The Second Battle of Olustee

I didn’t know I was a Yankee until I was nine years old. This is because I was raised in the north. In New Jersey in 1he 1950s, the Civil War wasn’t on everyone’s mind. The situation was quite different in Florida.

My family moved to Cocoa Beach in 1956, and during recess on the first day of fourth grade there, I was excitedly asked by one of my classmates, “Are you a Yankee or a Rebel?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Where are you from?”

“New Jersey.”

“Yer a Yankee! Git over there,” my classmate said, with a great deal of energy but with no apparent hostility, and he pointed to a pack of fourth grade boys that had formed up about 100 feet away.

So, I joined my fellow Yankees and we spent the next 30 minutes of recess re-enacting the Civil War as each group charged the other shouting with feigned ferocity. There seemed to be no real anger in this game, but it stoked up our spirits of tribal loyalty to blood-boiling intensity.

One year later, when our family had moved to Lakeland, the Civil War was once again re-enacted when my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Tolle, required that every morning after the pledge of allegiance to the flag, we remain standing to sing “Dixie.” By then I had learned to identify enough with my Yankee tribe that I would always insert the word “Jersey” in place of “Dixie” as I sang. In any case, it didn’t seem quite honest for me to sing, “In Dixieland where I was born in…” since it was Lafayette, Indiana, that I had actually been "born in," which is hundreds of miles away from Dixie.

Mrs. Tolle also introduced me to Southern manners when I answered “Yes” to a question she had posed, and she, with hot indignation, demanded that I answer her with “Yes, ma’am.”

Yes, ma’am.

My Yankee upbringing had never specified that ma’am and sir distinguished courtesy from rudeness, but Mrs. Tolle made it clear that this was part of the new code I had to learn, lest I invite myself to a real down-home whuppin’.

Years later, when I moved to California to attend graduate school, my fellow students there identified me as a Southerner. I didn’t object to this, since they seemed to think being Southern made me interestingly exotic. Also, by then I had learned to love grits and red beans and rice, so I felt I was Southern enough to pass in the greater Los Angeles area.

I see from Lizette Alvarez's article in today’s New York Times that the Civil War is still not over in Florida. The issue is the famous Battle of Olustee (well, famous in North Florida), where a detachment of 6,000 bluecoats got shellacked by a slightly smaller contingent of rebs and had to skedaddle back to Jacksonville in February of 1864. 

           Lithograph from 1894 depicting Florida's Battle of Olustee


What’s making Jefferson Davis tremble in his grave is the recent proposal by the Florida chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War to place an obelisk in the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park. Currently three monuments commemorating the Confederate soldiers already stand there, but there's nary a one for the Yankees.

The Confederate response? No go.

According to the Times story, John W. Adams, a former division commander in Florida for the Sons of Confederate Veterans declared, “Old grudges die hard. And feelings run deep.”

Well, I reckon they surely do.

The Times story continues:

“…the request has enraged many in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which views the state’s decision as a betrayal of the small park’s legacy. As word spread, an online call to arms was issued by the national Confederate group’s leader to oppose the ‘Darth Vader-esque obscene obsidian obelisk’ in what the group’s members see as the Second Battle of Olustee. Reinforcements were drafted, namely State Representative Dennis Baxley, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.”

I suppose that in the eyes of the Sons of the Confederacy, Darth Vader was a fairly typical Yankee.

The “Second Battle of Olustee” reminds me of the argument made by Joshua Greene in Moral Tribes, his study of the ways in which morality is often intimately linked to one’s sense of tribal loyalty. Greene’s book, by the way, is quite good, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the psychological roots of human moral systems. He offers a barrelful of evidence from psychological studies that show how a wide range of human motivators are apparently rooted in our genetic make-up and responsible for our capacity to survive as cooperative group members. These include “empathy, familial love, anger, social disgust, friendship, minimal decency, gratitude, vengefulness, romantic love, honor, shame, guilt, loyalty, humility, awe, judgmentalism, gossip, self-consciousness, embarrassment, tribalism, and righteous indignation.”

Despite his scientific credentials and good intentions, I’m afraid Professor Greene would never win the approval of Mrs. Tolle nor the Sons of the Confederacy. His main argument, ultimately, is that the best thing we can do when tribes collide is to hold our loyalties in check and seek a neutral basis on which to build a pan-tribal moral framework. And as far as the Confederate Sons of Olustee are concerned, a pan-tribal framework would be a desecration of the sacred site. “After all,” they seem to be saying, “the Yankees took a hard lickin’ here some 150 years ago, and that’s the one thing folks need to remember when they visit this park.”

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On a related topic, I have made the argument that my Great Great Grandfather Flynn may have actually won the Civil War. (Culture World, July 31, 2010)

Dmitri - Is That You?

To celebrate the first day of 2014, Mark Bittman of the New York Times wrote about previous years ending in 4, going all the way back to 1944. Following Mr. Bittman’s example, I propose that we go back even deeper into history to the year 1604. Why 1604? Well obviously because that was the year that False Dmitri (or, should I say, “a False Dmitri”) invaded Russia from Poland.

False Dmitri based his invasion on the claim that he was the real “Dmitri,” namely the long-lost son of the recently deceased Russian Tsar, Ivan IV, commonly known as "Ivan the Terrible". Clearly, he was not. Nevertheless, he was validated as a true and beloved son by his “mother,” the widow of the late Ivan the Terrible. (I suspect that Mrs. Terrible was motivated by a surge of “What's in this for me?” thinking at this crucial moment in her life.)

In any case, False Dmitri quickly assembled an armed force, comprising mainly Poles and other western types, made for Moscow, and, after a struggle, managed to seize the throne. Once installed as Tsar, he did something every Russian of his day considered a heinous and unforgivable sin: he married a Catholic. His bride and Tsarina, Marina Mniszech (aka “Marinka the Witch”), declined to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church. That’s when things started to get weird.

A nobleman named Vasily Shuisky accused False Dmitri of promoting Catholicism, Protestantism and, just for good measure, sodomy, in the Russian court. There was also a widely believed story that Dmitri planned to use his foreign minions to slaughter thousands of good Orthodox Russians. Armed with paranoid-induced passion, Shuisky managed to gather a mass of followers who stormed the Kremlin. 

In a desperate effort to escape, False Dmitri leapt from a window, but broke his leg in the fall. He was quickly caught by Shuisky’s followers and executed. But death was not adequate punishment for someone who dared to not really be Dmitri. Consequently, his body was first publicly displayed, then cremated and, following this, his ashes were stuffed into a cannon and shot westward in the direction of (the hated, Catholic) Poland.

 False Dmitri I - In a Cocky, Self-assured Moment

I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I am a particular fan of False Dmitri, or that I condone the impersonating of deceased heirs to thrones as a commendable life plan.  However, I feel compelled to give False Dmitri credit for one thing at least - originality. Here’s why.

Our False Dmitri (commonly known today as False Dmitri I) was followed in 1607 by False Dmitri II and a few years later by False Dmitri III. Each of these copycats showed up and claimed to be Ivan the Terrible’s long-lost son and each insisted he had NOT been blasted to Poland. On top of this, each one was presented to Marinka the Witch who authenticated each in turn as “the true Dmitri.” More on that later.

False Dmitri II, though a copycat, does deserve a little credit for not leaping immediately onto the False Dmitri bandwagon. He did not, after all, begin his public life by mendaciously claiming to be the late Tsar’s son. No, he started by mendaciously claiming to be Boyar Nagoy, a prominent Muscovite nobleman. It was only under torture that he “confessed” that this was a lie, and that he was actually the long-lost Tsarevich Dmitri, son of the late Ivan the Terrible.

Released by his torturers, False Dmitri II quickly assembled an army of Polish and Cossack troops (which apparently was easily done in those days), and marched on Moscow. His campaign ultimately failed and so he resigned himself to being the Tsar of some provincial territories out in the Russian boondocks. After a few years of being a mini-Tsar, and in the midst of a drunken binge, he was assassinated by Peter Urusov, a nobleman whom Dmitri had once had flogged. Urusov reportedly chopped off Dmitri’s head and hand after killing him, thus maintaining the “death is not enough” tradition initiated by the executors of the original False Dmitri.

False Dmitri II - It's No Wonder His Widow Was Fooled

No, we’re not done yet. There followed, in 1611, the sudden appearance of False Dmitri III who gained the backing of yet another army of Cossacks. The Cossacks of those days were apparently not too particular about their Dmitris as long as they were validated as authentic and true by the ever-amenable widow Marinka (the witch). “Yes,” proclaimed Marinka, “this one is definitely my Dmitri.”

False Dmitri III did somewhat better than F.D. I and F.D. II in that he was merely killed and was not fired from a cannon nor was his body publicly mutilated. In May 1612, he was quietly "disappeared" in a manner that today would probably have impressed even Jimmy Hoffa’s handlers.

How many more Dmitris would Marinka have willingly validated in her effort to maintain her tenuous claim on the Russian throne we know not, for with the demise of False Dmitri III, Russia ran out of Tsarevich Dmitris. So ends a period of Russian history of which I can honestly say, I would rather read about than live through.

In conclusion, I'd like to take a moment to thank my colleague Professor Alex Boguslawski who first introduced me to the false Dmitris during his spring 2013 seminar on Russian history. Any errors or false notes in this essay must be attributed to me and not to my true and learned friend, Alex. And thanks to Wikipedia for the Dmitri pictures. 

Ronald Reagan: Where Greatness Lies

In his December 8, 1986 journal entry, author Leo Lerman had this to say about Ronald Reagan:  “This man was shallow, a second-rate actor, utterly dependent on superficial Irish charm - the kind the morning milkman or letter carrier or any man in the street has.  He was destined to be used by strong, self-seeking, unscrupulous men wanting power not for state, but for self.  The man may be honest, but he is stupid, which in his position of highest power is criminal.”

Lerman had more to say about Reagan’s “smiling, good-fellow self” which I will not repeat here. No, I will confine myself to Mr. Lerman’s more moderate criticisms, i.e., the ones in the passage above.  

I’ve been thinking about Reagan these days because I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest book, Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.  Goodwin’s books have invariably been both enlightening and engaging to me and Bully Pulpit is no exception.  One of its main messages is the powerful effect that capable authors like Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens had on public opinion in the early 1900s.  It’s hard to think who has such influence today.  I suppose Jon Stewart’s Daily Show comes close, but it’s kind of humiliating to realize that comedy shows today are where we have to go to find influential critical commentary about political and corporate shenanigans.  A hundred plus years ago, serious writers could generate a tidal wave of reform just by reporting what Standard Oil and its flunkeys in the Senate were up to.  How times have changed.  Sigh.

Equally fascinating is a second theme of Bully Pulpit: the way in which Theodore Roosevelt, working against the leadership of his own Republican Party, used government to make life better for Americans at the expense of the big corporations.  Before Roosevelt became president, corporate money thoroughly controlled the GOP and the GOP served those moneyed interests.  Roosevelt changed much of that by establishing regulations aimed at protecting citizens against their depredations.

Ronald Reagan, of course, did the opposite.  He initiated an era in which the government – long the protector of the people – came to be viewed as a hostile alien entity.  And by encouraging a belief in this bizarre notion, he enabled the corporations to once again exploit and abuse ordinary citizens in a way they had not done for decades.  That’s why middle class incomes have become stagnant while the one percent has basked in unprecedented wealth - since about 1980.

But I don’t believe that Reagan screwed middle class Americans on purpose.  I agree with Lerman that he was simply not very smart - and certainly not smart enough to be president.  He thought he was doing the right thing because he listened to the wrong people.

Reagan had been a Democrat in his youth, and for good reason.  His hometown was hit hard by the Depression, and his family, like many others, faced the prospect of poverty and homelessness.  Only government intervention - Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal - saved the Reagan family and many of its neighbors from this fate.

But later in life, once he was married to Nancy, Ronald Reagan bought into the right-wing Republican philosophy of his wealthy father-in-law.  Even though his well-being as a youth had depended on government intervention, he decided, once he was wealthy, that “the government is the problem.”  His very shallowness served him well here, allowing him to ignore the bizarre contradiction of his about-face.  His biographer, Lou Cannon, said that Reagan was always uncomfortable around intellectuals.  No wonder.  By the same token, I imagine snake oil salesmen must be uncomfortable around real doctors.

One of the least appealing qualities of Reagan was his bigotry.  Granted, he was a sort of good-natured dude, and he didn’t come across as a snarling bigot in the style of, say, Jesse Helms.  But bigot he was.  Two of his most outrageous and disgusting gestures along these lines were his touting of “states’ rights” in his 1980 Philadelphia, Mississippi, speech and his portrayal of an irresponsible “welfare queen” living high on honest taxpayers’ money as though she were a fair depiction of poor black families during his campaign.  Yuk.

Despite his stupidity, Reagan was not without talent, and herein we find the sources of his political success.  He was competent enough in backslapping bonhomie, but his real skill lay in public relations.  The “superficial Irish charm” of which Lerman wrote came to the fore when he was on television and through that medium he reached millions of Americans, many of whom were no more knowledgeable about the world than he was.  When he said “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” millions of people, many of whom depended heavily on government protection or support, believed him and they watched with approval as he dismantled many of the reforms that his predecessors had put in place.  

Of course Reagan didn’t bring about anti-government hostility single-handedly and he isn’t solely responsible for the rapacious way in which corporations have once again come to exploit ordinary citizens.  But more than any single individual, he, with his shallow but clueless charm, made greed-is-good corporate ruthlessness possible.

His anti-government policies were not born in the thin soil of his own consciousness; they came from those “strong, self-seeking, unscrupulous men” in the background about whom Lerman wrote.  Reagan was merely their public face.  He was, in fact, not so much a president as a press secretary, a spokesman for those who stood to benefit from a pro-corporate, small government philosophy.  And that’s why I think it’s reasonable to consider him “great” in some sense.  He was, in my opinion, the greatest presidential press secretary of modern times.

Let me wrap up by recommending Goodwin’s Bully Pulpit.  The book is a veritable inspiration.  It shows how an awakened citizenry can actually make government an active force that protects the weak – that is, almost all of us - against the strong - those we have come to know as “the one percent.”  In short, it points the way out of the dreadful era into which Ronald Reagan’s ingratiating charm has led us.