(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Reflections on Juneteenth [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-12 First a disclaimer - I'm an almost senior citizen (6 mos. to go), white man of Irish and Yankee decent, Navy veteran, Roman Catholic, moderate Republican from Massachusetts, great-great-grandson of GAR veterans, Mass. native, and long-time history buff. Next week is Juneteenth. Its nearing has caused me to think of three things, the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), the Union cause, and the capacity for U.S. veterans to change. USCT - Yes, Lincoln freed the slaves in Confederate territory with the Emancipation Proclamation, but we need to remember that multitudes of slaves acted on their own agency to free themselves before and after the proclamation. Black soldiers seen in various segregated state regiments and the USCT were the ultimate expression of that agency. Even before the proclamation, the oft-maligned (I think unfairly) Benjamin Butler had armed local black men in the Delta a few short months after liberating New Orleans. Later, regiments such as the 54th Mass. proved their worth. As citizens, we owe a debt to the large numbers of the USCT who saved our country by providing the manpower for Grant to win in the heavy combat of 1864-1865 in the Eastern theater as well as giving Thomas the force to render the Rebel Army of Tennessee militarily ineffective at Nashville in 1864 while Sherman destroyed the Confederacy's ability to feed and arm Lee in the east. People sometimes forget that the nadir of the U.S. government's military fortunes were in the summer of 1864. The Confederacy needed only to destroy the U.S. population's willingness to continue to win. Heavy casualties in the Overland campaign and on Sherman's approach to Atlanta were sapping that will. The injection of the thousands of motivated, fresh men of the USCT sustained our Republic through the ordeal. Our country owes the black men in uniform a big debt. The Union Cause - I find it interesting that a lot of my party decry "cancel culture" when the Grand-daddy cancel culture of them all was the Lost Cause Myth. Amid all the caca de vaca that it erased from popular memory was the cause of Union. By this, I mean that by being in a union, the people had a determining role in their government. Yes, it was imperfect leaving out women and people of color (we have improved and need to stay vigilant about voting rights), but as the historian Gary Gallagher has said, this country was the only large republican democracy in the world with a presence on the world's main stage (although still not playing a lead role). The Lost Cause managed to portray the loyal population as focused only on money (yes, financial institutions in free states were entangled in the financial support of slavery) when the wealthiest per capita states of South Carolina an Mississippi were the two with majority slave populations. How many times have we heard Confederacy apologists say the war was about economics? Yes, the economics of the evil institution of slavery. Also, through the three-fifths compromise, slave-state white men had more representation in the House and more influence on the presidency, House Speaker, and Supreme Court, never mind the protection of this inequality by slave states' insistence on parity between slave and free states prior to 1850 giving them more Senate and Electoral College votes. Many in the free states had a huge grievance against their second-class citizenship resulting from this. At the base, we all agree to a vote, and if your position loses, you do not get to take your ball and go home (sound familiar?) - especially if you have benefited more than other players in the game. While the majority of free state populations were incredibly racist by today's standards (yes, even some famous Abolitionists), they saw the evil of slavery diminishing their voice in their own government (yes, name your cause of the war and it ALL ties back to slavery). The Lost Cause has erased so much of the memory of that cause. That cause was so strong that four (five by 1863) slave states remained in the U.S. The Lost Cause's need to portray it as a North-South struggle erased huge Unionist segments of the population in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Alabama, and northern Georgia. In their view of democracy, the wealthy oligarchs (that is, the plantation class), should not count more than the average person. We need to remember that, especially today. Capacity to Change - Again, by today's standards, some of the racial attitudes of men answering the call to defend the United States - well, sheesh, yeah, wow (yeah as Gary Gallagher fan, I need to refer you to the fact that the 1860 population of the free states was near 97 percent white and many of these soldiers had never seen a black person before) - but many changed through their experience. Abolitionism was not the majority opinion in the free states, but these men saw, as a Vermont soldier in Butler's command wrote, "enough of the horrors of slavery to make me an Abolitionist forever," it gained adherents (As a side note, we may wonder in how much of an influence the fact that American sailors were enslaved in the North African slave trade - can you say Barbary Wars? - had on the movements gaining momentum in the maritime states of the northeast. It was only two generations removed foam the men in the army.) Add to that their witnessing the bravery of black men fighting alongside them. Many a U.S. veteran also found the black population a dependable source of military intelligence. Top this off with the losers of the contest trying to act as if nothing really changed after the sacrifice of these men and their lost comrades, and one saw progress in racial relations and attitudes of these men (yeah, I know, by today's standards, still not good enough) that despite the great resistance of the Lost Cause Myth led to a better, albeit imperfect USA of today. These three subjects have always given me hope. As one of the junior members of the Baby Boom, I pray that it does for my fellow Americans, especially the youth. We can do better. We should do better. Remain hopeful and do the hard work of governing ourselves. Anyway, my two cents. Take care [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/12/2246314/-Reflections-on-Juneteenth?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/