#Confederate conscription law

[unabashedlyfuriousenthusiast]

Soul, Seriously!

In the same vein as my recent blog post, Bow-Tie Breakthrough, I clearly remember the first ominous sign that things were about to change in the idyllic world of my poetic imagination. While making my way towards the entrance of a now-defunct men’s clothing store in our hometown, I found myself juggling my toddler daughter and son. As I approached the main door, a seemingly healthy and muscular…

[memories-of-ancients]

A Fascinating Book I'm Reading

One of the best non-fiction reads I've read in a while, it's not a military history book, but details specifically the Confederate government, culture, society, the legal system, and economy.

What I find most fascinating about the book was just how fucked up the Confederacy became even from the early outset. Especially in terms of law and order. Due to the incredible manpower demands most men of military age either enlisted or were later conscripted into the army. This resulted in severe manpower shortages at home. When this happened, the system of slavery the Confederates were fighting for became a grave liability as there was no one left to control the millions of slaves that populated the south. As a result, whole plantations of slaves would run away and form free communities in the wilderness, surviving by pillaging plantations and farms, or robbing travelers on highways. In Louisiana there was a slave town hidden deep in the swamps that housed 2,000 people! At the same time thousands of Confederate soldiers were deserting as the war started going bad. Many soldiers found that their homestead and family was falling apart in their absence, so they deserted. These deserters were declared outlaws, and as a result many banded together, formed groups, and made a living as bandits and marauders.

At the same time many officers in the Confederate army who were garrisoned in specific places became de facto military dictators and warlords over the territory they controlled. They often disobeyed the law and refused to carry out orders issued by the Confederate government, but due to manpower shortages and the disorganization of the government there was little that could be done to reign them in. Often, these warlord Confederates acted as bandits, pillaging the territory they controlled not just for food and necessary supplies but for valuables as well. In many cases, whole towns and even counties rebelled against Confederate military authorities as they were sick of being pillaged by warlord Confederates. A good example was Jones County, Mississippi which actually seceded from the Confederacy as a result. Often, these rebel towns and counties survived by banditry and became marauders themselves just to make a get by.

According to the author, by 1863 much of the rural south was in a state of lawlessness and anarchy with the countryside controlled by bandits, marauders, independent towns or counties, pro-Union enclaves, and military warlords. Like bruh, this would be a good setting for an open world RPG game, perhaps something set in the Red Dead Redemption Universe.

Anyway if you are a Civil War buff I highly recommend this book.

[theredhavendelegate]

Iss. 7:

A New Order In Redhaven?

Gerhardt Square awoke to much pomp and solemnity on Sunday morning as Desdemona Carmine, Redhaven’s duly elected Mayor, came by with a formal announcement. Her office, Lord Redhaven’s estate, and occupying forces from The Frontline Confederation have reached a power sharing agreement.

The following conditions are now in effect: Though Redhaven retains its police precinct, The Frontline Coalition will be forming its own law enforcement body which supersedes local authorities. City administration is now a joint effort between the mayoral office clerks and separatist quartermasters, who will set and collect taxes together. Lastly, a curfew of 9pm is in effect now and for the foreseeable future throughout the city.

This change in authority, though not the first in Redhaven’s history, has not gone unchallenged. Isaac Kells, the voice of the political action organization known as The Blue Coalition, has raised concerns about the present and future state of Redhaven in an exclusive interview with The Redhaven Delegate. Though his associates have chosen to remain anonymous, he has come forward with a series of scathing indictments…

A woman with freckled skin, black hair tied back in a bun, and rough hands waits on a street corner. She glances at a pocket watch. The hands tick around the face, the short one pointing to twelve and the medium one to three while the longest moves faster than is worth checking. She stows the device and huffs. Another minute passes and she places a hand on her pocket, squeezing the fabric around the watch impatiently.

Before she can withdraw it, a man rounds the corner and waves. He has caramel skin and dark brown eyes, and he smiles sheepishly as he draws near.

The woman raises a brow and waits. The man shrugs and says, “Sorry Alessa, I had to reroute for more new demolition.”

The woman rolls her eyes. “So says you. I don’t think you should even be out here, Isaac. Do you really think its smart?”

The man pauses for a moment, and then nods. “I do. We don’t have many resources to allocate so I have to make sure they’re being spent wisely. Anyway, I have to be out here. Who wants to fight for someone who isn’t willing to fight for them as well?”

Alessa offers a wry smile. “All those saps with the orange patches seem perfectly fine dying for their betters.”

“Well maybe, given enough time, we can change their minds.” Isaac speaks confidently but Alessa only purses her lips.

Another woman walks down the street dressed from head to toe in green robes. Her demeanor is chilled and her brow is furrowed. She nods wordlessly to Alessa and Isaac as she walks by, and then she turns to enter the wooden double doors of the temple nearby.

As the doors slam shut, Alessa whispers, “They conscripted the orphans. They’re using them for message runners mostly.”

Isaac chews on the thought, then he whispers back, “It takes a lot to bring up children. The separatists will either realize that or pay for it.”

Alessa shakes her head. “Who’s going to make them pay for it?”

“Probably the kids,” Isaac answers quickly. “Let’s get moving.”

The two begin to stroll down the road. The streets here are whole, unbroken by The Great Transit, though the lack of recent upkeep is obvious between the building piles of trash and loose cobbles. The doors are locked and the windows are shuttered save for that of the post office, the door of which bears an orange flag alongside the Redhaven feather.

The street widens out into an open-air market. The stalls are empty, as are the aisles between them, but a few shops remain open on the edge of the square in the permanent buildings. Business is steady there, customers roaming quietly, purposefully between them and then back out of the square again.

Isaac takes a seat on a bench and watches for about half-an-hour. Alessa remains standing by a lamp post, glancing down the adjoining roads, into the windows of nearby structures, and at the rooftops that overlook the space. One of her hands hangs from her messenger bag by its thumb the whole time.

There is a commotion, the sound of shouting from the other side of the square, and Isaac starts off towards it. Alessa falls in behind him and releases her bag.

The two draw near to a butcher’s shop where a middle-aged man in an apron is waving a meat cleaver wildly in the direction of a smaller man in a vest. The two don’t notice their audience.

Alessa leans over to Isaac and whispers, “Tax collector.” Isaac nods.

The butcher shouts, “I shouldn’t have to pay! What about the meat shortage and The Transit and what’s money even worth now, what with everything that’s happened?”

Isaac will comment, “The butcher’s right.”

“The butcher is swinging a knife at a tax collector,” Alessa ripostes.

Isaac waits for a moment longer, takes a breath, then walks up to the storefront with Alessa in tow. The butcher doesn’t acknowledge him but the tax man turns.

“Sorry sir,” Isaac says, halting the argument. “I know him, he’s good for his taxes and his permits and all that. Just swing by tomorrow and it’ll be sorted out.”

The butcher seems suspicious, but he is unwilling to contest the sheer confidence with which Isaac speaks. The official raises a brow then looks to the butcher, who mutters, “Uh, yeah. Won’t be any trouble, we’re old pals.”

The tax collector waits another moment, glances between Isaac, Alessa, and the butcher’s now slack-held cleaver, and then nods. “Alright, one more day can’t hurt. Be well then, I’ll see you in the morning Mister Flanagan.”

He takes his leave.

There is a moment’s pause, then the butcher sighs. “Alright, what’s the scam? I know you’re with the Blues, so what do you want from me?”

Isaac shrugs and says, simply, “We want to help.”

Before the butcher can ask another question, Alessa interjects, “How much do you owe?”

He pouts and leans back. Alessa glares at him and he crumples. Isaac puts a hand on her shoulder and offers a sympathetic frown, and she finds something else to glare at.

The butcher softens and mumbles, “A hundred and twenty dollars, after the fees. That’s enough to put me out for good.”

Isaac nods his understanding, though Alessa remains alert. The former says, “Okay, that’s not too bad. We can cover it for you. There’s just one condition.”

The butcher seems doubtful and a prideful shine reappears in his eye, but he still nods for Isaac to continue.

He does. “There’s a building on lower street, number fourteen. Swing by there tonight and ask them about business management. We’ve got an accountant who should be able to get you back on track and, if you hear him out, we’ll pay off your current debts in full.”

“That’s it? What if I don’t?” the butcher responds, chin raised.

Alessa offers a soft smile. “Then the tax man will come back, probably with a pair of soldiers in tow. Instead of paying your debts, you’ll get a black eye. Maybe worse.”

The butcher holds Alessa’s gaze. Isaac waits.

The butcher nods. “Sure. I’ll think about it.”

Isaac smiles and pats Alessa on the back. “Let’s get going then. No point hanging around longer than we need to.” He waves at the butcher and starts away. Alessa follows, though her guard doesn’t drop until they’re down the street and around a corner.

Continuing down the road at a cantor, Alessa grumbles, “Business management? Accountants? I can’t believe our little underground movement is busy teaching old men how to fill out their check books while The Confederates are cracking down on innocent people.”

Isaac keeps his eyes forward and responds, “It keeps the community healthy. I’d rather shoot the tax man too, but I think we both know where that leads.”

Alessa retorts, “And what if he just ignores the advice?”

Isaac shrugs. “Then he can keep the money. It’s just taking up valuable warehouse space until it’s spent. Plus, you saw our track record: every business we’ve advised is doing well and every business that snubbed us is either closed down or floundering. What is the city doing to help these people. What are the occupiers doing?”

The conversation dies down and the next few minutes are spent in silence.

The pair emerge from an alley into a courtyard, and the faded stone of Redhaven is replaced by greenery and trellis fencing. The courtyard contains a well tended garden and is surrounded by red brick walls, clean and bright. A few others move about the space and wave Isaac and Alessa on in. Isaac remarks, “Prettiest place in Redhaven, and all it took was a little work.” He stops by a planter with strawberries growing in it and picks one. “This is what we’re working for Alessa. This is why the guns are only for self defense.”

He tosses the fruit to her and she catches it. “Strawberries? We’re fighting for that?”

Isaac is already heading up towards a door. “Gardens, growth, safe places, and yes, strawberries.”

Isaac carries on inside and Alessa follows him. The two work their way up a narrow stairwell and then into an office, one with a view to the outskirts of Redhaven and the lilac fog beyond beyond the countryside.

The space is gloomy compared to the outside until Isaac pulls the curtains the rest of the way open. pale, colorless light washes over the room as Alessa sits down on a creaking armchair.

Isaac pulls a bottle of brandy out from beneath the room’s desk along with a pair of tulip glasses. Alessa shakes her head and he returns one of them, then fills the other about a third of the way.

At last, he sits behind the desk, takes a sip from his glass, and asks, “So, what am I missing.”

Alessa takes the messenger bag off of her shoulder and places it on the floor, then steeples her fingers. “Not much, honestly. The money goes in and out below budget, recruitment is going well amongst the first responders and the laborers, and your…gentle…approach seems to be keeping the authorities off our backs. If this were a normal city back in Eudax, whether it belonged to The Confederation or The Covenant, I’d say that things couldn’t be better.”

“But it’s not a normal city,” Isaac responds dryly.

Alessa nods. “You got my report about the tunnels, and I’m not the only person who’s found one. There are more monsters coming out of the fog as well and nobody is actually trying to stop them except for the farmers.”

Isaac takes another sip from his glass and thinks for a moment. He looks wistfully towards the window. “We’ll get guns to them then, hunting rifles and coach guns.”

Alessa clears her throat. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, but that’s not why I’m worried. I’m worried because none of my contacts know why they aren’t trying to stop the monsters. No soldiers to guard the farms, no patrols around the countryside, no watchtowers on the edge of town. That’s suspicious.”

Isaac finishes his drink and shrugs. “Suspicious activity is your area of expertise. What do you think is going on here?”

“I think they’re waiting to see how dangerous these things are, waiting to see if they can be harnessed. Doesn’t matter to them if a few farmers get killed, it’s valuable research. Neither side held back in the civil war on account of their morals, I don’t see why they’d start now.”

Alessa leans back in her seat and waits for a response. Isaac taps the bottle of brandy and raises an eyebrow, and this time she nods. He pours her a drink and walks it over to her. She drains the glass and hands it back before he can turn, not frantically but with a sort of practiced motion.

Isaac retakes his seat. “The work never ends,” he says, more considering the words than declaring them.

Alessa frowns. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Isaac doesn’t answer aloud, but a small smile awakens on his face and his eyes gleam softly in the pale light.

---

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[fakecrfan]

I mean, not to downplay the fact that plenty of these poor whites were racist--but you do know many were conscripted, right? They were legally obligated to fight in the war or face imprisonment and death.

Slaveowners with 20 or more slaves were exempt from being conscripted to fight. But poor white men who couldn't get into a socially valuable profession were obligated to join the war and Confederate law meant they could be imprisoned without trial. This led to a lot of fury and resistance from the lower classes. Groups of soldiers would desert, sometimes in groups of hundreds, and would fight back violently against officers sent to bring them back. Mass desertions formed a serious headache to the Confederacy as a result. Resistance in the impoverished Appalachian region was particularly violent.

This is not to say that any of these men were anti-racist. But to portray them as all so racist they forgot their own self interest and willingly went to their deaths for the sake of the rich is not really true. It speaks to a poor understanding of how power is maintained, and in particular why men have fought in wars for most of history (its usually not due to holding ideas, but due to coercion or the hope of economic gain. People attribute idealism to these dead men after the fact). There were some motivated by extrmely dumb racism(especially before the conscription act dropped), but many were also forced to join, hated it, spoke openly about hating it, violently resisted and damaged the Confederacy as a result.

Source: Cline, Tyler, "Class Conflict and the Confederate Conscription Acts in North Carolina, 1862-1864" (2014). Honors College. 164. https://digitalcommons.library.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.13 (before 1970)

1002 – English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre. 1093 – Battle of Alnwick: in an English victory over the Scots, Malcolm III of Scotland, and his son Edward, are killed. 1160 – Louis VII of France marries Adela of Champagne. 1642 – First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green: The Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London. 1715 – Jacobite rising in Scotland: Battle of Sheriffmuir: The forces of the Kingdom of Great Britain halt the Jacobite advance, although the action is inconclusive. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Gen. Richard Montgomery occupy Montreal. 1833 – Great Meteor Storm of 1833. 1841 – James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism. 1851 – The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle. 1864 – American Civil War: The three-day Battle of Bull's Gap ends in a Union rout as Confederates under Major General John C. Breckinridge pursue them to Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. 1887 – Bloody Sunday clashes in central London. 1901 – The 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster. 1914 – Zaian War: Berber tribesmen inflict the heaviest defeat of French forces in Morocco at the Battle of El Herri. 1916 – World War I: Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription. 1917 – World War I: beginning of the First Battle of Monte Grappa (in Italy known as the "First Battle of the Piave"). The Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces, despite help from the German Alpenkorps and numerical superiority, will fail their offensive against the Italian Army now led by its new chief of staff Armando Diaz. 1918 – World War I: Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 1922 – The United States Supreme Court upholds mandatory vaccinations for public school students in Zucht v. King. 1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City. 1940 – Walt Disney's animated musical film Fantasia is first released at New York's Broadway Theatre, on the first night of a roadshow. 1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U-81, sinking the following day. 1942 – World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: U.S. and Japanese ships engage in an intense, close-quarters surface naval engagement during the Guadalcanal Campaign. 1947 – The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles. 1950 – General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, is assassinated in Caracas. 1954 – Great Britain defeats France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris in front of around 30,000 spectators. 1956 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery bus boycott. 1965 – Fire and sinking of SS Yarmouth Castle, 87 dead. 1966 – In response to Fatah raids against Israelis near the West Bank border, Israel launches an attack on the village of As-Samu. 1966 – All Nippon Airways Flight 533 crashes into the Seto Inland Sea near Matsuyama Airport in Japan, killing 50 people. 1969 – Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. stage a symbolic March Against Death.

[hoursofreading]

In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote. In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law. When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war.  When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”  By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to.  Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region. Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights. 

Heather Cox Richardson

[kiss-my-freckle]

Recently noticed a Stefan stan hate on Damon for the Civil War and claim he didn't leave based on principle despite there being many dialogues confirming it because of the scene in 2x4 where out of embarassment over his partner being at the ball with his brother he made a comment about George "defending the south" to distract from his embarassment. They claim he and George were friends although it was clear that interaction was forced and they didn't like each other and George smiled while backhandedly saying he judged Damon for leaving andd helped Katherine double cross him. It's strange to hate Damon over this and act like Stefan's better when he made comments romanticizing the Confederacy in 1x13 and 8x16 and also fell in love with a woman that owned slaves, even seeing her with one during their first meeting. Stefan never challenged their father over the Confederacy while Damon did and was colorist in his dating preferences. Kevin based Stefan on Ashley from GWTW who was a Klan member. I also think the comment Damon made may've also been out of survival since Damon started serving in the war in 1863 and left at the year's end and in Virgina law following the Confederate Conscription Act of April 1862, enforcement of punishing deserters was often harsh and included execution. George was a politician so it makes sense why he may've wanted a less harsh sentence so his future wouldn't be hindered. He left knowing he would most likely be killed and people think with that and dialogues of his as well as Oscar, Stefan, and Giuseppe confiriming he left on principle that he didn't leave on priniciple. Some argue he left for Katherine even though Henry was the one that brought up Katherine in 7x10 and Damon was worried about Stefan in addition to hating the side he fought for and barely thought of Katherine. Even the official TVD wiki states this: As a young man, Damon joined the Confederate Army on his father's order, to defend the South during the American Civil War. However, Damon secretly hated everything the South stood for and had been planning to desert for some time before his squad joined the army at Gettysburg. The only thing stopping Damon was fear of Giuseppe's disapproval. Eventually, he met a man named Oscar who convinced him to follow his own beliefs rather than his father's. That night, Damon deserted while his squad was decimated during the following battle.

The beautiful thing about friendships is that we don't always have to agree about everything. We can have different views and opinions while not being an ass about what we don't agree on. For Damon, I felt it wasn't about distracting from embarassment, but about respecting his friend's choice even though it didn't coincide with his own. George wasn't as nice. I took his comment as a direct slam against Damon for deserting. Damon very much left the war based on principle, and supporting his friend's right to choose according to his own beliefs doesn't change that fact.

[neutralgray]

A Synthesized History: An Amateur Comparison of the Perspectives between the "Patriot's," the "People's," & The "True" History of the United States - Part 4

Full Essay Guide link: XX

(Patriot - Chapter 4 | People - Chapter 5 | True - Chapter 6 & 7)

Post-Revolutionary America, the Articles, and the Constitution

During the Revolutionary War and following its conclusion, the new "United States" had been governed by the Articles of Confederation. The Articles served as a leading document to outline the powers, agreements, and central federal role of the states.

Under the governing principles outlined by the Articles of Confederation, the federal government was weak and barely present. This was, of course, by design. Having been written during the Revolution, the United States' approached governing philosophy with the intent of being antithetical to the English government model. However, issues would arise between nationalists and Federalists (later known as "Anti-Federalists") who disagreed with how the United States should be governed, and these disagreements would lead to a complete restructuring of the government that resembles what we know today, some approximately 250 years later.

During the immediate post-revolution, Sjursen writes that there was a rise in general egalitarian principles across several states. Vermont banned slavery. New Jersey temporarily gave women complete voting rights. Activists advocated for better frontier territory representation. Schweikart and Allen also explain that the new constitutions of these states followed a philosophy of "natural law," with strong legislative branches and a weak executive and judicial branch.

The post-revolutionary landscape was not without its problems, of course. Domestic conflicts are often overshadowed in times of war, but the war was no longer a variable of distraction or a drain on resources. Some states, in an effort to pay off war debts, imposed taxes 2-3x higher than what the colonists were subjected to under English rule. Debts ran high and creditors were looking to collect. Following a decision in Massachusetts to raise the voting property qualifications to an absurd degree coupled with increasingly cutthroat ways of keeping the indebted in debt, rebellions naturally broke out.

The people involved in these rebellions and others like it were sometimes, even often, veterans of the Revolutionary War. These veterans were typically poor or middle class denizens that were turned into revolutionaries either through conscription or under presumed pretenses of greater benefits for their efforts than they actually received. In 1781 , troops in Morristown would kill a captain, disperse their officers, and march towards the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to demand payment since they had received none of their promised benefits-- these concessions were made and granted due to their excessive force. Another mutiny would occur in New Jersey but was ultimately put down by Washington and his forces, pardoning one leader and executing two others by firing squad. They were set as an example. These events also barely touch on the fact that black Americans and slaves were reeling harder than ever against the institution of slavery during this period. The Revolutionary War served as one of the biggest periods of civil unrest and slave revolt before the Civil War.

The most well known of these post-war rebellions was known as "Shay's Rebellion." Daniel Shay's followers called themselves "the Regulators." They often took it upon themselves to storm jails and free prisoners locked away for debt failure, storm county court houses to block the work of debt collectors, and generally made it a point to publicly protest the actions of a richer elite. They were disruptive enough that it caused notice among the influential in America. While Shay's Rebellion eventually fizzled out and Daniel Shays himself would be pardoned, it left a notable impression on the ones in power. If the common people could rally into a "mob" and forcibly create conflict over issues they did not agree was in the country's best interest (or theirs), how were the ruling parties supposed to halt these rebellions as a united front when the federal government was so weak and de-centralized? This inability to raise a standing army against domestic affairs was very likely a contributing factor in the argument against the Articles. It also directly led to the "Riot Act," which imposed much harsher responses to rebels and rioters such as the ones in Shays' brief rebellion.

With these rebellions becoming a not uncommon occurrence, there was also a growing fear over western frontier states declaring independence. Frontier land settlements already had requirements to meet the criteria to be considered a "state." These requirements were to reach a population of 60000+ people and draft a constitution before it could potentially be recognized as a state (see: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin). With these requirements in place to be a state, potential low ability to support expanding territory interests in Congress, and the weak federal government outlined by the Articles, what could truly stop a new territory or state from declaring their own independence, separate from the established "United States"?

Two opposing schools of thought began to develop: Nationalists, in support of a restructured federal government, and Federalists, who supported the Articles as they had been written. This terminology would later become murky when nationalists would re-brand themselves as "Federalists," likely recognizing the negative connotations of a "nationalist" label, and declared their opponents (the original Federalists) as "anti-federalists." Such a move helped control the narrative surrounding the ideological and philosophical debate between the two parties, giving the Federalist/Nationalist supporters a clear edge in the shifting political landscape.

Many of biggest critics of the Articles of Confederation were essentially early aristocrats who saw the rise of egalitarian tendencies among some of the states as "bad governance." Under the current political landscape debtors felt empowered to rebel and creditors had no guarantee of reliably collecting their funds. Without this basic assurance, a lot of the wealthy elite felt societal rule would collapse. In the Federalist Papers #62 and #63, James Madison provided arguments for why a well constructed senate was necessary, some of which included protecting the common people from their own "temporary errors and delusions." To a lot of the pro-Federalist/Nationalist side, there seemed to be a position of assuming the common person was sometimes incapable of governing themselves, and tended to sometimes give into "heated" decisions that would compromise the country under a direct democracy. Other quotes of interest included Henry Knox, who said "America must clip the wings of a mad democracy," and John Adams who stated "There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide."

The new Federalist vision for government had three primary goals:

Establish a stronger federal government

Replace legislative dominance with a better balanced legislative/executive/judicial model

End total equality of states in congressional decision making through a system of proportional representation

To usher in their mythical "empire of liberty," a new document on governance was being drafted to accomplish those goals-- the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation, however, as it had been written, did not make this change easy. Any revisions to the Articles themselves needed unanimous agreement from all states to be approved. This did not stop the Federalists, however, who would draft the Constitution with its own set of rules. Based on the Constitution's draft, only 9 of 13 states would need to agree to forcibly bind all of them to this new rule.

The Federalists had several advantages that would ultimately allow them to achieve their goals. As previously mentioned, the control of language to re-brand and confuse political labels by essentially stealing the term "Federalist" from their opponents gave them significant persuasive control through common talk. The Federalists worked in secret to draft much of the Constitution, blind-siding Anti-Federalists when the draft was finally being heavily pushed for voting. Lastly, the Federalists had more significant names attached to them. Many of the prominent "founding fathers" who pushed the states to and through the Revolutionary War were Federalists, while the Anti-Federalists were younger political names with not as much influence.

A new vision of government also meant revisiting previous debates and unresolved national issues. In 1619, when given the choice between buying and using slave labor or rejecting it, the young Britons accepted slavery. In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was written and essentially outlined the philosophical underpinnings of a new nation, a section that condemned the practice of slavery was removed. And once again, in 1787, while considering revisions for their new federal government, this issue would once again be considered.

With the South relying so heavily on slave labor due to their expansive plantations and powerful land owners, the potential for immigration to the southern states was severely stifled. If no well paying labor incentives were present, people had little reason to make their homes there. Thus the southern states pushed for slaves to be considered as a number of the population for the purposes of representational voting. Slaves were not given a chance to vote or participate in any meaningful facet of society and yet the southern powers wanted to use their bodies as a way to bolster votes under the rules laid out under the Constitution's proposed House of Representatives. This would lead to the infamous "Three-Fifths Compromise," in which slaves would be counted as 60% of an individual... this, of course, did not mean anything for the slaves. It just boosted the power of slave using states who felt threatened after slavery was outlawed for any new states forming north of the Ohio River.

The Constitution was passed with enough support and it became the law of the land. This document outlined the functions of Congress and its two houses, the supreme court, and the functions of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch. The Anti-Federalists did not lay down completely, though. According to Schweikart, the amended Bill of Rights was largely thanks in effort to the repeated and undeniable criticisms many Anti-Federalists took with the Constitution; namely that it did not outline the civil liberties of United States citizens. In a sense, the Bill of Rights was not so much an issuance of rights as it was an outlined limitation on what the state should not be able to do.

Despite the supposed "need" for the Constitution, effective and influential laws still passed under the Articles of Confederation. Of the laws passed under the Articles before their total replacement, some prominent ones were the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. These acts had multiple intentional and unintentional functions:

Outlined a plan for the division and occupation of all land ceded by the British

The land was sold directly to citizens to generate wealth since the government could not issue direct tax under the Articles

Fueled the crisis and fiscal depression of post-war America due to ongoing and difficult fights with the Natives

Outlawed slavery north of the Ohio River, which caused backlash among the Southern States who not only opposed this but tried to push for slavery expansion

Provided a reason for land speculators to want a stronger federal government so organized forces could be amassed to defeat Native threats

Doomed Native Americans to conquest, subservience, or expulsion as the United States denizens continued to push

These threats on the Natives were horrific but also largely more of the same treatment that had come to expect from their American neighbors. In point of fact, after the Revolution, in 1779, George Washington devoted a third of his forces to the destruction of Iroquois Natives, labeling it as the "main American military effort" of that time. Under the ordinances, atrocities would continue in the name of expanding this new heavily Christian country.

Zinn makes a point of discussing how the Constitution was sensible in a vacuum-- assuming the government was completely impartial and served as "neutral referees" guiding the states through the efforts of opposing factions, rather than the reality that the people in government were also participants in society and thus had interest in maintaining a specific social order. He also argues that the Constitution does, of course, provide some support to middle class income which helped establish its broad support base, which insulates it from criticism from the lower class, i.e. black Americans, Natives, and poor white Americans. This was even supported by Schweikart and Allen's "patriotic" vision of American history, when it was written that Alexander Hamilton actively sought alliance between the government and the wealthy elite, rationalizing that the rich would likely not help the country if left to their own devices, and this alignment would provide a stronger investment in the institution of government.

Zinn also goes on to say that support was further bolstered by the addition of the Bill of Rights the Anti-Federalists pushed, but even with those revisions, the law still proved malleable. The Sedition Act of 1798 extended citizenship requirements, granted the president the ability to deport foreigners, and made it a punishable offense to " print, utter, or publish…any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the American government. This all stemmed from a fear of non-American settlers sympathizing with the French when the United States was on the brink of war with them. These laws essentially violated the supposed principles of "freedom of speech," demonstrating that laws could be determined, changed, or even outright ignored if it suited the powers that be.

Final Thoughts:

With the conclusion of these chapters, it's becoming more clear exactly what each voice wishes to convey in their writing. Schweikart and Allen take a more linear approach to history, describing major events as they happen and keeping things "simple" while providing historical context and details not often touched in basic history classes. However, Schweikart and Allen clearly have a point to make in their version of history through a "patriot's" eyes. While they do condemn many terrible acts undeniably committed by the United States; often, many acts by major political influencers are told in a more "apologetic" tone, with a sense of reverence that may not always be deserved. A Patriot's History also wants to constantly remind you that the United States was a Christian nation, despite some effort on the founders' parts to remove explicit Biblical references in government doctrine. It is, of course, very important to realize and accept the significant role Christianity played in the founding and influence of the United States, as this is often overlooked when history is re-told. However, Schweikart and Allen seem to reject that there is any value in the often quoted guiding principle of "separation of church and state," instead emphasizing the way in which Christianity helped create a supposed a sense of civic morality. Considering the consistent backstabbing done to Natives when tenuous peace was made and the industry of slavery providing much of the nation's wealth, I am doubtful of the supposed "civic morality" Christianity gave the new nation.

Zinn outlines a lot of interesting political takes which are more theoretical in concept but based in fact and undeniable when analyzed and compared to how the system of United States government seems to work. He also presented presented perspectives and details I could not fit naturally into the essay above, but that I would like to mention now:

Zinn discussed the writings of another American historian, Charles Beard, who proposed that the Constitution essentially had to be most beneficial to the wealthy elite because it was drafted by the wealthy elite. Even if not actually malicious in intent, these are the economic interests these men most well understood, ergo their foundation of federal government would be biased in this direction.

Zinn also briefly discussed Thomas Jefferson and his Anti-Federalist tendencies, which is a striking difference between him and other American founders. Jefferson even believed rebellion was healthy for society, as the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Sjursen surprises me. I am inherently leftist so my interpretation of these texts will lean left. When going in to these texts, I fully expected Sjursen to be the most radically left of the books, especially since the subtitle of his book is "Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism." Thus far, though, while Sjursen makes no secret his criticism and condemnation of many American actions, he does try to provide some rationale and context for these early historical years. I expect as we approach the modern era this may change.

We are now past the point of the United States establishing itself under new law, adopting the document that still guides the structure of American government today.

[histoireettralala]

Napoleon's empire: territories and allied states.

The Napoleonic Empire had France at its heart, but its borders continued to change with each passing year, spreading reforms, along with conscription, taxation, and political repression, to virtually every corner of Europe. In 1790 the French revolutionaries divided France into eighty-three departments; in subsequent years that number steadily increased, reflecting the ebb and flow of French territorial expansion. By 1800 there were ninety-eight departments, including fourteen that comprised the former Austrian Netherlands and parts of the Rhineland and Switzerland. Over the course of the next decade the Napoleonic conquests increased the size of metropolitan France to 130 departments (with a population of some 44 million people) that stretched from the Adriatic coastline to the North Sea. These included France proper and the lands directly annexed to it at different times: the German left bank of the Rhine (1802), Piedmont (1802), Liguria (1805), Tuscany (1808), the Papal States (1809), the Illyrian Provinces (1809), and the Dutch and north German territories incorporated after the dissolution of the Kingdom of Holland in 1810.

The French Empire, however, was much more than the territory administered directly by Napoleon. The informal empire also included tens of millions of people residing in the subject and allied states beyond the French imperial borders. These territories can be categorized into three groups based on the extent of control Napoleon exercised over them. The first included states that had retained their sovereignty but became "allies" of France and were compelled to acquiesce to Napoleonic demands and policies. For a time Austria, Prussia, and Denmark-Norway all fell into this category, as they were forced to submit to Napoleon's economic, political, and military directives. The second group included nominally independent states that were under the control of individuals whom the French Emperor hand-selected. These tended to be primarily his family members and close confidants, who became great beneficiaries of the imperial largesse. Napoleon possessed a strong sense of family and rewarded his brothers and sisters, believing that they shared a blood bond of loyalty that would help him consolidate control over the vast realm. In 1806, as the French troops occupied southern Italy, Napoleon's elder brother, Joseph, who had served him reasonably well in diplomatic negotiations with Austria, United States and Britain, became king of Naples. The same year Napoleon's brother Louis became king of Holland, while the youngest brother, Jérôme, took the reins in the newly created kingdom of Westphalia in 1807. As we have seen, just as Joseph was trying to win over the loyalty of his Neapolitan subjects, the emperor moved him to the throne of Spain and granted the Neapolitan crown to his brother-in-law Marshal Joachim Murat, while his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais became viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy. Nor did the emperor forget his sisters - Elisa became the princess of Piombino and Lucca in 1805 and grand duchess of Tuscany in 1809. Pauline was given the Duchy of Guastalla in 1806, though she soon sold the duchy to Parma and kept only the title. Caroline, the most ambitious of Napoleon's sisters, married Marshal Murat and was lavished with the titles of grand duchess of Berg (1806) and queen of Naples and Sicily (1808). In addition, Napoleon rewarded many of his generals and senior officials with "sovereign" states, including Benevento (given to Talleyrand), Pontecorvo (Marshal Bernadotte), Siewierz (Marshal Lannes), and Neuchâtel (Marshal Berthier). Finally, the third category was of satellite states that were nominally independent but closely supervised and managed by the emperor from Paris. These included the Grand Duchies of Warsaw and Frankfurt, the Swiss Confederation, and some of the states in the Confederation of the Rhine (most notably Westphalia and Berg). For the last two categories of states Napoleon laid down policy and expected complete subordination of their interests to those of France. These satellites were agents of political and social Napoleonic reforms: reorganization of local authorities into a centrally controlled bureaucratic government manned by professional bureaucrats and supported by bourgeois notables; creation of new legal systems (based on the Napoleonic Code) that reflected the French revolutionary ideals of secularism, equality before law, religious tolerance, and reaffirmation of individuals' private property rights; introduction of more efficient systems of tax collection and military recruitment; establishment of a police force and gendarmerie to maintain a close watch over the population; and a change in church-state relations that frequently meant the sale of property confiscated from the Catholic church.

Taken as a whole, this "Napoleonic system" represented a definitive challenge to the ancien régime societies, bringing about the abolition of the remnants of feudalism in the French-controlled territories and the assertion of revolutionary principles.

Alexander Mikaberidze- The Napoleonic Wars, A Global History.

[kvetchlandia]

Napoleon Sarony     General William Tecumseh Sherman, New York City     1888

“At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed vocations; but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves, subject only to the United States military authority, and the acts of Congress. By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro is free, and must be dealt with as such. He cannot be subjected to conscription, or forced military service, save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the young and able-bodied negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of the United States.“ William Tecumseh Sherman, Special Field Order #15, Jan, 1865.

General Sherman’s Special Field Order #15, issued in January, 1865, was his attempt to bring to reality his promise of “40 acres and a mule” to be given to each freed slave.  Special Field Order #15 confiscated some 400,000 acres of land, stretching from Charleston, South Carolina to the St. John's River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands, from the Confederate slavocracy and redistributed that land to formerly enslaved people.  Lincoln approved Special Field Order #15 and it was backed in the Senate and House of Representatives by the Radical Republican faction led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner.  Some 40,000 formerly enslaved people had the lands formerly belonging to Confederate slave owners redistributed to them.  Unfortunately, Andrew Johnson, shortly after he assumed the presidency following Lincoln’s assassination, countermanded Sherman’s order, reclaimed the confiscated land and returned it to the former slaveowners who only months before had been waging war against the United States in an attempt to continue enslaving human beings.  If the promise of “40 acres and a mule” had actually been delivered and enforced, the United States would be a completely different country than the Jim Crow country it became in the years following the Civil War and continuing under law until the 1960s and in less legal but no less oppressive ways today.

[smallfrost]

A turning point for Witches in Motherland: Fort Salem - the 1830s

One of the juiciest nuggets to come out of Memorial Hall are the family trees. We learn that the Cravens have 6 generations in the US military, while the Collars only have 5. And though we still have much to learn, they so far have provided us with some interesting math that leads us back to the beginning of the 19th century. We also find out that the Bellweathers (and the Swythes) fought in the Battle of Juarez in 1811. According to Abigail in 1x07, she is a 6th generation Bellweather, which, to be honest mathematically is pushing it that her ancestor would have fought in a war at the start of the 19th century. However, we can deduce that this was the start of the Bellweather line in the Military. 

It is no coincidence then, that it appears as though there was a new wave of matrilines entering the military between 1810-1840. But what exactly happened during this time? With the limited amount of historical context clues available, let’s take a quick trip through time.

For one, the Second Mexican War happened, which ended in 1813. Perhaps there was a push to identify more witches at the start of the 19th century as a need to strengthen the army for this conflict with Mexico. 

However, after the war, three very prominent things happened. First, the Chippewa Cession ceded from the United States and the lands were given back to Indigenous Tribal Federations in the 1830s. This is not something that has been explicitly addressed in the show, but Eliot teaches us in an early interview. And the reason for this Cession? Alder needed access to a particular type of magic the Federations had; the magic that would keep her youth. Without this magic, Alder would have perished. 

Second, a security act was signed into law, specifically in 1834, which was fittingly called the “Security Act of 1834”. Under this act, the use of inflatables in certain public areas was banned. We see this referenced on a sign outside of Salem Town. 

Aside: Perhaps this sign is just implying that Salem Town is a restricted/federally protected area, but that still leads to question the reason behind this act being signed into law specifically around this time frame. 

Now, the modern incarnation of the Spree has only been around for 20-25 years (according to Eliot in After the Storm).  But it appears as though tensions were high among witches and the government in the 1830s after the Second Mexican War. Not only was a large portion of land ceded back to the Tribal Federations, but there was also an apparent threat of some kind growing after the Second Mexican War for congress to sign a Security Act into law. Further, due to depletion of matrilines after the war, Alder was likely pressured by the government to “replenish the troops” while also seeking sources of magic to keep herself alive and young. 

And third, after three decades of conflict around this time that required an increase in conscription and the signing of security acts, the Civil War started in 1840 and lasted for 2 years. We can assume that the slaves fought on the side of the union because Petra reminds Abigail that their ancestor was a slave in the pilot ( and likely why the war only lasted 2 years instead of 4) but I would also assume the confederates had their own witches that were then required to conscript in the united American military after losing the war. 

In the pilot, Raelle tells Abigail and Tally that her family lived in the Cession before it was a cession, so the Collar line existed but did not begin conscripting until at closer to 1850, after the Civil War (5 generations back from 2018). So why were the Collars not in the military until then? Did they fight with the confederates and the south (I’m not making any sort of insinuations here just since they live near Carolina - we have no idea where the line was drawn or what exactly the sides were in this universe for the Civil War)? Does the flag in Memorial Hall only show conscriptions post Civil War when America was united?

Alternatively, perhaps a new way of seeking out and identifying witches was discovered? If these matrilines existed before the 1800s, why were they not enlisted in the army already? Was there a wave of immigration that took place during this time? Or could it be that families that were not previously required to conscript were suddenly subjected to a form of slavery by the government? Was there an awakening of magic in new families? 

If this is also around the first appearance of the Biddies, it is likely that this was the beginning of Alder’s constant battle to maintain power. Could it be that this, combined with the new efforts to increase those conscripted, led to the creation of the Spree? Were inflatables used in the 1830s as a form of weapon (the first inflatable balloons were actually invented around this time in our canon)? It seems convenient that around the same time a new wave of witches began to conscript that we may see the potential emergence of their most formidable enemy; the enemy that perhaps has given the Witch Army a reason to exist at all in modern times. And though still considered a crack theory, I would still file this under smells suspiciously like a deep state ploy to maintain control over a modern military by one Sarah Alder.

But regardless, and crack theories aside, while we are limited in the history of this Alternate America, it still appears as though something shifted in the 1830s in America. Perhaps this is where the first cracks in the American Military Complex appeared, ultimately leading up to the modern incarnation of domestic terrorism found in the Spree. I really need that history book now….

[vezely-a]

Hm, a meta on Vezely vs. death. Like, how is her view on that subject and does it differ now from how it once was? Considering she killed a lot in the past for the big bad and might have grown numb to it but maybe that changed? And in relation to that, how protective would her familiarity with death make her of Elladan and their son, should she ever be in a situation to fear for their lives?

send me something to drabble about: [ always accepting ]

I preface this by saying that Vezely is incredibly desensitized to death and killing. Mostly this is to due to the culture she was raised in, followed by the events of her life and a simple acceptance of her (prolonged) existence among Men. However, her understanding of what death consist of for her kin is unclear and a point of discomfort. Unfortunately, it is not comforting to find out the truth of what happens to elves when they die (this knowledge is not gained until the 4th Age).

Pultai (S. Balchoth) and Death Culture

The Men of Rhûn live shorter lives on average than Men of the Westlands. Famine, drought, disease, and conflicts meant death was a constant in people’s lives. Their culture embraced death as a natural cycle. Yes, one’s passing was mourned, but life could not and did not stop. Similarly, when one died in honor (for instance, in battle), there was a celebration of their passage to the halls of their ancestors. For those who died in dishonor, their body was left for the crows to feed.

In terms of war and conflict, arguably, Vezely was raised during a period of relative stability among the tribes that formed the Pultai-Confederation. However, the confederation continued to grow during these years and new tribal alliances did not always follow without protest. Before the start of mass invasions, smaller conflicts inevitably brought back bodies to burn for the afterlife. 

Raids were also common among the plains. Non-affiliated groups, mercenaries, and exiles made the semi-nomadic tribesmen vulnerable. A raid on her tribe’s encampment ended with the first staining of her hands at an incredibly young age.

In terms of law, executions occurred often enough that a man put to death in a gruesome manner would easily pass the eyes of even the smallest child. Similarly, a man with grievances might resort to violence, or call upon their grievers to fight them, often to the death. 

Have you seen a head succumb to decay and actually fall off a pike? Not a rare sight in Talath Harroch.

A harsh life, a cruel life, a violent life but full of life best describes the life of the Pultai.

Sidenote: The above is not the case for all Easterlings or of descendants of the “Balchoth” in the late Third Age. The “Blachoth” were seen as more “primitive” than even their predecessors, the Wainriders. Political and settlement structure changed in the years following the dissolution of the confederation and the people and culture changed with it.

Let’s talk about being a bringer of death:

The Pultai would say about the Magriags (Vezely’s tribe): “Don’t cross a Magriag or you’ll end up dead.”

Vezely did not only kill for Sauron, which would assume she only killed when there was an invasion or civil war (though kills in battle were seen as honoring their war-god, Maladûm (who is Sauron in disguise)). The first time she killed in cold blood was in her twenties. The seer who ironically was the reason for her existence in Rhûn, also met his end with calculation. Prior her adoption, he abused her so before her family’s departure to live in Kravod, she killed him in his sleep. When she told her adopted father, he was “proud” of her.

What was in store for the Pultai and Vezely (several failed invasions of the Westlands, decades of civil war among the remaining tribes) meant death and conscripted killing were constant. It goes without saying that by the time she was expelled from Rhûn (by someone ordering her own death), becoming a sell-sword in Khand for a few decades was just a job. Let’s get paid to kill people. Sure. Not a big deal. (Human life is to Vez as orc life is to most elves).

Minus the years of invoking her disregard of life as a slave handler, her Mordor days were rather tame in terms of killing due to her position advising trade and being an ambassador/emissary. She wasn’t trying to kill people but persuade them.

Ironically, Mordor might have made her more civil(ized). 

Facing Death

Facing her own demise, however, remains discomforting because it was essentially facing the unknown. There is a blanketed awareness that death would not bring her to the halls of ancestors of her adopted people and that something else awaited her. In Mordor, she became obsessed with her immortality and the potential of that in Sauron’s future dominion. She wanted power and position and dying meant losing that.

Elladan would explain to her what happens to elves when they die and let’s just say the Halls of Mandos sounds like a torture chamber within which she could never escape. If she dies, that’s it, she’s doomed to suffer for eternity. There is no reincarnation. Her anxiety about death is intimately tied to her anxiety about being persecuted (read: executed) for her war crimes. Worse now, however, is that she has become so emotionally intertwined with another who she cannot fathom losing or being distanced from. While another fate of elves is to fade, this would only disconnect her from him and cause him pain. She could not bear it. She wants to live even if she does not deserve to. The only time she comes to peace with dying is a seemingly imminent death to come (hopefully) at the end of her pregnancy (only if her child can live, she could die having created one good thing in this world, and something to keep Elladan living).

In terms of her loved ones dying, she cannot accept it even if their fate would be kinder. Perhaps it is linked to knowing she would also fade of a broken heart (or kill herself) upon their passing. I recall a thread with @peredhellen, when Elladan is on the brink of death (poisoned in Rhûn during one of King Elessar’s suppression campaigns), and Vezely breaks her will to never return to those lands to be at his side. Knowing of the poison that ails him, she practically burns a village down and tortures a few people to get the needed antidote. Basically, her old (read: Pultai) self is always lurking beneath the surface to aid the ones she loves.

Sailing to the Undying Lands is often viewed as death for elves, but to Vez (who sails with her family in Fourth Age 140), she believes she is either going to drown or on arrival, be sent back to fade. So it seems Vez always has death on her mind and it’s two fold: fear of retribution and fear of causing her loved ones pain. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

NASCAR is niche. A recent Morning Consult survey of the sport’s fans found that they’re much more male, white and Southern than other sports fans are. It’s a subculture status that some fans have relished but which NASCAR itself seems eager to shake — in the last two years, its TV ratings bottomed out after peaking in the mid-2000s, according to SportsBusiness Journal. They’ve declined for six years running, in fact. Since the mid-aughts, the sport has actively sought to expand its fan base — seeking race venues outside the South, for example — and in doing so, sometimes drawing the ire of its core fans. “We believe strongly that the old Southeastern redneck heritage that we had is no longer in existence. But we also realize that there’s going to have to be an effort on our part to convince others to understand that,” then-NASCAR President Mike Helton said in 2006.

Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.

So when the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, called for a ban of the Confederate flag earlier this summer, saying “No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race,” NASCAR readily complied. It had already formally asked fans to stop bringing the flags to events in 2015 following the murders of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. President Trump weighed in on NASCAR’s decision, tweeting that its flag ban was to blame for its “lowest ratings EVER!” (ratings are actually up following the flag ban).

But according to the Morning Consult survey from June, 44 percent of NASCAR fans agree with the president and said that fans should be allowed to bring the flag to races. Only 30 percent were fine with the ban. And at NASCAR races in June and July, Confederate flags reappeared. Not in the stands, but high above them; a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans rented planes to fly the flag over the racetracks. The group’s leader, Paul Gramling Jr., told the Columbia Daily Herald that “The Sons of Confederate Veterans is proud of the diversity of the Confederate military and our modern Southland. We believe NASCAR’s slandering of our Southern heritage only further divides our nation.”

Gramling’s statement about the “diversity” of the Confederate army and his use of the term “modern Southland” speak volumes. Enslaved men were conscripted as soldiers and servants in the Confederate Army — they were hardly volunteers for the Southern cause — and Gramling’s “Southland” conjures the image of a cohesive nation, as if the Confederacy, which existed for less than five years, had not been decimated long ago.

The SCV and NASCAR’s oblique tussling might seem like a fringe issue in an election year when a pandemic and an economic crisis imperil millions of lives, but their divergent visions of what the culture of the American South is — who it’s for and of — embodies much about the political and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Trump and NASCAR are in similar positions: overly reliant on a slowly shrinking, mostly white base. NASCAR is trying to expand its audience in order to stay relevant; Trump is not. The sport has realized something that the president can’t seem to grasp, which is that overt shows of racism turn most Americans off.

Electoral politics has played a role in normalizing on a national level the kind of neo-Confederate views that the SCV — and Trump — have condoned and promoted in recent weeks. You don’t have to have grown up in the American South to have thought that the Confederate flag was inextricably tied to what the SCV calls “Southern heritage,” but which really means a particular slice of Southern white culture. Going back decades, blocks of white votes in the South have been courted aggressively by non-Southerners who have played to the culture that has grown around these symbols and a particular nostalgic language about the Confederate past. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, a California governor of Illinois birth, appeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi — where Freedom Rider activists were famously murdered in 1964 — and gave a speech about “states’ rights,” which was read by many as euphemistic in the most loaded way possible, given the context of the place. The country had gotten comfortable with delicate work-arounds like that — the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. For decades, parts of the country have tolerated a semantic category that blandly normalized a strain of white resentment at the Confederate defeat. Sometimes the language is more blunt, of course: the War of Northern Aggression, “the South will rise again” or “It’s only halftime.”

According to the 2010 census, 55 percent of the country’s Black population live in the South. While the region is still nearly 60 percent white, its Black and Hispanic populations are significant, and while traditionally rural, diverse, growing cities like Atlanta and Charlotte have become important business hubs. North Carolina’s Research Triangle region boasts the sort of academic power and national draw often associated with the Northeast Corridor’s Ivy League. NASCAR’s bid to diversify, geographically and otherwise, is in keeping with the modern South’s changes.

But strong vestiges of the racist Confederacy have held on in the region. Mississippi removed the Confederate stars and bars from its state flag only last month, becoming the last state in the Union to do so. While the majority of Americans — 52 percent — favored the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, according to a Quinnipiac University survey from June, 52 percent of those from the South opposed removal, the only region of the country where a majority supported keeping the statues.

In the midst of a floundering campaign, Trump grasped onto Southern white culture — that particular strain of it — as a way to pull his head above water. A large base of his support does indeed lie in the South, as has been the case for all recent Republican presidential candidates; Bill Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in 1996, but no Democrat has since. Trump ran a race-baiting campaign in 2016, and his 2020 campaign has continued to play on long-standing tropes of racial fear, like violent “liberal Democrat” cities. Ironically, his use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., is about as far from states’ rights as you can get.

But Trump seems to be speaking to the SCV types and not the more “mainstream” white voters he actually needs to win. The SCV, for what it’s worth, is more than the “historical, patriotic, and non-political organization” that its website says it is. Its branches have donated to Republican politicians and it controversially purchased the Silent Sam Confederate statue that was torn down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In other words, the group is representative of the types of (white) voters who are Trump’s ride-or-dies.

But Trump has misjudged — or refuses to see — that much of white America is changing how it thinks about racial issues. A Monmouth University survey from June found that 49 percent of white Americans thought police were more likely to use excessive force against a Black person, up from only 25 percent in 2016. A Morning Consult poll from May and June of this year found that 49 percent of white Americans supported the protests unfolding across the country, and 54 percent of suburbanites supported them (white people are the majority in 90 percent of America’s suburban counties, according to Pew Research Center).

Someone seems to have leaned into Trump’s ear and told him he needs these white suburbanites in order to have a fighting chance of winning in November. Last week, he called on “The Suburban Housewives of America” — as if harkening to a membership organization from 1955 — and said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would “destroy” their American dream by promoting affordable housing for all in the suburbs. In Trump’s framing, by hoping to diversify the suburbs, Biden would destroy the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” A majority of Americans in a Pew survey conducted in 2019 said Trump had made race relations in the country worse, and while white, Black and Hispanic people still differ in their views on racial issues, it’s clear that recent events have brought greater racial awareness to the forefront of white Americans’ minds.

Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump losing a state like Ohio — once thought solidly in Trump’s camp — in large part because of the president’s diminishing support in suburban areas. (I wrote at length about this Ohio suburban phenomenon back in 2019.) His embrace of the racist totems of the white South — which large swaths of the white South itself eschews — could now potentially cost Trump with the Midwestern or Northeastern (whatever you want to call Pennsylvania) voters he needs to hold onto in order to win.

Trump, a New York City-born pol who doesn’t quite seem to “get” the ‘burbs — and has never been a particularly subtle political thinker or communicator — crucially misunderstood that the muscular Southern racism the Confederate flag has long represented doesn’t work in the white suburban realms of respectability anymore. That cohort — Republican and Democratic — absorbs and displays its biases more mutedly in 2020. Trump, who came to political power riding a wave of racist conspiracy theory — it was only fair to ask questions about whether the first Black president was actually American, wasn’t it? — now suddenly seems ill-equipped for the political times.

He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.

[murdoch-histories]

If you live in Canada and were forced to endure the mental torture that was Grade 10 Social Studies (like me), then there’s a very high chance you already know who the seventh prime minister was. But if you don’t...just look at the Canadian five dollar bill, which has featured Wilfrid Laurier’s face since 1972.

So far, Laurier, played by Brian Paul, has been featured in two episodes: “Confederate Treasure” and “24 Hours to Doomsday”.

Born in Quebec on November 20, 1841, Laurier was exposed to politics throughout most of his childhood, due to the fact his father was mayor at the time and encouraged debates in the family. 

As a young adult, Laurier attended the Collège de L'Assomption before attending McGill University, where he graduated with a degree in law.

Laurier’s career in federal politics first began when he was elected to the House of Commons in 1874, serving alongside Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. Eventually, he was chosen as leader of the Liberal Party in 1887 and won the position of Prime Minister in 1896, remaining in the position until the 1911 election, when the Conservative Party was instead voted into power. 

Despite not being prime minister, Laurier still continued his political career through the First World War, where he was a strong opponent of conscription, which meant that anyone eligible was to serve in the army. 

Laurier died of a stroke at the age of 77 on February 17, 1919 and was buried in Notre Dame Cemetary, where some 50,000 people attended.

Interesting facts:

- Due to the fact he was born in Quebec, Laurier marked the first time that a francophone prime minister was elected.

- When Laurier was alive, there was a rumour going around that he had an affair with a married woman named Émilie Barthe, even having a son with her. However, there is little evidence to support this. Despite the rumour, Laurier’s wife Zoé would remain with him until his death.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.13 (before 1960)

1002 – English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre. 1093 – Battle of Alnwick: in an English victory over the Scots, Malcolm III of Scotland, and his son Edward, are killed. 1160 – Louis VII of France marries Adela of Champagne. 1642 – First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green: The Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London. 1715 – Jacobite rising in Scotland: Battle of Sheriffmuir: The forces of the Kingdom of Great Britain halt the Jacobite advance, although the action is inconclusive. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Gen. Richard Montgomery occupy Montreal. 1833 – Great Meteor Storm of 1833 1841 – James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism. 1851 – The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle. 1864 – American Civil War: The three-day Battle of Bull's Gap ends in a Union rout as Confederates under Major General John C. Breckinridge pursue them to Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. 1887 – Bloody Sunday clashes in central London. 1901 – The 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster. 1914 – Zaian War: Berber tribesmen inflict the heaviest defeat of French forces in Morocco at the Battle of El Herri. 1916 – World War I: Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription. 1917 – World War I: beginning of the First Battle of Monte Grappa (in Italy known as the "First Battle of the Piave"). The Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces, despite help from the German Alpenkorps and numerical superiority, will fail their offensive against the Italian Army now led by its new chief of staff Armando Diaz. 1918 – World War I: Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 1922 – The United States Supreme Court upholds mandatory vaccinations for public school students in Zucht v. King. 1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City. 1940 – Walt Disney's animated musical film Fantasia is first released at New York's Broadway Theatre, on the first night of a roadshow. 1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U-81, sinking the following day. 1942 – World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: U.S. and Japanese ships engage in an intense, close-quarters surface naval engagement during the Guadalcanal Campaign. 1947 – The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles. 1950 – General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, is assassinated in Caracas. 1954 – Great Britain defeats France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris in front of around 30,000 spectators. 1956 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery bus boycott.

[twatd]

6,000 Years of Murder – Part Six: Things Fall Apart

Tim: The Wicked + The Divine #36 finally gave us a definitive list of every damn Recurrence that has occurred since Ananke first started exploding heads, so we thought we’d take a walk through the annals of history and provide some context for what was happening at the time. Welcome to 6,000 Years of Murder.

Our sixth octet of Recurrences bridges the gap between BC and AD, and sees two great powers rise, in the form of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Republic, only for them to crumble into bloodshed and chaos. Feels like an appropriate arc for WicDiv, no?

188BC – Eastern China When we last left China, the Zhou dynasty was starting to crumble back into a series of smaller territories, but since then, the Qin imperial dynasty has reunited the country. Now, we’ve begun the Han dynasty, considered a golden age in Chinese history, with China’s majority ethnic group still calling themselves the ‘Han Chinese’ and modern Chinese script often referred to as ‘Han characters’. 188BC sees Emperor Hui of Han die aged just 22 (maybe he was in the Pantheon?) and his domineering mother Empress Dowager Lü take the throne, having already been the power behind it.

Also occurring since we last checked in on China? The birth, life and death of Confucius, one of China’s most influential philosophers. His teaching, which emphasised personal and state morality, justice, sincerity and social harmony, will form one of the central schools of thought for the rest of China’s history. It emerged during a period called the Hundred Schools of Thought, a time of great cultural and intellectual expansion that occurred during the Warring States era. Alongside Confucianism, important Chinese philosophies like Taoism and Legalism were also developed, and their interplay will shape China for centuries to come.

96BC – Etruria The Roman Republic has been chugging along for around 300 years at this point, so we should probably pay some attention to it. As the name suggests, Rome is still a republic at this point, controlled by a Senate and giving at least the tip of a hat towards the notion of democracy popularised by the Greeks. However, little Julius Caesar, currently four years old, will soon put an end to that and transform the already successful republic into an Empire that will conquer much of Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

It’s worth noting that this Recurrence doesn’t take us to Rome itself but Etruria, the cradle of an earlier culture in Northern Italy that was assimilated into the Roman Republic around 300 years earlier. I couldn’t nail down a concrete reason for this choice, but my current working theory is that, as one of the first cultures absorbed into Rome, Etruria represents the way that the Empire will go on to suck in and process so many of the surrounding civilisations.

4BC – Judea When a series is focused on humans ascending to godhood throughout history, cultivating great followings and bringing about change before dying young, it makes sense that we ended up in Judea in time for Jesus’ birth (yes, contrary to what you’d think, Jesus was born between 6-4BC, to allow Herod to be King upon his birth). As you can imagine during this period, despite travelling almost 1,500 miles from our last Recurrence, we haven’t outpaced the Romans, who annexed Judea in 63BC, shortly before transforming from a republic into an empire.

Herod was designated “King of the Jews” shortly after the Roman conquest, gaining military control in 37BC. He dies just as we visit, in 4BC, and will split Judea up amongst his sons, who are largely inept and rejected by the people in favour of more direct Roman rule. Even then, Jews living in the province still maintained some form of independence, able to judge offenders by their own laws. This independence was also the root of several rebellions that brewed in the area over the next 150 years, eventually resulting in the Romans renaming large areas to try to erase the historical ties Jewish people had to the region. That didn’t really go over very well.

88AD – Teotihuacan We’ve crossed over into Anno Domini - the numbers start going up from here! To celebrate, let’s take a trip to the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas and the sixth largest city in the world: Teotihuacan. Located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, and just 25 miles from modern-day Mexico City, this metropolis boasted advanced building techniques including multi-storey residential blocks. Like other Mesoamerican sites, the urban planning was incredibly precise, oriented to the progression of the sun and stars, making the entire city a living calendar.

Quite who constructed Teotihuacan is unknown. Archaeological evidence suggests it was a multi-ethnic city, with distinct quarters occupied by the Otomi, Zapotec, Mixtec, Maya and Nahua peoples. Originally, it was presumed that the Toltecs were behind initial construction, based on colonial-era texts that quote Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs. However, the Nahuatl word “toltec” means “craftsman of the highest level”, and so might not refer specifically to the Toltec civilisation. It’s now generally assumed that settlement began around 300BC by the Totanac people, with the city reaching its zenith around 450AD.

181AD – South East Asia So far, our dalliances in Asia have mostly been centred on modern-day India and China, but that leaves large areas unaccounted for. Merchants throughout the region are busy establishing the Silk Road to China, but trade is also occurring via sea, taking you close to the Mekong Delta in present-day Vietnam. Right now, that area is part of the Funan network of states. Like Teotihuacan, modern understanding of Funan and the people that founded it is heavily debated. A lot of evidence, including the name we give it, comes from a single report by two Chinese diplomats, and given that China was often trying to conquer this part of the world, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

There’s a boss-ass folktale surrounding the region’s founding which involves a genie, a magic bow and a snake princess, but we can probably (unfortunately) also file that under “dubious”. What we do know is that Roman, Chinese and Indian goods have all been excavated in the area, suggesting a truly powerful trading centre. The Mekong Delta was perfect for both rice cultivation and fishing, further helping the area’s economy, and tactical conquests and colonies meant that at points, the kingdom controlled the entire trade route from Malaysia to central Vietnam.

271AD – Eastern China The Han period in China may have had a massive impact that continues to today, but it had to end at some point, that point being around 220, not long after the awesome Battle of Red Cliffs (see the great John Woo film starring Tony Leung for more details). Prior to this, there was already considerable infighting between various kingdoms and warlords as the Han dynasty weakened, and with it dissolved, we reach the Three Kingdoms period - a slight misnomer given that each of the states (Wei, Shu and Wu) had an emperor claiming the right to rule over all of China. By 271, the Shu have already conquered by the Wei, who shortly afterwards are usurped by the Jin dynasty, and in 280, the Jin will conquer the Wu, reuniting China.

While the Three Kingdoms period may only less than 100 years, from the Han Dynasty weakening to the Jin emerging triumphant, this period is the most bloodthirsty in the country’s history. As much as 60 per cent of the population may have been killed due to high conscription levels, brutal massacres and widespread famine. Despite this, the period also saw considerable advances in technology, include improvements on the repeating crossbow, mechanical puppet theatres and non-magnetic compasses that used differential gears. Still, Ananke’s visit seems remarkably tranquil for such a period of upheaval.

364AD – Eastern Europe The Roman Empire is still doing its thing, but change is on the horizon. Constantine has ended the persecution of Christians after converting, and has shifted the Roman capital to New Rome AKA Constantinople to be closer to his rivals the Sassanid Empire. Meanwhile, out in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, a number of nomadic warrior tribes have formed a loose confederation called the Huns. While their best known leader Attila won’t be born for another 40 years, they are doing their best to disrupt things for both the Sassanids and the Romans, attacking settlements across Eastern Europe.

The Huns attacks didn’t come out of nowhere - it’s likely that the El Niño Southern Oscillation caused a megadrought in Inner Asia, causing them to migrate to the edges of their own lands. Whatever caused their sudden attacks, they terrified the Romans, who associated them with the Antichrist and Gog and Magog (whom Alexander the Great had captured behind mountains, according to legend). Those superstitions probably weren’t helped by a massive earthquake that hit the Eastern Mediterranean the year after our visit, destroying parts of Crete, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Sicily and Cyprus.

454AD – Germania Our first Recurrence that we’ve seen before, in the 455 Special. Persephone’s death takes place the year before the Roman Lucifer went all “meat-harpy”, and her placement in Germania suggests she may have been part of the Vandals, who we see invading Rome in the Special, rather than a Roman citizen like Lucifer and Bacchus. By this point, the Roman Empire has split in two following the death of Theodosius I, with the Eastern part to remain going as the Byzantine Empire, and the Western part (where we are) soon to fall.

Rome, as we find it, is beset on all sides. In the East, our old friends the Huns are attacking, Attila having just died and divided the Empire among his sons. The Visigoths are sometimes allies and sometimes enemies, depending on what they can get away with. Anglo-Saxons are settling Britain, and in Germania, tribes including the Suebi, the Alans and the Vandals have been ransacking towns and establishing their own kingdoms. The Vandals, led by Genseric (who also appears in the Special) establish a kingdom that includes Corsica, Malta and parts of Africa, and while originally thought to be part of the destruction of Rome, are now thought to have acted as inheritors of many Roman traditions. They’ve certainly inherited Ananke’s efficiency at disposing of heads.

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