When Lincoln took office, the main role of the federal government was to deliver mail. The government also conducted foreign policy, defended the frontier with a small army, and collected import duties, but primarily, Washington was a post office. By the end of the Civil War, the government supported an army of a million men, carried a national debt of $2.5 billion, distributed public lands, printed a national currency, and collected an array of internal taxes. (p. 302) David Goldfield’s brilliant history of the Civil War is the best one-volume analysis of our tragic conflict that I’ve ever read. Goldfield shows how the build-up to the Civil War happened. He details the major events of the Civil War without getting bogged down in just a litany of battles (although his vivid descriptions of the carnage will cause your stomach to churn). There’s no sugar-coating of what war is like here.
Goldfield’s presentation of post-Civil War America is also graphic. Here’s how our ancestors dealt with Indians:
Some 30 or 40 squaws and children were hiding in a hole for protection. They sent out a little girl six years old with a white flag on a stick. She was shot and killed, all the others in the the hole were killed…I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed along with their mothers. (p. 447) This was a brutal time in our history. America Aflame is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. GRADE: A
Sad indeed. I’ve read some Civil War history, enough not to want more, but we were a brutal people then, and perhaps we’ve changed or perhaps not. Mostly the Indians were just insects to be eradicated. Too bad, we could have learned from them, same with the Spanish on the west coast. The growth of government aspect in certainly an interesting one.
Rick, I learned a lot about the U.S. before, during, and after the Civil War from reading AMERICA AFLAME. If I was teaching a Civil War history course, I’d use AMERICA AFLAME as my textbook.
Can’t help but wonder if the Union should have let the South secede permanently. Other than the college areas, they are nothing but trouble. The end of slavery was the only good that came out of it. And we are forced to let them exert their influence today.
David Goldfield discusses the options of letting the South go their own way, Patti. There were plenty of Northerners, especially in the later stages of the Civil War, who were concerned about how to reintegrate the South into the Union. It’s still a work in progress.
Yes, Patti, I can see that POV, but the end of slavery is a huge benefit, easily worth all the rest!
Not my ancestors. They were running from Czarist pogroms.
Sounds good. I’ve been interested in the Civil War for a long time and “the best one-volume analysis” is high praise.
Patti, you probably saw the piece in yesterday’s NY Times Book Review about how Roosevelt made a deal with the Devil (the Southern Democrats) to get his New Deal passed by allowing segregation to continue.
Jeff, and LBJ made another deal with the Devil to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965. “We’ll lose the South for a 100 years,” LBJ said after that landmark legislation passed.
Squaws were pretty vicious, too. Their treatment of prisoners and wounded enemies were unspeakable. Killing the kids was over the line, of course, but the Indians did it to whites all the time. There’s this idea that we should be better than everyone else, but the fact is we’re all savages under the right circumstance and inducement.
No group has a monopoly on cruelty and viciousness, Bob. It was shocking to read about all the atrocities in AMERICA AFLAME by the various groups.
Ah, but certainly not YOU, Cap’n.
That’s what I said, George.
Well, I might have been less than perfect in my conduct at one time, Rick, but now that I’m an ordained minister I try to lead an exemplary live.
The Right Reverend Cap’n Bob
Bob, were you ordained in the Church of the Internet?