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Aug. 8th, 2023 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cathywam reading Colin Woodard's "American Nations" and while I have not completed the book yet these are my thoughts so far:
- the politics of the American Revolution were a lot more complicated than either my high school history classes or the movie 1776 let on
- also the Civil War
- like nobody ever talked about how outside the Tidewater gentry and their fascination with yeoman farmers the Southern elites were somewhere between 'suspicious of' and 'actively opposed to' democracy and said this out loud?
- also nobody ever talked about what led up to the Whiskey Rebellion (and how it was Alexander Hamilton's fault), only that George Washington gloriously put it down, but Woodard at least gives the impression it was justified?
- I knew racism almost prevented the annexation of Hawai'i but I did not know that racism actually did prevent the annexation of most of Mexico in the 1840s (paraphrase: 'yes, we will take Texas and some of the border territories where there are already a lot of Americans living but... while we have validly conquered the rest of Mexico we do not want to be in charge of all these icky brown people, go about your business.')
- Appalachian folks: 'we hate all of you but we will team up with the enemies of the ones we hate most to fight them' - yeah that tracks (and for all that Appalachian people now loudly wave the Confederate battle flag and scream 'this is our heritage!!!!', in the Civil War the ones they hated most were the Deep South planter elites, ever so slightly more than they hated the Yankee busybodies, so they joined the Union army, even forming an Alabama unit)
- also in fairness given that most others held a view of Appalachia that boiled down to 'my god you are barbarians, have you considered civilizing yourselves according to my preferred model' I kind of see where that comes from?
- it is a miracle the United States has held together for 200+ years and in my cynical moments I wonder if it might not have been better if it hadn't
- the politics of the American Revolution were a lot more complicated than either my high school history classes or the movie 1776 let on
- also the Civil War
- like nobody ever talked about how outside the Tidewater gentry and their fascination with yeoman farmers the Southern elites were somewhere between 'suspicious of' and 'actively opposed to' democracy and said this out loud?
- also nobody ever talked about what led up to the Whiskey Rebellion (and how it was Alexander Hamilton's fault), only that George Washington gloriously put it down, but Woodard at least gives the impression it was justified?
- I knew racism almost prevented the annexation of Hawai'i but I did not know that racism actually did prevent the annexation of most of Mexico in the 1840s (paraphrase: 'yes, we will take Texas and some of the border territories where there are already a lot of Americans living but... while we have validly conquered the rest of Mexico we do not want to be in charge of all these icky brown people, go about your business.')
- Appalachian folks: 'we hate all of you but we will team up with the enemies of the ones we hate most to fight them' - yeah that tracks (and for all that Appalachian people now loudly wave the Confederate battle flag and scream 'this is our heritage!!!!', in the Civil War the ones they hated most were the Deep South planter elites, ever so slightly more than they hated the Yankee busybodies, so they joined the Union army, even forming an Alabama unit)
- also in fairness given that most others held a view of Appalachia that boiled down to 'my god you are barbarians, have you considered civilizing yourselves according to my preferred model' I kind of see where that comes from?
- it is a miracle the United States has held together for 200+ years and in my cynical moments I wonder if it might not have been better if it hadn't
