[lbo-talk] The North's burden of enlightening the South (was Re: T he "NAFTA Superhighway" Urban Myth)

Carl Remick carlremick at gmail.com
Mon Nov 19 11:59:30 PST 2007


On Nov 19, 2007 12:59 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 19, 2007, at 5:30 PM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:
>
> > In antebellum days wasn't the South basically an economic colony of
> > Great Britain, whose textile mills were dependent upon Southern
> > cotton?
>
> Via New York City. Most of the South's cotton was exported by New
> York merchants, and the imported fabrics and garments were shipped
> back through New York. The city's elite was very sympathetic to the
> South until the moment the Civil War broke out, when they made the
> necessary patriotic turn. ...

Well, that's NYC for you -- anything for a buck. BTW Scarlett O'Hara was apparently modeled on the mother of Theodore Roosevelt. The Civil War was fought out right in TR's NYC household. TR's Southern-born maternal uncles served the Confederacy, while TR's Northern-born father bought his way out of serving in the Union Army so that wouldn't contribute further to his high-strung wife's mental distress by possibly doing injury to any of her relatives in the South. That's one of the things that made TR such a nutcase. He admired his father above anyone else, yet he was ashamed of the old man for shirking military duty during the Civil War. Therefore, TR honored his father's pacifism by winning the Nobel Peace Prize, while simultaneously making up for his father suspected cowardice by being the most enthusiastic warmonger ever to occupy the White House. There's nothing quite as uncivil as a civil war.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say: "Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Williams, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in great detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind>

Carl



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