( Interesting to read synopsis of panoramic view of American civil War which encroached Mexico and Canada. This Civil War has not ended and is still raging in political arena. f.sheikh).

“Some excerpts; A mountain of historical studies testifies to enduring interest in the American Civil War, a conflict still politically relevant in a nation riven over how to remember it. Those doubting that there is anything fresh to say about the bloodiest event in the republic’s history should read Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor’s brilliant, panoramic account of the conflict. Applying a wide continental lens, he explores this crux of United States history and how it shook neighbouring Mexico and Canada. In all three settings, liberals and social and political conservatives were involved in parallel struggles to build a modern nation. After a French invasion, the creation of a short-lived monarchy and a devastating civil war, the Liberal Party leader Benito Juárez returned to power in Mexico. Fearing the growing power and rapacity of the United States, meanwhile, Canadians navigated internal divisions to create a continental confederation. And in the United States, the pulsing heart and geographical centre of events, Abraham Lincoln’s Union forces subdued the reactionary and rebel slave power to achieve emancipation and the constitutional basis for a more liberal and democratic nation.”

“Panoramic in scope, Taylor’s book regularly shocks the reader with its descriptions of the brutality of warfare (‘arms shot off – legs shot off. Eyes shot out – brains shot out … everything shot to pieces and totally maimed for all after life,’ a Union surgeon grieved in the early stages of the war). Taylor concedes that Union and Confederate generals abided by a code of conduct that precluded total war against white civilians. But it did not extend to non-white peoples. To the horrors of battlefield carnage must be added Americans’ indiscriminate slaying of Indians and Mexicans, as well as Confederates’ murder of black troops in slaughter pens and rampaging whites’ violence against black civilians in the Union’s draft riots. The self-proclaimed ‘fiends from hell’, William Quantrill’s Raiders, threw victims, including a black baby, into burning buildings. In Mexico, frustrated and vengeful French troops played football with the heads of decapitated guerrilla prisoners. The victory of American liberals was scarcely cost-free. “

American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850–1873

By Alan Taylor

W W Norton 577pp £33.99

Full Article

(Source: Adobe Firefly.)

Some excerpts; “

For many decades after the Founding, American identity was indeed based on ancestry. Americans struggled mightily to move beyond ancestry to an identity based on ideas alone. 

We can trace changing ideas of American identity by the evolution of requirements for voting and citizenship. The first sentence of the Constitution refers to “We the People of the United States of America,” but does not define who “The People” are. It was in fact quite restrictive. At the moment of the Constitution’s ratification, only white men who owned property qualified as full rights-bearing members of the political community. The property qualification was lifted in most states by the 1820s, but the country moved dangerously towards civil conflict over the question of race and whether one American could hold another American as a chattel slave. It took a civil war that killed over 600,000 Americans to settle that question; in the war’s wake, the country ratified the Fourteenth Amendment that stated:

All persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

For the first time black men could vote, and African Americans were elected to office both in the states and at a federal level. But shamefully, these rights were progressively taken away as the Southern states were readmitted to the Union after 1876, and the country looked away as legal segregation and restriction of voting rights for black people were imposed. Throughout this period, women did not have the right to vote either; their citizenship was codified only by passage of the Nineteenth Amendment after World War I. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s that the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment was finally realized and women and racial minorities were accepted as full rights-bearing citizens, even if they faced continued discrimination on a social level.

It is important to step back and understand what was going on as a result of these changes. American citizenship and therefore American identity were initially based not simply on ideas, but on ascriptive characteristics like social class, race, and gender (“ascriptive” meaning things you are born with and have no control over). The full promise of the Declaration’s assertion of human equality was not formally implemented until the Civil Rights era. In other words, American identity was made creedal over time, by stripping out those other qualifications based on ancestry. Getting to a creedal identity was therefore a huge achievement, one that required war, death, struggle, and nation-wide mobilization.  

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posted by f/sheikh

“Today, Holiday is revered as one of the most influential musical artists of all time. Time magazine named her 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” the song of the 20th century. “In this sad, shadowy song about lynching in the South,” Time wrote in 1999, “history’s greatest jazz singer comes to terms with history itself.”

“Abel Meeropol, a New York City teacher and songwriter who used the pen name Lewis Allan, wrote “Strange Fruit” after seeing a photograph of a lynching that shocked and haunted him: “Black body swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a nearby charity hospital on evidence of drug use, then lay for hours on a stretcher in the hallway, unrecognized and unattended. Her estate amounted to 70 cents in the bank and a roll of bills concealed on her person, her share of the payment for a tabloid interview she gave on her deathbed.

Strange Fruit song with lyrics

Lyrics: Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allen) ⁽³⁾

Music: Billie Holiday and Sonny White ⁽⁴⁾
Year: 1937⁽⁴⁾
Genre: Blues
Country: USA

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swingin’, In the southern breeze.
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of the magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, forthe trees, tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Full Article

posted by f.sheikh

Encouraged on social media, many Americans are estranging themselves from their families as a therapeutic step.

As she struggled through her sophomore year in college, Zhenzhen spent hours in therapy, but it hadn’t addressed the central strain in her life: her parents.

They called her at her Midwestern campus again and again, badgering her to fulfill their expectations — to study business, and to return to China, marry a wealthy man and raise children near them, she said. When she pushed back, her father screamed, she said, and her mother wept.

The pressure made it hard to function, and Zhenzhen fended off thoughts of suicide. But when she brought this dynamic up with her therapists, she said, “they would always stand by reconciliation, and ‘family is everything.’ They would always look at the problem from the parent’s lens.”

That’s when she discovered Patrick Teahan, a licensed social worker from Massachusetts with tousled hair and a massive YouTube following. Mr. Teahan’s videos introduced her to a new idea — that to heal from childhood trauma, it may be necessary to “go no contact” from abusive parents. Around half of Mr. Teahan’s clients restrict or sever ties with their families, which he describes as “brutally hard” but, when it is appropriate, deeply rewarding.

Zhenzhen, who asked to be identified by her first name in order to speak about a family conflict, took action as soon as she graduated and began to earn a paycheck. The relief was almost immediate, she said. It was lonely at first, but not for long. Through Mr. Teahan’s site, she found others — her “chosen family,” she calls them — who supported her decision.

“I think he saved my life, in a way,” she said.

Full Article

posted by f.sheikh