Adding to New Orleans’ Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s spot-on speech on Confederate Monuments — There’s a big Confederate monument in St. Louis that the new mayor, a Democrat, wants to take down. And naturally people of St. Louis are arguing about it. I wrote a letter to the editor expressing my, um, anti-Confederate views that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a couple of days ago. But the Post-Dispatch word count limit didn’t let me say everything I had to say.

First, regarding St. Louis — Missouri was a state that allowed slavery, and in the 1860 elections “Breckinridge Democrats” won a majority of seats in the statehouse. However, the state as a whole was not that keen for secession. Claiborne Fox Jackson, elected governor in 1860, ran as an anti-secession candidate and won by a comfortable margin.  But Gov. Jackson was not, in fact, anti-secession.

After he took office in January 1861, Jackson arranged for a state convention to settle the matter of whether the state would secede or remain in the Union; the convention voted for the Union, by a vote of 98-1. Jackson then declared the state would be neutral in any upcoming armed conflict, and after Ft. Sumter he refused to send state militia to Washington, as Lincoln requested.

At some point, Jackson got in touch with Jefferson Davis to plan a military secessionist coup. The first stage of this plan was to use state militia to seize the federal arsenal in St. Louis. Munitions taken by Confederates from a federal arsenal in Baton Rouge — two howitzers, two siege guns, 500 muskets, and ammunition —  were shipped by steamboat to St. Louis for this purpose, sometime about May 1, 1861.

However, the officer in charge of the St. Louis arsenal, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, had been tipped off about the movement of Confederate weapons. Lyon secretly moved most of the rifles and muskets in the arsenal across the river to Alton, Illinois. Then on May 10 he and troops under his command surrounded the militia that had been assembled just outside St. Louis in preparation for the coup. The militia surrendered. So far, so good.

St. Louis was one of the few parts of Missouri that had voted for Lincoln in 1860, and this was largely because the city had been just about taken over by German immigrants. (These included Adolphus Busch, currently being featured in Budweiser ads, who arrived in 1857; Eberhard Anheuser had arrived in 1842.) The Germans were anti-slavery and pro-Union to the hilt. What we might call the native-born population of St. Louis were of mixed opinions on secession and slavery. But in St. Louis, a lot of pro-secession sentiment was mixed together with anti-German nativism, and there were hard feelings going both ways.

It so happens that Lyon’s troops were mostly German immigrants. As the federal troops marched state militia through St. Louis, secessionists lined the streets, jeering the “Dutch” and throwing rocks and dirt. At some point, somebody fired a gun. And then more people, including the federal troops, fired guns. Several people, mostly civilians, were killed. And several days of violent riots followed. But St. Louis remained a Union stronghold ever after.

On May 11, Gov. Jackson appointed Sterling Price to be Major General of the Missouri State Guard. Officially, Jackson was still posing as “neutral” — neither pro nor anti Union — but he sent dispatches to the Confederacy saying that if Confederates invaded, the Missouri State Guard would help them “liberate” St. Louis. Missouri Lt. Governor Thomas C. Reynolds actually traveled to Richmond to request an invasion.

By June, Captain Lyon had been promoted to Brigadier General. Lyon marched troops to Jefferson City, the state capitol, arriving June 13. Jackson and most of the “Breckinridge Democrats” fled to Boonville, Missouri, to continue to try to flip the state to the Confederacy. At one point Jackson actually led state militia against Union troops.

In July, the convention that had voted against secession met again and declared that the governor’s office had been voided. A new governor was appointed. And, in fact, the state government was such a mess that much of the state was under martial law for much of the war, which didn’t turn out well, either. But that’s another story.

Jackson and the renegade state officials met in Neosho, Missouri, in August, and voted an ordinance of secession; shortly after that the Confederacy recognized Missouri as its 12tth state. However, as the enormous majority of the state was under Union control, that gesture was meaningless.

In 1864, Sterling Price led Confederate troops toward St. Louis with the intention to invade it, but he didn’t get very close. The Confederates were stopped near Ironton by troops commanded by Gen. Thomas Ewing, who was General Sherman’s brother in law, and by locals who were what was left of the Ironton militia unit. The latter included some of my kinfolk, according to family lore.

Base of the Confederate Memorial in St. Louis after recent, um, renovation. Reuters photo.

Anyway, all this history rather begs the question of what a Confederate monument is doing in St. Louis.

The monument itself, erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1914, was designed deliberately to be innocuous. It bears no Confederate battle flags or likenesses of famous generals. Instead, under an angel representing “the spirit of the Confederacy” are generic (but heroic!) figures that are supposed to be sending a youth off to war. Whether there were any St. Louis Confederate regiments I do not know, and the monument doesn’t tell us.

(The Missouri Daughters of the Confederacy were big on planting innocuous monuments around the state. There used to be a big, granite rock on the University of Missouri–Columbia campus when I was a student there. The rock bore a plaque dedicating the rock to the Confederacy, courtesy of the Daughters. It was a huge object of contention, and the thing was removed to parts unknown about 1974, a year after I graduated. I doubt that anyone misses it now.)

As far as St. Louis is concerned, a more appropriate monument to the spirit of the Confederacy would have featured a snake hiding in grass, or maybe a weasel. The Missouri Confederates were not a heroic crew, in particular the psychopathic “bushwhackers” such as William Quantrille and “Bloody Bill” Anderson. I notice there are no heroic monuments to those guys.

In 1860, about 114,000 persons were enslaved in Missouri, mostly on farms. I don’t know of any monuments to them, either.

The truth is, the enormous majority of Confederate monuments in the United States have little to do with history. They do not mark a place where any particular thing happened. They don’t teach us anything about the history of The Late Unpleasantness. They are totems of white supremacy, period.

Even when a monument has some legitimate reason for being, if you look into the monument’s history, white supremacy tends to be lurking there. For example, there’s a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on the Bull Run/Manassas battlefield, now a national park. The statue occupies the spot where Jackson’s regiment was said to be holding against a Union assault, and some other general is said to have rallied his troops by saying “There stands Jackson like a stone wall.” It’s a bit of actual Americana, in other words, so arguably the monument has some justification for being there. But when the statue was dedicated in 1940, the governor of Virginia actually said that the statue of Jackson honors “one of the greatest soldiers of the Anglo-Saxon race.” Argh.

Some of the people defending the monument in St. Louis argue that it has artistic value. They like looking at it, they say. Fine; they are free to raise money and buy the damn thing, and then they can move it to private property and look at it all they like. I say the same thing about the other Confederate monuments as well, since (again) few of them mark a place where any historical thing happened. There must be a really rich pro-Confederate guy some place who will buy them up and move them to his estate. Maybe he can open a theme park. Just get them off public property.

There is more documentation to show that Richard Nixon sabotaged Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative.

A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench the initiative. …

…Nixon had entered the fall campaign with a lead over Humphrey, but the gap was closing that October. Henry A. Kissinger, then an outside Republican adviser, had called, alerting Nixon that a deal was in the works: If Johnson would halt all bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviets pledged to have Hanoi engage in constructive talks to end a war that had already claimed 30,000 American lives.

But Nixon needed the war to continue so that he could run against it.

Nixon had a pipeline to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson’s actions as a cheap political trick. The conduit was Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.

Nixon had a pipeline to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson’s actions as a cheap political trick. The conduit was Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.

“! Keep Anna Chennault working on” South Vietnam, Haldeman scrawled, recording Nixon’s orders. “Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN can do.”

Nixon told Haldeman to have Rose Mary Woods, the candidate’s personal secretary, contact another nationalist Chinese figure — the businessman Louis Kung — and have him press Thieu as well. “Tell him hold firm,” Nixon said.

Nixon also sought help from Chiang Kai-shek, the president of Taiwan. And he ordered Haldeman to have his vice-presidential candidate, Spiro T. Agnew, threaten the C.I.A. director, Richard Helms. Helms’s hopes of keeping his job under Nixon depended on his pliancy, Agnew was to say. “Tell him we want the truth — or he hasn’t got the job,” Nixon said.

Lyndon Johnson knew at least some of this was going on but decided to not go public with the knowledge, because he lacked absolute proof of Nixon’s direct involvement.

In a conversation with the Republican senator Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, Johnson lashed out at Nixon. “I’m reading their hand, Everett,” Johnson told his old friend. “This is treason.”

“I know,” Dirksen said mournfully.

What might have been. More than 21,000 American troops died in Vietnam while Nixon was president.

Well, it’s that anniversary again. Somehow I woke up today with the phrase “correct remembrance” in my head. This is taken from Buddhism. The Sanskrit term is samyak-smriti (in Pali, samma-sati), and it is often translated “right mindfulness.” But it could just as accurately be “correct remembrance.”

Mindfulness, of course, is trendy now. Popular mindfulness is all about being here now; staying in the present moment without getting lost in daydreams, worries or plans. And it is that.

But the Buddha also spoke of remembrance. Part of this is correctly remembering that none of us will escape sickness, old age, death and loss. It’s also the case that if you are mindfully attending to current events, you will remember them correctly. Otherwise, you won’t.

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Memory is not like re-playing a video recording. Memories change over time. Sometimes what you think is your memory is something planted in your head that you heard from someone else. It really isn’t that uncommon for people to remember things that didn’t happen, or that didn’t happen the way they remember it.  (See Scientific American on this point.)

Today all kinds of people are “remembering” 9/11. Most were watching on television. The “truthers,” of course, remember all kinds of things that differ from what I saw with my own eyes. By now they’ve grown a whole mythology about 9/11 that has completely replaced any resemblance of verifiable fact, and they can’t be dissuaded from it.

But there’s also the blanket blaming of “religion.” I see memes on social media showing the twin towers with the words “imagine no religion.” But this is incorrect remembrance from people who never bothered to understand the roots of Middle East terrorism.

The 9/11 terrorists were hardly devout Muslims; it was recorded that several of them drank and liked to go nightclubbing. They were fanatics, yes, but not religious ones. Their core grievances had more to do with politics, with history, with western hegemony threatening their cultures, and probably with personal issues also. Religion was just the box they put their grievances in.

And, in a similar way, religion has become the  simplistic, one-size-fits-all scapegoat for violence in the world today. I’m not saying there is no connection at all, but if you study each situation in detail you find that the core issues, the real fanatical grievances that drive violent mass movements these days, are not religious issues. Religion is used to erect a facade of righteousness around the real sources of fanatical rage. It also can be used to absolve perpetrators (in their minds) of blame for what are really acts of depravity and hate.

The truth is, if religion disappeared tomorrow, people would just find other boxes. If the 20th century should have taught us anything, it’s that violent and fanatical mass movements can be formed around politics, nationalism, and ethnic identity. Religion isn’t necessary. Of course, it is regrettable that religion doesn’t seem to help, either, except on an individual level.

By now we’re way past correct remembrance of 9/11. As soon as it happened, people were putting the events through their own conceptual filters, which is way not mindful. By now hardly anybody remembers 9/11. What we recall are our ideas about 9/11. Not the same thing.

I keep seeing a really stupid meme showing Abraham Lincoln’s face with the words, “In 1860 I was third party. Was your vote wasted?” Obviously, this is meant to encourage people to vote for fringe candidates Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. It’s also the kind of derp that comes from people not being taught history.

In the 1860 elections, the Republicans not only took the White House; they also won a majority of seats in both the Senate and the House. That’s a third party?

Yes, the Republican Party was relatively new, but it was never really a “third” party. Here’s the history:

Let’s go back to 1850. We aleady were locked into a two-party system, and the two major parties were the Democrats and the Whigs.

The Whig party imploded in 1854 over the issue of slavery. Pro-slavery Whigs mostly joined the Democrats. Anti-slavery Whigs and some other factions met later that year to form the beginning of the Republican Party.

In the 1856 elections the Republicans won 90 out of 237 seats in the U.S. House, and they held 15 seats in the Senate, so the Republican Party very quickly took the place of the defunct Whigs to become one of the two major parties. It was never really a “third” party.

In 1860, the Republicans nominated Lincoln and the Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas. But Democrats in slave states were pissed off at Douglas for supporting the statehood of Kansas as a non-slave state, so the southern Democrats met separately to nominate John Breckinridge. The Democratic Party split in half, in other words. And finally there was a party of “third way” types who were anti-secession but didn’t take a position on slavery; this was the Constitutional Union party, which nominated John Bell. There were some other parties in the running but they didn’t win any electoral votes.

Historians today consider Breckinridge and Bell to be the “third party” candidates in that election, and Lincoln and Douglas were the major party candidates. Any freshman-level American history textbook would tell you this.

With the votes split four ways, Lincoln won 39.8 percent of the popular vote and 180 out of 303 electoral college votes, which at the time was enough to give him the victory without it going to the House. Douglas came in second in the popular vote but fourth in the electoral college.

Once again, in 1860 the Republicans also won the majority of seats in both the House and Senate, which is one of the things that triggered the secession crisis. In 1860, the GOP wasn’t just one of the two major parties; it was the dominant party.

On the other hand, a party that’s been around for many years but has never elected anyone to Congress and is (currently) running at about 4 percent in national presidential polls — yeah, I’m talking about the Greens — really is a third party and in no way, shape or form is in the same position as the Republicans in 1860. I hope that’s clear.

Yes, this record shows us a new party becoming very successful, but note that the Whig Party had to die first. As long as the two major parties we have now are both intact, third parties are not likely to achieve the same success.

Update: For some of you not catching on — We’re locked into a two-party system because of the way we hold elections. Our political system supports only two major parties at a time, period, especially at the national level. This article explains why that is pretty well, and also explains why it would probably require amending the Constitution before third parties can become viable. People have been trying to establish successful third parties since the 1830s, and not one has lasted very long. See also a blog post I wrote about this awhile back.

So you started off with the Whigs and Democrats; the Whigs fell apart, and a portion of the Whigs re-formed into the Republicans, while most of the rest of the Whigs joined the Democrats. The Republican Party was basically an update of the Whig Party. Because of those circumstances, the Republicans were able to step into the niche formerly occupied by the Whigs and become one of the two major parties fairly quickly. Most of the guys elected in 1860, including Lincoln himself, were well known to the public as former Whigs.

I’m not asking who was the best POTUS, mind you. Just which candidate for the office had the most impressive resume. He wouldn’t have had to be elected, even.

I ask because of this exchange on Facebook, which I repeat here word for word.

Some Guy: Have you been listening to the media know-nothing pundits and Hillary Clinton detractors critical of her foreign policy speech, denouncing her lecture as more of an attack on Con man Trump’s total lack of any qualifications to be President.

Well, Any sane person would know she is correct, Trump is not even fit to visit the White House much less live there.

Hillary was outstanding and proved without any doubt that she is indeed the best qualified person to ever seek the Presidency.

Me://the best qualified person to ever seek the Presidency.// EVER seek the Presidency? (No sir, no cult of personality here, sir.) Seriously, her qualifications beat Trump’s by several miles, although you could say the same thing about an order of french fries. But best qualified person EVER? Don’t you think that claim is a tad overboard?

Another Person: No – her education and experience make her the best qualified candidate in history. That’s resume – not personal, partisan opinion.

Some Guy: Barbara, Who would you say was better qualified than Hillary and why????

Me: Just as an example, there was another POTUS who was a U.S. senator from New York and who was re-elected, but then resigned before the second term ended to become governor of New York. He also served as Secretary of State, and achieved some notable diplomatic successes. He also served a term as Vice President of the United States before being elected President. I’d say that guy was qualified up the wazoo. And that guy was Martin van Buren, one of our more mediocre presidents.

Some Guy: Okay, So what was his record for service to the community before he went into public office, anything close to Hillary’s involvement.

Me: Having beat the socks off you in the resume department already — he was an attorney with an active law practice in his early career, and then worked his way up in local and state politics before running for the U.S. senate. He was a “surrogate” or probate court attorney, then New York State attorney general, then a New York state senator. Clinton’s resume can’t hold a candle to this guy’s. But they didn’t do “community service” in the early 19th century.

Another Person: how does a mediocre president beat a candidate was on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action?

Worked on Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee researching migrant labor?

Was a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law?

Is a former civil litigation attorney?

Served as the director of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Arkansas School of Law?

Was the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation which helps ensure everyone has equal access to justice under the law, despite inability afford it?

And first female partner at Rose Law Firm.

Co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families?

Was named twice as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal?

(Btw – such an honor is rarely bestowed upon criminals or incompetents. Just sayin.)

That her entire career has been spent as a strong advocate for families and solid track record includes leading a task force that reformed Arkansas’s education system as First Lady of Arkansas?

That – as FLOTUS – she was instrumental in the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act?

Or who – with her husband – has spent the years since she was FLOTUS – establishing the Clinton Foundation – a non profit whose mission is to help the poor and disadvantaged around the world realize their potential and build better lives.

They also work to improve global health, reduce preventable diseases, create economic opportunity and growth, help communities deal with the impact of climate change – and to increase opportunity for women and girls.

The Clinton Foundation is recognized and highly respected around the world and here in the US – even – grudgingly – by the GOTP -as a tireless and powerful advocate for the vulnerable.

It receives donations from

DONALD TRUMP

Bill and Melinda Gates

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Coca Cola Company

The Elton John Aids Foundation

Anheuser Busch

Hewlett Packard

The Kingdom of Norway

The Commonwealth of Australia

The Government of The Netherlands

The Government of Sweden

To name just a few…

Or who – as Secretary of State – has a solid track record in international relations and policy?

Played a key role in finding and taking down Bin Laden – and authored the agreement that brought the Iranians to the negotiating table for the deal that the entire P5+1 endorsed, along with most of the rest of the world?

Or who is respected and admired around the world – as this illustrates:

http://youtu.be/ECNQDqMoAjw

Don’t like her policies? Fine.

But anyone running around snarking about not trusting her, claiming she’s a RHINO – after 20+ years of being the target of relentless, hateful Republican bs – is either not paying attention or too dumb to vote.

Name ANYONE else – in EITHER party – with a resume even close to hers.

Just ONE.

Take all the time you need.

Me: Pad it all you like — and most of that is padding, especially the stuff about the Clinton Foundation — but Martin Van Buren’s resume at the time he became POTUS was a hell of a lot more impressive than Clinton’s. And his record as Secretary of State is a lot better, I’d say. No coup in Honduras, no stupid intervention in Libya. He did some good stuff that helped folks gain peace and prosperity. I assume you can google and find that for yourself. However, the Yale Law Review didn’t exist until after he died, and like most attorneys of his time he became an attorney through self-study and apprenticeship. It was a different world.

And my point, of course, is that while Van Buren’s resume was outstanding, he was a very middle-of-the-road POTUS who served only one term. And that was just one guy I picked at random.

Some Guy: Barbara, You just cited his professional record, good, but was he opposed to slavery, did he reach out to women, children, the middle-class and the poor or was he just another white male President who ignored the great sin of slavery and just went along to get along. Now, to me, any one who turned his/her back on human slavery can do no good, but you have a right to your heroes.

Me: I already said he was a mediocre POTUS. And he’s no hero of mine. I am just pointing out that, on paper, his resume at the time he became POTUS was simply outstanding. Successful lawyer, state senator, state attorney general, state governor, U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of state (and a pretty good one), vice president of the United States. Those are just the high points; there are some other jobs/appointments he had here and there as well. His political views, some of which which I consider fairly awful, are beside the point. We’re just talking qualifications — as (Another Person) said, “That’s resume – not personal, partisan opinion.”

The fact is, if you take the time to go back and look a the details of his many offices held and what he did in them, van Buren really did have an astonishing record of accomplishments before becoming one of the most average presidents in U.S. history.  (See his Wikipedia page)

Now, if you’re talking about a guy with a sterling background in doing charitable acitivism stuff, Herbert Hoover is your man. He was internationally known for his humanitarian relief efforts.  A great many other presidents have had amazing records of accomplishment before they became POTUS, which is sorta kinda how you become POTUS.  I’d have a hard time finding someone who was a total deadbeat and became POTUS, actually.

As I’ve said  before, this is cult of personality stuff. It’s not “normal.”

Update: Thinking about it, Abraham Lincoln’s resume wasn’t that great. He’d been a lawyer and U.S. Representative. He’d been a militia captain in the Black Hawk Wars and said later most of the action he saw involved swatting mosquitoes. He got noticed because of his debates and speeches more than anything else. The guy was a slacker.