
>
> [...]
>
> ...the bands of poorer Southern whites who organized
> against the Confederacy and who indeed were abused and
> exploited by their overlords, first as wage-slaves and
> then as canon fodder. Sadly, these Confederate
> deserters never understood that not even the one thing
> they held onto as their own—their self-image as
> whites—actually belonged to them. Rather it was one
> among many means used by rich men to exploit them.
>
> The Rev. Thandeka is associate professor of theology
> and culture at Meadville/Lombard Theological School.
This relates in so many ways, worth a repost.
--
Shark Pact Manifesto / Will Dockery & Shadowville All-Stars:
http://youtu.be/Ft3X3kC6nr4
> In alt.arts.poetry.comments:
>
> > it won't be a stylish venue
> > but the work will be fresh and genu
>
> > and you'll look neat upon the seat
> > as the bowl quickly fills with ... .
>
> David George, gotta run for a while put wanted to add this before I
> go, while I have it on copy-paste mode:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.dylan/msg/b3d95326d4cfcb5a?h...
> Again, I'll point out that it goes deeper than "White vs. Black" on
> racism, but really racism was manufatured, a fakery, created by the
> rich plantation owners of the South in the years just before the Civil
> War, to keep poor whites & black slaves from forming a possible, &
> natural, solidarity. While racism thrived afterwards, the whole issue
> is a matter of the hate being a /manipulation/ of the rich
> intellectuals against the naive poor people. This book, "Rich Man's
> War", makes it all very clear, from somewhat censored historical
> facts: "Rich Man's War:
> Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower
> Chattahoochee Valley
> By David Williams
> Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998. $34.95
>
> Reviewed by Thandeka
>
> The importance of David Williams's new book, Rich
> Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the
> Lower Chattahoochee Valley, cannot be overestimated.
>
> [...]
>
> Williams accomplishes this stunning feat by studying
> the socioeconomic factors in the South that led first
> to the Civil War and then to the defeat of the
> Confederacy, focusing primarily on the thriving
> industrial center of Columbus, Georgia, and its
> surrounding area, which by 1860 was producing almost a
> quarter million cotton bales annually. During the
> war, this area became a center for war-related
> industries because it was deep in the southern
> heartland, far from major theaters of combat; had rail
> connections to every major city in the South; and was
> at the head of navigation on the Chattahoochee River.
> Williams, who grew up in the area, uses photographs
> and family history in the book, as well as archival
> material. The result is a vivid depiction of the life
> and times of a people who called the Civil War "a rich
> man's war and a poor man's fight."
>
> Williams begins by retelling how the southern planter
> class created the white race for purposes of class
> exploitation. Until then in Colonial America,
> people's race was defined by their class, and there
> was no distinction in law or custom between European
> and African servants, all of whom were known as
> "slaves." Not surprisingly, these bondservants lived,
> loved, worked, and rebelled against their upper-class
> oppressors together.
>
> [...]
>
> But under the planters' new race laws, race was
> defined by genealogy. Masters and servants who could
> claim that all their ancestors came from Europe became
> members of the white race. In truth, of course, the
> "poor whites" continued to be viewed as an alien race
> by the elite. As one Georgia planter wrote a friend,
> "Not one in ten [poor whites] is. . . . a whit
> superior to a negro." Privately called "white trash"
> by the elite, the poor whites were publicly embraced
> as racial kin by the planters, 3.7 percent of the
> population who owned 58 percent of the region's slaves
> and were dead set on keeping their exploited workers
> divided by racial contempt. Because the antebellum
> South's pervasive class exploitation depended on
> fabricated white racial pride, any challenge to racial
> solidarity among whites threatened to reveal the
> hidden class system. Here lay the path to revolution.
>
> Thus it's not surprising that writer Hinton Rowan
> Helper's 1857 book The Impending Crisis of the South,
> which exposed the race-class link, was publicly
> burned; a Methodist minister spent a year in jail for
> simply owning it; and three Southerners were hanged
> for reading it. Here is some of what Helper said:
> "The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters
> of the blacks. . . . but they are also the oracles and
> arbiters of all nonslaveholding whites, whose freedom
> is merely nominal, and whose unparalleled illiteracy
> and degradation is purposely and fiendishly
> perpetuated." According to Williams, this work sold
> more copies than any other nonfiction book of the era
> and was called by one historian "the most important
> single book, in terms of its political impact, that
> has ever been published in the United States."
>
> [...]
>
> Having set the scene, Williams gives his account of
> how most poorer southern whites dealt with the "rich
> man's war." He begins this section of the book by
> reminding us that Georgia's very decision to secede
> from the Union was never put to a popular vote.
> Rather, it was made by secession delegates, 87 percent
> of them slaveholders in a state where only 37 percent
> of the electorate owned slaves. These delegates knew
> better than to heed antisecessionist delegates' plea
> to submit the decision to the electorate for final
> determination. After all, more than half the South's
> white population, three-quarters of whom owned no
> slaves, opposed secession.
>
> Next Williams details the Confed-eracy's corrupt
> impressment system. Georgia was one of the first
> Confederate states to legislate the right to
> confiscate, or impress, private property for the war.
> Not surprisingly, corruption ran rampant among
> impressment officers, of whom one Georgian said, "They
> devastate the country as much as the enemy." Another
> Georgian predicted that the widespread corruption
> would "ultimately alienate the affections of the
> people from the government." It did.
>
> [...]
>
> To add insult to injury, planters continued growing
> cotton (rather than food) and traded with the North as
> poorer whites and the army faced starvation. Williams
> also tells us that all too often, funds that should
> have been distributed to indigent families wound up in
> the pockets of corrupt officials. Not surprisingly,
> by 1863, food riots were breaking out all over the
> South, led by the starving wives left behind as their
> starving husbands, sons, and fathers died for the rich
> men and their slaves.
>
> And always, the racial degradation of the poor white
> continued. As Williams reminds us, most of the South's
> higher-ranking officers came from the slaveholding
> class and treated those under their command like
> slaves. One soldier thus complained in a letter home,
> "A soldier is worse than any negro on [the]
> Chattahoochee river. He has no privileges whatever.
> He is under worse task-masters than any negro."
> Soldiers were also punished like slaves, says
> Williams: "whipped, tied up by the thumbs, bucked and
> gagged, branded, or even shot."
>
> [...]
>
> Thus did the desertions begin. By September 1864, two
> thirds of Confederate soldiers were absent without
> leave. One hundred thousand went over to serve in the
> Union armies. Thousands more formed anti-Confederate
> guerrilla bands, of which one historian wrote that
> they were "no longer committed to the Confederacy, not
> quite committed to the Union that supplied them arms
> and supplies, but fully committed to survival." These
> bands, Williams tells us, "raided plantations,
> attacked army supply depots, and drove off impressment
> and conscription officers. . . . One Confederate
> loyalist, a veteran of the Virginia campaigns, said he
> felt more uneasy at home than he ever did when he
> followed Stonewall Jackson against the Yankees."
>
> Meanwhile, Williams writes, "One prominent antiwar
> resident of Barbour County held a dinner honoring
> fifty-seven local deserters. Though a subpoena was
> issued against the host, the sheriff refused to
> deliver it." The draft was by now difficult to
> enforce, nor did disgrace attach to either desertion
> or evasion. Indeed, Williams concludes that the
> Confederacy would have collapsed from within if there
> hadn't been a Union victory.
>
> [...]
>
> ...the bands of poorer Southern whites who organized
> against the Confederacy and who indeed were abused and
> exploited by their overlords, first as wage-slaves and
> then as canon fodder. Sadly, these Confederate
> deserters never understood that not even the one thing
> they held onto as their own—their self-image as
> whites—actually belonged to them. Rather it was one
> among many means used by rich men to exploit them.
>
> The Rev. Thandeka is associate professor of theology
> and culture at Meadville/Lombard Theological School.
This relates in so many ways, worth a repost.
--
Shark Pact Manifesto / Will Dockery & Shadowville All-Stars:
http://youtu.be/Ft3X3kC6nr4
Will Dockery
Apr 7, 2013, 2:46:31 PM4/7/13
to
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alabama.general/tIqOgoUgarE/1iSEwqPAZP0J
Every now and then this Confederate stuff comes up, and so I refer, again and again, to a history book available at the Bradley Library that nails the situation in terms that for some reason nobody much wants to discuss. In fact it won't be surprising if this post is ignored... again. The book is "Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley" By David Williams. And, yes, it wasn't so much "white or black" in the South back then, it was whether you were "rich or poor". Now why is that just not surprising to me, ever? This is running long but click the link and see the way the plantation owners manipulated the situation, and I'll see if I can excerpt some key bit, time & interest permitting. This is some fascinating, heavy reading.
Every now and then this Confederate stuff comes up, and so I refer, again and again, to a history book available at the Bradley Library that nails the situation in terms that for some reason nobody much wants to discuss. In fact it won't be surprising if this post is ignored... again. The book is "Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley" By David Williams. And, yes, it wasn't so much "white or black" in the South back then, it was whether you were "rich or poor". Now why is that just not surprising to me, ever? This is running long but click the link and see the way the plantation owners manipulated the situation, and I'll see if I can excerpt some key bit, time & interest permitting. This is some fascinating, heavy reading.
jean.a...@gmail.com
Apr 7, 2013, 4:13:56 PM4/7/13
to
There are many reasons for lack of discussion. People would rather hang onto their pride and not acknowledge that some of the deepest beliefs which have been handed down to them are lies, propaganda and BS. When I noted slavery still exists in the FB post I meant it as metaphor.
And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
Will Dockery
Apr 9, 2013, 6:29:40 AM4/9/13
to
On Sunday, April 7, 2013 4:13:56 PM UTC-4, Jean Arambula wrote:
> There are many reasons for lack of discussion. People would rather hang onto their pride and not acknowledge that some of the deepest beliefs which have been handed down to them are lies, propaganda and BS. When I noted slavery still exists in the FB post I meant it as metaphor.
>
> And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
>
> My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
Hello Jean!
> There are many reasons for lack of discussion. People would rather hang onto their pride and not acknowledge that some of the deepest beliefs which have been handed down to them are lies, propaganda and BS. When I noted slavery still exists in the FB post I meant it as metaphor.
>
> And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
>
> My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
I reckon at this point it may just be best to try and let all memory of that part of our Chattahoochee Valley's past fade into oblivion, given the ever-heated image the "oral tradition" has passed down..?
Maybe... but I find discovering the truth fascinating and inspiring, so here's more on David William's studies and book:
http://personal.tcu.edu/swoodworth/Williams-RMW.htm
"...David Williams’s Rich Man’s War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley offers a close examination of the role of class within the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Williams scrutinizes issues of class within the lower Chattahoochee Valley running through Georgia and Alabama. This particular region elicits socioeconomic analysis due to the combination of agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation industries defining the area. Serving as a highly productive cotton region, an important port, as well as a congested railroad hub, the lower Chattahoochee Valley quickly became a crucial economic center throughout the nineteenth century. As such, the area was populated by very wealthy planters, successful manufacturers and merchants, factory workers, yeomanry farmers (both slaveholders and non-slaveholders), poor whites, and an abundance of slaves [...] the perceived threat of abolitionists toward the destruction of the institution of slavery overwhelmingly swayed the planter elite to advocate secession, beginning as early as 1850. The desire and decision to secede, subsequent to Lincoln’s election in 1860, directly opposed the will of the majority of those living in the South, according to the author. Conscious of the authoritarian position of the planter elite, and the inability to improve one’s social status, the remaining classes viewed the idea of secession ambivalently, with little to gain personally, and a military conflict to follow likely. In the end, the planter elite paid scant attention to the concerns of the other classes and voted for secession in defiance of the majority of the region’s inhabitants [...] Not simply the enactment of a draft by the Confederate Congress in 1862, but rather the implementation of a policy allowing substitutes, engendered the ire of the lower classes. The practice of substitutes directly favored the wealthy elites and insulated them from the dangers of combat. Even more contentious was the “twenty-slave law” allowing those individuals owning twenty or more slaves to be exempt from the draft. Such practices highlighted the disparity in socioeconomic status and privilege that characterized the Confederate South..."
Anyway, it just boils down in the end on where your head is at in these modern times and where your own perceptions take you. What seems obvious, and typical of these types to me will look different from your own culture and history.
Will Dockery
Jun 4, 2013, 2:56:26 AM6/4/13
to
http://www.civilrights.uga.edu/cities/columbus/police_demonstration.htm
I think this has been posted here, but probably not recently.
News piece on the origins of the Riot. Willie J. Osborne was an alleged
armed robber shot and killed by a Policeman:
"...Rioting reached a height on June 21, 1971, when a white officer, L. A.
Jacks, shot and killed a twenty-year old African American youth named Willie
J. Osborne after an alleged armed robbery. Riots, arson attacks, police
violence, and further protests impacted the city for several months,
prompting the Columbus City Council to invoke an emergency ordinance, and
Columbus mayor J. R. Allen to declare a state of emergency." - in Columbus.
I think this has been posted here, but probably not recently.
News piece on the origins of the Riot. Willie J. Osborne was an alleged
armed robber shot and killed by a Policeman:
"...Rioting reached a height on June 21, 1971, when a white officer, L. A.
Jacks, shot and killed a twenty-year old African American youth named Willie
J. Osborne after an alleged armed robbery. Riots, arson attacks, police
violence, and further protests impacted the city for several months,
prompting the Columbus City Council to invoke an emergency ordinance, and
Columbus mayor J. R. Allen to declare a state of emergency." - in Columbus.
willdo...@gmail.com
Jan 3, 2019, 11:25:21 PM1/3/19
to
On Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 4:13:56 PM UTC-4, Jean Arambula wrote:
> There are many reasons for lack of discussion. People would rather hang onto their pride and not acknowledge that some of the deepest beliefs which have been handed down to them are lies, propaganda and BS. When I noted slavery still exists in the FB post I meant it as metaphor.
> And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
>
> My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
>
We don't much care about the nigs in these parts one way or another.
> There are many reasons for lack of discussion. People would rather hang onto their pride and not acknowledge that some of the deepest beliefs which have been handed down to them are lies, propaganda and BS. When I noted slavery still exists in the FB post I meant it as metaphor.
> And in the words of Owen Masters as he stands in front of the time clock waiting for the last tic to make his time, "I have made enough men millionaires."
>
> My favorite oxymoron,"Good Job."
>
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