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Post by crzhrs on Aug 21, 2007 13:17:35 GMT -6
<Actual history has always been available if not in the movies and stories and simpleton elementary school texts. That's real. It's just a question of reading it>
I think most of us here are fairly well read about history and other events. But that's due to making an effort to get the facts from a wide variety of sources and not rely on Hollywood, TV, school books, etc., which unfortunately far too many people do.
And even those of us who have read the countless number of books on the LBH have come to realize that one single battle could be interpreted so many different ways with authors and historians coming up with their version of what happened.
But for the most part many people get their "facts" from the wrong places.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 21, 2007 18:09:49 GMT -6
I'm puzzled, Merkel. Lincoln freed slaves in the South, where he could not yet enforce it . . . . Yes, so . . . ? Perhaps we should now tell the Cubans [or name your favorite oppressed/suppressed people] they have all the rights of American citizens. It would do as much good. My point was about history as it is being taught in the K-12 system throughout the US. Lincoln freed the slaves, the Great Emancipator, etc., doesn't quite tell the whole story, does it? It may have been a good political document for some of the reasons you mentioned, but it isn't taught as such.
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Post by Montana Bab on Aug 21, 2007 19:21:19 GMT -6
Oh my, yes, Elisabeth, excellant comments! (Reply # 135)
The sad reality is, though, that many of our presidents make decisions based solely on what their historical "legacy" will be. Oh, boy, could we use a Lincoln today!
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 22, 2007 4:10:39 GMT -6
Well, you're implying that because at the moment of the Emancipation being announced he couldn't enforce it in the areas discussed, he didn't emancipate anyone. But before he died, many or even most had been freed from the chains because of it. It was a restatement of/addition to war aims, and declarations of war - since the war hasn't been won yet or perhaps even fought - aren't discredited because their announced goals haven't happened yet.
That said, of course your point is correct: the over-simplified-to-the-point-of-incoherent-stupidity-crap, and badly written, which we inflict as history does much harm.
But it's also true that when Lincoln went to Richmond and sat in Davis' office, every move the President made outside was accompanied by many former slaves who felt emotional necessity to compose expressions of gratitude rather consistent with the belief that it was primarily Lincoln who was responsible for their wrists and ankles healing after the chains - in fact or metaphor - were cut.
Nobody that I know of among the ones most affected screamed "Hypocrite! Tease! Cruel Jokester! Our self esteem was seriously impacted when we heard the Emancipation Proclamation which you couldn't enforce yet and which you knew you couldn't enforce yet! And every season as freedom got closer our depression grew with the knowledge that because of your vanity or political need, we had to live a lie, albeit with something worth living for, and this for the first time in centuries! Explain yourself!"
Yes, there was far more to it than the proclamation, and it was as an adroit a political move as anything ever done and not entirely or even primarily done for humanitarian reasons, but Lincoln made it. And as more and more power swept into his hands with overwhelming military victories, he became more and more compassionate towards the South and stepped away from the abyss that Stanton and others were trying to push him into.
Lincoln made smarmy politics noble. Man, did we luck out.
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Post by elisabeth on Aug 22, 2007 5:43:13 GMT -6
Maybe he'll get a form of justice done him soon -- or, knowing Hollywood, maybe not. Rumours are afoot that Spielberg is planning a biopic based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book, to star Liam Neeson as Lincoln. (Not wild about that casting, myself; Neeson's a fine actor, but a barrel of laughs he is not ... and any decent portrayal has to give us his humour as well as his astuteness, integrity, nerve, etc.) Could be interesting, though.
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Post by Melani on Aug 22, 2007 15:48:15 GMT -6
There seems to have been an interesting pendulum swing, at least in California. When I was in K-12 in Illinois, we had primarily Western history in school, and just barely touched on places like China and Africa. When my daughter was in K-12 here in California, she studied the history of China, India and Africa, and had hardly any Western history. In her case, that didn't matter so much, since she got plenty of the latter at home, but I think a little more balance would be nice.
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