Occasionally one would think that a fact check prior to publication might help things a bit. I’ll leave it to you to do that.
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Occasionally one would think that a fact check prior to publication might help things a bit. I’ll leave it to you to do that.
Crossroads 
“Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyo… blah” – There’s your problem.
About the only time I see heritage folk cite anything, it comes from DiLorenzo.
At least they cite him. Now tell me when DiLorenzo cites anything. I recall an article by him spewing intellectual junk about the Replublican platform in 1860 which had one source note. Must be a Mises practice.
As often stated, it is useless to have an intelligent discussion with these people.
I don’t know,nor do I care, who this Southern Sentinel is but I do find it amusing that in one sentence he puts the number of deaths at 700,000 and a few sentences later he puts it at 620,000, this guy can’t even agree with himself.
Talk about butchering history, the Lost Cause is strong with that blogger. It seems as if he’s accumulated the garbage collected at other Neo-confederate sites and compacted it into one big glob of bull.
As a Grant historian, maybe you can answer something in regard to this screed. I’ve seen the heritage crowd on many occasions state that he and his family had slaves when he became President. I know the Dents owned slaves and that Grant received one from his father-in-law whom Grant later freed well before the war.
From this it seems the neoconfederate crowd has given this story some much longer legs and are using it to in essence slander Grant. How long has the Grant-as-slaveowner-in-the-White House story been around?
Of course he didn’t have slaves when he became president. Guess some people either don’t know when he became president or don’t know when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. Not that they let historical fact stand in the way of a good story that serves their prejudices …
This has been addressed before, but heritage apologists don’t care for historical accuracy when heritage correctness will do just fine. As to the origins of these tales, I haven’t delved into them in detail, although some misrepresentations were circulating as early as the 1860s.
“Heritage Correctness” I love it.
DiLorenzo continues his plunge off a cliff into the deep end of irrelevant idiocy.
When a few folks found out that I was taking on the study of the Civil War, they suggested that I read this sort of tripe so as to get a fully rounded view of history. My reply is that when I want history, I read factual history, when I want fiction I read Heinlein, but the last thing I want to waste my time on is fiction masquerading as fact (history). I am very protective about what goes into my mental repository, as it is very difficult to expunge data once its imputed and processed.
I am always dumbfounded by the people who believe the bile DiLorenzo spews. As Dr. Simpson pointed out, all one has to do is look at the 13th Amendment to realize Grant never had slaves while he was President.
The Mississippi SCV is busy spreading this garbage and trying to convince people slavery didn’t play a role in secession and the war. Their big tag line is the Civil War was a dispute over money.
Many people with the intellectual curiosity of a brick assume that just because somebody carries the title “Professor”, he/she knows what he/she is talking about. While in many cases that’s a reliable assumption, in others it’s not. DiLorenzo falls into the latter category. The Mises Robot Factory and its agenda-driven philosophy is not noted for producing insightful historians.
I had a professor in college, Dr. Keenan, who would describe Di Lorenzo as a man educated beyond his intelligence.
And when one chooses to go outside the box of Lost Cause propaganda, and actually seeks out legitimate history and intelligent discourse….the Causers track you down with hate mail for doing so. When I completed my Trifecta of Truth blogs and joined Kevin Levin’s blog (and commented) I received a message that excoriated me for “falling under the influence of that internal trio of Mackey/Simpson/Levin” Glad it bugged ’em so much 🙂
The Causers want to retain a certain image of the South. Historians by nature wreck the stereotypes that “true believers” have. As has been noted by others, the whole thing revolves around modern political ideology.
Ray Raphael said, “History is about the past exclusively and the modalities are inquiry and understanding. Heritage is how we use the past to see it in the present. It is more about cultural identity and affirmation.”
As we can see from the Causers and their quite often racist rants, they see things through a white supremacist lens. History is used by them only to support their belief structure. Anything that does not fit into that narrow-minded and erroneous interpretation is rejected out of hand. Today we see that expressed when they use the terms, “PC, revisionist, or leftist.”
The wonderful thing about the whole causer stupidity is they haven’t advanced any new facts or information for a very long time. When they do come up with anything, it is almost invariably recycled and disproved information that usually fits into the Lost Cause Catechism or is derived from it. They constantly repeat the same old lies over and over again expecting them to be received as facts.
If they want to send hate mail, let them. USPS needs the traffic and it will help keep the cost of stamps down. It’s fun to watch them use aliases.
Your post is both enlightening and reassuring, Professor. Five months down, and a lifetime of CW study ahead; I foresee my endeavor as empowering, whilst they will continue to wither on the vine- desperately clinging to hackneyed canards.
And I’m smugly smiling at getting top billing, but wondering what an “internal trio” would be.
Dam spell check: it was supposed to be INFERNAL TRIO as written to me. You are part of an Infernal Trio, Mr. Mackey. I wonder if that includes some sort of dance with fire? And YUP, you got top billing, as the other two were classified “also ran” (kind of like certain hockey teams these days)
It’s always astonished me that kids and their families are forking over tuition in order to take courses from this Mises robot. Who knew that Prince Asaka was just following Abe’s directions at Nanking. Among many things missing here is DiLorenzo’s incisive assessment of the immorality of the Allied blockade of Nazi Gemany in WWII. Another checkmark in the column against Lincoln, I guess..
The author of the linked article quotes Jefferson:
“We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Somehow the author fails to notice that Lincoln did rely on reason to combat errors of opinion. Lincoln used military force to suppress an armed rebellion.