On 1/11/06, Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Depends on who you are talking about. Many white
> soldiers fighting for the North still recalled the
> feudalism/unfree labor of Europe and were indeed
> anti-slavery. Then there were black soldiers in the
> Union army, too. Also, dont forget there were even
> marxists in the union army. Wedemeyer (sp) was in it,
> I believe.
I think that one thing that happened was that when the Southern states declared independence, they unleashed a whirlwind. To win, Lincoln had to get beyond the old professional army (much of which had gone South, anyway), bringing in a whole raft of volunteers and draftees, who had to be motivated to fight. The anti-slavery motivation bubbled up from below (from the soldiers). The victory over the South also empowered the abolitionists (as did the struggle against Pres. Andrew Johnson), moving the Congress temporarily into the "Radical Republican" camp.
> I dont know the history of this song. While I dont
> see that it is explicitly racist, it does seem kindred
> to these artforms (like "Gone with the Wind") or
> movements (like John Crowe Ransom and "the Fugitives")
> to mythologize and glorify the "Old South" and
> therefore could be considered racist in that way.
The song is about the end of the South more than about its "golden era."
> On the other hand, it could be argued that it is the
> ballad of one man's bitter personal experience after a
> horrible war. To make something of an analogy, I
> mean, there are the stories of certain Red Army
> soldiers raping german women when they swept through
> Nazi germany. One can imagine that a woman who
> suffered this would have a bitter memory of that
> event, but a song to that effect would not necessarily
> be a political condemnation of the Soviet Union's
> efforts, would it? In like manner, if this song is
> seen as just the tale of one man's personal experience
> then it is not necessarily a condemnation per se of
> Reconstruction or necessarily a glorification of the
> "Old South".
that's my interpretation.
-- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin