Howard Zinn on teaching the real history of the United States

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zfCjDhQP-z4

 

History Minute (065): Black soldiers were vital to the success of the North.

Per Zinn:

• 200,000 blacks fought in the army and navy of the North.
• 38,000 were killed.
• Historian James McPherson observed:  "Without their help, the North could not have won the war as soon as it did, and perhaps it could not have won at all."

Read More

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (063): More debunking "Slaves liked being slaves."

Quoting Zinn:

Also in 1865, a South Carolina planter wrote to the New York Tribune that

"the conduct of the Negro in the late crisis of our affairs has convinced me that we were all laboring under a delusion. . . . I believed that these people were content, happy, and attached to their masters. But events and reflection have caused me to change these positions. . . . If they were content, happy and attached to their masters, why did they desert him in the moment of his need and flock to an enemy, whom they did not know; and thus left their perhaps really good masters whom they did know from infancy?"

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (062): Enslaved people fight slavery in various ways.

As Zinn reports, plantation owners complained that during the Civil War, enslaved black people showed they could not be trusted, because there were so many instances where those most trusted were the first to desert the plantation owners to go to the North, and in many cases fight for the North army against the South.

One minister observed in 1862, "I think every one, but with one or two exceptions will go to the Yankees. Eliza and her family are certain to go. She does not conceal thoughts but plainly manifests her opinions by her conduct — insolent and insulting."

Quoting Zinn:

And a woman's plantation journal of January 1865:

"The people are all idle on the plantations, most of them seeking their own pleasure. Many servants have proven faithful, others false and rebellious against all authority and restraint. . . . Their condition is one of perfect anarchy and rebellion. They have placed themselves in perfect antagonism to their owners and to all government and control. . . . Nearly all the house servants have left their homes; and from most of the plantations they have gone in a body."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (061): Debunking "Slaves liked being slaves."

People are inclined to think that blacks accepted slavery, Zinn observes, and this is supposedly proven by claiming that during the Civil War, when there were abundant opportunities to escape, most enslaved people stayed on the plantation.  

However, the data show otherwise: 500,000 ran away — or about 20% of all — and this is made all the more significant in that they would face great difficulty knowing where to go to find safety and how to survive.

Read more: 

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (059): Why Lee suddenly surrendered

As relayed by Zinn:

Simply by stopping work, the 4 million enslaved people had tremendous power because they could threaten the Confederacy with starvation at a time when hundreds of thousands of soldiers had been killed and war fatigue was high. Lee had two options: Either the South must free its slaves and use them to fight the North — and thereby make it impossible to benefit from slave labor in the future — or the South must surrender to the North on the assumption that after the war, they could resume enslavement practices.

Quoting Zinn:

George Rawick, a sociologist and anthropologist, describes the development of blacks up to and into the Civil War:

"The slaves went from being frightened human beings, thrown among strange men, including fellow slaves who were not their kinsmen and who did not speak their language or understand their customs and habits, to what W. E. B. DuBois once described as the general strike whereby hundreds of thousands of slaves deserted the plantations, destroying the South's ability to supply its army."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (058): White resentment and the Draft Riots of 1863

Quoting Zinn:

With the [Emancipation] Proclamation, the Union army was open to blacks. And the more blacks entered the war, the more it appeared a war for their liberation. The more whites had to sacrifice, the more resentment there was, particularly among poor whites in the North, who were drafted by a law that allowed the rich to buy their way out of the draft for $300. And so the draft riots of 1863 took place, uprisings of angry whites in northern cities, their targets not the rich, far away, but the blacks, near at hand. It was an orgy of death and violence. A black man in Detroit described what he saw: a mob, with kegs of beer on wagons, armed with clubs and bricks, marching through the city, attacking black men, women, children. He heard one man say: "If we are got to be killed up for Negroes then we will kill every one in this town."

Excerpts From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (057): The Thirteenth Amendment

Per Zinn, although Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation itself did not free all slaves, but only those in the rebel states, it did inspire abolitionist activities.  Abolitionists gathered 400,000 signatures by 1864 asking Congress for legislation to end all slavery.  Congress responded by passing the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring an end to all slavery. 

Read more:

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (056): The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863

According to Zinn, the Emancipation Proclamation declared free only those slaves in states that fought against the Union (i.e., the United Sates).  It said nothing about the slaves residing in the Union — i.e., in the north.  The London Spectator wrote: "The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

Read more:

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (055): Lincoln gets more pressure from abolitionists, and restates his position.

Quoting Zinn:



In July Congress passed a Confiscation Act, which enabled the freeing of slaves of those fighting the Union. But this was not enforced by the Union generals, and Lincoln ignored the nonenforcement. Garrison called Lincoln's policy "stumbling, halting, prevaricating, irresolute, weak, besotted," and Phillips said Lincoln was "a first-rate second-rate man." 

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune challenged Lincoln, writing (as reported by Zinn):

"Dear Sir. I do not intrude to tell you—for you must know already—that a great proportion of those who triumphed in your election . . . are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels. . . . We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. . . . We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss . . . with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. . . .

We think you are unduly influenced by the councils . . . of certain politicians hailing from the Border Slave States." 

Lincoln wrote in reply:

"Dear Sir: . . . I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. . . . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. Yours. A. Lincoln."

Excerpts From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (051): Lincoln waffles on race.

Quoting Zinn:

He opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa.

In his 1858 campaign in Illinois for the Senate against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln spoke differently depending on the views of his listeners (and also perhaps depending on how close it was to the election). Speaking in northern Illinois in July (in Chicago), he said:

"Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."

Two months later in Charleston, in southern Illinois, Lincoln told his audience:

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races (applause); that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. . . .

And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

 

 

History Minute (054): Wealthy conservatives lobbied to keep slaves

Quoting Zinn:

Conservatives in the Boston upper classes wanted reconciliation with the South. At one point they stormed an abolitionist meeting at that same Tremont Temple, shortly after Lincoln's election, and asked that concessions be made to the South "in the interests of commerce, manufactures, agriculture."

The spirit of Congress, even after the war began, was shown in a resolution it passed in the summer of 1861, with only a few dissenting votes: ". . . this war is not waged . . . for any purpose of . . . overthrowing or interfering with the rights of established institutions of those states, but . . . to preserve the Union."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

Get your copy — Support your local bookstores by shopping Bookshop.org:

 

History Minute (053): Racism in the North in 1860

Quoting Zinn:

"Racism in the North was as entrenched as slavery in the South, and it would take the war to shake both. New York blacks could not vote unless they owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites). A proposal to abolish this, put on the ballot in 1860, was defeated two to one (although Lincoln carried New York by 50,000 votes)."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

Get your copy — Support your local bookstores by shopping Bookshop.org:

 

History Minute (050): Lincoln's "moderate" position on slavery

Quoting Zinn:

Lincoln read the Constitution strictly, to mean that Congress, because of the Tenth Amendment (reserving to the states powers not specifically given to the national government), could not constitutionally bar slavery in the states.

When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which did not have the rights of a state but was directly under the jurisdiction of Congress, Lincoln said this would be Constitutional, but it should not be done unless the people in the District wanted it. Since most there were white, this killed the idea. As Hofstadter said of Lincoln's statement, it "breathes the fire of an uncompromising insistence on moderation."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

Get your copy — Support your local bookstores by shopping Bookshop.org:

 

History Minute (049): From John Brown to Abraham Lincoln

Quoting Zinn:

"John Brown was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the national government. It was the national government which, while weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew Jackson's administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.

Such a national government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism. He would keep the abolition of slavery not at the top of his list of priorities, but close enough to the top so it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (048): John Brown

As reported by Zinn:

John Brown was a white abolitionist, 60 years old when he plotted a rebellion against slavery. Others in the movement, including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass tried to dissuade him, saying his plan could not work. And they were right: local militia and marines, led by Robert E. Lee, overpowered Brown and his fighters. Even when only Brown remained alive, he refused to surrender and was wounded and taken prisoner, and eventually was hanged. In his last written statement in prison, he said: 

"I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, not an activist himself, said of the execution of John Brown: "He will make the gallows holy as the cross."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

 

History Minute (047): What did the children think?

Blacks of the north who worked to ban slavery asked children in a private school financed by and for Negroes this question: "What do you think most about?" 

As conveyed by Zinn, a seven-year-old child wrote:

"Dear schoolmates, we are going next summer to buy a farm and to work part of the day and to study the other part if we live to see it and come home part of the day to see our mothers and sisters and cousins if we are got any and see our kind folks and to be good boys and when we get a man to get the poor slaves from bondage. And I am sorrow to hear that the boat . . . went down with 200 poor slaves from up the river. Oh how sorrow I am to hear that, it grieves my heart so that I could faint in one minute."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (046): Shall we a third time kiss the foot that crushes us?

In 1841 Secretary of State Daniel Webster urged Congress to go to war with England because England refused to return to the United States certain slaves who rebelled and took over the ship on which they were being transported.  

Quoting Zinn:

The Colored Peoples Press denounced Webster's "bullying position," and, recalling the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, wrote:

"If war be declared . . . Will we fight in defense of a government which denies us the most precious right of citizenship? . . . The States in which we dwell have twice availed themselves of our voluntary services, and have repaid us with chains and slavery. Shall we a third time kiss the foot that crushes us? If so, we deserve our chains."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (045): Frederick Douglass: "What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?"

As found in Zinn's book, Frederick Douglass gave this speech on the Fourth of July, 1852:

"Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? . . .

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. . . ."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (044): J.W. Loguen replies to the woman who claims she owns him.

Quoting Zinn: 

Loguen made his home in Syracuse a major station on the Underground Railroad. It was said that he helped 1,500 slaves on their way to Canada. His memoir of slavery came to the attention of his former mistress, and she wrote to him, asking him either to return or to send her $1,000 in compensation. Loguen's reply to her was printed in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator:

"Mrs. Sarah Logue. . . . You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, "You know we raised you as we did our own children." Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping post? Did you raise them to be driven off, bound to a coffle in chains? . . . Shame on you!

But you say I am a thief, because I took the old mare along with me. Have you got to learn that I had a better right to the old mare, as you call her, than Manasseth Logue had to me? Is it a greater sin for me to steal his horse, than it was for him to rob my mother's cradle, and steal me? . . . Have you got to learn that human rights are mutual and reciprocal, and if you take my liberty and life, you forfeit your own liberty and life? Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?

If you or any other speculator on my body and rights, wish to know how I regard my rights, they need but come here, and lay their hands on me to enslave me. . . ."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn