Difference between revisions of "471A3--Week 6 Questions/Comments--Tuesday"
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(New page: On page 229, Blight discusses Joel Chandler Harris's story "The Comedy of War" he describes an impending battle on Squire Farnborogh's farm. Apparently the Squire has a son fighting in eac...) |
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| − | On page 229, Blight discusses Joel Chandler Harris' | + | On page 229, Blight discusses Joel Chandler Harris' story "The Comedy of War" he describes an impending battle on Squire Farnborogh's farm. Apparently the Squire has a son fighting in each army. Although the story is fiction is there truth to the fact that brother faced brother, and how common place was this? --R. King |
Blight seems to be saying that the Underground Railroad is a myth, is this true? -- R. King | Blight seems to be saying that the Underground Railroad is a myth, is this true? -- R. King | ||
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| + | Is DuBois' address an attempt to refute the Lost Cause ideology? -- R. King | ||
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| + | We had discussed to a limited extent in class the ways in which classical ideals played into a creation of the memory of the Confederacy. DuBois seems to strike at the heart of this when he says, "we seek in vain the Teutonic deification of Self, and Roman brute force." Why else would he feel it necessary to base his speech around the glories of the Teutonic or the Roman Empires, unless he saw the Lost Cause becoming institutionalized?- DRadtke | ||
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| + | DuBois argues that the nation that Jefferson Davis represented was getting in the way of civilization of the United States. How might Southern Lost Causers counter this argument? -MK | ||
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| + | The rhetoric that Frederick Douglass uses in his Decoration Day speech is similar to the rhetoric of the Lost Cause- especially when speaking about how the future generations would "study the deeds of fathers.." Are their motivations similar? -MK | ||
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| + | MK, I wondered the same thing regarding the motivations of Douglass and the Lost Causers. I would be tempted to say yes, if only because I have to imagine both sides saw themselves as oppressed and wanting to raise national (or at least regional) awareness towards what each side viewed as their plight, regardless of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of their claims. I read this quote as very similar to the idea of "he who forgets will be destined to remember." And, if anyone else now has Pearl Jam's "Betterman" stuck in their head like I do, I apologize. --Cash | ||
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| + | On page 214, Blight discusses that the Lost Cause was born at Appomattox in the dignified manner of Robert E. Lee's surrender and in his attribution of defeat to "superior numbers of resources," surely the spirit of reunion was, in part, born there as well. Do you agree with this statement that the Lost cause was created when the Civil War ended due to Grant's lenient terms to Robert E. Lee? Nick | ||
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| + | Alexander Crummell and Fredrick Douglass had differing interpretations concerning the remembrance of slavery and emancipation. Both Douglass and Crummel sought racial uplight, but one would take the risk of sustaining a sense of historic grievance against America as the means of making the nation fulfill its promises. For example Crummell sought to redeem Africa, and to inspire moral values in the freedpeople by the example of an elite black leadership while Douglass embraced the same values but sought to redeem the civil and political rights established by the verdicts of Fort Wagner and Appomattox. Which view became the chief perspective of African American remembrance? Nick | ||
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| + | The story of "Meh Lady" presents a rather utopian view of life in the South. Not only are the slaves happy there, but so too is a Yankee soldier, who marries Meh Lady. The characters view the events after the fall of Richmond as a collapse of a civilization. However, the end provides the hope that a new country could rise from the metaphorical ashes. What was it about Southern society that made it so infallible? It is telling, in my opinion, that the faithful slave narrative developed, clearly as an attempt to reconcile a vision of the South as a utopia, even with an institution like slavery at its core.- DRadtke | ||
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| + | Albion Tourgee wanted people to remember "only the causes that underlay the struggle and the results that followed from it." But would most Americans have agreed with Tourgee about what the causes were? -GStan. | ||
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| + | It's interesting that Du Bois would call for the strong to submit in order for all to advance. I wonder if he only meant that in a racial sense; he was known for being elitist. He believed the advancement of his people lay with its "Talented Tenth." I'm not sure where this speech fits into that message. -GStan. | ||
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| + | Blight’s chapter on the literature on reunion and its discontents in the beginning (like in every chapter) the fight about what the war was fought over. Most of Blight’s arguments center on this theme and how both sides differed. Later in the chapter he describes literature written about combat and prisons during the war. Blight discusses soldier’s romanticized version of combat and generals arguing their roles in the war. Was all literature on the war centered on these subjects? Was there not literature on the war itself instead of its causes? Were there any debates about battle outcomes, decision made during the war or political actions, like in modern scholarship? Logan T | ||
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| + | On page 313 Blight explains that slave narratives rejected the plantation myth. Did ex-slaves want the institution of slavery to be remembered as it really was for reasons other than morality? Did former slaves care about an accurate account of slavery in the same way historians do today? Did they want people to remember that not every slave worked on a huge plantation? Or that slaves didn’t fight back by just running away but broke tools and reframed from working as hard as the master liked. Did former slaves want people to remember that slavery existed in many forms and slaves resisted there masters in many different ways. Logan T | ||
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| + | Do you think Blight's comparison of post-Civil War writers (Grant, Tourgee, Page, etc.) is an accurate reflection of the competing ideas of the war and the South in the public sphere during the time of their publications? And what about Tourgee's idea regarding the "forgetting" of the war? Obviously people hadn't forgotten about it, so what did he mean by this thought?- Victoria Y. | ||
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| + | Victoria, I wonder if this was an initial response, much like we have talked about in class. Perhaps they were merely trying to forget as a manner of initially attempting to "get over" the fact that they had lost the war. I agree, clearly no one had forgotten and no one was GOING TO forget, however, I think at least for a while, everyone needed to forget. I know I've brought this point up a couple times, but it certainly seems relevant. I think the psychological effects of losing a war are going to be incredibly prevalent in how the nation chooses to remember said war. Moving forward about 110 years, just think of how Americans viewed Vietnam... --Cash | ||
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| + | Tourgee's argument about how the American people had "gone so far that there was even a tendency to forget altogether the fact that a war could not be waged for the preservation of the union unless someone was responsible for the attempt to destroy it" brings up a big point against reconciliation, and the popular acceptance of southern literature. Should the US, specifically the union have put more effort into remembering the specific causes of the war like Touragee argued, or was it better for the nation overall to embrace the reconciliationist view like it did. -AJ L. | ||
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| + | When Blight talks about Siebert and his research into the underground railroad he mentions the seeming belief of the people who had been a part of the underground, or who's ancestors had, that they had "permanently destroyed slavery and its related problems". Did this belief, or similar ones among other northerners, contribute to the lack of effort in fighting against jim crow laws? or was it more because they were tired of fighting at that point? - AJ L. | ||
