“Passing”

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Eireann

Yesterday’s post about Eliza, the 1/64th black slave sold into sexual slavery, reminded me of a discussion from my university race relations class. A quick Google search (possibly hampered by my increasingly foggy memory – university’s starting to feel like a long time ago) doesn’t reveal much on the “one fatal drop” theory we discussed, but the Brazilian alternative “mulatto escape hatch” brought up this Wikipedia article on racial identity.

What it comes down to is, when do slaveowning societies stop considering a mixed race person to be black? In Brazil, mulattoes were able to move far more smoothly into society. In America, “one fatal drop” of black blood meant you were forever considered to be black. So despite Eliza being only 1/64th black and looking like a white woman, she was considered a purchaser’s bargain, not a societal catch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_(racial_identity)

**UPDATE**

Found it! It’s the “One Drop Rule”

According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, “If you are not quite white, then you are black.” However, in Brazil, “If you are not quite black, then you are white.” Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier’s complexion when in Brazil: “We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, ‘What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?’ He turned his head to me and said, ‘I’m not black,’ . . . It simply paralyzed me. I couldn’t ask another question.”

The Washington Post story also described a Brazilian-born woman who for 30 years before immigrating to the United States considered herself a morena. Her skin had a caramel color that is roughly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. “I didn’t realize I was black until I came here,” she explained. “‘Where are you from?’ they ask me. I say I’m from Brazil. They say, ‘No, you are from Africa.’ They make me feel like I am denying who I am.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Confederate Gold

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Eireann

I’m just wrapping up the Shelby Foote audiobooks, and listening to the Confederate cabinet parsing out the remains of the treasury. I appear to be the last person on Earth for whom “Confederate Gold” didn’t ring any bells. Does this mean I’m too late to head South with my metal detector and spade?

Accordingly the group set out on their assigned mission, but unfortunately their scouts met Union troops before they got to Augusta. The group returned to the Chennault Plantation. Parker was unable to receive further instructions from Davis because he had already left Washington. It was on this night that the gold disappeared in a hijacking about 100 yards from the porch of the house. One theory says that the treasure was buried at the confluence of the Apalachee and Oconee rivers. Some say that the gold was divided among the locals…

As time went by, the Chennault plantation became known as the “golden farm,” and for many years after that people came there to search for the missing gold. Down through the years, many gold coins have been found along the dirt roads near the plantation following a heavy rain storm.

http://www.kudcom.com/www/gold.html

The Telegraph: A Series of Wires

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Eireann

Another fine Disunion piece, this one on the importance of the telegraph in disseminating war news to the nation. There is plenty of documentation of Lincoln’s time spent in the Telegraph Office, but I hadn’t realised the genesis nor the explanation for this habit. We have McClellan to thank for the many anecdotes relayed (ahem – little telegraph joke there) by the office’s staff. I’ve listed two more Library “holdings” below as examples.

Perhaps the most consequential adoption of the telegraph was in journalism. In the late 1840s, the establishment of the New York Associated Press made it possible for member newspapers to share the costs of the new technology in order to gather news. By the early 1850s, content from the A.P. comprised at least two columns of every major daily newspaper, and many readers considered this “telegraphic news” to be the most compelling and urgent part of the paper.

By 1860 the A.P. was distributing its news not just in New York but around the country, and this practice began to transform the very meaning of news. Local papers now had the capacity to report national events to their readers in a timely manner, so that “the news” gradually came to connote not just events, but events happening at almost that very moment. Prior to the telegraph, the distribution of news was regulated by the speed of the mail, but now news was potentially both instantaneous and simultaneous.

The immediacy of the news fed a public frenzy for the latest information. Circulation of New York papers rose by more than 40 percent during the war, and in other areas of the nation by as much as 63 percent. During a major battle, editors could expect to sell up to five times as many copies of their papers. While newspaper reporting remained highly competitive throughout the war, the A.P. came to dominate wire news, and this also served the interests of the Administration. The A.P. had regular access to the president and the War Department, and was given exclusive bulletins and announcements to disseminate to the papers. In exchange, the A.P. gave the administration a way to reach the public in a manner that could be carefully controlled and rapidly disseminated.

The Disunion article can be found here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/news-of-the-wired/?ref=opinion%2F%3Fsmid%3Dfb-disunion

The free books are:
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, by David Homer Bates – http://www.archive.org/details/lincolnintelegr01bategoog. This one is promising! A quick search for “Tad” (there was a great anecdote about Tad Lincoln and a bottle of the Telegraph Office’s ink) reveals a fair number of hits, and there are some facsimiles of Lincoln’s handwritten messages in the HTML version.

A similar, yet much shorter, book is available here: http://www.archive.org/details/glimpseofuniteds00wils – William Bender Wilson’s A Glimpse of the United States Military Telegraph Corps. There are a few, less consequential, personal anecdotes about Lincoln. Still, any time with Lincoln is well spent.

How Egypt Won the War

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Eireann

One of the things I love about history is the ripple effect: One splash in America’s pond leads to ripples that extend North to Canada, South to Mexico, and apparently even East to Egypt.

In less than a year’s time, Southern cotton exports would plummet by more than 50 percent and the European superpowers needed to quickly find a new source. It was then that the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, Said Pasha (who supported the Union and would follow the Ottoman policy of barring Confederate ships from Ottoman waters), saw an opportunity and ordered that his vast holdings of land in the Lower Nile be turned towards the production of cotton. Washington, delighted by the prospect, went so far as to send an official to Egypt to urge Said Pasha to produce even more cotton. Egypt, which previously accounted for only 3 percent of cotton exports to Europe, saw its profits boom from $7 million to $77 million in just four years. With Egyptian cotton flooding the European market, the demand for Southern cotton disappeared, as did European support for the Confederacy that was based, in part, on a need for the South’s cotton. This, in turn, crippled the Southern wartime economy that relied heavily on a demand for cotton, thus hastening the end of the war.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/02/192091.html

Confederates in Canada

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Eireann

I caught a passing mention, years ago, that Jubal Early’s memoirs had been written in Toronto, but wasn’t able to follow any trails to more local information. This website was interesting, though, in providing quite a long list of famous Confederates who lived here or in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which seems to have become a kind of Richmond North, post-war.

The war’s end brought General John C. Breckenridge and his family to Toronto first, and then Niagara on the Lake in May 1866. Breckenridge served as vice president of the United States under James Buchanan 1856-1860, was a candidate for president in 1860 on the Southern Democratic ticket, (received nearly 850,000 votes) and a Major General in the Confederate service. He and his family rented a small home on Front Street overlooking Lake Ontario for twelve dollars a month. Immediately opposite the home on the New York bank of the river was Fort Niagara. Breckenridge gazed at the fort often, “with its flag flying to refresh our patriotism.” To him it seemed both a symbol of the Founder’s republic he tried to save, as well as a taunt that threatened arrest should he cross the river.

One who frequently visited the exiled Southerners was Lt. Colonel George T. Denison, commander of the Canadian Governor-General’s Body Guard, another was General Breckenridge’s “beloved old adjutant,” J. Stoddard Johnston of New Orleans. Johnston was the nephew of General Albert Sidney Johnston, and also served as an aid to Generals Bragg and Buckner. General George Pickett was also in Canada, though perhaps living in Toronto. Soon to join the ex-vice president at Niagara on the Lake were Confederate commissioner to England James M. Mason, General’s Jubal Early, John McCausland, Richard Taylor (son of General Zachary Taylor), John Bell Hood, Henry Heth, William Preston; and a host of lesser officers and their families. They often commiserated in the shade at Mason’s home, “discussing military matters and the practice of the soldiers art under the modern conditions inaugurated” by the War Between the States.

There’s even an account of Jefferson Davis coming for an extended visit, and being greeted by a cheering throng on Yonge Street.

Davis’ departure invoked this tribute from The Niagara Mail:

It is a subject of pride to Canadians that they can offer the hospitality of the soil and the shelter of the British flag to so many worthy men who are proscribed and banished from their homes for no crime at all, viz. to assert the right of every people to choose their own form of government.

One assumes the pro-Southern rhetoric can be attributed to the fear of many Canadians (D’Arcy McGee is quoted on this earlier) that the US would use its standing army to get that whole Manifest Destiny thing out of the way, at last.

http://www.cfhi.net/WilmingtonsWartimeCanadianConnection.php

Civil War Ballooning

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Eireann

God, I love nerds. The speaker in this video is fantastic: Speaks for 11 minutes without notes, with a great deal of enthusiasm, and even with a stereotypical “retainer lisp” on Thaddeus Lowe’s involvement in the war, covering everything from the technology to the chronology of the Balloon Corps. A terrific little introduction to a fascinating sidenote of the war.

Civil War Trading Cards

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Eireann

One of the members of my Civil War Round Table reminded me – in stunning fashion, by bringing in his entire set – that Topps issued a series of trading cards in the 1960s, commemorating the centennial. They’re beautifully rendered in gory detail for their target market of pre-teen boys: A painting on the front depicts a lurid “news” item, e.g.

Topps Civil War Trading Card Burst of Fire

which is reported in much drier detail on the back, e.g.
Topps Civil War Trading Card Burst of Fire News

The link below boasts the entire collection, which is heavy on “Death” and “Doom” titles. Sadly I can’t find any site that shows the front and back side by side. (Now I’m even more jealous of Neil, who can flip through and read at his leisure!)

http://www.bobheffner.com/cwn/index.shtml

Salt Works

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Eireann

Salt. Not something we think about much today – it’s cheaply bought and always available. But this article explains how it was once a commodity, and the importance of Florida’s salt works to the Confederacy.

During the Civil War, Florida was not only a main supplier of beef cattle to frontline Confederate troops but it was also one of the top producers of salt.

Prior to the invention of refrigerators, salt was used to preserve a variety of meats, such as pork, fish, and of course the beef cattle shipped to the frontline troops…

By 1863, the Union put a strain on the shipment of Florida’s beef cattle, and its raids severely impacted the production of salt, with the larger salt works becoming key targets. With no beef supply or salt to preserve it with, the food line for the Confederate Army was cut.

(This New Port Richey Patch is doing some neat little articles on the war. I’m keeping an eye on them!)

http://newportrichey.patch.com/articles/salt-springs-not-just-natural-beauty

Newspaper Dynasty

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Eireann

I opened this article thinking it would be about Chicago newspaper tycoon and erstwhile Lincoln advisor, Joseph Medill, and it is, in a way: Turns out that Medill and his grandchildren were responsible for three of America’s best-known dailies: The Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Washington Herald, which was eventually merged into the Washington Post.

Medill had two contentious, competitive daughters — “the worst two she-devils in all Chicago,” a public evaluation from none other than their own father. Older sister Nellie married newspaperman Robert Patterson, who worked for his father-in-law. Kate married Robert McCormick, a diplomat. Each had two children.

Of Kate’s sons, Joseph Medill McCormick served in the U.S. Senate but, plagued by alcoholism and depression, killed himself at 47. The self-styled “Colonel” Robert Rutherford McCormick grew The Tribune into “the world’s greatest newspaper.”

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111231/FEATURES04/312310033/Book-review-Newspaper-Titan-Infamous-Life-Monumental-Times-Cissy-Patterson-?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cs

Christmas on the Homefront

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Eireann

An article from The News Leader is more interesting than the weak lede would have you believe. Offering a survey of Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus drawings, it also tacks on an anecdote about Wadsworth Longfellow’s Christmas poem. A nice little read for Christmas Day.

Thomas Nast's Santa Claus

Nast created a character for Harper’s based on a fourth century bishop in Asia Minor named St. Nicholas, who, over time, had become known to the Western world as the patron saint of children and a symbol of Christmas. But until 1862, St. Nick was more often than not portrayed as tall and cadaverous. One artist in 1845 even made him look like a leprechaun with a police record.

Nast took the character, fattened him up and dressed him in a gaudy red suit with white trim. A flowing white beard and bulging bag of toys completed the picture.

I’ve been listening for years to Johnny Cash performing the full poem, without realising it had a Civil War origin!

Merry Christmas.

http://www.newsleader.com/article/20111224/LIFESTYLE22/112240311

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