Thursday, April 2, 2009
Well, I’m starting to call a series of pieces I’m doing “Operation Rebranded,” because what we’re seeing unfold with the Obama administration’s foreign policy is basically continuing many of the worst parts of Bush’s foreign policy and sort of repackaging these policies. So, for instance, the Obama administration has dropped the use of the term "global war on terrorism” and uses phrases like “contingency operations” to describe the US occupation of Iraq. The latest news we have is that the Obama’s administration has decided on its mercenary firm of choice. Clearly, Obama did not want to continue at least a public relationship with Blackwater.
Well, they’re connected, because, you see, one of the great dangers of an economic crisis is it can lead to war. I remember Hitler coming to power very well. There were six million unemployed in Germany, and Hitler said it’s all due to the Jews and the communists and the trade unions. “Give me power,” said Hitler, “and I will give you jobs.” And he did. Half the unemployed, he put in the arms factories. The other half, he put in the German army. And we had another bloody war. And the two European wars from 1914 to 1945, in thirty-one years, cost 105 million lives, were lost in two wars, and that was not unpredicted with the grave economic crisis in the 1930s.
lecture 16, "the great war, grief and memory"
bruno cabanes (john merriman)
------------
the great war, "grief and memory"
mass death and mourning a fact of life in France well before the end of the first world war: around 50% of the soldiers killed during WWI lost their lives in the seventeen month period from August 1914-December 1915.
one must also add the deaths of the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed up to 20 million people(!)
---------------
but these figures mean nothing, prof argues, if one does not consider them in relation to private and collective mourning. i.e., we need more than a statistical, demographic understanding of mass death.
the challenge, then, is to grasp this process in its fullness.
---------------
first, who were the people who were mourning? who were these "communities in mourning"?
second, the specificity of mourning in the aftermath of WWI--it can be studied, in this sense, in a comparative perspective, as well.
third, examine the mourning process itself--the relationship between personal suffering, and collective mourning--how grief becomes a collective process.
--------------
from a demographic perspective, this is difficult. war widows lost their benefits, and so vanished from the statistics in 1920 and 1921. the numbers then that you find about 600,000 widows and 760,000 orphans is very rough--and this is not to mention the extended families.
so the concept of "communities in mourning" is a very useful one, as a way to grasp the scale of mourning after WWI.
EVERY social structure went into mourning after the WWI, prof is arguing.
"circles of mourning," as well.
the first: fellow soldiers--"mourning the dead." what did soldiers do on armistice day? first tried to find the bodies of their fellow soldiers, in order to bury them.
notion, also, of the "survivor's syndrome"--guilt at having been spared. predominant amongst French soldiers after WWI.
the second: parents, grandparents, family, etc.--larger family group has, most times, been underestimated. mourning a lost relative becomes a way to participate in the conflict, in a distant sense.
the third: friends--the story of friendship in wartime still needs to be written--especially from the perspective of the history of bereavement.
-----------------
second larger point--specificity of WWI mourning.
the generational mourning had been reversed--a whole generation was lost. many people in the cities were suffering from depression (Emile Durkheim died of grief, only one year after his son's death in 1915).
death was also experienced by the soldiers in a very solitary way--must be seen specifically in the extreme violence of the war, and in light of the religious rituals that were prevalent in the war. one of the pervasive fears was of dying alone in no man's land, abandoned by comrades. soldiers who fell wounded between the lines lay dying for hours, sometimes days. (1/3 of the 20,000 men who died on the Sommes in 1916 might have been saved had they been seen to). and this added an unbearable toll to the bereavement. "horrible, pitiful deaths on the fields of honor."
all the traditional stages of grieving, as per the Catholic tradition, were eliminated--absence of dead bodies (around 30% of the dead bodies were completely destroyed, could not be identified; after 1918, bodies remained on the battlefield until the French gave permission to repatriate them, which did not happen until 1920!--they were arguing for the abstract equality of the mourning process, even as prof is stressing the specificity, as well)
-----------------
third point: new rituals, new traditions
the violence of the war experience, the absence of dead bodies required new ways of commemorating the dead.
two major cultural processes, in particular, as personal grief was translated into collective mourning
(1) the nationalization of mourning--in the 1920s and 1930s, the battlefields were converted into commemorative sites, through a network of military cemeteries, parks, etc. these new sites of memory were often represented in objects, paintings, pictures, and a number of ceremonies were organized to pay homage.
and they clearly played a role in forging a new conception of french national unity. on november 11th, each commune would name the dead from "the lost generation," at their respective war memorials (unity of time, space, action).
(2) the spiritualization of mourning--the 1920s and 1930s were characterized by a type of spiritual revival. prof giving one emblematic example.
bruno cabanes (john merriman)
------------
the great war, "grief and memory"
mass death and mourning a fact of life in France well before the end of the first world war: around 50% of the soldiers killed during WWI lost their lives in the seventeen month period from August 1914-December 1915.
one must also add the deaths of the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed up to 20 million people(!)
---------------
but these figures mean nothing, prof argues, if one does not consider them in relation to private and collective mourning. i.e., we need more than a statistical, demographic understanding of mass death.
the challenge, then, is to grasp this process in its fullness.
---------------
first, who were the people who were mourning? who were these "communities in mourning"?
second, the specificity of mourning in the aftermath of WWI--it can be studied, in this sense, in a comparative perspective, as well.
third, examine the mourning process itself--the relationship between personal suffering, and collective mourning--how grief becomes a collective process.
--------------
from a demographic perspective, this is difficult. war widows lost their benefits, and so vanished from the statistics in 1920 and 1921. the numbers then that you find about 600,000 widows and 760,000 orphans is very rough--and this is not to mention the extended families.
so the concept of "communities in mourning" is a very useful one, as a way to grasp the scale of mourning after WWI.
EVERY social structure went into mourning after the WWI, prof is arguing.
"circles of mourning," as well.
the first: fellow soldiers--"mourning the dead." what did soldiers do on armistice day? first tried to find the bodies of their fellow soldiers, in order to bury them.
notion, also, of the "survivor's syndrome"--guilt at having been spared. predominant amongst French soldiers after WWI.
the second: parents, grandparents, family, etc.--larger family group has, most times, been underestimated. mourning a lost relative becomes a way to participate in the conflict, in a distant sense.
the third: friends--the story of friendship in wartime still needs to be written--especially from the perspective of the history of bereavement.
-----------------
second larger point--specificity of WWI mourning.
the generational mourning had been reversed--a whole generation was lost. many people in the cities were suffering from depression (Emile Durkheim died of grief, only one year after his son's death in 1915).
death was also experienced by the soldiers in a very solitary way--must be seen specifically in the extreme violence of the war, and in light of the religious rituals that were prevalent in the war. one of the pervasive fears was of dying alone in no man's land, abandoned by comrades. soldiers who fell wounded between the lines lay dying for hours, sometimes days. (1/3 of the 20,000 men who died on the Sommes in 1916 might have been saved had they been seen to). and this added an unbearable toll to the bereavement. "horrible, pitiful deaths on the fields of honor."
all the traditional stages of grieving, as per the Catholic tradition, were eliminated--absence of dead bodies (around 30% of the dead bodies were completely destroyed, could not be identified; after 1918, bodies remained on the battlefield until the French gave permission to repatriate them, which did not happen until 1920!--they were arguing for the abstract equality of the mourning process, even as prof is stressing the specificity, as well)
-----------------
third point: new rituals, new traditions
the violence of the war experience, the absence of dead bodies required new ways of commemorating the dead.
two major cultural processes, in particular, as personal grief was translated into collective mourning
(1) the nationalization of mourning--in the 1920s and 1930s, the battlefields were converted into commemorative sites, through a network of military cemeteries, parks, etc. these new sites of memory were often represented in objects, paintings, pictures, and a number of ceremonies were organized to pay homage.
and they clearly played a role in forging a new conception of french national unity. on november 11th, each commune would name the dead from "the lost generation," at their respective war memorials (unity of time, space, action).
(2) the spiritualization of mourning--the 1920s and 1930s were characterized by a type of spiritual revival. prof giving one emblematic example.
lecture 7, "the kansas-nebraska act and the birth of the republican party"
david blight
-----------
the urgency of political tumult motivated by the discovery of gold in California. California was ready for statehood--and already people realized how big/rich it was. would it be a free state, or slave state?
the South's greatest leader delivered what became known as "The Southern Address", and in it John C. Calhoun said many things: that the North threatens to reduce the question to "resistance or submission." he makes California the litmus test.
one of the oldest ideas in US political culture is that great conflict comes when one side cannot accept the result--that they cannot accept a political outcome. this is the question in the 1850s--can some kind of compromise be reached?
Clay invites Daniel Webster, Northern Whig, who was anti-slavery (though never a card-carrying abolitionist), had been in Congress since 1823. seen as the voice of New England. "Liberty and Union," was his phrase--he always seemed to be the union man, even as he was an anti-slavery man. Henry Clay, slaveholder from Kentucky, founder of the Whig Party, its organizational genius, original founder of the American Colonization Society, was someone with great influence in Congress. He pulls in Clay and says we've got to save the union.
----------------
what were the issues in 1850?
(1) California is ready for statehood, overnight almost. miners flock there.
(2) DC was a huge center of the slave-trade. there was a massive slave jail 2.5 blocks from Congress. foreign visitors would stand in awe of the Capitol, and they would ask, "where's the slave jail?" so there were a lot of Northerners who were saying lets deal with this question as part of the larger compromise.
(3) Fugitive Slaves, in the so-called underground railroad. and the term "underground railroad" emerges in debates on the floor of the House and Senate. Southerners wanted a federally-enforced Fugitive Slaves Act.
(4) and then there was the issue of Texas--the boundaries had never been determined. and the question was how would you divide up Texas (there was no New Mexico or Arizona, yet). the idea was that if you moved the border back 300 or 400 miles, you might free up space for new states (and they would, in the Southern imagination, be slave states, further tipping the national balance in their favor).
-------------
Daniel Webster's support for the five measures of the Compromise of 1850
(1) California would be admitted as a Free State (Clay said that if you were to hold a referendum there there's no question that it would be a Free State; they're all little people that are flocking there)
(2) in return, the South is going to get a whole new, much stronger, federally-enforced Fugitive Slave Act.
(3) abolish the slave trade in DC--Northerners will like that.
(4) let's move the boundary back 350 miles back, and let southerners dream of 2-3 more states in that open space. let's let them feel secure that California may come in as a Free State, but there's potential for new Southern states in the future.
(5) how would slavery be determined in the SW? popular sovereignty--let the people have a referendum, and vote. (except for California, remember--this is the stuff of compromise).
(NB: Daniel Webster says I can't take the Fugitive Slave Act back to MA; Henry Clay says you must).
how was the Compromise finally passed? there was no certainty it would work--after Clay initiated the debate, with an emotional speech. Daniel Webster held forward, in the 7th March speech--"I speak today for the preservation of the Union." he was asking, remember, Northerners to vote to be complicit in the slave trade. people call it the greatest speech in the history of the US Senate--it also ruined Webster's political career.
Calhoun was unable to deliver a speech. he was too sick (he'll be dead by the Fall). delivered, instead, by his colleague Mason. Calhoun's speech actually frightened many Northerners into voting for the Compromise, despite their disdain for it. and so it passed, in early August, 1850.
Henry Clay was terminally ill, had gone home to Kentucky. he'd be out of the picture by the end of that very year. Webster was to be denounced, forever, in his own political party and constituency.
------------
but it passed. and, in some ways, saved the union. BUT: "it was far more an armistice than it really was a compromise. it began to collapse almost as soon as it passed." people were certainly relieved in the North, and there were rally celebrating its passing.
at the same time, the State of Georgia legislature passed its conditional approval of the Compromise, saying that it depends on the North's good faith. North replied in kind.
there were vehement protests against the Fugitive Slave Act. above all else, it was this Act that led to further conflict. it led to as many as 20,000 free blacks and freed slaves leaving the Northern states for Canada, between 1850 and 1857/8.
this will lead to the establishment of special federal magistrates, whose sole job it was to set up a police apparatus to retrieve fugitive slaves and identified (there was a monetary incentive to convict vs. acquit!). this led to famous fugitive slave rescues--abolitionists carted a slave from Syracuse off to Canada, a slave broken out of jail in Boston taken to Concord, MA and then to Montreal.
there were many other slave rescues, as well.
resistance to slavery was direct, sometimes violent--the underground railroad had become overground.
one could argue that the most important thing that happened in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act was the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. she made everyone complicit in the slave story (the most despicable character in the book is Miss Ophelia, a thoroughly racist anti-slavery character). the whole world was suddenly reading a work of fiction about slavery (it sold 300,000 copies in its first year; re-printed into 20 languages in its first 5 years of existence). brought an awareness of the slavery problem, as never before.
in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, now, though--the country had to face this question, by 1853/1854 was what was going to happen with Kansas and Nebraska territories. the parts left over from the Louisiana Purchase (1803).
but the Kansas-Nebraska Act was at the front of the agenda of the US Congress at the end of 1853, in the environment of the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which was enforced fairly effectively in the North, despite this well-known resistance to the Act). the Anthony Burns rendition case: after the earlier freeing, his trial became a litmus test. there was an all-night vigil held by abolitionists, in protest. eventually they bought him back from a farm in SC.
-------------
what was firing the American imagination at this time was not just the West, but the Railroad West. would the eastern terminus of the West-going railroad be in Chicago, or further south in a slave state? stephen douglass, the man who negotiated the Compromise of 1850, wanted the terminus in Chicago. (though, prof is saying, his approach to slavery is critical: Stephen Douglas believes that climate will solve the problem of slavery--if the soil is good, temperatures are right, slavery will exist--climate will solve the problems!).
back to Kansas-Nebraska--what principle will you apply? had the Compromise of 1850 superseded the Missouri Compromise of 1820? so which rule is in play? do you apply, even the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (which said it will never exist in the early Northwest)?
in other words, this is the great question of the 1850s--would the American pragmatic tradition "continue" to solve this?
Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. he wrote three different versions, in fact. went from vaguest to most specific, because Southerners put his feet to the fire.
version 1: January 4, 1854--"as their constitution may prescribe." (leave it to time, climate, and good sense--Southerners said not enough).
version 2: January 10, 1854--a direct statement of popular sovereignty. "decision to be left to the people residing therein." (but, Dixon tells him that he must rid the bill of geographic shackless--repudiate Missouri Compromise, etc.
version 3 (which passed): two measures--(1) explicit repeal of Missouri Compromise line; (2) popular sovereignty. (note: this opens up the whole of the West to the possibility of slavery).
-------------
the Kansas-Nebraska Act is arguably the seminal event of American politics in the 1850s: (1) it will sectionalize American politics; (2) break apart what's left of the Whig party; (3) give birth to the first successful third party coalition movement (the Republican party)
note the vote count: Northern Democrats were split right in half, Southern Democrats voted 57-2 in favor; Northern Whigs voted 45-0 against, and Southern Whigs 12-7. and the four Free Soilers voted against, of course. (113-10 passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it breaks apart the system, and brings about an anti-slavery coalition that will elect a President within six years).
david blight
-----------
the urgency of political tumult motivated by the discovery of gold in California. California was ready for statehood--and already people realized how big/rich it was. would it be a free state, or slave state?
the South's greatest leader delivered what became known as "The Southern Address", and in it John C. Calhoun said many things: that the North threatens to reduce the question to "resistance or submission." he makes California the litmus test.
one of the oldest ideas in US political culture is that great conflict comes when one side cannot accept the result--that they cannot accept a political outcome. this is the question in the 1850s--can some kind of compromise be reached?
Clay invites Daniel Webster, Northern Whig, who was anti-slavery (though never a card-carrying abolitionist), had been in Congress since 1823. seen as the voice of New England. "Liberty and Union," was his phrase--he always seemed to be the union man, even as he was an anti-slavery man. Henry Clay, slaveholder from Kentucky, founder of the Whig Party, its organizational genius, original founder of the American Colonization Society, was someone with great influence in Congress. He pulls in Clay and says we've got to save the union.
----------------
what were the issues in 1850?
(1) California is ready for statehood, overnight almost. miners flock there.
(2) DC was a huge center of the slave-trade. there was a massive slave jail 2.5 blocks from Congress. foreign visitors would stand in awe of the Capitol, and they would ask, "where's the slave jail?" so there were a lot of Northerners who were saying lets deal with this question as part of the larger compromise.
(3) Fugitive Slaves, in the so-called underground railroad. and the term "underground railroad" emerges in debates on the floor of the House and Senate. Southerners wanted a federally-enforced Fugitive Slaves Act.
(4) and then there was the issue of Texas--the boundaries had never been determined. and the question was how would you divide up Texas (there was no New Mexico or Arizona, yet). the idea was that if you moved the border back 300 or 400 miles, you might free up space for new states (and they would, in the Southern imagination, be slave states, further tipping the national balance in their favor).
-------------
Daniel Webster's support for the five measures of the Compromise of 1850
(1) California would be admitted as a Free State (Clay said that if you were to hold a referendum there there's no question that it would be a Free State; they're all little people that are flocking there)
(2) in return, the South is going to get a whole new, much stronger, federally-enforced Fugitive Slave Act.
(3) abolish the slave trade in DC--Northerners will like that.
(4) let's move the boundary back 350 miles back, and let southerners dream of 2-3 more states in that open space. let's let them feel secure that California may come in as a Free State, but there's potential for new Southern states in the future.
(5) how would slavery be determined in the SW? popular sovereignty--let the people have a referendum, and vote. (except for California, remember--this is the stuff of compromise).
(NB: Daniel Webster says I can't take the Fugitive Slave Act back to MA; Henry Clay says you must).
how was the Compromise finally passed? there was no certainty it would work--after Clay initiated the debate, with an emotional speech. Daniel Webster held forward, in the 7th March speech--"I speak today for the preservation of the Union." he was asking, remember, Northerners to vote to be complicit in the slave trade. people call it the greatest speech in the history of the US Senate--it also ruined Webster's political career.
Calhoun was unable to deliver a speech. he was too sick (he'll be dead by the Fall). delivered, instead, by his colleague Mason. Calhoun's speech actually frightened many Northerners into voting for the Compromise, despite their disdain for it. and so it passed, in early August, 1850.
Henry Clay was terminally ill, had gone home to Kentucky. he'd be out of the picture by the end of that very year. Webster was to be denounced, forever, in his own political party and constituency.
------------
but it passed. and, in some ways, saved the union. BUT: "it was far more an armistice than it really was a compromise. it began to collapse almost as soon as it passed." people were certainly relieved in the North, and there were rally celebrating its passing.
at the same time, the State of Georgia legislature passed its conditional approval of the Compromise, saying that it depends on the North's good faith. North replied in kind.
there were vehement protests against the Fugitive Slave Act. above all else, it was this Act that led to further conflict. it led to as many as 20,000 free blacks and freed slaves leaving the Northern states for Canada, between 1850 and 1857/8.
this will lead to the establishment of special federal magistrates, whose sole job it was to set up a police apparatus to retrieve fugitive slaves and identified (there was a monetary incentive to convict vs. acquit!). this led to famous fugitive slave rescues--abolitionists carted a slave from Syracuse off to Canada, a slave broken out of jail in Boston taken to Concord, MA and then to Montreal.
there were many other slave rescues, as well.
resistance to slavery was direct, sometimes violent--the underground railroad had become overground.
one could argue that the most important thing that happened in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act was the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. she made everyone complicit in the slave story (the most despicable character in the book is Miss Ophelia, a thoroughly racist anti-slavery character). the whole world was suddenly reading a work of fiction about slavery (it sold 300,000 copies in its first year; re-printed into 20 languages in its first 5 years of existence). brought an awareness of the slavery problem, as never before.
in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, now, though--the country had to face this question, by 1853/1854 was what was going to happen with Kansas and Nebraska territories. the parts left over from the Louisiana Purchase (1803).
but the Kansas-Nebraska Act was at the front of the agenda of the US Congress at the end of 1853, in the environment of the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which was enforced fairly effectively in the North, despite this well-known resistance to the Act). the Anthony Burns rendition case: after the earlier freeing, his trial became a litmus test. there was an all-night vigil held by abolitionists, in protest. eventually they bought him back from a farm in SC.
-------------
what was firing the American imagination at this time was not just the West, but the Railroad West. would the eastern terminus of the West-going railroad be in Chicago, or further south in a slave state? stephen douglass, the man who negotiated the Compromise of 1850, wanted the terminus in Chicago. (though, prof is saying, his approach to slavery is critical: Stephen Douglas believes that climate will solve the problem of slavery--if the soil is good, temperatures are right, slavery will exist--climate will solve the problems!).
back to Kansas-Nebraska--what principle will you apply? had the Compromise of 1850 superseded the Missouri Compromise of 1820? so which rule is in play? do you apply, even the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (which said it will never exist in the early Northwest)?
in other words, this is the great question of the 1850s--would the American pragmatic tradition "continue" to solve this?
Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. he wrote three different versions, in fact. went from vaguest to most specific, because Southerners put his feet to the fire.
version 1: January 4, 1854--"as their constitution may prescribe." (leave it to time, climate, and good sense--Southerners said not enough).
version 2: January 10, 1854--a direct statement of popular sovereignty. "decision to be left to the people residing therein." (but, Dixon tells him that he must rid the bill of geographic shackless--repudiate Missouri Compromise, etc.
version 3 (which passed): two measures--(1) explicit repeal of Missouri Compromise line; (2) popular sovereignty. (note: this opens up the whole of the West to the possibility of slavery).
-------------
the Kansas-Nebraska Act is arguably the seminal event of American politics in the 1850s: (1) it will sectionalize American politics; (2) break apart what's left of the Whig party; (3) give birth to the first successful third party coalition movement (the Republican party)
note the vote count: Northern Democrats were split right in half, Southern Democrats voted 57-2 in favor; Northern Whigs voted 45-0 against, and Southern Whigs 12-7. and the four Free Soilers voted against, of course. (113-10 passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it breaks apart the system, and brings about an anti-slavery coalition that will elect a President within six years).
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
lecture 15, "the home front"
john merriman
------------
1917 and 1918--the mutinies.
the mutinies have to be seen in the context of all this, but in particular they have to be seen in the context of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which was the darkest period in four years of dark days.
began on July 1st, 1916--on the first day, almost 40,000 British soldiers were wounded, 20,000 were killed. there was a casualty for every half-meter of the front line. there were more British soldiers killed in the first three days of this battle than there were Americans killed in WWI, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq combined(!). those are phenomenal losses.
it's easy, perhaps, to poke fun at Oxbridge class society--but, in WWI, the flower of British youth perished in these battles.
1917 is the crucial year in determining the outcome of a war that seemed like it was going to go on forever. by the end of 1917 and into March 1918, the military planners begin to think that they'll win the war by 1920, 1921. as so many people died, to win a few kilometers, there were wags who said we'll reach the Rhine by 2007(!).
but two things happen in 1917, that are crucial.
(1) Bolshevik Revolution, after the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar--people wake up and discover that the Emperor has no clothes. Kerensky's provisional government keeps Russia in the war. But by October the Bolshevik's take power, and withdraws Russia from the war by March 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (there was a deceleration in the war effort before this; and there were any way quite a number of desertions, though less than you might have thought.) (2) the other thing that happens is that the Americans enter the war. they were officially neutral, though the majority of the population supported the Allies, but it's not really that that brings the US into the war. the German High Command had decided that the only way they could win was to knock Britain out of the war. and the way they were going to do that was to sink ships supplying munitions, etc. to the British (a submarine campaign). they placed warnings at ports in US and Philadelphia. sunk the Lusitania on her maiden voyage on 1915, killing 1,200 civilians. (in the 1960s/1970s divers found that the ship was carrying munitions, and that was the German claim). over the long run, the man that was going to keep the US out of the war, Woodrow Wilson, ends up taking the US into WWI (despite widespread domestic opposition--Wilson couldn't get the Treaty of Versailles ratified by Congress, after returning home).
what did the entry of the Americans really mean? not so much troops--troops don't really make the difference, really. the big difference is that the curves cross--the ability of the Germans to supply their own war-machine cannot compete with the combined power of American industrial might. factories easily transformed into the production of arms. and it's at that point when many people in the French and British High Command realize that they will win the war--though they're still unsure at what cost.
all this helps set up March 1918, when the Germans decide that "it's now or never"
--------------
what about the mutinies?
most people in France did not want war in 1914. but because it was easy to portray Germany as the aggressors, the vast majority of the population recognized the urgency of the fight.
to be sure, there are tensions within French society re: the war. there was tremendous resentment. at the Opera, they distributed coal as per rations--as people waited in line, they saw the fancy people in their big cars going off to the restraunts (people who had profited tremendously from Big Business' role in war). so there is class tension fueled by the War.
more than that, you have tensions felt by peasants, who are conscripted without any real possibility of refusing (unless they've already had two brothers killed!).
you have refugees, as well--refugees from the North (sometimes even German-speaking, and Flemish), settling in other areas, as a strain on local resources. you have grumbling, then, about these "Germans" of the North.
many women and men also go on strike in 1917 (689 strikes, affecting 300,000 workers--as compared to 98 strikes in 1916)--not defeatist strikes, but they're agitating for better conditions. why should you work in terrible conditions when the "Big Hats" are simply getting more wealthy?
there are attempts to break these strikes.
but, in sum, 1917 is a year when morale on the home front is lower than ever. (prof just noting that conditions are worse in Berlin than they are in Paris; better in London than in either place)
------------
what about the mutinies? how serious?
there were probably only two totally reliable divisions standing between Paris and the Germans, after these mutinies.
nobody on the home front really knew about them (part of this is that letters sent home were censored, remember). nor did the Germans, nor did the British.
it's not too hard to say why these mutinies take place when they do. or why they take place at all. it is not defeatism, but these tactics of trench warfare were killing hundreds of thousands of people for nothing--for no reason. there isn't any hope, in this sense.
the mutinies were, indeed, widespread--refusals to "go over the top" simply spread like wirefire. soldiers say they don't want to get killed any more for five cents a day (in some places red flags go up--in some places black flags). though remember socialists had joined the war effort (jules guesde ends up a minister in 1915).
two regiments decide that they're going to march on Paris, and convince the Chamber of Deputies to stop the war. most of the Generals foolishly claim Bolshevik propaganda behind this.
in May and June about 40,000 soldiers were involved in collective acts of refusal (other statistic goes as high as 70,000). the first signs that the soldiers supposed to go "over the top" started ba-ing like sheep on their way to the slaughterhouse. there was socialist and anarchist literature that had gotten into the trenches, but it was obviously not a Bolshevik conspiracy.
a General ends the policy of these mad attacks, over the tops. there were some people who were put up against the wall and shot, for sure, but we don't know. there were 3427 condemnations--about 10% of the people who were court-martialed. 49 were condemned to death, which were carried out immediately.
----------
in the Spring of 1918, the Germans launch a major offensive (Ludendorf Offensive)--their first since 1914.
at the same time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is having all sorts of problems (Franz Joseph I, Emperor-King since 1867, dies in 1916). all the predictable cracks are opening up--the Germans are quite unsure whether the Austrian-Hungarian Empire will be able to hang on, fighting against the Italians, for example.
the Americans have, by the Spring of 1918, 325,000 soldiers.
so Ludendorf decides on a massive offensive. encouraged by the fact that there are younger soldiers, barely 18, that have newly arrived in the ranks. and older troops have arrived, as well. so on the 21st of March, 1918, after a relatively brief bombardment of 5 hours, 1.6 million men attack the allied defenses in five separate offenses across a front of 40 miles. and they do break through--some pass 40 miles to the other side.
on Easter Sunday, shells fall on Paris, and they begin taking lives.
but what happens, is predictable. as on a small scale, the Germans begin to outrun their cover and supplies. they begin to encounter stiff resistance at all of these five points. in July, they try a final offensive, they fail, and know that they're simply not going to win.
at that point, morale plunges dangerously in Germany. in January 1918, 250,000 workers had anyway defined the government by going on strike. in July, the British, French, Americans counter-attack quite effectively, using tanks. on the 8th of August, 1918, the German army's darkest day, a British force moves 8 miles(!). at this point, Ludendorf tells Wilhem II that "it's all over but the shouting."
and, at the end, Willhelm the II will slink over the Dutch border, and sign an armistice in a railroad car north of Paris. the war ends on the 11th of November, 1918 (people were killed, afterward, because they didn't know that the armistice had come along).
and, alas, the Spanish Flu comes on the tail of the War. the biggest pandemic since the Black Death.
-------------
the statistics, which are simply staggering:
Russia (1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded--nothing like WWII, of course, when 25 million died)
France (at least 1.4-1.5 million dead, 4.3 wounded)
British, including the Empire (908,000 dead, 2 million wounded)
Italy (508,000 dead)
Serbia (208,000 dead)
Belgium (38,000 dead)
Germany (2 million dead, 4 million wounded--how do you explain losing this many and losing the war? well that's something that the Right would latch on to, in the war's aftermath. it was the socialists, of course)
Austria-Hungary (1.1 million dead, 3.6 million wounded)
in France, there are 36,000 communes, and there were only 12 that didn't have somebody killed. that's why you see war memorials everywhere.
"if God exists, how could he let this happen?"
-------------
john merriman
------------
1917 and 1918--the mutinies.
the mutinies have to be seen in the context of all this, but in particular they have to be seen in the context of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which was the darkest period in four years of dark days.
began on July 1st, 1916--on the first day, almost 40,000 British soldiers were wounded, 20,000 were killed. there was a casualty for every half-meter of the front line. there were more British soldiers killed in the first three days of this battle than there were Americans killed in WWI, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq combined(!). those are phenomenal losses.
it's easy, perhaps, to poke fun at Oxbridge class society--but, in WWI, the flower of British youth perished in these battles.
1917 is the crucial year in determining the outcome of a war that seemed like it was going to go on forever. by the end of 1917 and into March 1918, the military planners begin to think that they'll win the war by 1920, 1921. as so many people died, to win a few kilometers, there were wags who said we'll reach the Rhine by 2007(!).
but two things happen in 1917, that are crucial.
(1) Bolshevik Revolution, after the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar--people wake up and discover that the Emperor has no clothes. Kerensky's provisional government keeps Russia in the war. But by October the Bolshevik's take power, and withdraws Russia from the war by March 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (there was a deceleration in the war effort before this; and there were any way quite a number of desertions, though less than you might have thought.) (2) the other thing that happens is that the Americans enter the war. they were officially neutral, though the majority of the population supported the Allies, but it's not really that that brings the US into the war. the German High Command had decided that the only way they could win was to knock Britain out of the war. and the way they were going to do that was to sink ships supplying munitions, etc. to the British (a submarine campaign). they placed warnings at ports in US and Philadelphia. sunk the Lusitania on her maiden voyage on 1915, killing 1,200 civilians. (in the 1960s/1970s divers found that the ship was carrying munitions, and that was the German claim). over the long run, the man that was going to keep the US out of the war, Woodrow Wilson, ends up taking the US into WWI (despite widespread domestic opposition--Wilson couldn't get the Treaty of Versailles ratified by Congress, after returning home).
what did the entry of the Americans really mean? not so much troops--troops don't really make the difference, really. the big difference is that the curves cross--the ability of the Germans to supply their own war-machine cannot compete with the combined power of American industrial might. factories easily transformed into the production of arms. and it's at that point when many people in the French and British High Command realize that they will win the war--though they're still unsure at what cost.
all this helps set up March 1918, when the Germans decide that "it's now or never"
--------------
what about the mutinies?
most people in France did not want war in 1914. but because it was easy to portray Germany as the aggressors, the vast majority of the population recognized the urgency of the fight.
to be sure, there are tensions within French society re: the war. there was tremendous resentment. at the Opera, they distributed coal as per rations--as people waited in line, they saw the fancy people in their big cars going off to the restraunts (people who had profited tremendously from Big Business' role in war). so there is class tension fueled by the War.
more than that, you have tensions felt by peasants, who are conscripted without any real possibility of refusing (unless they've already had two brothers killed!).
you have refugees, as well--refugees from the North (sometimes even German-speaking, and Flemish), settling in other areas, as a strain on local resources. you have grumbling, then, about these "Germans" of the North.
many women and men also go on strike in 1917 (689 strikes, affecting 300,000 workers--as compared to 98 strikes in 1916)--not defeatist strikes, but they're agitating for better conditions. why should you work in terrible conditions when the "Big Hats" are simply getting more wealthy?
there are attempts to break these strikes.
but, in sum, 1917 is a year when morale on the home front is lower than ever. (prof just noting that conditions are worse in Berlin than they are in Paris; better in London than in either place)
------------
what about the mutinies? how serious?
there were probably only two totally reliable divisions standing between Paris and the Germans, after these mutinies.
nobody on the home front really knew about them (part of this is that letters sent home were censored, remember). nor did the Germans, nor did the British.
it's not too hard to say why these mutinies take place when they do. or why they take place at all. it is not defeatism, but these tactics of trench warfare were killing hundreds of thousands of people for nothing--for no reason. there isn't any hope, in this sense.
the mutinies were, indeed, widespread--refusals to "go over the top" simply spread like wirefire. soldiers say they don't want to get killed any more for five cents a day (in some places red flags go up--in some places black flags). though remember socialists had joined the war effort (jules guesde ends up a minister in 1915).
two regiments decide that they're going to march on Paris, and convince the Chamber of Deputies to stop the war. most of the Generals foolishly claim Bolshevik propaganda behind this.
in May and June about 40,000 soldiers were involved in collective acts of refusal (other statistic goes as high as 70,000). the first signs that the soldiers supposed to go "over the top" started ba-ing like sheep on their way to the slaughterhouse. there was socialist and anarchist literature that had gotten into the trenches, but it was obviously not a Bolshevik conspiracy.
a General ends the policy of these mad attacks, over the tops. there were some people who were put up against the wall and shot, for sure, but we don't know. there were 3427 condemnations--about 10% of the people who were court-martialed. 49 were condemned to death, which were carried out immediately.
----------
in the Spring of 1918, the Germans launch a major offensive (Ludendorf Offensive)--their first since 1914.
at the same time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is having all sorts of problems (Franz Joseph I, Emperor-King since 1867, dies in 1916). all the predictable cracks are opening up--the Germans are quite unsure whether the Austrian-Hungarian Empire will be able to hang on, fighting against the Italians, for example.
the Americans have, by the Spring of 1918, 325,000 soldiers.
so Ludendorf decides on a massive offensive. encouraged by the fact that there are younger soldiers, barely 18, that have newly arrived in the ranks. and older troops have arrived, as well. so on the 21st of March, 1918, after a relatively brief bombardment of 5 hours, 1.6 million men attack the allied defenses in five separate offenses across a front of 40 miles. and they do break through--some pass 40 miles to the other side.
on Easter Sunday, shells fall on Paris, and they begin taking lives.
but what happens, is predictable. as on a small scale, the Germans begin to outrun their cover and supplies. they begin to encounter stiff resistance at all of these five points. in July, they try a final offensive, they fail, and know that they're simply not going to win.
at that point, morale plunges dangerously in Germany. in January 1918, 250,000 workers had anyway defined the government by going on strike. in July, the British, French, Americans counter-attack quite effectively, using tanks. on the 8th of August, 1918, the German army's darkest day, a British force moves 8 miles(!). at this point, Ludendorf tells Wilhem II that "it's all over but the shouting."
and, at the end, Willhelm the II will slink over the Dutch border, and sign an armistice in a railroad car north of Paris. the war ends on the 11th of November, 1918 (people were killed, afterward, because they didn't know that the armistice had come along).
and, alas, the Spanish Flu comes on the tail of the War. the biggest pandemic since the Black Death.
-------------
the statistics, which are simply staggering:
Russia (1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded--nothing like WWII, of course, when 25 million died)
France (at least 1.4-1.5 million dead, 4.3 wounded)
British, including the Empire (908,000 dead, 2 million wounded)
Italy (508,000 dead)
Serbia (208,000 dead)
Belgium (38,000 dead)
Germany (2 million dead, 4 million wounded--how do you explain losing this many and losing the war? well that's something that the Right would latch on to, in the war's aftermath. it was the socialists, of course)
Austria-Hungary (1.1 million dead, 3.6 million wounded)
in France, there are 36,000 communes, and there were only 12 that didn't have somebody killed. that's why you see war memorials everywhere.
"if God exists, how could he let this happen?"
-------------
lecture 6, "expansion and slavery: legacies of the mexican war..."
david blight
------------
frederick douglass' 4th of July speech: "like Beethoven on steriods, with language as weapon."
given in 1852, in Rochester, NY, in the wake of the crisis that has gripped the country in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, as slavery expands into the West.
"why have you invited me to speak on your Fourth of July?" a critique of American hypocrisy--utilizing "by the rivers of Babylon" passage from Bible.
------------
in 1847, in the midst of that expansionist war (and a modest number of Northerners who opposed it; and certainly abolitionists, who saw it as a war for the expansion of slavery), Douglass called America a "nation of inconsistencies."
------------
the anti-slavery impulse that takes hold in the American north goes through various stages:
(1) 1830s-1840s: an expansion of organization of American abolitionisms--tended to be a kind of Garrisonian moral suasion. largely devoted to this idea of reforming or changing the heart of American people. driven very much by the Second Great Awakening.
(2) 1837, with the birth of the Liberty Party--we see this moral line take a political turn. a political party begun by some quite serious abolitionists. in the 1840s, after minimal political success, the Liberal Party becomes the Free Soil Party, in 1848 (directly in response to the expansionist war with Mexico). directly committed to keeping the West (and, America's future) free from the institution of slavery.
it is a fear of slavery, a fear of the way slavery as a system could control America's future that comes to the front and center in American politics after the Mexican War (1846-1848, following formal annexation of Texas in 1845--effective annexation had come 9 years earlier, in 1836).
-----------
how did we get the Mexican War?
after the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1836, which was to be that great Western border that was seemingly limitless (for that matter, there was no Southern border decided upon). the US simply took Texas. Mexico never accepted the Rio Grande as the border. they assumed that, if there was a border, it would be the Nueses river, further North and East.
we've talked about how the Western expansion of the South was booming from 1820s-1840s--and there was a deep and abiding sentiment in American society, now known as Manifest Destiny, of inevitablity. a "racialism" that informed a deep commitment to these territories and their colonization.
this was seen, of course, in the policy re: Native Americans--Indian Removal Act (1830) under President Jackson in the 1830s physically removed Native Americans from their homelands. the five great tribes were, between early-mid 1830s were removed, outwest--to Oklahoma and further. that Indian removal was part and parcel of opening up this Southern frontier to the cotton boom. and the development of the greatest source of wealth in the Southern US.
in the presidential election of 1844, James K. Polk, an avid expansionist, Democrat, and a slaveholding cotton-planter from Tennesee, ran against Henry Clay (intellectual founder of the Whig party, which operated from 1833-1856 on a platform of supremacy of Congress, among other things), who also ran on an expansionist platform. But the Whigs tended to argue for expansion by negotiation(!). Polk said," negotiation=bullshit, elect me and I will give you Mexico and Oregon. "
it was a close election, Polk won by 36,000, out of 2.8 million. (Liberty Party won 16,000, mostly in NY). just before John Tyler left office, he pushed through the annexation of Texas in 1845 (not as a negotiated treaty, but as a State--i.e., without 2/3 approval of Congress). but James K. Polk became the sixth of the first ten American presidents who was a slaveholder. before the American Civil War, 2/3 of all American presidents were either slaveholders or deeply sympathetic. 2/3 of all members of the Supreme Court. James K. Polk was, as far as we know, the only president who bought and sold slaves from the Oval Office(!).
Polk ordered troops to move South to the Rio Grande in order to, in effect, see what the Mexicans would do. in early 1846, there was a brief attempt at negotiation (which was conducted in French, actually, because neither spoke the other's language). Mexico had never acknowledged the Rio Grande. there was a three-week stand-off along the river, and then on the 24th of April 1846 a Mexican cavalry contingent ambushed American troops on the other side. two weeks later, Zachary Taylor's dispatch reached to the White House, announcing that hostilities had commenced in Mexico. Polk received the news and immediately asked Congress for a declaration of war, saying "Mexico had invaded American soil(!)" Approved, even if with a number of abstentions from Northerners in Senate.
-----------
the first major expansionist war of American history. a flurry of speculation about what soldiers, settlers might find in Mexico. Herman Melville said, "the people here are all in a state of delirium... nothing is talked about but the halls of Montezuma." Illionis paper arguing "reptiles on the path of progressive democracy."
many abolitionists had very serious things to say about the war. James Russel Lowell: "a national crime committed in behoof of slavery, our national sin." Ralph Waldo Emerson (in his private journals, however): "the US will conquer Mexico, but it will be as though a man swallows arsenic... Mexico will poison us..."
by the end of 1846, the US had established dominion over the southern half of California. in 1847, US forces conquered Mexico City. and, by the end, a treaty was negotiated, on dictated terms. Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo, in the US lost 13,000 Americans in a year and a half of fighting, the vast majority of disease. an estimated 50,000 Mexicans died.1848, gave the US all of the western part of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado). Payment was $15 million.
that same year, 1848, was a tremendous turning point (as important in American history as in Europe, some argue). as these nationalistic revolutions against monarchy were breaking out all over Europe (Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France--some will succeed, some will fail), republican America was seizing territory, and launching an Empire on its own continent.
sitting in House of Representatives, young Congressman from IL, Abraham Lincoln, voted against the Mexican War every chance he got, calling Polk's justification "a half-insane mumbling of a fever dream."
------------
why all the fuss? what did the war unleash?
Daniel Webster, the great Whig of MA, probably the most powerful and important Northern politician, kept trying to argue that this wasn't really all that important. (the Southwest was all desert--we won't expand slavery there, "an imaginary Negro in an [inhospitable] place"
but why did so many people care?
first, Northerners (prof is admitting that he is generalizing): (1) they cared about this because there was a belief that slavery could indeed take place in the Southwest (in mining, e.g.)--and, lo and behold, what was discovered in California, but gold! and why couldn't you build canals/railroads/etc. with slaves? (2) lots of Northerners in politics favored non-extension on constitutional grounds. (3) didn't want to be complicit in the expansion of slavery--"don't ask me to vote, to create a new territory, which will become a Slave state." Northerners wanted to confine slavery to the South--make slavery sectional, but free labor national. (4) there was also racism, involved in this. they saw the West as a place that would be free for small, white farmers--free from competition from a powerful Southern oligarchy. (5) and finally, of course, there were some abolitionists around, who believed in the immorality of slavery's expansion. (and sometimes there would be a mix of all this: racism, moral opposition, etc..--Abraham Lincoln, e.g.)
the South: (1) cared, in part, because an assumption had set in that it was not just because it was considered the South's destiny, but also a necessity for its economic system ("to check the expansion of slavery would be to strangle the Southern economy and way of life"). (2) the growing slave population in existing Southern states was a possible powder-keg--they feared the "shrinking" South as an economic entity, as a political culture--an economy turning in on itself, possibly. (3) political party in the Congress. new states meant two new senators. in 1850, the ratio of slave states to free states was 1:1 (15 to 15). they wanted to sustain that parity. California will be the test case. (4) and then there's a question of State's rights--did anyone have the right to prohibit anyone else from taking their property anywhere? "you Northerners have no right to stop me from taking my wagon, my horse, and my slave, anywhere I wish."(5) there's a sense of honor, here--the legal standing of slavery in the Western territories stood as a measure of its moral standing everywhere. if you tell me that slavery is not a part of America's future, then you're telling me that it's wrong in my home. and that's unacceptable.
---------------
the fuss, then, is this is because this is really a debate about American's future.
there were four plans put in place:
(1) Wilmont Proviso: penned by a young Democratic HofR, who got up in the midst of the Mexican War, who got up during the debates and said, "in any new territory we gain from Mexico, there won't be slavery." it became the rallying cry of the Free Soil movement. all but one Northern legislature endorsed it; all the Southern legistlatures condemned it. it passed the House of Representatives, but did not pass the Senate (where the slave states still had parity). there was a good deal of racist support for the Proviso (and here we see the mixture of Northern anti-slavery sentiments)--"I have no sympathy for the slaves... I speak on behalf of the free white men..." Keep the West free of black people, essentially.
(2) State sovereignty (South's position): ultimately, no federal legislature, President, etc., had the authority to stop slavery's expansion.
(3) Popular sovereignty: the simple idea that there would be no act of Congress--take Congress out of the story, and simply let the people in the Western territory have a vote. let there be a referendum, popular democracy. "a charm of ambiguity"about this proposal. the problem, of course, was when do you hold the vote? do you establish a rule about the #'s of ppl there. Southerners wanted the vote later in the process, because it would take them a while to take slaves/their system out there.
(4) they went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery North of the parallel. half of California, of course, was North of that line. in the 1850s, people suggesting that we continue to draw careful geographic lines across the West.
-------------
the election of 1848 was crucial: Democrats ran on a popular sovereignty platform, candidate was Lewis Cass. Zachary Taylor was the Whig candidate, recent war hero, "ol' rough an' ready." problem was, of course, that he was a Louisiana slaveholder, not very committed to Whig principles.
there were two new political offshoots, at this time, over this furore: (1) the conscience Whigs--a group of abolitionists created in MA who broke with the Whig party (and would never go back, harbinger of its future demise) (2) Free Soil Party, created in 1848, and ran Martin Van Buren, a former president. and they stood for one thing--stopping slavery's expansion. they took 10%!
Zachary Taylor was elected.
and, lo and behold, gold was discovered in California--and so suddenly there was a desperate need to find a middle-ground. on a night in January 1850, Henry Clay gets together with Daniel Webster and they cut a deal, that became the Compromise of 1850 (they're drunk, prof is noting).
that month, Clay would announce the five provisions of the Compromise before the Senate (holding a piece of George Washington's coffin, to boot!). people were very worried that the Union was going to unravel, and fall apart.
and indeed, it almost did.
david blight
------------
frederick douglass' 4th of July speech: "like Beethoven on steriods, with language as weapon."
given in 1852, in Rochester, NY, in the wake of the crisis that has gripped the country in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, as slavery expands into the West.
"why have you invited me to speak on your Fourth of July?" a critique of American hypocrisy--utilizing "by the rivers of Babylon" passage from Bible.
------------
in 1847, in the midst of that expansionist war (and a modest number of Northerners who opposed it; and certainly abolitionists, who saw it as a war for the expansion of slavery), Douglass called America a "nation of inconsistencies."
------------
the anti-slavery impulse that takes hold in the American north goes through various stages:
(1) 1830s-1840s: an expansion of organization of American abolitionisms--tended to be a kind of Garrisonian moral suasion. largely devoted to this idea of reforming or changing the heart of American people. driven very much by the Second Great Awakening.
(2) 1837, with the birth of the Liberty Party--we see this moral line take a political turn. a political party begun by some quite serious abolitionists. in the 1840s, after minimal political success, the Liberal Party becomes the Free Soil Party, in 1848 (directly in response to the expansionist war with Mexico). directly committed to keeping the West (and, America's future) free from the institution of slavery.
it is a fear of slavery, a fear of the way slavery as a system could control America's future that comes to the front and center in American politics after the Mexican War (1846-1848, following formal annexation of Texas in 1845--effective annexation had come 9 years earlier, in 1836).
-----------
how did we get the Mexican War?
after the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1836, which was to be that great Western border that was seemingly limitless (for that matter, there was no Southern border decided upon). the US simply took Texas. Mexico never accepted the Rio Grande as the border. they assumed that, if there was a border, it would be the Nueses river, further North and East.
we've talked about how the Western expansion of the South was booming from 1820s-1840s--and there was a deep and abiding sentiment in American society, now known as Manifest Destiny, of inevitablity. a "racialism" that informed a deep commitment to these territories and their colonization.
this was seen, of course, in the policy re: Native Americans--Indian Removal Act (1830) under President Jackson in the 1830s physically removed Native Americans from their homelands. the five great tribes were, between early-mid 1830s were removed, outwest--to Oklahoma and further. that Indian removal was part and parcel of opening up this Southern frontier to the cotton boom. and the development of the greatest source of wealth in the Southern US.
in the presidential election of 1844, James K. Polk, an avid expansionist, Democrat, and a slaveholding cotton-planter from Tennesee, ran against Henry Clay (intellectual founder of the Whig party, which operated from 1833-1856 on a platform of supremacy of Congress, among other things), who also ran on an expansionist platform. But the Whigs tended to argue for expansion by negotiation(!). Polk said," negotiation=bullshit, elect me and I will give you Mexico and Oregon. "
it was a close election, Polk won by 36,000, out of 2.8 million. (Liberty Party won 16,000, mostly in NY). just before John Tyler left office, he pushed through the annexation of Texas in 1845 (not as a negotiated treaty, but as a State--i.e., without 2/3 approval of Congress). but James K. Polk became the sixth of the first ten American presidents who was a slaveholder. before the American Civil War, 2/3 of all American presidents were either slaveholders or deeply sympathetic. 2/3 of all members of the Supreme Court. James K. Polk was, as far as we know, the only president who bought and sold slaves from the Oval Office(!).
Polk ordered troops to move South to the Rio Grande in order to, in effect, see what the Mexicans would do. in early 1846, there was a brief attempt at negotiation (which was conducted in French, actually, because neither spoke the other's language). Mexico had never acknowledged the Rio Grande. there was a three-week stand-off along the river, and then on the 24th of April 1846 a Mexican cavalry contingent ambushed American troops on the other side. two weeks later, Zachary Taylor's dispatch reached to the White House, announcing that hostilities had commenced in Mexico. Polk received the news and immediately asked Congress for a declaration of war, saying "Mexico had invaded American soil(!)" Approved, even if with a number of abstentions from Northerners in Senate.
-----------
the first major expansionist war of American history. a flurry of speculation about what soldiers, settlers might find in Mexico. Herman Melville said, "the people here are all in a state of delirium... nothing is talked about but the halls of Montezuma." Illionis paper arguing "reptiles on the path of progressive democracy."
many abolitionists had very serious things to say about the war. James Russel Lowell: "a national crime committed in behoof of slavery, our national sin." Ralph Waldo Emerson (in his private journals, however): "the US will conquer Mexico, but it will be as though a man swallows arsenic... Mexico will poison us..."
by the end of 1846, the US had established dominion over the southern half of California. in 1847, US forces conquered Mexico City. and, by the end, a treaty was negotiated, on dictated terms. Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo, in the US lost 13,000 Americans in a year and a half of fighting, the vast majority of disease. an estimated 50,000 Mexicans died.1848, gave the US all of the western part of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado). Payment was $15 million.
that same year, 1848, was a tremendous turning point (as important in American history as in Europe, some argue). as these nationalistic revolutions against monarchy were breaking out all over Europe (Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France--some will succeed, some will fail), republican America was seizing territory, and launching an Empire on its own continent.
sitting in House of Representatives, young Congressman from IL, Abraham Lincoln, voted against the Mexican War every chance he got, calling Polk's justification "a half-insane mumbling of a fever dream."
------------
why all the fuss? what did the war unleash?
Daniel Webster, the great Whig of MA, probably the most powerful and important Northern politician, kept trying to argue that this wasn't really all that important. (the Southwest was all desert--we won't expand slavery there, "an imaginary Negro in an [inhospitable] place"
but why did so many people care?
first, Northerners (prof is admitting that he is generalizing): (1) they cared about this because there was a belief that slavery could indeed take place in the Southwest (in mining, e.g.)--and, lo and behold, what was discovered in California, but gold! and why couldn't you build canals/railroads/etc. with slaves? (2) lots of Northerners in politics favored non-extension on constitutional grounds. (3) didn't want to be complicit in the expansion of slavery--"don't ask me to vote, to create a new territory, which will become a Slave state." Northerners wanted to confine slavery to the South--make slavery sectional, but free labor national. (4) there was also racism, involved in this. they saw the West as a place that would be free for small, white farmers--free from competition from a powerful Southern oligarchy. (5) and finally, of course, there were some abolitionists around, who believed in the immorality of slavery's expansion. (and sometimes there would be a mix of all this: racism, moral opposition, etc..--Abraham Lincoln, e.g.)
the South: (1) cared, in part, because an assumption had set in that it was not just because it was considered the South's destiny, but also a necessity for its economic system ("to check the expansion of slavery would be to strangle the Southern economy and way of life"). (2) the growing slave population in existing Southern states was a possible powder-keg--they feared the "shrinking" South as an economic entity, as a political culture--an economy turning in on itself, possibly. (3) political party in the Congress. new states meant two new senators. in 1850, the ratio of slave states to free states was 1:1 (15 to 15). they wanted to sustain that parity. California will be the test case. (4) and then there's a question of State's rights--did anyone have the right to prohibit anyone else from taking their property anywhere? "you Northerners have no right to stop me from taking my wagon, my horse, and my slave, anywhere I wish."(5) there's a sense of honor, here--the legal standing of slavery in the Western territories stood as a measure of its moral standing everywhere. if you tell me that slavery is not a part of America's future, then you're telling me that it's wrong in my home. and that's unacceptable.
---------------
the fuss, then, is this is because this is really a debate about American's future.
there were four plans put in place:
(1) Wilmont Proviso: penned by a young Democratic HofR, who got up in the midst of the Mexican War, who got up during the debates and said, "in any new territory we gain from Mexico, there won't be slavery." it became the rallying cry of the Free Soil movement. all but one Northern legislature endorsed it; all the Southern legistlatures condemned it. it passed the House of Representatives, but did not pass the Senate (where the slave states still had parity). there was a good deal of racist support for the Proviso (and here we see the mixture of Northern anti-slavery sentiments)--"I have no sympathy for the slaves... I speak on behalf of the free white men..." Keep the West free of black people, essentially.
(2) State sovereignty (South's position): ultimately, no federal legislature, President, etc., had the authority to stop slavery's expansion.
(3) Popular sovereignty: the simple idea that there would be no act of Congress--take Congress out of the story, and simply let the people in the Western territory have a vote. let there be a referendum, popular democracy. "a charm of ambiguity"about this proposal. the problem, of course, was when do you hold the vote? do you establish a rule about the #'s of ppl there. Southerners wanted the vote later in the process, because it would take them a while to take slaves/their system out there.
(4) they went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery North of the parallel. half of California, of course, was North of that line. in the 1850s, people suggesting that we continue to draw careful geographic lines across the West.
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the election of 1848 was crucial: Democrats ran on a popular sovereignty platform, candidate was Lewis Cass. Zachary Taylor was the Whig candidate, recent war hero, "ol' rough an' ready." problem was, of course, that he was a Louisiana slaveholder, not very committed to Whig principles.
there were two new political offshoots, at this time, over this furore: (1) the conscience Whigs--a group of abolitionists created in MA who broke with the Whig party (and would never go back, harbinger of its future demise) (2) Free Soil Party, created in 1848, and ran Martin Van Buren, a former president. and they stood for one thing--stopping slavery's expansion. they took 10%!
Zachary Taylor was elected.
and, lo and behold, gold was discovered in California--and so suddenly there was a desperate need to find a middle-ground. on a night in January 1850, Henry Clay gets together with Daniel Webster and they cut a deal, that became the Compromise of 1850 (they're drunk, prof is noting).
that month, Clay would announce the five provisions of the Compromise before the Senate (holding a piece of George Washington's coffin, to boot!). people were very worried that the Union was going to unravel, and fall apart.
and indeed, it almost did.
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