"irrepressible conflict?" Topic

My current big project is a curriculum, and in aid of that I am doing a series of "Teaching the Tough Topics" essays. One on the Revolutionary War has already been posted.

Next three posts will be the latest, on the causes of the CW. We have been here before, and in fact I have benefitted from (some) of the comments on TMP from previous threads. Lots of new stuff here, though. So give it a read and let me know what you think. (Any errors you spot, definitely tell me about.)

Here's the first segment of three:

TEACHING THE "IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT":
WAS THE CIVIL WAR INEVITABLE? AND WAS SLAVERY ITS SOLE CAUSE?

Setting the problem:
During the 1858 midterm elections Republican Senator William Seward declared that an "irrepressible conflict" was brewing over slavery and that the United States, as a result, must sooner or later become all slave or all free. Seward argued that the Democrats were the party of the "slave power" and must be defeated. Seward's rhetoric was widely regarded as too extreme and weakened his appeal even among Republicans, contributing to Lincoln replacing him as the Republican nominee in 1860. Does the fact that the war did indeed come prove Seward was correct? Or does the fact that even most Republicans disagreed with him three years before the war mean it was NOT irrepressible?

Note to teachers:

As is usually the case, this topic requires careful definitions and distinctions. What do we mean by "Civil War" and what do we mean by "inevitable" or "irrepressible"? Do we mean the actual conflict of 1861-65, or do we mean some sort of war, sooner or later? And almost any event in history becomes inevitable at some point, if only when it is just about to happen. And on the other hand, almost nothing (except death and taxes) is inevitable if we start far enough back. So the proper question is, AT WHAT POINT, or WHEN, did an event become inevitable?
This is a good occasion to impress upon students the importance of precision in our thinking about complex issues. (See three of those complexities discussed in the next section.)

One useful metaphor: an elderly man has several serious underlying conditions such as diabetes, and also is not eating a healthy diet. He is not, however, dying. Then a flu bug bites him and he does die, even though 99% of those who catch this flu survive it. So what caused the old gentleman's demise? It was neither his underlying weakness, nor the flu, but the two acting in combination; neither alone would have killed him.
Or, in chemistry, an agent may be inert, until a catalyst is added, whereupon it bursts into flames. Again, it Is a combination of things that produces a reaction.

That slavery was in some way and to some degree the "cause" of the 1861-1865 conflict is undeniable. But historians generally hold to a doctrine of "multiple causation." Complex events have complex causes, and the Civil War was about as complex as any event in history. Was it also the result of a combination of factors? And if so, what might those other factors have been?

THREE COMPLEXITIES:
First, the British empire emancipated all of its many slaves, after a fierce political debate, in 1833, without a war. Perhaps there would have been violence, had the southern colonies still been part of the empire. Or perhaps not. But the British showed that it was possible to end the evil system peaceably.

Second, slavery within the US was the subject of a number of compromises, from the Declaration of Independence (from which language condemning slavery had to be dropped to win southern support) though the Constitution's three-fifths compromise, to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. All of these "worked" about as well as compromises do, if only by postponing a final resolution of the big question. Then the Compromise of 1850 broke down within a few years, and a last ditch attempt at a compromise, the Corwin Amendment that would have protected slavery in the states where it already existed, was rejected by the south. If slavery could be compromised for more than half a century, and then could not be, the reasonable question is, what changed?

Third, the nation came rather close to a civil war during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. The cause was not slavery but the protective tariff, that took money from the agricultural south and gave it to the commercial and industrial north. It will not do to insist that slavery underlay the tariff dispute; that gets cause-and-effect backwards. It was geography, including the warm climate, the navigable rivers, and the fertile soil, that tied the south to profitable crops like tobacco and cotton; such agriculture required a large and controllable work force, which was initially white indentured servants and then changed to African chattel slavery. The tariff would have been (and was) a huge source of political conflict, potentially to the point of disunion and war, regardless of what labor system the south relied on.

THE UNDERLYING OR ROOT CAUSES:
The first is certainly slavery. That this wicked institution is incompatible with the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with its emphasis on equality and natural rights, was evident from the start. Founders including Washington and Jefferson were keenly aware of the problem, and did what they could to alleviate if not to remove it. Slavery has been called America's "original sin," tainting its otherwise good creation, and there is merit to that metaphor.

A key book is Winthrop Jordan's WHITE OVER BLACK (1968), which examines in detail the transition in Virginia from indentures to slavery. In a pre-industrial economy most of the labor had to be done by a large number of unskilled or semi-skilled workers, the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water." Somebody had to do the scut work, the heavy lifting. And when the staple crops leach nitrates from the soil and exhaust the land within five or six years, as both tobacco and cotton do, the work force had to be moved at regular short intervals. The turmoil in Virginia during Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 showed the difficulty of controlling white indentured servants, who also had to be replaced when their term of service was up (and then often became competitors for labor as they became planters themselves.) Plus, as long as the Indians were a threat, as they still were in 1676, the white servants needed to be armed, and so would be even harder to control. So the advantages of African slaves whose service was lifelong, who reproduced themselves, and who were readily distinguishable, were very clear. Basically it was black slavery that enabled white freedom, and this was recognized from the start. Without the Africans, it would have been poor whites laboring in the fields.

A second underlying cause was the ill-defined and loose structure of the American federal union. The relative power of the national ("federal") and state governments was an issue right from the beginning. The two dominant men in Washington's first cabinet were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who feared the new government was too powerful, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who feared it was too weak. This came to a head in the debate over the chartering of the national bank; the Founders had actually debated giving Congress the explicit power to charter corporations, and had failed to do so. But Hamilton's argument for the "necessary and proper" or "elastic clause" prevailed and the bank was chartered. Jefferson eventually left the cabinet and, with James Madison, formed an opposition party. And then in 1798 they authored the Virginia (Madison) and Kentucky (Jefferson) Resolutions in which those state legislatures declared the Alien and Sedition Acts to be tyrannical and unconstitutional, and suggested that a state might intercede to protect its citizens against such an abuse of power. That was not actually done, and the resolutions can be understood as campaign documents for the Congressional election of that year, but the idea of nullification can be traced back to the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The south came to be identified with the states rights philosophy, because of the nullification crisis of 1832-33 and then secession in 1860. But in fact states rights including nullification or secession were at least discussed if not appealed to on a number of occasions by northern states or interests: examples include the Essex Junto (1803, in reaction against the Louisiana Purchase), the Hartford Convention (1814-15), and the opposition ("Personal Liberty Laws") to the Fugitive Slave Act during the 1850s. With the south in power during the "Virginia Dynasty" of 1801-1825, the main source of secessionist rhetoric was New England.

But "states rights" of this nature did not prevail and probably could not have prevailed in the long run, and the example of Jefferson as president shows why. Jefferson bought Louisiana, which he himself acknowledged he had no power to do (under his strict construction of the Constitution); but it was too good a deal not to take. Jefferson's Embargo Act was even more outside any republican notion of what the Constitution permitted, and was immensely unpopular in New England. And when the leading advocate of strict construction abandons that idea, at least twice, it destroys it except as an argument to be made by whichever party is currently out of power. So the states rights argument is only made by the political losers, who mostly drop it as soon as they win an election and once again have power that they do not wish to see checked or contained.

Yet the states do retain some sovereignty, as has been recognized many times by the Supreme Court. In present times we still have "sanctuary" cities in which controversial laws regarding guns, or abortion, are opposed by local or state authority. It might go too far to say that the looseness or lack of clarity in the federal system, in the boundary of state versus national power, was a major cause of the Civil War, but it can certainly be said that this looseness allowed if not encouraged it.

A third root cause is WESTWARD EXPANSION

If there had been no west, if the continent had ended where the Mississippi River is, would the south still have slavery today? No, for several reasons. World opinion turned against slavery during the 19th century, and the south would have become as much a pariah as South Africa under apartheid. But even more importantly, industrialization would have lessened if not removed the need for a large population of unskilled workers, and also changed the southern economy. Slavery (or a dependent working class of some sort) was compatible with factory work, but factories did not require it the way cotton did. And Lincoln (and Seward) was right: the nation could not have survived indefinitely half slave and half free; the incompatibility of the ideals of the Declaration and the practice of chattel slavery was too obvious.

But would a civil war have been required to end slavery? Both north and south believed, correctly, that slavery had either to expand or to die. Without the west to grow into, its inherent inefficiencies (and the exhaustion of the soil) would have killed it eventually.

It is an unanswerable question, but worth posing by teachers: if we knew that slavery would be abandoned, without war, by, say, 1900, would that have been preferable to ending it in 1865 with a war costing 600,000 lives? Slavery was a great evil, but so was the war. Calculating which would have been worse, a longer "time on the cross" for the slaves versus a bloodbath to end it thirty-five years early, would be something upon which reasonable people might disagree, and only God would know.

The reality was that each time the country grew into the west, a new compromise about slavery had to be constructed. The new land would be organized into territories, which would eventually enter as new states, slave or free, potentially changing the balance of power in the US Senate and, more broadly, defining and shaping the future of the country. The two great acquisitions were the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and the Mexican Cession of 1848. The first was resolved for a generation by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which lasted until the second happened. But the Compromise of 1850 was cobbled together and began to break apart almost immediately. The issue of slavery in the west could be settled by compromise in 1820 but not in 1850. So what happened in between those dates?

CATALYSTS

Nat Turner's uprising in 1833 was almost certainly the crucial event, the pivot, the point at which the nature both of slavery and of the debate over it changed drastically. It seemed to come out of the blue, but on the other hand seems to be a predictable human eruption of deeply buried outrage against inhumanity. Nothing dependent on a single individual can be said to be inevitable; what if that person had never lived? But the human spirit cannot be confined under great pressure indefinitely; somewhere, sometime, something will blow.

It is important to try to understand slavery in Anglo North America within the larger context of slavery throughout the New World. In general, slavery in Latin America was somewhat less racially based, but on the other hand far more deadly. The Spanish and Portuguese had had centuries of experience interacting with the "Moors" of southern Iberia and North Africa, fighting them as equals and also coexisting with them peacefully. There was no automatic assumption of inferiority towards the darker skinned. But the conditions of slavery (including the climate) were much harsher, and there was a constant need to replenish the slave work force, which typically died before it could reproduce itself. (There was also often an imbalance of men and women.)

Between 1500 and 1800 more than 10 million Africans were carried to the Americas. Fewer than 400,000 of them went to British North America or (after 1776) to the US. (For estimates of the transatlantic slave trade, see slavevoyages.org). Yet today the US has the largest number of African-descent citizens: more than 40 million, with Brazil second at about 20 million, followed by Haiti with about 10 million. So the conditions of slavery on, say, the coffee plantations of Brazil or the sugar plantations of the Caribbean were far harsher – deadly! – in comparison to tobacco or cotton plantations in Virginia.

If Nat Turner had lived in Brazil, his revolt would barely merit a footnote, because slave insurrections were both frequent and very large. (Turner's rebellion lasted three days and resulted in the deaths of about 80 whites and about 120 blacks.) Brazilian slaves escaped to the frontier, formed communities, and waged war against the planters. And in the Caribbean Haiti (known then as St. Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas jointly averaged one major revolt every two years between 1731 and 1832.

This relative lack of slave insurrections in North America when compared to Latin America is explained partly by the harsher conditions in the southern continent, but also by the imbalance of power in what became the US, where the whites were more numerous, well-armed, and had stable governments, and the frontier was not much of a haven for runaway slaves. (Florida was the exception, as the Seminoles welcomed new men into their society. But the Cherokees and Choctaws and Creeks held slaves themselves.)

So it was easy enough for the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas to reassure themselves as to their benign treatment of their "people" – the standard term for the slaves. But Nat Turner's master had treated him kindly – Turner himself acknowledged this – which made his deadly uprising all the more shocking. After Turner the planters could not easily tell themselves comforting lies, and the assurances of paternalism were replaced by a lively and justified fear – which the Abolitionists helped kindle into paranoia.

In 1829 the black abolitionist David Walker published AN APPEAL TO THE COLOURED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD in which he argued that black slaves should become responsible for securing their own liberty, not just through prayer but by action. Walker did not specifically recommend violence, but "action" was a broad enough term to encompass it. And there is no direct evidence that Nat Turner ever read Walker, but copies of it were smuggled into the south by 1830, and it is (and was, for the planters) an easy causal link to assume. When the Virginia legislature debated slavery after Nat Turner's revolt, and how similar uprisings might be prevented, the fear prevailed over any hope. Strict regulations were imposed throughout the south, including slave illiteracy and the censoring of the mail.

Teachers should help students understand what the white south increasingly did NOT understand, that the Abolitionists were a small (albeit vocal!) fraction of northern opinion. Some large number of northerners opposed the Abolitionists strongly enough to riot against them, with the worst case being the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois in 1837. (And when John Brown learned of the murder, he consecrated his life to the Abolitionist cause.) The reasons for such riots are complex; see Leonard L. Richards, GENTLEMEN OF PROPERTY AND STANDING: ANTI-ABOLITION MOBS IN JACKSONIAN AMERICA (1971). But they included a recognition that quite a lot of northern prosperity was based on southern cotton. The cotton plantations were all in the south but the banks, insurance companies, textile mills, and merchants who dealt in the crop were mostly in the north. And southern cotton exports to Britain and France were a major source of foreign capital fueling northern economic development.

Teachers should also be sure that students distinguish between slavery and racism. The first was found only in the south (and the border states) but the second might be found anywhere. Almost every white citizen in 1830 held racial views that we today would find repugnant. (That would be true throughout the world, and not just in the United States.) The reasons why the Underground Railroad had to go all the way to Canada include not just the federal fugitive slave acts, but also private "slave catchers" who made money returning escaped slaves to their masters. And in some parts of the north, such as the southern parts of Indiana and Illinois, public opinion was decidedly against the Abolitionists. (These same areas would produce the "Copperheads," the anti-war northern Democrats, whom Lincoln had to act against.)

The majority of northerners eventually came to agree with Republicans such as Lincoln, that slavery must be kept out of the western territories, but eliminating it from states where it already existed was not worth the risk of a civil war. Nobody knows exactly how many committed Abolitionists there were, but it is unlikely to have been more than 5% of the north, perhaps doubling to 10% by 1860.

Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison agreed with the south that the US Constitution recognized and protected slavery in the states where it existed. (Lincoln also agreed, and worked to get the 13th Amendment passed.) But the Abolitionists for that reason advocated abandoning the Constitution, which was not a persuasive position for most northerners. This was one of several reasons why the Republicans emphasized keeping slavery out of the territories, because Congress did have that power under the Constitution.

The issue of slavery in the western territories became the flashpoint, first politically and then in actual violence in "Bleeding Kansas." It was the issue that the last remaining national party, the Democrats, struggled with and proved unable to solve. Stephen Douglas's "popular sovereignty" was a disaster, provoking an influx of armed and aggressive settlers from north and south into Kansas. The Abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of UNCLE TOM;S CABIN) proclaimed that when it came to doing God's work in Kansas, a rifle had greater moral agency than the Bible. Beecher raised money to buy Sharps repeating rifles for the free-state settlers in Kansas, which were shipped in boxes labeled Bibles, and which became known as "Beecher's Bibles."

Teachers may point out to students that this portrayal of John Brown – cruciform, with his hair resembling a crown of thorns – shows him with a Bible in each hand: the book and the rifle. A slave family cowers behind him, menaced by "border ruffians," and protected by armed Abolitionists, with a dead Union and Confederate soldier at his feet. Beecher is there too. (It is part of a mural in the Kansas State Capitol.)

(insert picture)

Teachers should emphasize that John Brown never acted alone. He always had armed followers, including his sons (three of whom were killed, one in Kansas and two at Harper's Ferry). He received significant support, financial and also political and social, from wealthy and influential Abolitionists. He was associated with both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, both of whom were involved in his plans for what became the Harper's Ferry raid. In short, the Abolitionist movement was a spear aimed at the heart of slavery, and Brown was the tip of that spear.

Any teacher who wants students to debate whether and when deadly violence is appropriate in a good cause may use John Brown as an example. His cause was as just as it gets, but he was also a mass murderer and a traitor. Brown was a fanatic, and a terrorist, and was also very shrewd. The wealthy Abolitionists of Boston used him, and he allowed it and in turn used them. And he quite deliberately played upon the south's paranoia, leaving behind (in the farmhouse near Harper's Ferry) a map covered with cryptic symbols suggesting that other slave up-risings like his were planned; the south went nuts. (See "John Brown's Private War" in THE BURDEN OF SOUTHERN HISTORY by C. Vann Woodward.)

FROM A DIVIDED CULTURE TO DIVIDED POLITICS TO WAR

Politics, it is said, is downstream from culture. And by 1849 the American culture was thoroughly divided. The three major Protestant denominations split, with the northern churches declaring "no communion with slaveholders." The Presbyterians divided in 1837, the Methodists in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845. This is a good occasion for teachers to remind their students of Max Weber's distinction between the ethic of moral conviction versus the ethic of responsibility, "two different ways of thinking about how leaders address moral problems in politics.

The ethic of moral conviction was what propelled Garrison; it is the point of view that says one must be true to one's principles and do the right thing, at whatever cost. It has a purity about it that is admirable. The ethic of responsibility takes a different view. It guides moderates (and, as we shall see, Lincoln himself) to the belief that leaders must take responsibility for the totality of effects arising out of their actions. It takes into account the tragic character of history, the fact that one can easily do the right thing at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and do an immense amount of damage to good and innocent parties in the process." (See LAND OF HOPE p. 128) The northern churches were right to condemn slavery, but their casting out of slaveholders from Christian community made disunion and war more likely.

With the churches split, the Democratic Party was the last remaining major American institution with adherents in all sections, and its splintering into three factions in the 1860 election was politics catching up (or falling down) to where the culture already was.

An alternate theory is that a "blundering generation" of ineffective political leaders replaced the dominant triumvirate of Henry Clay (the "Great Compromiser') and John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, all of whom died soon after the Compromise of 1850 (Calhoun in 1850, the other two in 1852).. While each of these senators had been an effective spokesman for his section (west, south, and New England) they all sought sectional advantage within a union that they were able and willing to compromise to preserve.. Their replacements, it is suggested, were either unable or unwilling to curb the extremists and allowed things to get out of hand.

There is some merit to this argument, but it does not account for the change in the major issues with which the political parties and their leaders were dealing. Between 1820 and 1845 slavery was simply not much debated; the House of Representatives even had a "gag rule" to that effect. When the argument is about money, or even about land, it is usually possible to "split the difference" to make a compromise both sides can accept. But when the issue is fundamental moral values and principles, and perceived existential threats, compromise becomes difficult if not impossible. Southerners saw abolitionist conspiracies to murder them in their beds (as Nat Turner had in fact done); northerners spoke of a "slave power" that controlled the national government, thwarting the reasonable democratic demands of the more populous north, and demanding the acquisition of Cuba (the Ostend Manifesto) as a new place for slavery to expand. Mutually reenforcing paranoias grew. It is by no means clear that Clay and Calhoun and Webster would have had much success in managing these conflicts, although Calhoun's idea of "concurrent majorities" was an effort to do so.

A CONCLUSON

No one thought harder about the war's causes and meaning than the man who had to wage it, and it is appropriate to end with Lincoln's words, from his Second Inaugural:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Will all this be on the test? Jeez…

+1 John H

Well, yes. That is the idea. This is my recommendation of how this topic ought to be taught. The target audience, to some extent, is the high school coach with minimal subject knowledge who is tasked with teaching US to 10th or 11th graders.

So the question, John, is, if your kid were in high school, is this how you would want this important topic to be taught?

I think the argument underpinning slavery can be traced back to the founding of the USA. When they published "All men are created equal" this was a new concept. Before that there was a pecking order, with the king on top, nobles, merchants, droogies and finally slaves on the bottom; so they were simply another step on the ladder. Once the founding fathers published that all were equal the argument changed to a simple question of whether slaves were men or not. There was plenty of proof that they were, and the 2/3 compromise proved that people were thinking in that direction. Eventually it had to come to a head.
Also, I don't subscribe to the theory that slavery was doomed regardless. Since slavery still exists in various parts of the world there must be some circumstances where it makes sense economically, and some slave owner in the US would have figured a way to keep them too. The racism that underpinned black slavery didn't start bleeding out until after WW2.

Yes, it took the Holocaust to discredit racism as a thery.

For an advanced college course, maybe.
For a high school course taught by a football coach? Are you serious? Particularly at a public school, when your "syllabus" (?) is packed with your own ideology.

I might add that you should look up what a "catalyst" does in a chemical reaction. You're way off base. It's the mistake that someone who thinks they know what means, but doesn't, would make. Your usage is an irrelevant metaphor.

It's too long, it's meandering and often wanders off topic. It's way too long for a high school course, where often the subject gets a day or less.
My first history class ever covered "1492-1865". And that was back in the 1950s, when we were actually taught American History.

This quotation is credited to a few French wits like Voltaire and Montesquieu. Also to Americans like Ben Franklin or Mark Twain.
"I must apologize for sending such a long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one."

We are very aware of the inadequacies of US history as commonly taught, and are working to change that. It is longer than the lesson would be, but we hope the teacher will know more than what he tells the students. Quite a lot of it is advice to teachers,, and so would not be part of a lesson.

But the topic does cover events from the 1600s through 1860, so I expect would take more like a week than a day to cover.

I shall investigate the use of catalyst. My only chemistry course was in 1961. I DO remember the teacher telling us that if you mix THIS with THAT you get a fire.

What would you consider my own ideology?

My main memory of chemistry was the demonstration of flour exploding. Paint can with a hole in the bottom and a rubber tube going into a funnel. Lighted candle also in the can. Tablespoon of flour in the funnel. Lid on loosely. Stand back and blow so that the flour is dispersed as a cloud which instantly explodes, flame and lid up several feet. (Be sure the fire alarm is off.)

To be honest, most kids sitting in a HS history class don't care about nuance, complexities, or deep thinkimg. In addition, the teachers that I have spoken with teach "to the test." Kids need to pass th state test. Are any of your teaching points on the state test?

78th, it depends. Each state has its own extensive standards, and we are cognizant of those. Private academies often use a classical curriculum that far exceeds most state requirements. Home schooling is another situation. But we ARE aiming at adoption in a number of states.

The goal and purpose of these essays is teacher development.

The teachers guides to Land of Hope and to LOH Young Readers Edition are available at Amazon. They are a splendid resource for committed teachers, especially home schooling parents who are committed but may need help with content.

What we are doing now is trying to broaden to help improve the rather typical situation of a young teacher, not much classroom experience, who was an ed major and has not much depth of subject knowledge. And we are very interested in training teachers to use our matrials successfully.

There is a pretty wide recognition that the present state of history education is unsatisfactory. We hope to improve that as we are able.

I was one of three profs doing a three day workshop for civics teachers this past summer, had 30 teachers, a mix of public and private and hs. Focus was on the Declaration and the Constitution, and we used the LOH materials plus the Federalist Papers. Six hours a day. The teachers got $600 USD and some continuing ed credits. It was fun and successful. Increments.

I wish you luck. I think your target may be Honors programs, private school teachers, and top-tier publics.

The public school abentee rate for the city I live in has dropped to 41%. They are not your target audience.

In layman's terms, a catalyst is a substance that enhances the rate of a reaction without being itself consumed.

A catalytic converter has a fine mesh of platinum wire. Unburnt hydrocarbons in the exhaust bind to the platinum metal chemically. This exposes the hydrocarbon to oxygen gas which lowers the activation energy of combustion. The fuel burns more quickly into carbon dioxide and water. The platinum is not consumed because it is not a combustion product.
Like I said, layman's terms.

I cannot comment on people using "catalyst" in other contexts when their use is incorrect.
Consider that LGBTQ activists have similarly appropriated "cis" and "trans" from organic chemistry which uses those terms to describe molecular orientation. Somehow, they neglected to appropriate "ortho". 🙄

As for your "ideology", it is apparently apparent to everyone but yourself. I'll leave it at that.

What I AM saying is that people appropriating terminology and using it "incorrectly" is annoying. There are other similar instances that others can point to in other fields.
My particular bugbears are "catalyst" and "cis trans". Come up with your own words! 😄

As Napoleon famously said on Twitter and Instagram, "History is a lie agreed upon."

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet. "
—-Abraham Lincoln

Consider that chickens CAN die of old age. But a farmer can grab the chicken by the neck and strangle it.
The farmer hastened the death of the chicken, but is not consumed. He is the platinum.

I was taught USA History my Junior Year (1958 – 1959) by Saint Francis De Sales (Riverside, Caĺifornia) Principal Sister Mary Agatha,MA-History.

79th, yes, but are we willing to accept that?

I'm not.

So John, how about a simple example of two things that are safe by themselves but together are dangerous? Never mind the terminology.

And I am sincerely interested in where you see ideology. There are a lot of facts. They are arranged to make a narrative, as historians do. Certainly I HAVE an ideology, and it informs everything i write, but I'd appreciate if you would point out specifically what you consider the most egregious examples.

Doc. Consider metallic elemental sodium and water.
In my day, metallic sodium was stored in a jar under an oil to keep it from contact with water. It was used in experiments.
But dump a lump in water, and it immediately bursts into flame. There is no catalyst involved. It's even worse with metallic elemental potassium. It will explode.

A catalyst is a substance that enhances the RATE of a reaction but is not consumed.

Used politically, the word "catalyst" can frankly mean anything you want it too. My BS is in chemistry, so I take a proprietary interest in word usage. Harrumph.

But, as Ringo said to Doc Holliday, "Age quod agis", or "you do you".

BUT… you said "In chemistry, an agent may be inert, until a catalyst is added, whereupon it bursts into flames." So you don't have the excuse of using it politically. You are using it chemically incorrectly.

Certainly I HAVE an ideology, and it informs everything i write,

Res ipsa loquitur.
Let's not argue over what you already admit, shall we?

Okay, I'll drop the word "catalyst" == thank you.

I do not "admit" to having an ideology, like it is something shameful; you do too, as does everyone old enough to think for themselves. But I do wish you would help; wherein do you see an ideological bias?

I'm basically arguing that the war was caused by a combination of factors of which slavery was primary, and became more-or-less unavoidable sometime between Nat Turner and the Mexican Cession. Do you see an ideology hidden in that?

Or if not there, then where? Please.

Doc, a Marxist historian would present the same set of facts, but certainly with a different spin. Does he have an "ideology"? Of course he does. Yours is a Christian ideology which is also evident.

I had a Philosophy teacher in college who once taunted me with "But Mister Carroll! That is but a TAUTOLOGY!" (No. He wasn't even an Assistant or Associate Professor. He was a mere hireling. 😄)
He rose up on his tiptoes to smirk that. He also had a ridiculous little chin mustache under his lower lip, like Napoleon III.
Which is one of the main reasons I dislike arguing over the semantics of a word like "ideology".
Okay. You win. I'll shut up.

As the Herald says to Henry V, "Thou never shalt hear ‘ideology' from me any more."

I don't want you to shut up, I want your help.

Yes, of course I am a Christian, and so are my brother and my daughter, both of whose views on history are quite different from my own. But what specifically do you find objectionable about my interpretation? What I am going for is the truth, not any ideology. Christian historians share some assumptions, as do Marxists (and one of the great hstorians on this very topic was Gene Genovese, who started Marxist and ended Christian. While remaining one of the best historians ever.

So please give me some specifics.

John, I am sorry. I very much need and want feedback from thoughtful and knowledgeable readers.

Hmmm…

Well, for me, I got a feeling that Nat Turner and John Brown wind up being seen in your text as somewhat heroic. I find them to be neither. As evil as slavery was (and is) the violent extremes they went to were in my opinion wrong on every level. And, since they achieved actually nothing positive, but instead built up the animosity between slaveowner and slave and abolitionist and republican (by which I mean those who wanted political solutions within a Constitutional framework, not abrupt upheaval), I would say that both set things back and did move the nation closer to a violent war than if neither had taken any violent action, but instead operated within political means. But perhaps a discussion like that is what you seek to encourage?

I will say that a Christian perspective is clear in your text, however any effective history must recognize and include the fact America was an almost entirely Christian nature and culture at the time, heavily Protestant, and Biblically literate. Even the Deists referred to Scripture as a basis for philosophy, and certainly the concept of abolition rose entirely from Christian teachings (it certainly appears in no others with influence on Western thought).
But I think you may hit a bit of a problem there, as the USA is considerably less Christian and less Protestant than it was fifty years ago, or even thirty years ago. When I was in high school, my teachers could essentially rely on all of us having been exposed to the Bible, at least via Sunday School classes if nothing else. I recall in college encountering for the first time people who had no familiarity with various stories I had known from childhood, like David and Goliath, Samson, etc.. One of my English professor made the King James Bible required reading, saying (correctly) that English and American literature could not be truly understood without it.
So the Christianity element in this, while necessary for history, cannot be assumed to be readily grasped by either young teachers nor their students, at least not among all schools— and may cause reactionary responses, too.

Lastly, have you given consideration to just how radical abolition was as a world-wide concept? For 10,000 years slavery was simply part of life. The idea that it was to be universally condemned really only arose in, of all places, America, in the 17th century. In many ways it was a radical notion. America stirred it by the sharp racial divide of slavery, which was largely not so readily seen in previous societies.

I'm curious as to the support for the claim that race-based slavery in America arose from a notion that black slaves were easily identifiable as such if they should escape. A circumstance, yes, but a deciding factor? Seems a stretch.

An interesting thought that struck me while writing this is that legally and technically, slaves would and should have retained a number of the rights expressed in the Bill of Rights. After all, the document says nothing about the status of the individual to whom these rights are inherent. It may have been assumed by the populace, but the text is silent!
There is no distinction in the US Constitution between races, nor between citizenry and slave, save in the 2/3rds concept of Congressional apportionment (and the electoral college). But that passage actually does not deal with race, but solely the status of being a person "not taxed"— as slaves and Indians who were of their own nations, and thus not taxed by the governments of the states or the US. Slaves, not holding property, were also not taxed. (Indians who were not citizens of their own nations could be citizens of the US and be taxed). Note also that race is not mentioned— the 2/3rds compromise would have extended to indentured servants and the few white slaves (yes, there were white slaves). I will also note that this passage is actually the opposite of what most assume, because it is not making the distinction on race, but rather on the notion of taxation. To be taxed, one must be represented— that was the whole underlying cause of the American Revolution. But conversely, if one is not taxed, then what does that mean for one's claim to representation? Should it not be reduced? The Northern states were concerned that the population of the South, largely slave, would overwhelm their smaller populations while at the same time handing power to the wealthy Southerners outside their relative tax presence. In other words, if 10 Northerners paid taxes, their representation would wind up being equal to 1 Southerner who paid taxes but held 9 slaves, who did not. So that one Southerner, despite potentially providing no more for the US Treasury than one Northerner, would have outsized representation compared to his contribution. By counting slaves by a fraction, the Northerners reduced the political power of the Southern slaveowner, and in effect created a political situation where it would actually be favorable to the South politically to free their slaves, thus increasing their counted population and resulting Congressional seats by a third! Didn't work in the long run, but it was hanging there the whole time.

Also, you fail to mention the impact of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, which made cotton more easy to produce, and sparked the growth in plantations and slavery across the South. Otherwise, I'm not certain that slavery in the South would not have dwindled away much sooner, and without war. (Effective harvesting equipment would have ended it even with the gin. Alas, that was not to be for another century.)

Just rambling thoughts of an amateur, quite possibly answered elsewhere, or off base. Otherwise, I found the whole thing to be fascinating.

^ The so called compromise regarding slave representation was 3/5 not 2/3.

Did I say 2/3? Whoop, thanks.. oh, no,that was Parz. Close enough!

parz, that discussion of NT and JB would indeed be a goal, and if I made them heroic. . . I'm not sure whether I meant to or not. Do you know Benets summation of JB? He was a stone, hard and destructive as a stone, and, if you like, heroic and devoted a such a stone. Maybe I should put that quote in.

Wow, Parz, you get into the high grass even more than I do with the taxation and representation thing. And I agree.

And yes, I definitely need to mention Eliand his gin.

It's been 50 years since I read White over Black, but I'm pretty sure he discussed the significance of a readily identifiable subordinate class. Boorstin called blacks "indelible immigrants" in a similar vein.

And I share completely the concern about Biblical literacy and illiteracy. Which means when Biblical concepts are vital, as they are in understanding slave culture and the spirituals/"sorrow songs", the teacher must explain those concepts. And understand them himself. That is a HUGE difference between home schoolers and Christian classical academies, versus public schools.

Mea culpa on the 3/5 or 2/3 thing. Somebody else did mention 2/3, I think? In any case, I attach 3/5 to a fairly recent concept for a super majority in the House as a requirement for something… tax increases, I think. It was from the ‘90s.

So edit my text to read 3/5, and the potential increase of political power of 2/5– 40%— which is helluva better than a measly 33%!

As for Benet on Brown, I had not heard that quote. Interesting… but I would point out it's an opinion of him, which is probably a question left to the students to decide, with the guidance of the teacher. (And stone to me sounds too stable— again, almost positive. I would have said he was a cracked and leaking oil lamp sitting on a barrel of black powder, claiming he would make things brighter, one way or another.)
To me, Brown was a terrorist. Nothing more, nothing less. He may have latched himself to a good cause, but he wasn't actually furthering that cause. I think at some point he was just so full of hate he couldn't see any other way, and in the end, as evil as what he sought to stop.
And at that point, I would be saying to the students, "Sometimes the cause may be just, but that doesn't mean the action is. Were there other solutions to the problem than violence? Did Brown help the situation, or make it worse, or achieve no appreciable change at all?"

I think it's important to remember the final intended audience of these lessons— teenagers. The teen years are emotion years, when the body is changing and pumping out hormones like mad. It's all too easy to get kids riled up about something, and riled up kids are too swift to through a punch, or agree that violence or threats of violence are a solution to whatever they're riled up about. Even into young adulthood the desire to "change things NOW" can be overpowering. It's hard for teens to see the long term, and to consider that slow change may be better all around. That's a great discussion to have, and I think something you're getting at here, as well. Was the war inevitable? I don't think it had to be— but when things get emotional, things get bad, quickly. And I think that's what happened then. (And I pray it doesn't happen that way now. But that's not a discussion for TMP.)

When time-permits (it takes a week of class time) I like to do a debate. Each team has to present and then defend answers to these:

Why did Brown do what he did? (This includes the issue of his sanity)

Was Brown morally justified in his actions. I give them the Just War criteria.

To what extent did Brown cause the war?

But I believe I did call brown a terrorist. And a murderer and traitor.

Parz, have you read John Browns Body? It is still, I think, the best single book for understanding the civil war.

Doc,

If this is suppose to be a secondary lesson plan, you are missing quite a bit. You need to spell out the objectives. Clearly define what students should know or be able to do by the end of the lesson. Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Example: "Students will be able to identify and explain the causes of the American Civil War."

List the educational standards or benchmarks the lesson aligns with (e.g., Common Core, state standards). This is very important.

Have a Set Induction at the beginning of the lesson. A Set Induction is a kind of hook to get the students interested in the lesson. My favorite was to hand out Civil War era photographs and have the students explain what they see in the photograph. Usually a person but sometimes an object like a building.

Direct Instruction. This is where you provide the core content of the lesson through lectures, demonstrations, or presentations.

Independent Practice. I would have the students break up into groups and give them a short project which reinforces the lesson.

Assessment. This is where you find out if they have achieved the goals of the lesson. At the end of the lessen I would ask them what have we learned today. Something like that.

Closure. Conclude the lesson by summarizing key points, answering questions, or connecting the lesson to future topics. I would shuffle the photographs and hand them back out and now tell me what you see?

Teachers want something practical and applicable. What you have is great for college but just another reference for High School Teachers and that's fine if that is what you are going for.

OC, thanks. the audience is the teachers, and only through them to the students. Also, for now, these "how to teach tough topics" pieces are part of a comprehensive curriculum that does all of those important things you list.

However, if/when I collect them into a stand-alone book, then things like timelines and outlines may be needed, and can be added.

OC, are you familiar with LAND OF HOPE and its associated TEACHERS GUIDE and WORKBOOK, plus the Young Readers Edition? Worth a look, I think you will find. On Amazon.

My feeling on all of this is that now, and likely in the future, high school teachers will look to quicker, simpler references. They are no less practitioners of screen life than their students. In general, shorter attention spans, tech oriented, less time for reflective thought. Consumers of sound bites. Short cuts. Test scores.

This is cultural, and IMO creates the challenge of presenting history in a less nuanced format in order to make anything stick. But my thought is that there is room for creativity in these new ways of seeing the world. Again, my opinion, everything starts by telling a good story well. Drama, emotion, passion. Lincoln and others as Marvel heroes of some sort. Dangerous, crazy, fanatical John Brown, the same.

As a practical matter,and with all due respect Doc, much editing is needed, IMO. And the TMP crowd, with its love of old school history and detail, are not the ones to do it. Find the points and make them sound as entertaining, catchy, and relevant as possible. And maybe some kids will be hooked enough to want to go deep in college. I dove into history in the 50s via Disney, not exactly academic stuff, but I was hooked by the stories.

My favorite historians are always great writers with a flair for the drama of a narrative. Catton, Sears, etc. But even these dudes would not cut it in high school today. Of course there will always be kids who are exceptions. But it's not a big bunch. History as entertainment is a challenge – passionate, emotional, unforgettable (hopefully). Teachers need inspiration to be good, and they need help with this. They act out the stories. They are performers, they must connect. The script has to work for this to happen.

I must correct my own record. The Constitution does (or did) deal directly with slavery, and made a distinction between "free people" and others. The latter is the previously discussed 3/5s section. The former is in Article 9, where Congress is forbidden from abolishing the importation of foreign-born slaves (though the word "slave" does not appear) for a specific period from the ratification of the Constitution. Historically, Congress did in fact forbid the international slave trade as soon as this restriction was met, passing this same law (and in fact before Great Britain passed a similar law— though the US law took affect the year after GB's law). So it's a bit ironic that in this temporary passage slavery is (at least in part) actually condemned, as the desire to stop the slave trade was presented as an assumed fait accompli, and was a power only temporarily restricted from Congressional action— meaning that afterwards, a Congressional act to ban slavery outright by the simple passage of a law would have been within Congress' power, and could have put a speedy end to the whole thing! (At the very least, Congress had the power, via the interstate commerce class, to ban the slave trade across state lines, which would have been a massive blow to the practice.) So the Constitution foresees the end of slavery in its inception.

It occurred to me last night that in reality, slavery was effectively legally abolished by the Bill of Rights, specifically the 1st, 2nd, and 4th through 9th Amendments, and of course the 10th. As these amendments make no distinction as to whom holds the rights guaranteed by them, then that protection should be assumed to provide to *all* people— and that would have included the slaves. And since the slaves were, by definition, denied rights to life, liberty and property without due process of law or any sort of trial, the existence of slavery was essentially unconstitutional from the start! Even the argument of states rights flails around against the statement "or to the people themselves" and the requirement that states must abide by these same amendments, too. In short, with a strict reading of these amendments, the 13th, 14th and indeed 19th* Amendments were, in a technical sense unnecessary— the exception being the necessary correction and removal of the 3/5ths clause.
I don't know whether anyone attempted to free a slave based on the above considerations, though it is certainly to our forefathers' collective shame that they did not recognize what they had written, and instead clung to an abhorrent practice for no other reason than personal financial and political benefit.

*Yes, the 19th Amendment is the amendment securing for women the right to vote. Yet in actuality, the Constitution never prevented women from voting, nor from having any of the other rights acknowledged in the text. In several states, women did vote, even from the earliest days of the republic, and women were elected to public office— including Congress— several decades before the ratification of the 19th amendment! It was the various states which restricted women (and minorities) from voting, not the Constitution. But, people being people, we sometimes have to have an explicit rule in place before we can acknowledge the obvious conclusions of our own ideals.

^ Ay Dios Mio!!!

Tort, yes, agree and agreed.

Parz, yes, the natural rights philosophy destroys slavery -- it just took s century and a bloody war.

Will all this be on the test? Jeez…

There'll be a test ?!?

Nobody said anything about a test !?

Will it be open book ??

But seriously, some very good posts and knowledge of US history. A very good read … I actually learned a few things. Many here are much more knowledgeable about some of these topics than I.
👍👍

I rather like open book tests. The presence of cell phones makes exam security pretty problematical. I taught a double-section of US survey (80 versus 40, double stipend) in a huge theater, with a steep climb. Eighty students scattered among about 300 seats. Quite impossible to monitor. So open notes and phone, and I tell them that they don't get much credit for simply presenting facts -- which they can access. What I grade is their marshaling g of facts into a coherent narrative to answer a fairly sophisticated question. No just what happened but why, with some built in conflicts to resolve.

The good students loved it, the poor ones hated it. VERY hard to grade, though.

I think it's clear I would have loved it, doc!

everything starts by telling a good story well.

Right! And stories are about people, not vast impersonal forces.