Scott’s Comments (group member since Apr 25, 2015)

Scott’s comments from the Saints Report History Chat group.

your right about the projecting. In this state though anything is possible in regards to corruption.

the only one I don't know about is the church. The political corruption of Louisiana (particularly in the south) is so well documented I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. And the local machine, called "the ring" did control the NOPD completely. The politicians, starting with Martin Behrman were not immigrants themselves but they were very popular with them and controlled their votes because of all the city jobs - the sewage and water board jobs in particular. The ring ended but the corruption did not going straight through to Edwin Edwards.

I look forward to getting to this book.

another book about the corruption that my mother liked was

The Last Hayride

guess my list just keeps getting longer lol

where does he suggest the corruption resided, in politics, police or private business? I know that from reading about the first half of the 20th century it was so bad in politics and the NOPD it would make your jaw drop. Not sure how far that carried forward into the 2nd half of the century.

the site is excellent. I got lost in the maps and videos. I have not signed up yet and don't know what that has to offer (Theo?) but I will most certainly be getting back to it.

Carnival of Fury

You were right Theo, this was a great book. 4 Stars

The events followed the same as the brief history given by Krist in Empire of Sin (it seemed as if Hair may have been almost his only source but didn't check the biblio)

Anyway, this had really good backstory about Charles. I am actually pretty familiar with the areas of Mississippi he lived in as well. Much of Copiah County still seems to be stuck in time by appearances.

I like how the author speculates as to whether Charles had regrets after the first incident but I would like to think that I would have done the same things he did after things went south. There is no doubt that he would have faced worse had he allowed himself to be captured.

It reminded me of a Nelson Mandela quote that I just read last month "..the oppressor who defines the nature of the
struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire."

I just kept thinking about how the interactions between minorities and Police is still so similar. After 115 years, the chances and consequences have changed (not always) but the well placed mistrust has always been there.

and who dat!

glad you joined us Joseph. Do you have a SR handle? I am Zack Lee, Thodis is Grandadmiral, Luan is MT15 and Chris is Fish321

I hope you enjoy Empire of Sin. It gives a pretty good overview of the whole storyville era. It was the first place I read about Robert Charles and I am really enjoying Carnival of Fury right now.

I also liked your review on John Adams. I added that to my list and plan to read it before I see the mini series. I was not overly impressed with 1776 but I have seen reviewers say that it was not as well done as McCulloughs other books.

from The Great New Orleans Kidnapping:

In 1873, Jourdain joined an extraordinary but short-lived political organization called the Louisiana Unification Movement. in New Orleans a movement of white Creoles, Afro-Creoles, Jewish leaders, and black and white businessmen made a final effort to form a political party led by Louisiana’s moderates—educated, longtime residents of the state, who were willing to put commerce ahead of race. Elite Afro-Creoles like publisher Louis Roudanez and philanthropist Aristide Mary joined whites with deep Louisiana ties, including the state’s greatest Confederate hero, Creole General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (of Fort Sumter and Manassas fame), on a committee chaired by Beauregard that drafted a platform that pledged to uphold integrated public schools, black voting rights, and equal access to public transportation and accommodations. The movement quickly collapsed. Reactionary white Democrats across the country ferociously assailed the effort.

Jourdain was the black NOPD detective (detectives were a new thing in police forces) that the case was assigned to. The part about Beauregard surprised me. I have always seen him as a symbol of all the evils that dominated the south of that era I guess simply because he was such a popular confederate. But it comes back to the fact that in New Orleans the $$ was the incentive for everything. The city in the first half of the 19th century was built on Sugar and Cotton. Which means that it was built on slavery. But the city was also against Secession very much because cutting themselves off from the states upriver also affected their $$.

The fact that money was the driving factor certainly does not make them more noble but it does make me wonder if given the right motivations could Reconstruction have worked. It appears that it worked in the case this book is about, at least to the degree that the accused were set free when they most likely would have payed with their lives in Jim Crow days that followed shortly after.

"The President was inclined to be kind and magnanimous, and his death at this time is an irreparable loss to the South, which now needs so much both his tenderness and magnanimity.”
- Team of Rivals quote by General Grant when he learned of the presidents death

so we see in Team of Rivals Lincoln's ability to bring strange bedfellows to the table. Could he have used that ability again with Southern leaders like Beauregard to give Reconstruction a better result? Seems like too tall an order but Lincoln was certainly a great man so who knows.

wow, I didn't even know of the battle there I will remember that there is a park there for sometime when I have to go to Houston.

My interest has been renewed so that I can pass on the info to my niece and nephew also. Tying together generations is important; the history on their fathers side is all done and easy to follow - Im trying to do the same for mine and my sisters side. I might not get to tackle it to the obsessive degree that I do things until next year but it will get done.

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era

this was a pretty good book. The author was excellent at research and it painted a pretty detailed picture of what reconstruction was like in NOLA. It did get slow a for a bit about 2/3 of the way through. That is because when the case went to trial the author had to cover a lot of territory that he had already covered. Since he covers so much ground before the trial there is a lot of repeat while he is describing testimony to events that you are already aware of. There are just enough revelations to keep it going though. It raised some interesting questions for me which I will post when I get them properly formulated.

I see threads asking some of the same questions I have could Lincoln have made Reconstruction work

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

I finished up team of rivals. I learned a ton from this book but much of that may just indicate how little I knew from school. I didn't even realize that were already well into war when the president made the emancipation proclamation. And the views of the "rivals" on what to do after slaves were freed, there were so many eye openers for me.

The only area that I was left wanting was in the area of what made Lincoln such a humanitarian. I started a biography thread on the EE as I have really just started reading them a lot in the last year and I was having a hard time putting a finger on why I love some so much more than others. It really gets down to whether you can get to the "why" a person was like they were. What made/makes them great.

As an example Walter Isaccson wrote biographies on Steve Jobs and Einstein; the Jobs book was fantastic and I only moderately enjoyed the book on Einstein. It was easy to see what set Jobs apart, his idiosyncrasies and philosophies that drove him. You can strive to be like his better qualities. Einstein was just brilliant and in truth what he revealed to us was far more interesting than he ever was.

I guess I said all that to say that this will not be the last Lincoln book I read.

This one looks intriguing. Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

I will be finishing the Great New Orleans Kidnapping soon. That one is going slower because I have the physical book and so I usually only have it with me when I head to bed.

obviously don't expect anyone else to be as interested in this as I am but since I had to make notes for my research anyway I just copy/pasted.

In truth family had nothing to do with my interest in history. I have always had an interest in genealogy but I never connected the two in my mind. Connected them this way has certainly made both more real for me though.

my grandmother was very educated and given her odd personality it is certainly possible that she knew more and expected me to find out myself. I regret that I did not stumble into it until after she was gone. Unfortunately I also lost the great aunt last year.

the documents have been passed down in my family directly from him so they obviously had some import; perhaps they were used as proof to gain benefits during reconstruction. Dunno.

it would appear that I have a personal link to Reconstruction efforts.

In talking to my grandmother about her grandfather, the only thing she offered me was that her mom had told her he was “just an old scallywag” That was it. It sounded almost like she was never able to get answers herself; like maybe she had been dismissed when asking about him. I assumed that this meant that he was a drinker or a womanizer, he appears to be almost all Irish after all.

To the contrary, upon digging there is no evidence that he was a womanizer. He had a large family with my great great grandmother and they apparently were always together. Likewise, no evidence one way or the other of drinking but he provided for a large family very well and as farmers this life had to have been hard work.

It was not until I recently started reading about the reconstruction period that I finally made the connection that Scallywag had an older meaning.

Scalawag -a derogatory term (originally describing worthless livestock) applied to native white Southerners who supported the federal reconstruction plan and cooperated with the blacks in order to achieve their ends. Some of the scalawags were entirely above board, having opposed the Confederacyin earlier times and later wanted a new South to emerge from the rubble. Others cooperated with or served in the Republican governments in order to avail themselves of money-making opportunities.

Scalawags were often poor lower class who resented the upper class in the south before the civil war.

I have copies of Confederate Roll cards and pay stubs with the following info:

He was enlisted and was making 11 dollars per month from 1861 to 1863
He was captured January 11, 1863 at Arkansas Post during the Vicksburg campaign
he was paroled at Camp Douglas Illinois April 3, 1863 and delivered April 10, 1863 to City Point Va.
there is another card that says at Camp Douglas December 4, 1864 where he took a loyalty oath and written on the card” claims he has always been loyal, enlisted to avoid conscription. Was captured and desire to take the oath of allegiance to the U.S. and become a loyal citizen.”

more than a year and a half latter. Curious if he actually went back to Illinois or if that was a technicality. I have to do more digging here.

Under Lincoln’s ten percent plan, the benefits of the oath were protection of property, and political and financial advantages.
My great aunt (Nelda) did her own digging. this is from her notes she states that there are records that showed when he got married in 1868 he had one horse and a saddle and his wife had a “few house keeping items.” There was no money and no land. Within a few years they acquired 128 acres of land.

I have more digging to do.

I figure I will want a place to discuss Team of Rivals when I finish it but I decided to make it a general Civil War thread after the site I found this evening.

There are fantastic videos and interactive maps for all of the battles here. I have only scratched the surface but I am already blown away by this website.

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/...

edit: main site portal
http://www.civilwar.org/

not much of a find since it will be pretty near the top of a google search but I wanted everyone to see it.

I am not going to worry too much about the people coming over. That part has been more frustration with lack of interest. Seems like so many or on the fringe of interest but not really wanting to dive in. If we build it they will come, or they would not be good contributions anyway.

I am loving this site. I am still learning new stuff. Since I found the compare ratings feature I went back and rated things with more care.

I am hoping to find a good day to stay in the quarter for a while. They have another exhibit going on now to at their other building on Huey Long. Theo are you a teacher? Seems like some of your posts have indicated this parallels your professional line.

you got it Luan. Check your inbox

I am learning just how limited my knowledge of he Civil War is while reading Team of Rivals right now. My education is about 50/50 between Catholic School and Public School too so there is some blame to go around.

I don't know that my signature on SR is helping us lol. Do you think anyone can even tell that it is a link? Or maybe most people have sigs turned off. Dunno

Luan wrote: "Think of the loss of life avoided 100 years or so later, not to mention the horrors endured by generations of slaves during the next 100 years! "

The New Orleans Historic Collection has what sounds like a great exhibit right now - Purchased Lives. It ends July 18 and I had already made up my mind that I would see it before then but yesterday on NPR one of the shows was going through the exhibit with the curator.

The era it is concerned with is after the international slave trade was outlawed. During that period a million people were forced to come from Virginia further south by foot. They would be in bad shape from all of the walking and most of the owners would put these slaves in the hospital for the sole purpose of restoring them to working health. They have Touro Infirmary's patient logs from that time and occupancy was as much as 45 percent slaves that were checked in by owners.

But the thing that struck me the most and speaks to the horrors you mention was the newspaper ads that they have. After emancipation NOLA was a prime spot for freed slaves to move to. All of the ads in the papers were for people all over the south looking for family and loved ones. What really hits you in the gut is when they said that these ads ran into the first decade of the 20th Century. So for 30 or 40 years people were searching for lost family. So much pain there.

I don’t know who among you actually live in or visit New Orleans frequently but this definitely sounds like a good thing to see. I will try to remember to post pics when I go. They have many items connected to Solomon Northup (12 years a slave)

http://www.hnoc.org/purchasedlives/

This book is on my short list. I grew up in uptown myself and moved back there as an adult. I have lived more than half my life (in various houses) within a couple of miles from there. One of the things I liked about Empire of Sin is that he pinpoints the exact locations of everything he mentions. I took a ride to those locations after reading it.

When you read about the original incident that started everything, you could be reading about any of the incidents that happen almost daily now of the exact same sort and forget that you are reading about something that happened 115 years ago.

you will probably like it. I wanted to ask you about Carnival of Fury. I had seen it on Amazon and thought I would like to read it like 2 days before you started this group; I was very pleased to find someone who had read it to give me their thoughts.