Greetings Gentle Readers!!
I never took a lot of history classes on my way to a BA in biochemistry at UCB....in fact, I took as little as possible. I remember taking the "History of Western Europe After 1648".....I never took the class about what happened before that. But I graduated knowing more about modern European History and US History. And I decided to remedy that by taking a class on the US Civil War and doing a lot of reading on my own....what a surprise to learn that what I was taught in High School was propaganda, pure and simple....
Lincoln, the Great Emancipator".....wasn't this perfect human being whose primary desire was to free the slaves....not at all. He wanted to prevent the spread of slavery into new territories but was content for it to exist where is was. The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT free all of those enslaved it only freed slaves in the rebelling states....slaves in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, the so-called border states, were allowed to remain in bondage. A friend who took a class in African American Studies was taught that the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted as a way to get more former slaves to fight for the Union. After the passage of the 14th Amendment, which freed all of the slaves, Lincoln counselled for gradual freedom for the former slaves as they weren't quite ready for freedom....and then, right after the Civil War ended, he was killed and Andrew Jackson became president.
Jackson was from Tennessee, one of the rebel states, and while he wanted to keep the Union intact, he wasn't an active abolitionist. Such fanciful ideas as giving the land from the plantations for former slaves (the 40 acres and a mule) he nixed and restored the land to the plantation owners....weren't those the folks who started the Civil War and who deserved to be punished???
One of the few Institutions that helped the former slaves was the Freedman's Bureau, which actually took the complaints of the former slaves seriously and tries to help them.....this Bureau lasted 2 years and was then disbanded.
The treatment of the newly freed was appalling. There are too many stories of lynching for "being insolent", being "uppity", speaking to a white land owner before being addressed by him......in Georgia, Gen. Sherman, who was a racist jerk, actually did give land to the former slaves....land that was taken from them and given back to the original landowners. Not to mention the number of whites in government who felt that African Americans were intrinsically inferior and would not work without being whipped, ad nauseum. The only people who seemed to have values we might tolerate today were considered, at that time, rapid abolitionists without any sense.
Would that history was taught with a little more attention to what actually happened and why instead of dates and making heroes out of folks with a dubious character. It depresses me to read what happened to the formerly enslaved, the promises given and broken, the lack of any governmental responsibility for what their policies had promised and were believed. In reconstruction, things for the former slaves went back to their former condition with many being share choppers and being treated no better than slaves.
It makes me angry and upset to think about this.....so I'm going to start reading about something else.....maybe Napoleon.....maybe Tamerlane??? sounds more cheerful.
