How ugly was he?

That's from my son Chris, who, as I told you before, is in the midst of a project of reading a biography of every American President. He reads his books in book form, so he texts photos of paragraphs when he's got something to share.

The paragraph above comes from Ron Chernow's "Grant" (commission earned).

How ugly was General Benjamin Butler? Pictures, here, at Wikipedia. He looks bad, but not as bad as those words make him sound. As Chris put it: "You have to really hate someone to describe them that way."

Here's Butler's General Order No. 28 (with rhetorical flourishes that may remind of a certain modern-day President):

Chris and I independently thought that seemed like a Trump tweet! The capitalization is so evocative. And that willingness to use strong interpretations of law to intimidate those who are affronting you....

Maybe Trump is tapping into a deep vein of American rhetoric.

Trump said Abraham Lincoln was only "probably" a great president, because "Why wasn’t that settled?" ("That" = the Civil War.)

A kid asked Trump who was his favorite President when he was a kid, and, after talking about Reagan, his favorite President, who didn't become President until Trump was 35, he said:

"Uh, great presidents — well, Lincoln was probably a great president. Although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know? I’m a guy that — it doesn’t make sense we had a civil war."

This remark fits with his determined insistence that if he'd been President, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine and the October 7th massacre would never have happened. War can be avoided, we'd all like to think, but who are the peacemakers? Trump would like you to think he's the one. 

I'm reading that quote in a NYT article called "Four of Trump’s Most Meandering Remarks This Week/The former president says that his style is to 'weave' from one subject to the next. Others see something more worrisome in his ramblings."

I love the Abraham Lincoln quote. Why do we see war Presidents as the great ones? If there was a war, why don't we fault him for not saving us from it? And who, this time around, will save the world from war?

But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about the extent to which Trump is meandering. Let's worry about what are pointless ramblings.

The other article about Trump on the front page of the NYT is "At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity." He's speaking in a way that can be characterized as unpresidential. He said 1. "Such a horrible four years, we had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —" and the audience yelled "Shit!" 2. (about Harris) "We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president," and 3. (about Arnold Palmer) "This is a guy that was all man.... And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, 'Oh, my god, that’s unbelievable.'... I had to tell you the shower part of it because it’s true... We want to be honest.'"

Meanwhile, there's only one article about Kamala Harris on the front page of the NYT at the moment, and it's not about problems with the way she speaks. It's not that she said "It's real," when someone asserted that Israel is committing genocide. It's not that she taunted "You guys are at the wrong rally" when somebody yelled "Christ is Lord."

No, readers are left to assume Harris is speaking in the normal, presidential manner, while Trump is in worrisome decline.

The article the NYT gives us about Harris is news of a weak blip in one question on a poll: "Harris May Be Catching Up on a Key Polling Question: Which Candidate Helps You?"

The NYT seems to be saying: Please be encouraged about Harris, though there's nothing positive that she's said or done that we can elaborate for you today. Leave the Harris door shut, and look at Trump. Isn't he terrible in the same way we've considered him terrible for an entire decade... or, uh, no, at some new more worrisome and ever lower level of descent into hell?

"I have a visceral reaction against, against the attacks on those statues. There were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves..."

"... and, you know, I just, I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are. We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. … If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history...."

Said RFK Jr., quoted in "RFK Jr. had a ‘visceral’ reaction to tear-downs of Confederate statues/Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a podcast that he doesn’t think 'it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history'" (WaPo).

Memorial Day at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin.

Photos by Meade.

ADDED: Meade's video of the crowd listening to the Military Service Medley by the VFW 1318 Band:

"A Virginia school board voted to restore the names of two schools previously named after Confederate leaders...."

"The Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to call the schools Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School, four years after the board — under different members — changed the names of the institutions due to their ties to Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby."

WaPo reports.

"Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a series of questions reflecting what seemed to be an emerging consensus..."

"... that the 14th Amendment was not meant to permit states to determine whether a candidate was an ineligible insurrectionist. 'The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power, right?' he asked, adding that the challengers’ contrary argument was 'a position that is at war with the whole thrust of the 14th Amendment.' Chief Justice Roberts noted that the challengers’ position would have empowered the former Confederate states to determine whether candidates were disqualified from holding federal office. The 14th Amendment was adopted to constrain states’ rights and empower the federal government, the chief justice said, and it is 'the last place you’d look for authorization for the states, including Confederate states, to enforce the presidential election process.'"

Writes Adam Liptak, about this morning's oral argument, pointing to a passage that I was going to wait until I had the transcript to write about. 

"He claimed magnets don’t work underwater.... He bragged about his ability to put on pants.... He said the Civil War could have been 'negotiated.'..."

I'm reading "8 Awful Things Trump Said in Iowa, Ranked" (NY Magazine).

Is it not a good thing to believe wars can be avoided? Is it an article of faith that American slavery could only have been ended through warfare? Why is it "awful" to say that, as President, Trump would have tried to end it peacefully?

Should a politician hold a campaign rally in a church?

Here's "Charities, Churches and Politics" at the IRS website.

I'm not going to give a tax law lecture. I just want to say politicians using churches usually attempt to be somewhat subtle. Is this some kind of joke:

Here's the article, "Biden Tries to Rally Disaffected Black Voters in Fiery Condemnation of Trump."

President Biden sought to rally disaffected Black supporters on Monday with a fiery condemnation of former President Donald J. Trump, linking his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the nation’s history of white supremacy in what he called “the old ghost in new garments.”

Ghost?! If Trump used the idea of a ghost to scare black people, he'd be accused of trading on the old racist trope. 

"New York Times' Nikole Hannah-Jones tweets the North didn't fight to end slavery in Civil War."

A Fox News headline from last year, interesting today in light of Nikki Haley's recent comments on the Civil War.

On [May 21, 2022], Hannah-Jones tweeted out a quote from her controversial 1619 Project...

"I think you had one side of the civil war that was fighting for tradition and one side of the civil war that was fighting for change."

"At the end of the day, what I think we need to remember is that, you know, everyone’s supposed to have their rights, everyone’s supposed to be free, everyone’s supposed to have the same freedoms as anyone else. So I think it was tradition versus change. ['Tradition versus change on what?'] On individual rights and liberty of people."

Said Nikki Haley, in 2010, quoted by The Guardian back in February 2023, in "Nikki Haley: video shows Republican candidate saying US states can secede/Contender also says civil war – fought over slavery – was one side ‘fighting for tradition’ and the other ‘fighting for change.'"

Here's the video:

In 2010, presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a pro-Confederate group that states have a right to secede.

Interviewer: “Do you believe the states of the United States have the right to secede from the Union?”

Haley: “I think that they do. I mean, the Constitution says that.” pic.twitter.com/QwJNdhZpDV

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) February 14, 2023

I'm looking at that today, because I see that a lot of other people are going back to that video, relevant as it is to the seemingly inane answer she gave this past Wednesday when asked "What was the cause of the Civil War?" Now, I think I was too charitable in calling her recent statement a "word salad," as if she were unprepared, inept, and pretty much what Trump called her — a "bird brain."

It seems she's really thought about the Civil War for a while and come up with a political position that she'd said out loud quite clearly on at least one other occasion.

Yes, she was talking to "a pro-Confederate group," but: 1. She talked to a pro-Confederate group, 2. She gave them what, presumably, they wanted, and 3. She's repeated this bullshit/true belief.

Now, what?

I see "Haley, Asked About the Cause of the Civil War, Avoids Mentioning Slavery/A pointed question, at a town hall in New Hampshire, raises a complicated topic for Nikki Haley, who as governor of South Carolina wrestled with issues stemming from the Confederacy" (NYT).

Asked — at a town hall — "What was the cause of the United States Civil War?" she served an insane word salad:

"I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” she said eventually, arguing that government should not tell people how to live their lives or “what you can and can’t do. I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.... It was never meant to be all things to all people."...  After a quick back and forth with the questioner, she said, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”

Key words: "What do you want me to say...?" Does this woman have a mind at all? Is she saying what [somebody] wants her to say? If so, why didn't they program in a stock answer about the Civil War? 

So much money has just been thrown at this person. Now, what?

ADDED: Here's the full video. The NYT summary is merciful, if anything. 

"In The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman argues that the Confederate states had a constitutional right to secede and that Lincoln violated the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves."

Here's the NYRB review of Feldman's new book "The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America." 

From the review, by James Oakes:

"Whose story is being told with this monument? The hierarchy is very evident. White commander out front; Black soldiers in the background. It’s the first thing you see...."

"It’s not enough to just see the piece. You have to go deeper. There’s so much not told, but the monument is so moving that it can lead you to those things, if you’re curious."

Said L’Merchie Frazier, the education director at the nearby Museum of African American History in Boston, quoted in "Black soldiers monument faces scrutiny amid racial reckoning/Amid the national reckoning on racism, an unlikely monument is facing scrutiny: a Boston memorial to a famed Civil War unit made up of Black soldiers." The monument in question is the beautiful bas relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that depicts the story that many of us know from the movie "Glory."

The work, which sits across from the Massachusetts Statehouse, has been vandalized over the years, mostly by people snapping off Shaw’s broadsword. But during the unrest that followed Floyd’s killing in May, the monument was tagged with anti-police slogans, expletives and other graffiti, along with about a dozen others in and around the Common.

Kevin Peterson, founder of the New Democracy Coalition that’s calling on Boston to rename Faneuil Hall after Crispus Attucks, said the Shaw monument should be moved to a museum because it casts Blacks as “subservient” to whites.

Similar complaints have prompted the removal of other ostensibly well-meaning monuments in recent weeks, including a statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a statue of Abraham Lincoln depicting a freed slave kneeling at his feet in Boston.

I didn't watch Trump's interview with Chris Wallace, but I'll read the transcript.

Why didn't I watch?! I told myself to watch, but I did not. I've turned away from watching the news on television. It's becoming a real aversion. I prefer to get my information from reading, so let's look at this transcript. I'll just do a few excepts, I think:

WALLACE: But -- but this isn't burning embers, sir? This is a forest fire.

TRUMP: No, no. But I don't say -- I say flames, we'll put out the flames. And we'll put out in some cases just burning embers. We also have burning embers. We have embers and we do have flames. Florida became more flame like....

Ugh. They're debating about the metaphor — the ember/flame distinction.

They don't talk about Mexico.... But you take a look, why don't they talk about Mexico? Which is not helping us. And all I can say is thank God I built most of the wall, because if I didn't have the wall up we would have a much bigger problem with Mexico....

He wants to tell you about this wall he built "most of."

They have a dispute about how high the "mortality rate" is in the United States. I think that means the number of deaths in proportion to the population (not in proportion to the number of detected cases), and the website I look at puts the U.S. in 10th place. Wallace said we were in 7th place. Trump asserts, "I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world." That's just wrong and Wallace tells him so. Trump doubles down, "I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world."

That sound crazily wrong, but he might be thinking the "mortality rate" is the ratio of deaths to cases. We do so much testing that we get a very high number of cases, and that causes the percent who die to look very low. Trump asks Kayleigh to get the numbers and insists, "I heard we had the best mortality rate... number one low mortality rate." Knowing this disarray looks bad, he says: "I hope you show the scenario because it shows what fake news is all about." Ridiculous to attack Chris Wallace like that, to call him "fake news" to his face.

This morning at 5:55, I paid my respects to the empty plinth of the Hans Christian Heg statue.

I didn't insert the flags — only took the photograph.

Notice the bent up portion of the bronze in back. That damage occurred when the statue was attacked last week:

Toppling Albert Pike... "Why are the cops letting this happen?"

Beyond pathetic. Why are the cops letting this happen? https://t.co/uBW3FUFI33

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 20, 2020

I had to ask who was Albert Pike. Here's Wikipedia:

In 1861, Pike penned the lyrics to "Dixie to Arms!" At the beginning of the war, Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native American nations. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one of the most important being with Cherokee chief John Ross, which was concluded in 1861. At the time, Ross agreed to support the Confederacy, which promised the tribes a Native American state if it won the war. Ross later changed his mind and left Indian Territory, but the succeeding Cherokee government maintained the alliance.

"Federal judge lambastes amendment to rename confederate bases as 'madness'/Gets thoroughly bodied by clerk."

Headline at The Intercept.

The judge is Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit.

Silberman [wrote]... that his great-grandfather had fought for the Union as part of Ulysses S. Grant’s army and was badly wounded at Shiloh, Tennessee. His great-grandfather’s brother, meanwhile, joined the Confederate States Army and was captured at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “It’s important to remember that Lincoln did not fight the war to free the Slaves Indeed he was willing to put up with slavery if the Confederate States Returned,” he wrote (lack of punctuation and errant capitalization in the original, and throughout). “My great great grandfather Never owned slaves as best I can tell.”

From the clerk's pushback:

[M]y maternal ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi.... [M]y ancestors would not have been involved in the philosophical and political debates about Lincoln’s true intentions, or his view on racial equality.... [Y]ou talked about your ancestors, one that fought for the confederacy and one that fought for the Union.... [N]o matter how bravely your uncle fought for the Confederacy, the foundation of his fight was a decision that he agreed more with the ideals of the Confederacy, than he did with those of the Union.

Silberman, a Reagan appointee, is 84 years old. Giving him the Medal of Freedom in 2008, President George W. Bush said:

"Pvt. Triplett enlisted in the 53rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment in May 1862, then transferred to the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment early the following year..."

"... according to Confederate records. He fell ill as his regiment marched north toward Gettysburg and remained behind in a Virginia military hospital. He ran away from the hospital, records show, while his unit suffered devastating losses at Gettysburg. Of the 800 men in the 26th North Carolina, 734 were killed, wounded or captured in the battle Pvt. Triplett missed. Now a deserter, he made his way to Tennessee and, in 1864, enlisted in a Union regiment, the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. Known as Kirk’s Raiders, the 3rd North Carolina carried out a campaign of sabotage against Confederate targets in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. After the war, former Kirk’s Raiders were despised in areas of the former Confederacy. Pvt. Triplett, by then a civilian with a reputation for orneriness, kept pet rattlesnakes at his home near Elk Creek, N.C. He often sat on his front porch with a pistol on his lap.... Pvt. Triplett married Elida Hall in 1924. She was 34 when Irene was born in 1930; he was 83."

Their daughter, Irene Triplett, was the last person to receive a Civil War pension (Wall Street Journal). Irene had mental disabilities, so as the "helpless adult child of a veteran," she qualified for government support. She has now died, at the age of 90.

""Now its your turn to record history as its happening. The [Wisconsin Historical] Society is actively documenting the impact of COVID-19..."

"... on Wisconsin and the world. Our tradition of balancing the collection of artifacts and material with personal experiences is a critical part of this process. Just like the soldiers in 1861, it is your documentation of your experience living during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine that will allow the Society to share history with people living 100 years from now. Every story is important. The Society is seeking individuals and organizations from all walks of life, different backgrounds and cultures. Perspectives from a retired couple or school-aged child are just as important as those from front-line health care workers. Teachers or supervisors could also make this an engaging group project!"

From The Wisconsin Historical Society.

Just like the soldiers in 1861?

In 1861, Wisconsin Historical Society founder Lyman Draper asked soldiers stationed at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin to help document the Civil War by keeping a diary. After the war, those diaries were mailed back to the Society, where today they are regarded as one of the most valuable collections in the Society’s archives.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ryan writes:

Because staying home all day watching Netflix is just like the Civil War.

When Jefferson Davis called the people of the northern states "the descendants of the human scum that Cromwell scraped from the bogs and marshes of England."

Yesterday, I was trying to understand the meaning and significance of Trump's use of the phrase "human scum" to describe the "Never Trumper Republicans." I used the NYT archive as my source.

In the comments, Bill Peschel shared the results of his search, using a Library of Congress website that lets you search all of American newspapers, going back to 1789. There, you can see that the oldest use of "human scum" is from the Western Reserve Chronicle, January 21, 1863 — "A Brace of Traitors — The Roundheads and The Cavaliers" — characterizing what Jefferson Davis said as he bucked up southerners to fight during the Civil War:



ADDED: Using that search tool, I am finding earlier newspapers with the more elegant phrase, "the scum of humanity."

AND: I made this chart: