Finally caught up with this AAR. really good. 
I am curious though, what things are different culturally in your USA vs OTL?
I am curious though, what things are different culturally in your USA vs OTL? -
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Finally caught up with this AAR. really good.
Not much. Other than a lot of French with Quebec and more Mexicans with the Mexican wars and seizure of lands south of the Rio Grande. Oh the irony!
So I guess that means a stronger Catholic presence too. We’ll get to some of this later as we discuss nationalism and imperialism in the progressive era. You know...another thing progressives were very enthusiastic about back in the day just like liberals in Europe in the mid-19th century. People suffer from amnesia!
Great to see you caught up vyshan!
CHAPTER XV: A NEW REPUBLIC
The Progressive Historians and Historiography
The Progressive Historians and Historiography
The construction of this new republic in the aftermath of the Civil War was a central focus of the so-called progressive historians. As there is a lot of confusion over the term progressive, and progressive historiography, and before we move headlong into the progressive era, it is necessary to discuss the matter at the close of this chapter.
Philosophically, progressivism was the politicization of the philosophy of progress; the secularization (or temporalization) of the idea that history, History, was progressively unfolding to its predestined end. The relationship between historical teleology and Christian soteriology is already well-attested to in academic scholarship,[1] so I will not belabor this point here—other than to say most of the vehemently anti-Christian of writers and individuals today ironically embody a spirit of Christianity they are unwilling to eschew as it would entail the collapse of everything they hold dear.
What the progressive historians did was to merge their own inherited yet secularized Puritan millenarianism with a revision of the Marxist dialectic of historical return; that is, they accepted prima facie the economistic view of history: That economic forces propelled history forward and nothing else than economics and that by understanding the forces of economics one could understand where history was unfolding to. In contrast to Marx, who was a reactionary, and revolutionary in the proper sense of the word: “to revolve,” i.e. “to return” to the original state of freedom that defined man in the state of nature, the progressives rejected this cyclical and reactionary conception of history in place of the linear, progressivist, view of history.
Admittedly, the linear view of history is a derivative of the Protestant conception of historical eschatological fulfillment. Thus, the English-speaking’s world obsession with a so-called “dark age” between the fall of Rome and the Reformation; a view now discredited by most academic historians in the English-speaking world and never held by those historians on the continent of Europe.[2] Progress, as a term, only makes sense if there is a destination, a goal, to progress to. Movement to this destination counts as progress. Any sliding away from this destination counts as backwardness.
The fundament split between the Marxists and progressives rested on the metaphysics of cyclicality and linearity. Most people who parrot Marx today are not Marxists, though I will not belabor this point either; other than to reiterate what any student of philosophy or history would know if they bothered to read and understand the seminal texts they quote passages out of context from—the Marxist understanding of history, and thus why the term “revolution” is applied to Marxist thought, is because it is cyclical; before the movement of history there existed—in the Rousseauian sense—a perfectly free and egalitarian state of nature that the exhaustion of the economic dialectic is returning us to. Hence “revolution.” The progressives, by contrast, took the more doctrinaire liberal, and Whiggish, view: The original state of nature was dark, ignorant, and superstitious. We cannot call the progressives revolutionary, nor did they describe themselves as such, precisely because the movement of history was not revolving back to this state of nature but moving away from, a progressive unfolding away to something better.
Herbert Croly, the chief public intellectual of the emerging progressive moment, wrote in his definitive treatise on American Progressivism The Promise of American Life, “The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.”* Croly also coined the term “new nationalism” and was a confidante to Theodore Roosevelt.
In attempting to read this unfolding of history, as I’ve already discussed, the progressives concluded, contra Marx, that the urban, factory-like, and mathematically centered city was the destination of history. It was, therefore, the task of government to help facilitate peoples’ integration into this world as quickly and efficiently, and painlessly, as possible. The end of history was not communism, as the effectual return to the original state of primitive communism that defined pre-history in Marx’s imagining, but the factory that Marx so deplored and critically analyzed. The difference, again, being that the progressives saw the factory as something benign and beneficial. It is easy, however, to see why progressivism gets conflated with Marxism: Both share an economistic (and therefore materialist) conception of history; both share the view that aligning with the unfolding dialectic is what constitutes freedom; both share a teleological understanding of history; both believed the movement of history was coming to completion—in other words, “the end was nigh.” The differentiation between the progressives and the Marxists came down to metaphysical first principles. The Marxist understanding of the world was fundamentally cyclical while the progressive understanding of the world was linear; the Marxist understanding of the world was therefore one of return while the progressive understanding of the world was "progressivist"; the Marxist understanding of the world accepting the movement to capitalism as necessary for the exhaustion into socialism and then communism while the progressive understanding of the world was being completed through industrialization, capitalization, and urbanization as the end point of history.
For these reasons the progressives celebrated the expansion of the Untied States, her industrialization, her vanquishing of slavery—which was seen as being tied to agricultural economics—and her capitalization. What the progressives, however, began to develop was a consciousness of “compassion,” directed at those workers and peoples who were not yet integrated in the brave new world, and a growing technocratic mathematical worldview which believed that precise “regulation” would produce a more effective equilibrium that would redress extensive wealth disparity between classes. The progressives did not seek a perfectly egalitarian society in the material sense; they sought an efficient and well-oiled machine where everyone played their part like a factory in an assembly line. Providing a certain level of material comfort to those who worked, as well as limiting work hours to allot for more leisure time, were all seen as means to stave off potential discontent from the working-class.
Returning, briefly, to the historical reality that progressivism was a bastardized incarnation of Christianity, the “disciples” of salvation were the progressives. They were the elect who preached and brought the new gospel to the unwashed masses. Many studies also highlight how most of the progressives were the scions of Puritan families, though abandoning, by orthodox standards, the doctrinal theology of their more religious fathers, they nevertheless embodied the same practical outlook.[3]
John Dewey, the chief philosopher of progressivism, wrote in his book Human Nature and Conduct, “Habits are arts. They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials. They assimilate objective energies, and eventuate in command of the environment. They require order, discipline, and manifest technique. They have a beginning, middle and end. Each stage marks a progress in dealing with materials and tools, advance in converting material to active use.”** The general outlook of Dewey’s philosophy of (re)education (or better, reprogramming) was to homogenize American education into a factory to produce Americans capable of functioning in the new utilitarian, urban, factory-based world. An emphasis on practical skill, math, and science, replaced the traditional focus on grammar, language, the arts, and literature.
Given the messianic conception of the self that the progressives embodied for themselves, it is unsurprising that they presented themselves as the saviors of the great unwashed masses. Except for the truly brainwashed, or those who embody this progressive parochialism and messianic consciousness—which is the epitome of narcissism—the elitism entailed in this outlook should be readily visible. The success of the progressive historians, and their chief intellectuals, was their establishment of the new media establishment—the “fourth estate,” whose primary role was to create the new consciousness that would help move the people to settle into this new world that they were helping to create. To this end the progressives did see themselves as saviors of the multitude of farmers, debtors, and other poor and downtrodden masses.
[1] For a general treatise on the history of the philosophy of progress see Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress. For a treatise examining the theological roots of the philosophy of history, see Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History. As it relates to the United States and the relationship between Puritan postmillennialism and progressivism, see Avihu Zakai’s Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment.
[2] For those not caught up with the paradigm shift in historiography, which began in 1970 with the works, principally, of Peter Brown, the epoch once called the “Dark Age” in English-speaking scholarship is now called “Late Antiquity” or “Late Antique.”
[3] A good study is George McKenna’s award-winning book The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism. Another good study is Richard Gamble’s The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation. I will return to these themes more specifically in the forthcoming chapters of this AAR.
* The Promise of American Life (1909), p. 9.
** Human Nature and Conduct (1920/2007 reprint), p. 15.
CHAPTER XV: A NEW REPUBLIC
The Third Mexican War
The Third Mexican War
The Great Strikes of 1878-1879, which I have already covered, dealt a great blow to the Wheeler Administration—in part, leading to Sherman’s reluctant acceptance as the Republican nominee to “save the republic.” In attempting to overcome the crisis of confidence, President Wheeler launched the Third Mexican War to boost popularity, patriotism, and hopefully rally common people to his cause.
If the first two Mexican Wars were moved by a general spirit of American exceptionalism—Manifest Destiny—and contained great support from the mass public (despite Whig opposition to the second war), the Third Mexican War was the exact opposite; it also contributed to Wheeler’s image as a blood thirsty tyrant of sorts: First attacking the striking laborers; then sending them to die in the Mexican desert. The Third Mexican War was, by military standards, a swift and glorious success of the U.S. Army. Also known as the Baja War, the war resolved longstanding disputes between the Mexican Empire and the United States. Mexican nationalists, or Mexican revanchists, sought to reclaim Nuevo Leon from the United States.
From an economic perspective, the Baja War provided very little. Some Marxist historians speculate that it was the fishing industry in California that prompted the war—for the Baja coast was plentiful with fish and whales. Its acquisition would boost the growing California fishing industry which, in turn, would help the industrialization and urbanization of the state; which was experiencing a post-Civil War population boom with ex-Confederates seeking a new beginning there and Chinese immigrants arriving too. While the nativist American Party experienced a revival in the state in the 1870s and 1880s as such, the notion that the war was the product of the greed of the fishing industry shows the shortcomings of Marxist historiography and outlook.
The Sonora Desert, the Baja Peninsula, and the general territories southwest of the Rio Grande – from the American view – were of little economic use. Nevertheless, the fishing waters off the Baja were the most economically useful territories acquired during the war. In reality the war seemed to be the outcome of a desperate move by President Wheeler to recover after the Great Strikes. But he failed miserably.
As mentioned, the first two Mexican Wars were popular and were seen as necessary for American continental supremacy. The third was unpopular, seen as unnecessary, and many of the hopeful “volunteers” never showed up. The farmers and laborers who Wheeler hoped would join the army for a “short and successful war” never showed up. The American Army of the South, and the California Guard, were the only forces utilized in the war as a result.
General Francis Wilson, a veteran of the Civil War, conducted a remarkably successful campaign by military standards. He crushed the limited Mexican forces with ease—which were still recovering from the Mexican crisis of the preceding decade. He marched on Mexico City and forced the end of the war within four months of its beginning. The war was over by Christmas. His California counterpart, Brigadier Samuel Allen, took the California Guard and swept into the Baja Peninsula in a bloodless campaign. 106 days after the war began, the Mexicans agreed to peace.
The Battle of Nogales. The charge of the 2nd U.S. Calvary broke the Mexican ranks and led to the decisive victory within an hour of the battle.
The failure of the Third Mexican War was, however, the revolt of the volunteer and agrarian classes that Wheeler had hoped would join up for this short successful war. Still reeling from discontent and economic problems, the last thing these men wanted to do, or could do, was leave their farms, homes, and families for an adventure in the Mexican desert. In fact, more American soldiers died from environmental causes than from Mexican soldiers.
As such, the war did little to change Wheeler’s popularity and, as we already know, led him to not seek reelection in 1880 despite the “success” of his war. Moreover, and materialist historiography has better legs to stand on here, the lack of interest in the war by the population that Wheeler erroneously thought would back the war was certainly motived by the dire economic conditions of poor farmers and laborers in the late 1870s. Why would these men, with their families, risk their lives in what they rightly regarded as a generally pointless war when they were suffering from the burdening weight of the railroads and industrial displacement. Moreover, for farmers, the Civil War had broken their backs and the Sonora Desert wasn’t exactly the Garden of Eden waiting to be tilled.
If the war itself was somewhat forgettable, the war did have significant ramifications for American-Central American relations. The United States of Central America, established by the grey-eyed man of destiny, now President William Walker, and still President Walker, saw the war as a chance to secure better relations with the United States. After all, Walker and the agrarian elite in the USCA. Still a legal slave-holding sovereign nation, recognized by the United States and much of Europe, the war gave Walker the legitimacy he so craved. It also gave a new meaning to the roughly 20,000 Confederates, mostly officers, who had fled to the country at the end of the Civil War.
President William Walker of the United States of Central America, President from 1856-1886 (his death).
Much like the Texans during the Texas War of Independence, these Angl0s in the USCA considered themselves “American.” They saw themselves as descending from the great Anglo-American stock of peoples. Heirs of the American Revolution, the Protestant gospel, and the Anglo-Saxon race. They saw themselves as exiles from their own country, but nevertheless proud to still call themselves American. The whole concept of the USCA, to some extent, was the extension of an American-slave holding entity across the Caribbean. The Third Mexican War, which cooled the otherwise frosty relations between the US and USCA that stemmed from the Civil War, now saw an active de-facto alliance between the two nations to hem in the Mexican Empire. One of the reasons why the U.S. suffered so little during the war was because the Mexican Empire and the USCA were preoccupied with most of the fighting.
The abolitionist wing of the Republican Party saw this move as a general betrayal of their principles; in part, because they wanted to keep pressure on “Dictator Walker” and maintain the economic embargo which would force his hand to abolish slavery. But the Republican Party, following Reconstruction, had little interest in advancing international abolitionist policy and wanted to concentrate on economic industrialization and modernization—as had long been the goal of many Republicans even when the party was founded in 1854.
A direct result of this de facto alliance between the US and USCA was that slavery would remain in Central America, by legal statute, until 1891 when rebels overthrew the white slaveholding government. While the United States subsequently intervened to keep the American ruling class minority in power, the legal abolition of slavery was mandated in the new constitution. Furthermore, the newfound friendly relations with the USCA paved the way for the American construction of the Panama Canal—with the USCA as the American base of operations.
On the whole, the Third Mexican War would soon be forgotten. It was, however, another step in the construction of the new American republic. The consequences of the Third Mexican War, namely increased American presence in Central America, would lead to a long series of American involvement in the politics of the USCA, the construction of the Panama Canal, and new relations with the northern South American countries; Colombia most prominently.
The Treaty of Mexico City granted the Sonora Desert and Baja Peninsula to the United States of America. The Baja Territory and Sonora Territory were set up as a result.
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I can't remember the mod, but are you using the one that grants cores to those extra border states if America goes further in its Manifest Destiny?
President Wheeler carries on the time-honored American tradition of starting a war abroad in an effort to distract from scandal at home -- though, in this instance, he has once again badly miscalculated the effect of his actions on the American public.
I do want to note that Sonora might be a terrible place for homesteading farmers, but it's incredibly rich in minerals -- the Cananea copper mine, one of the largest and most productive open-pit copper mines on earth, is an excellent example. I could see a select coterie of industrialists and railroad men providing quiet backing for Wheeler's war in order to get their hands on some of that mineral wealth themselves... Or, at least, I could see that kind of story getting really popular in certain sets of newspapers.
And glad to hear a little more news on William Walker and his band of ne'er-do-wells, though it sounds like his little fossilized snapshot of antebellum America isn't long for this world (in its present form, at least).
I do want to note that Sonora might be a terrible place for homesteading farmers, but it's incredibly rich in minerals -- the Cananea copper mine, one of the largest and most productive open-pit copper mines on earth, is an excellent example. I could see a select coterie of industrialists and railroad men providing quiet backing for Wheeler's war in order to get their hands on some of that mineral wealth themselves... Or, at least, I could see that kind of story getting really popular in certain sets of newspapers.
And glad to hear a little more news on William Walker and his band of ne'er-do-wells, though it sounds like his little fossilized snapshot of antebellum America isn't long for this world (in its present form, at least).
In addition to the other comments, this war also gives the USA complete control of the Colorado river.
Nope. Just grabbing some extra bits of Mexico to pass the boring time in between the Civil War and the Great War.
I believe long ago I made promise, perhaps to Specialist or someone else, that we'd return to the USCA at some point in the future when their history and mine, as the U.S., interlinked again.
Good history-book AAR about America
Thanks Floyd, glad to know you're enjoying this!
A few mines, what's the big deal?
Admittedly, I totally neglected Sonora and Baja in game. I just wanted to make my border aesthetically more pleasing to look at than that ugly gobbled mess from the Second Mexican War. And I also wanted to pass time on something other than railroad and factory building in between the big lull between the Civil War and some other important wars we'll eventually become acquainted with in the coming chapters.Poor AI Mexico here, victim of my boredom...
It also gives the U.S. total control of the "Californias" too! This could also have ramifications for where a famous family in a famous novel by John Steinbeck decide to go!
The California chaparral and woodlands can actually sustain farmers.
Don't I know it! Though my family was not a farming family, I was friends with people from farming families. However, the climate encourages heavy use of wells (the Salinas River is generally a dry riverbed instead of the kind of river people from wetter regions might expect). And that can cause problems during extreme droughts. Especially when, to echo a theme of this AAR, east coast owned* wineries abuse the state's water laws to pump so much groundwater that locals' wells go dry. Not to mention SoCal investors having their winery clear cut the oaks in violation of community norms. At least there's a law against clear-cutting now, but it'll take at least a generation for the damage to be undone. Just writing all that makes me feel the old anger and resentment again. Good thing it's after the election!
*To make the situation more stereotypical, the winery in question is owned by the endowment of one of the Ivy League schools. I forget which, not that it matters for establishing attitudes towards them.
Ha! Wine and civilization. The two are inseparable.
I’ll just say as an alum of Yale that there is tremendous hypocrisy at the Ivy League schools that only those so wrapped up by the Ivy League towers (i.e. the deans and many profs) are blind to the self parody rampant at these places. Not to mention a whole list of other educational issues; like the fact that, unless coming for certain subject matter still staffed by exceptional faculty, you can receive a better education elsewhere at half the price—but that degree just won’t open as many doors as all know.
But I think we’ll visit Salinas at some later point in this AAR.
CHAPTER XVI: ENFORCING THE NEW REPUBLIC
He has been gone nearly a year now…he promises to come home as soon as he has saved enough money for my dowry and pay our taxes.
~ Anetka Kaminski, April 9, 1896, speaking of her coal mining father.
He has been gone nearly a year now…he promises to come home as soon as he has saved enough money for my dowry and pay our taxes.
~ Anetka Kaminski, April 9, 1896, speaking of her coal mining father.
Guns, Guts, and Goons
If the industrialization and urbanization of America after the Civil War marked a transitionary period in the epochal reorganization and reconstitution of the United States as a new republic—one industrialized, urbanized, and financialized—then it is also the case that the newly constructed nation had to be enforced upon its citizenry. While more than half of the population remained subsistent farmers, still idealized as the independent “own boss” that would later become a core myth in the rise of the middle-class shop economy, the east coast capitalist class still suffered from deep antagonism and opposition from the very people whom they exploited and upon which the backbone of the new nation was forged. The Railroad Strikes of the 1870s gave way, by the 1890s, to the coal mining strikes and other factory strikes from Pittsburgh to New York and Boston.
America’s gun-culture, oft misunderstood and demonized by those who have never left their posh and gated communities, was a source of labor radicalism in the nineteenth century. As many of the new factory and coal mining class were frontiersmen and farmers, in which a weapon was necessary for their livelihood, they brought with them in their newfound occupation all the old possessions and mentality of the frontier and farming life. Given the reality of the bleak situations they soon found themselves in, they took to their weapons to demand safer working conditions, higher pay, and less hours.
While the unions were being tamed, they were also growing. And in their growing strength the labor unions, notably the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA), pushed their newfound power with striking. Andrew Carnegie, one of the “men who made America,” was so distraught by the possibility of unproductive economics went as far as employing Pinkerton agents to quell the labor strikes. Some historians say that Pinkerton agents infiltrated and began false-flag operations within labor strikes which would, in turn, permit retaliatory attacks by Pinkerton agents and other law enforcement agencies against the striking laborers. Others argue against such conspiracy theories and point to the long history of tense labor-capitalist relations and the natural dialectic of how such encounters unfold as reason enough for why the sides clashed as often as they did.
David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy in James Cameron’s epic Titanic. Lovejoy is perhaps the most famous fictionalized (former) Pinkerton agent portrayed in film.
If the railroad strikes were suppressed, this did not bring about the end of labor vs. industrialist contests; it merely ended one medium of labor strikes and the spirit of striking and human recognition jumped to a new medium. That medium was the economic medium of the coal mining industry. America had an abundance of coal; indeed, the continental United States—as well as Canada—was blessed with an abundance of natural resources of good farmland. “American exceptionalism” can, and should be easily seen, as a fortunate byproduct of largely material circumstances coupled with the cunning vicissitude of history.
Appalachia was one of the most coal-soaked regions of the country. Longstanding towns, of only a few hundred people, were suddenly transformed with the arrival of coal barons seeking to extract from the ground the black gold they desperately needed for their factories and to feed the engines of coastal cities and facilitate coastal trade. While the Republican Party was originally founded as a largely protectionist party in trade matters, the decades after the Civil War and the building up of the American economy—especially industrial base—meant new opportunities. It would be wrong to assert that beginning in the 1890s there was a move to an open door policy with regard to trade. That was not true. But, then again, there has never really been “free trade” in the manner fantasized by libertarian economists. The growing new industries of the U.S. were supplying more than the domestic population could consume, thus it became imperative to “export” surplus minerals and goods to other lesser countries to keep the economic engines growing. The United States, as was the case in the United Kingdom, France, and the North German Confederation, was not opening herself to international trade and economics but forcing underdeveloped nations to take-in American goods and products to continue to propagate American economic growth. And with the rise of the new American navy, international shipping travel, and Pacific exploration and exportation, coal was the hot commodity needed to sustain New York City, Boston, and American trade and travel.
In places where towns were not already existent the coal industry simply moved in, established the “company town,” and held a de facto monopoly over the lives of the people. Existing small towns transformed into coal towns experienced tremendous cultural pressure as native populations soon found themselves swarmed by foreigners speaking other languages and practicing other religions, mostly Catholicism, as they entered the towns for works. The company towns were largely stocked by immigrants; mostly Irish, Polish, Hungarian, and Italians.
The dynamic of cities is one in which people are uprooted from the land. Oswald Spengler noted how the city, far from being the beacon of culture, was really an anti-culture; a hollow and sterile parody of the real vitality of life. Cities, these mechanical blights on the landscape, are constructed for one of two primary reasons: To carry out the commerce; or to provide a temporary working refuge for people uprooted from the land—which leads them to become alienated from the natural world, tradition, and biology.
The same could be said for the coal towns—though they reflected this Spenglerian morphological dynamic at a small scale. The coal towns were hastily constructed over once untouched virgin lands and found themselves swarmed by peoples displaced from their native homelands. Unable to have a relationship with the ground, these towns were unable to replicate the recapitulation of culture as their parents and native ancestors. Work. Work. More work.
The only bastion of culture and community in these places became the ethnic churches or native churches, in the case of already existing towns transformed into coal towns. For it was at church where one could find respite, peace, community, true solidarity, and sense of home—especially for immigrant populations. Those arrogant, haughty, and otherwise ignorant wealthy city folk, especially in present times, so detached from these realities, circumstances, and history, are truly unable to understand why these people “cling to their religion”—thus leading to the well-known condescending disposition toward these people. There is, in this, an irony of well-to-do bourgeoisie proclaiming themselves to be defenders of the commoners while having nothing but contempt for the plebeian way of life.
Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, along with western Virginia, became the new epicenters of economic exploitation and growth at the same time with the rise of the coal industry. And with the rise of the coal industry came the railroads that previously skipped formerly “unsuitable” locations (which had a negative impact on some existing cities having been “passed over” and, with “new opportunities,” led to some families and sons, especially, packing up and seeking jobs on the railroads never to return home again). Now there was an economic blitz into the Appalachian hills.
All regions experienced tremendous economic contestation as a result. Tennessee, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania certainly stand out for their ferocity and bloodiness. In 1892, an event which was seen as a catalyst for Bryan’s eventual election in 1896, the Homestead Strike occurred in what was then the bloodiest event in American labor history. Coal and steel workers exploited by the Carnegie Steel Company were on strike in the Pittsburgh region and a group of 400 Pinkertons were raised to quell the strike. Things did not go as planned. When the Pinkertons arrived the armed strikers, knowing what was about to happen, fought back. The clash of the Pinkertons and strikers was a terrible spectacle for onlookers, strikers, and Pinkertons themselves. “The armed Pinkerton men commenced to climb up the banks. Then the workmen opened fire on the detectives. The men shot first, and not until three of the Pinkerton men had fallen did they respond to the fire. I am willing to take an oath that the workmen fired first, and that the Pinkerton men did not shoot until some of their number had been wounded” recounted eye-witnesses to the event.
The Pinkertons were unable to make landfall despite causing more deaths to the strikers. Less experienced Pinkertons lacked the will to continue fighting despite the attempts of more experienced Pinkertons to encourage them onward. The Pinkertons soon found themselves sheltering on their boats pinned down by snipers from the hills and angry mobs on the shores shouting “kill the Pinkertons!” The Pinkertons arranged a surrender in what seemed to be a decisive victory for the strikers despite having lost half a dozen men to the Pinkerton agents. But the engagement wasn’t over.
Carnegie’s managing director, Henry Frick, was busy persuading the Pittsburgh political elite and the Pennsylvania government that the strikers posed a major threat to the health and law of the city, the Carnegie plant, and the state of Pennsylvania itself. Moreover, Frick had bypassed attempts at negotiations after the arrival of the Pinkertons. The plants needed workers and workers they received. Afro-Americans were brought in to replace the unionized strikers. This was a cause for even more violence as Afro-Americans were non-union and the union strikers were Whites, race-riots broke out when union members realized what was going on. The Afro-Americans, unemployed and destitute at a level greater than the union workers, were more the happy to take what they could get.
On July 12, five days after the failed attempt by the Pinkertons to break the strike, the Pennsylvania State militia arrived and quelled the strike. Their general sided with Carnegie and Governor Pattison; the strikers posed a threat to peace and stability in the region and needed to disperse. Martial law was eventually declared, small engagements erupted, but the strike was eventually broken. By September, Pittsburgh was back up and humming like it was before the strike. The strikers, of course, came out as the biggest losers of the whole affair. The state did not press charges against any of the Pinkertons accused of murder. Carnegie grew in power. And the Pennsylvania unions were shattered in prestige and support from the local populace.
The Pennsylvania Militia arrives to end the strike.
The Homestead Strikes showed one thing. The enforcement of the new, urban, industrialized, and capitalist republic with the force of law, government, and goons, or all three in an unholy tripartite alliance with one another. But the Homestead Strike would not be the first, or last, such strike to end with the strikers fending off the private contractors before being put down by professional law-enforcement and state soldiers.
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The level of discontent is rising ... there usually is a point where it crests. I wonder if that will happen soon.
Another nice update
We shall not gloss over fallen heroes in service to the Whigs!
That crest may be related to someone's infamous speech, "A Cross of Gold"!
Ha. Actually no, I sadly do not have much time for video games nowadays with all my contractual writings obligations. I'm in the process of a series of film criticism as part of my bimonthly column with TIC loosely connected with the concept of the holistic hero against the mechanical monster -- the crisis that biological life feels in an age of technological and mechanical encroachment which forsakes the erotic. And given that Titanic is one of my favorite films that unconsciously plays on a lot of deep themes, and one of the characters is a former Pinkerton, well, I thought now was the appropriate time to make mention of them. Hence the cultural reference with Warner as Lovejoy in one of the intersplicing images.
I have read RDR2 is supposed to a really great game and story. A shame it's out of my hands; I truly did enjoy the first game back in 2010 or 2011 whenever it was. I sank a lot of hours into that game.
I have nothing to add at the moment to what's already been said, except the observation that the more things change:
The more they stay the same:
The more they stay the same: