Black History: Secession of West Virginia

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeWest Virginia was formed and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War. In the early days of the war, Union troops under George McClellan drove off Confederate defenders, essentially freeing Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form their own government as a result of the Wheeling Convention. Despite its central location and disputed territory, West Virginia suffered comparatively little. Early in the war, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson led the Great Train Raid of 1861, which resulted in the capture of several locomotives and rolling stock of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Jackson later led his men in what became known as the Romney Expedition, an unsuccessful attempt to firmly establish Confederate control over western Virginia. In a series of relatively small battles, McClellan's forces gained possession of the greater part of the territory in the summer of 1861, and Union control was never seriously threatened, in spite of Robert E. Lee's attempt later same year to retake parts of western Virginia. A key part of the Union strategy in West Virginia for the rest of the war was to keep the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad open as a major supply and troop transportation route. Another important mission was to protect the vast supply warehouses and munitions factories at Harpers Ferry. However, the town fell to Stonewall Jackson during early days of the Maryland Campaign, and the surrender of its Federal garrison was the largest capture of U.S. Army troops until World War II nearly eighty years later. With Lee's withdrawal to Virginia following the Battle of Antietam, Harpers Ferry reverted to Union control for the rest of the war. The Maryland Campaign concluded in what became West Virginia with the Battle of Shepherdstown. In 1863 Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden, with 5,000 Confederates, overran a considerable portion of the state and tore up sections of the B&O. Bands of guerrillas burned and plundered in some sections, and were not entirely suppressed until after the war was ended. A Confederate brigade of cavalry under antebellum U.S. Congressman Albert G. Jenkins saw considerable action during the Gettysburg Campaign, as well as other major campaigns. The low number of voters in the elections sponsored by Wheeling was a result of voter suppression by Wheeling and in the fact that Wheeling actually controlled only a small part of West Virginia, mostly the Northern panhandle and associated counties near Wheeling. Vote numbers from the interior counties were actually cast in Wheeling by refugees from those counties. A number of West Virginia regiments were distinguished for their war records, including the 7th West Virginia Infantry (which assaulted the Sunken Road at Antietam and rushed onto Cemetery Hill in the twilight at the Battle of Gettysburg to help push back the famed Louisiana Tigers. The 3rd West Virginia Cavalry also fought well at Gettysburg as a part of John Buford's veteran cavalry division that defended McPherson's Ridge on the first day of the battle. President Lincoln was in a close campaign when he won reelection in 1864. However, the act that allowed the state to be created was signed in 1862, two years before Lincoln's re-election would have been an issue in any real way. Slavery was officially abolished February 3, 1865. On May 30, 1861, Gen. George B. McClellan in Cincinnati wrote to President Lincoln- "I am confidently assured that very considerable numbers of volunteers can be raised in Western Virginia...". After nearly two months in the field in West Virginia he was less optimistic. He wrote to Gov. Francis Harrison Pierpoint of the Restored Government of Virginia in Wheeling that he and his army were anxious to assist the new government, but that eventually they would be needed elsewhere, and that he urged that troops be raised "among the population". "Before I left Grafton I made requisitions for arms clothing etc for 10,000 Virginia troops--I fear that my estimate was much too large." On August 3, 1861 the Wellsburg "Herald" editorialized "A pretty condition Northwestern Virginia is in to establish herself as a separate state...after all the drumming and all the gas about a separate state she has actually organized in the field four not entire regiments of soldiers and one of these hails almost entirely from the Panhandle." Similar difficulties were experienced by Confederate authorities at the beginning of the war. On May 14, 1861 Col. George A. Porterfield arrived in Grafton to secure volunteers, and reported slow enlistment. Col. Porterfield's difficulty ultimately, however, was lack of support by the Richmond government, which did not send enough guns, tents and other supplies. He eventually turned away hundreds of volunteers due to lack of equipment. General Henry A. Wise also complained of recruitment in the Kanawha valley, though he eventually assembled 2500 infantry, 700 cavalry, 3 battalions of artillery for a total of 4,000 men which became known as "Wise's Legion". These men were later sent to defend South Carolina. A curious anomaly occurred in the recruitment of Union soldiers in West Virginia, the presence of Secessionist or Secessionist sympathizers within the ranks. A series of letters to Gen. Samuels and Gov. Pierpoint in the Dept. of Archives and History in Charleston, most dated 1862, reveal the concern of Union officers. Col. Harris, 10th Company, March 27, 1862, to Gov. Pierpoint-"The election of officers in the Gilmer County Company was a farce. The men elected were rebels and bushwhackers. The election of these men was intended, no doubt, as a burlesque on the reorganization of the militia." It is difficult to determine accurately the number of men from West Virginia who volunteered for service in the Union or Confederate armies. The Union numbers are inaccurate because of the large number of Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, and others who enlisted as "Virginians". An analysis of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry by the Moore Center in Shepherdstown revealed that only 32% were Virginians. An estimate of Union numbers for 1862 was 12-15,000 though this would include non-resident soldiers. The range of estimates were a high of 32,000 for Union soldiers to a low of 3-5,000 for Confederate soldiers in 1862. The Confederate Dept. of Western Virginia gives the number of soldiers for 1863-4 at 18,642. Recent studies have concluded that the numbers of Union and Confederate soldiers from West Virginia were about equal, in the range of 22,-25,000 each. Birth Of A Notion Disclaimer SPECIAL REQUEST FOR TCD FANS: The San Francisco Chronicle is pondering the addition of new cartoons for their paper - a process that seems to be initiated by Darren Bell, creator of Candorville (one of my daily reads - highly recommended). You can read the Chronicle article here and please add your thoughts to the comments if you wish. If anything, put in a good word for Darren and Candorville. I am submitting Town Called Dobson to the paper for their consideration. They seem to have given great weight to receiving 200 messages considering Candorville. I am asking TCD fans to try to surpass that amount. (I get more than that many hate mails a day, surely fans can do better?) This is not a race between Darren and I, it is a hope that more progressive strips can be represented in the printed press of America. So if you read the San Francisco Chronicle or live in the Bay Area (Google Analytics tell me there are a lot of you), please send your kind comments (or naked, straining outrage) to David Wiegand at his published addresses below. If you are a subscriber, cut out your mailing label and staple it to a TCD strip and include it in your letter. candorcomment@sfchronicle.com or David Wiegand Executive Datebook Editor The San Francisco Chronicle 901 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103 BIRTH OF A NOTION WALLPAPER is now available for your computer. Click here.

Campaigning Under Mountain Momma

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeI did part of my growing up in West Virginia where my father mined coal out of the hills - so did my uncles and my grandfather. It is where many of them died due to mining, sometimes by black lung and sometimes by accident. My uncle Dewey died when a kettle bottom fell on him and crushed him below the ribcage. During the autopsy, they also learned his lungs were filled with coal dust from long exposure to mining. My grandfather's lungs were also full of coal dust when he died and my father died of black lung and complications due to that condition. I talked with my mom yesterday and we chatted about the upcoming election. She lives in Princeton and lives off of Social Security and the pension that has been well protected by the United Mine Workers. I asked who she was going to vote for and she said she didn't know. The commercials on television have not been helpful to her. Yes gas prices are high in West Virginia, but she is concerned with who is going to protect the unions and the pensions related to them. Over the past 150 years, immense amounts of money has been drained out of West Virginia in the form of coal and none of it has been funneled back in terms of monetary wealth. Unlike Alaska, where the citizens get a yearly check from the oil companies for the oil that has been pumped out, West Virginia has been left to corporate wolves. It is a pity, some of the most beautiful wilderness in America is blighted by crushing poverty caused by an uncaring federal government. I think the people, at least my family that still lives in West Virginia, have one question on their minds. "Which candidate will screw me the least?" SPECIAL REQUEST FOR TCD FANS: The San Francisco Chronicle is pondering the addition of new cartoons for their paper - a process that seems to be initiated by Darren Bell, creator of Candorville (one of my daily reads - highly recommended). You can read the Chronicle article here and please add your thoughts to the comments if you wish. If anything, put in a good word for Darren and Candorville. I am submitting Town Called Dobson to the paper for their consideration. They seem to have given great weight to receiving 200 messages considering Candorville. I am asking TCD fans to try to surpass that amount. (I get more than that many hate mails a day, surely fans can do better?) This is not a race between Darren and I, it is a hope that more progressive strips can be represented in the printed press of America. So if you read the San Francisco Chronicle or live in the Bay Area (Google Analytics tell me there are a lot of you), please send your kind comments (or naked, straining outrage) to David Wiegand at his published addresses below. If you are a subscriber, cut out your mailing label and staple it to a TCD strip and include it in your letter. candorcomment@sfchronicle.com or David Wiegand Executive Datebook Editor The San Francisco Chronicle 901 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103

Early Polling News From North Carolina

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeMy wife read today's strip, and after she stopped rolling on the floor laughing, she wiped away the tears and alerted me, "you are gonna get so much hate mail!" Anyway, at my polling place here in Lewisville, NC, I had the choice of taking the unaffiliated ballot, the Republican Ballot and the Democratic ballot (I am independent). When I looked, he had only three Dem ballots left in the stack. I asked jokingly if he was going to run out. He said, "Oh no, I have more packs in the back - it's just not many people are voting Republican so far today." And yes, we had PAPER ballots that you marked with a pen - now black box voting and no chads. Paper and ink. Afterwards, my wife and I went for breakfast and our waitress noted our "I Voted Today" stickers on our shirts and said she thought about voting, but doesn't pay any attention to politics (WTF?). She liked Obama so we gave her our Obama pitch. The table next to us had a similar conversation with her and they were talking about how much they liked Bill Clinton and hated Hillary Clinton. They too supported Obama. Should be an interesting evening. SPECIAL REQUEST FOR TCD FANS: The San Francisco Chronicle is pondering the addition of new cartoons for their paper - a process that seems to be initiated by Darren Bell, creator of Candorville (one of my daily reads - highly recommended). You can read the Chronicle article here and please add your thoughts to the comments if you wish. If anything, put in a good word for Darren and Candorville. I am submitting Town Called Dobson to the paper for their consideration. They seem to have given great weight to receiving 200 messages considering Candorville. I am asking TCD fans to try to surpass that amount. (I get more than that many hate mails a day, surely fans can do better?) This is not a race between Darren and I, it is a hope that more progressive strips can be represented in the printed press of America. So if you read the San Francisco Chronicle or live in the Bay Area (Google Analytics tell me there are a lot of you), please send your kind comments (or naked, straining outrage) to David Wiegand at his published addresses below. If you are a subscriber, cut out your mailing label and staple it to a TCD strip and include it in your letter. candorcomment@sfchronicle.com or David Wiegand Executive Datebook Editor The San Francisco Chronicle 901 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103

What Hillary’s Umbrella Is Protecting

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeToday's commentary is light because it is my birthday and I am relaxing today! w00t! Anyway, a tiny bit of commentary I guess. Hillary's nuclear umbrella bothers me. What are we protecting besides oil with her umbrella? Dictatorial societies and cultures that are repressive to women, unfriendly towards the west and loves to kill Jews. I am not sure protecting Sharia Law and Wahhabism is a good mission for our soldiers to die over. SPECIAL REQUEST FOR TCD FANS: The San Francisco Chronicle is pondering the addition of new cartoons for their paper - a process that seems to be initiated by Darren Bell, creator of Candorville (one of my daily reads - highly recommended). You can read the Chronicle article here and please add your thoughts to the comments if you wish. If anything, put in a good word for Darren and Candorville. I am submitting Town Called Dobson to the paper for their consideration. They seem to have given great weight to receiving 200 messages considering Candorville. I am asking TCD fans to try to surpass that amount. (I get more than that many hate mails a day, surely fans can do better?) This is not a race between Darren and I, it is a hope that more progressive strips can be represented in the printed press of America. So if you read the San Francisco Chronicle or live in the Bay Area (Google Analytics tell me there are a lot of you), please send your kind comments (or naked, straining outrage) to David Wiegand at his published addresses below. If you are a subscriber, cut out your mailing label and staple it to a TCD strip and include it in your letter. candorcomment@sfchronicle.com or David Wiegand Executive Datebook Editor The San Francisco Chronicle 901 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103

Science 1, Superstition 0

National Center for Science Education: Antievolution bills dead in Florida When the Florida legislature ended its session on May 2, 2008, legislative attempts to open the door to creationism died in the House of Representatives. Senate Bill 2692, as originally introduced, purported to protect the right of teachers to "objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution." The bill resembled a string of similar bills in Alabama as well as a model bill that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to promote, and was widely viewed as a backlash against the treatment of evolution in Florida's new state science standards. As NCSE reported, SB 2692's originally identical House counterpart, HB 1483, was substantially altered, requiring public schools to provide "[a] thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution." The phrase "critical analysis" is commonly used by "intelligent design" advocates in their campaign to undermine the teaching of evolution. The sponsor of SB 2692, Senator Ronda Storms (R-District 10), then sought to smooth the bill's passage by revising it to match HB 1483, but was unsuccessful. On receiving SB 2692 from the Senate, the House substituted the text of HB 1483 and returned it to the Senate, which then restored the text of the bill and sent it back to the House, where it died. HB 1483 was already tabled, and is now dead, too. I don't care if a voodoo doctor is a college-educated jerk wearing a three piece suit (Hello, Mr. Stein), because once he starts babbling about "intelligent design", he has negated whatever fragile opportunity he had to be taken seriously. Science, not superstition, is the only means we have to fix the problems that are facing every single passenger on Spaceship Earth, and we've already wasted too much time.

The Vast Clinton Conspiracy

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing. "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche Any residual sympathy I had for the Clintons as targets of the "vast right wing conspiracy" was expended in the umpteenth chapter of "The Endless Saga of the Eternal Primary." This because team Clinton insists on borrowing heavily from the very playbook they so famously decried. The tactics should be familiar to those who've watched the machinations of that very VRWC: insinuations of guilt by association, reliance on the media of the right wing noise machine, faux populism and disingenuous charges of elitism, and, of course, blatant distortions of reality. With a self-righteous arrogance befitting the Bushes, it seems the Clintons are operating from the belief that it's only wrong when other people do it. And in their Bush-league hypocrisy, the charges of motes they hurl only make them seem totally oblivious to the many beams in their own eyes. Witness their exploitation of the Ayers red herring. As per Clinton biographer Carl Bernstein: Which raises the question: Is the Clinton campaign's emphasis on the Ayers-Obama connection significantly different or less spurious than the familiar (McCarthyite?) smears against Hillary, particularly those promulgated and disseminated by the forces she labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s? Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has (at least so far as this reporter and biographer has been able to determine) consistently rejected the ideological rigidity of the radical Left and -- especially -- the notion of revolutionary violence as a means of political change in contemporary America, despite claims to the contrary by the VRWC. Like Obama -- and John McCain for that matter -- she has valued her friendships with individuals who figured in the Left-wing and anti-war movements of the 60s and Vietnam era. And like Obama and McCain, she has never wavered from her belief and faith in establishment politics, within the two-party system. As Bernstein explains Hillary has carefully expunged much of her own idealistic interest in radical politics -- such as the Black Panthers trial -- from public accounts; even going so far as to bury her thesis on Saul Alinsky in unobtainable Wellesley archives. Yet her campaign has attempted to leverage Obama's even more tenuous link to radicalism. Notes Bernstein, with dismay: One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery (witness their fight against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and excesses). The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association--of which the Bill Ayers allegations are but one example: see Louis Farrakhan, or a comparatively-obscure African-American writer and perhaps -- communist party member named Frank Marshal Dixon, whom Obama knew in high school in Hawaii -- is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying. Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped, judging from Hillary's triumphant and collegial senate years, that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics when the Clinton Presidency ended in 2001 and the Right-wing threat to the Clintons' tenure in the White House had abated. "The sad irony," noted Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "is that these are the same [guilt-by-association] attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women... But, alas, no bit of Republican-style chicanery is too loathsome for the desperate Clintons to embrace. And, as this blogger was particularly dismayed to learn, a key architect of their new attack machinery is none other than Sidney Blumenthal. Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era. Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others. . . . But, rather remarkably for such a self-professed liberal operative like Blumenthal, a staggering number of the anti-Obama attacks he circulates derive from highly-ideological and militant right-wing sources such as the misnamed Accuracy in Media (AIM), The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The American Conservative, and The National Review. To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group. Suddenly, Hillary's endorsement in longtime foe Mellon Scaife's paper seems not so terribly surprising. Any reader of David Brock's "Blinded By The Right" will recognize, in Blumenthal's modus operandi, the familiar tactic of force-feeding propaganda from far right venues to more mainstream sources, and into the established media narrative. After years of defending against this very tactic, he seems to have learned it well. Some Clinton supporters who also knew about Ayers have been discreetly trying to catapult the story out of the right-wing sandbox into the wider mainstream media. On April 9, Fox News' Sean Hannity interviewed fellow right-winger Karl Rove, who raised the Ayers-Obama connection. The next day, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper wrote about Ayers in his Political Punch blog. The following week, on his radio show, Hannity suggested to his guest, George Stephanopoulos, that he ask Obama about his relationship with Ayers at the upcoming Philadelphia presidential debate. Stephanopoulos, who was Bill Clinton's press secretary, replied, "Well, I'm taking notes." The following night during the April 16 nationally televised Presidential debate, Stephanopoulos dutifully asked Obama about Ayers, who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Possibly more insulting is watching the Clintons turn to that mainstay of Republican politics: making fun of pointy-headed intellectuals. Is there anything more disingenuous than the obviously well-heeled pol insisting that it's the other guy who's part of the elite? In the annals of sheer audacity, I never thought anything could top the mind melting hypocrisy of the scion of one of the wealthiest, most insulated families in the world -- an alumnus of both Yale and Harvard -- convincing blue collar voters that he was just plain folk. Okay, Dubya still wins the prize on the faux populism scale. But there also, Hillary refuses to be outdone. Exploiting for all it's worth, Obama's "bitter" faux pas, she has once again joined forces with the Republican competition. This time to paint the black son of a struggling single mother as an "elitist," and her Wellesley and Yale educated self, as someone who couldn't tell arugula from iceberg lettuce. In her latest triangulation two-step, Clinton has partnered with McCain on an all out assault on voter intelligence, with the shamelessly pandering "gas tax holiday." To drive the point home, this woman, whom the Secret Service has protected from all concerns automotive since 1992, set out on her own blue collar comedy tour of gas station photo-op destinations. Would you want to have a cup of coffee with this woman?