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Post by Chuck T on Jul 10, 2010 10:34:41 GMT -5
gtj222: That is what I was wondering too. That is all I was wondering.
Mark: Perhaps you have got something.
There is no fault attached to being Black, not being a self loathing White man, or for that matter being anything else under the sun. Where the fault lies is letting who you are, or what you have experienced shade your work to such an extent it becomes diatribe and not history. I shudder to think what someone who picks up Doctor Tucker's book a hundred years from now will think of that time, and the motivation of the defenders. You might say that there are plently of other books out there that approach the subject in a more scholarly manner. But what if this future person only reads this one?
Most of us were raised on the Fess Parker, John Wayne version of the Alamo story. Most of us have come to the conclusion that many aspects of those movies were not fact but legend. Even though we know this, it does not change the fundamental fact, portrayed in the movies, that these were men who were prepared to die if need be for a higher purpose. Some may have been slaveholders and some adventures, Some may have even been the most personally despicable human beings on earth. That in my view does not change the one fact we can all agree on - That for a brief moment in time a group of men came together in common purpose, and struck back at what they considered tyranical rule.
Is Doctor Tucker's next work to be the Constitutional Convention of 1776? There were slave holders and Anglo-Celts there too. Plenty of them. Would he see the declaration of our liberties as some Anglo-Celt land grab plot.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Jul 10, 2010 11:13:31 GMT -5
The problem with "Exodus" isn't so much personal bias as it is poor research and bad writing.
A case can be made that slavery played a big part in the Texas Revolution, but Tucker didn't make the case, he simply restated his premise ad nauseum.
Jim
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Post by marklemon on Jul 10, 2010 13:36:32 GMT -5
The problem with "Exodus" isn't so much personal bias as it is poor research and bad writing. actually, it's all of the above.
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Post by jesswald on Jul 10, 2010 14:54:34 GMT -5
Thanks, Chief, for your clarification. Much more lucid in the daytime, when off your pills. I understand where you are coming from, but I wonder if it's true that a black author has more of an obligation to be "balanced" on the issue of black slavery than would a white author. I must disagree with Mark's take that Tucker is a self-loathing, guilt-ridden white man. Nothing in the tone of his book strikes me as "self-loathing." On the contrary, he sounds very sure of himself; indeed, arrogant. He is falling into the trap that Chieftan mentions, judging nineteenth century people according to twenty-first century standards. On the other hand, I think some of Tucker's points are well taken. They just aren't original. I find thought-provoking the notion that the myths of the Alamo were created and expanded in order to rationalize Manifest Destiny. A book about the development and metamorphosis of the Alamo mythology over the years would be more interesting than the volume Tucker produced about "what really happened."
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Post by marklemon on Jul 10, 2010 15:42:43 GMT -5
Jesse, My experience with those expressing white guilt has been that very often they ARE arrogant and sure of themselves, as if they are privy to a brilliant insight that us neanderthals are too stupid or racist to either realize or admit. The "loathing" does not really manifest itself as outward, visible remorse, just anti-white vitriol. Mark
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Post by Jim Boylston on Jul 10, 2010 15:43:59 GMT -5
I completely agree.
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Post by Chuck T on Jul 10, 2010 15:45:18 GMT -5
Jesse: I have decided to take only half a pill from now on. I tried it last night and it works quite well, plus I don't have the moring hangover as a result. But that is a whole other story.
All things being equal I believe you are correct. There should be no obligation for more balance from a say Black author about slavery, or any other author about any other subjects that have deep emotional context.
Maybe someday this will be true. I certainly hope so. But for now, all thing are not equal. I look forward to the day when men are judged upon character and integrity alone.
I do appreciate you calling me out, because a more comple explanation was required..
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 13, 2010 8:40:17 GMT -5
One conclusion I gradually came to during research on the last 2 books is that images of Crockett and the Alamo were hijacked for various purposes pretty early on and came to dominate the impressions of succeeding generations. It's tough to get beyond that and find the truth and, if you do and it conflicts with people's cherished images, they aren't always glad to hear it.
Allen
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Post by jesswald on Jul 18, 2010 15:05:04 GMT -5
In the Executions thread I mentioned that I've been perusing John Myers Myers' "The Alamo," which Allen is familiar with, and I asked a question about his take on Crockett's "execution." I have some other observations about this book, however, which perhaps properly belong here, because Myers presents such a contrast to Tucker. Myers' book was written in 1948, and contains no citations, though it does have a bibliography, largely of secondary sources. His style is entertaining and lively (Allen thought it read like a novel rather than a history), and he buys into virtually every one of the myths that Tucker is at such pains to debunk. Myers does apply some thought, however, and is no demagogue. He agrees that the Alamo story begins with "folly," a word that Tucker uses incessantly. But Myers claims that the story ends with "magnificence." Without labeling it, he describes a "last stand" with no "exodus." But his tone is so delightful that even a skeptical modern historian, with far more resources at his disposal, would never get angry at Myers' naivete. Among other things, Myers accepts the notion that the garrison bought crucial time for Houston, that Bowie fell before he became ill, that Travis drew a line in the sand, that Crockett may well have left a diary, that Davy went down swinging, leaving seventeen soldados in his path, that Travis killed an officer with his dying breath, and that Santa Anna suffered 1600 fatalities and who knows how many more wounded. And any number of other "myths" that Tucker rejects contemptuously. It is perhaps Tucker's tone that most antagonized some of the scholars on this forum. However. If you look beyond the tone, and the fact that Tucker's book is a travesty in all sorts of ways, it is illuminating to see what the state of Alamo knowledge was before Disney and Wayne even exploded the story into national consciousness. I am particularly interested in the extent to which slavery was an issue in the Texas Revolution, and have been appropriately schooled by some of the members of the Forum. Tucker, it is generally agreed, has overstated the case, perhaps to a huge degree. Myers, a World War II veteran born on Long Island but transplanted to Texas, has remarkably little to say on the subject. "In 1832," he writes, "the administration thought up a new and ingenious way to hamstring the colonies. Negro slavery was abolished, a measure that sounds altruistic but was scarcely so in intent. As the missions had failed to reduce local Indians, the decree produced a labor problem in Texas only." The Indians who worked the mines and ranches, he says, were unaffected. While I cannot dispute the truth of these observations, if I were a person of color reading the book I would be a bit put out by the cavalier way Myers reduces emancipation to a mere "labor problem." The least he could do is address the question of whether the Mexican government happened to think slavery was wrong, in addition to their strategic reasons for outlawing it. While Myers does chastise other historians for "putting aside" the statements of Joe, who after all was an eyewitness, and an "intelligent" one at that, there is a certain condescension. It is true that Joe was described by Gray as "intelligent," IIRC, but would Myers have repeated this description if the object were a white man? Or is there a hidden assumption that a Negro slave, unless otherwise described, is not intelligent enough to proffer accurate eyewitness testimony? Myers also never says in so many words that Joe was a slave. He calls him "Travis' Negro body servant" and "Travis' man." (At least he avoided saying "Travis' boy.) Yes, we all get the message, but my point is that in 1948 it seemed necessary to soften the language, to make the institution of slavery sound more like a semi-voluntary social and economic arrangement. Myers describes how Joe "dutifully" followed Travis to the North Wall once the alarm was given. "Dutifully?" Sure, Myers is trying to praise Joe. But it's rather quaint, isn't it, to consider it Joe's "duty" to follow Travis to almost certain death. Of course, Joe didn't die. Myers isn't quite sure why. He figures he was "spared as an involuntary combatant" which seems to overlook all the women and cats and others who were slaughtered. He apparently gives no credence to Santa Anna's claim that he was not warring with slaves, but freeing them.
Obviously Myers did not write a polemic, and perhaps Tucker did. But Myers' book illustrates the tradition that Tucker decided to take on. While deploring Tucker's poor writing, poor scholarship, and intellectual dishonesty, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There was much in Alamo scholarship that needed adjusting. And while it may be unfair to use a 60-year-old book as an example, and much corrective scholarship has found its way into print in the meantime, the popular reader has never caughtup with it. Perhaps Gary and the others can do something about this. Jesse Waldinger
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 19, 2010 13:09:03 GMT -5
Myers certainly was writing in the style of his times, and everyone did side step the slavery issue. I think many of us consider Lord the watershed in Alamo studies, and then comes the works of Hardin, Davis, and such.
You may have hit on something here. While the scholarship does improve, the general concept does not. In many ways, we (the general public) go right back to the "same old Alamo."
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Post by jesswald on Jul 30, 2010 17:16:31 GMT -5
Continuing my attack on Tucker, with whose politics I am perhaps more sympathetic than are the majority of Forum members, I happened in my research to check a couple of citations. What I found will not surprise those of you who long ago wrote off Tucker as not being worthy of your time. Nevertheless, it is disturbing if not shocking to see what a "scholar" who purports to be a "historian" will stoop to in order to make his point. We know he was disingenuously selective in his use of sources, but what I am about to report goes beyond that.
One of Tucker's main points is that most of the paltry few Mexicans who died during the assault were victims of "fratricide," falling to friendly fire. At page 228, he argues that "There was no real organized or united resistance of any duration along the north wall during the initial phase of the steamrolling Mexican attack." He claims that the Sapper battalion that led the attack over the north wall lost very few officers, and that "fratricide may well have claimed these officers. This very likely was also the fate of many of Duque's officers, such as Captain Don Jose Maria Macotela, who fell mortally wounded not long after he took over for Colonel Duque who also was felled. Both Macotela and Duque were wounded 'in the vicinity of the enemy parapets' along the north wall, while Mexicans below them were firing upward and around them blindly in the night, resulting in what de la Pena lamented as the 'destruction among ourselves' in the blackness."
One would be forgiven, in reading this, for thinking that de la Pena (whom Tucker alternately dismisses and relies upon as a reliable source) supports the proposition that the assault on the north wall was the site of "fratricide," and that Duque and Macotela may well have been slain there by their comrades. I mean, that's basically what Tucker says, isn't it? But when you look at the very pages of de la Pena's diary cited in Tucker's footnote, you find the opposite. At pages 47-48, in unambiguous language, de la Pena states that both Duque and Macotela fell victim to a cannon volley from the Alamo defenders! Incidently, another Alamo cannon volley had done away with "half the company of chasseurs from Toluca." I don't believe that Tucker ever deals with this evidence that there was some effective resistance to the assault on the north wall.
It is true that de la Pena mentions "destruction among ourselves", but it is significant that, contrary to Tucker's thesis, this is not in the context of the assault on the north wall. Once the attackers were inside the compound, de la Pena writes on page 50, there was a justifiable fear of this misfortune, which was partially avoided by the forward troops taking refuge in the defenders' trenches, but "nevertheless, some of our men suffered the pain of falling from shots fired by their comrades."
Look, we don't know the extent of the "fratricide." Maybe de la Pena got it wrong in relegating it to just "some" of his men. But Tucker has no business citing de la Pena in support of assertions with which de la Pena patently disagrees. In a legal brief, this type of transgression is a no-no which can cause an appellate judge to all but disregard everything else you say.
But there's more. Tucker's discussion of little Enrique Esparza's recollections is a travesty. At page 227, he correctly quotes Esparza's memory that when the attack began his mother said to his father "Gregorio, the soldiers have jumped the wall. The fight's begun." Of course, even here Tucker is prone to exaggeration, claiming that the woman "had to yell to her sleeping husband" the above alarm. Actually, Enrique related merely that he heard his mother "say" the words, not that she yelled them or had to awaken Gregorio. The Alamo Remembered, p. 70.
The next bit is tricky. Tucker writes: "A short time later, Enrique Esparza related the confused horror that faced the newly awoken garrison." This does not mean, despite what the words plainly state, that a short time after Enrique's mother spoke those words Enrique related something. Tucker really means that Enrique Esparza subsequently related the horror that faced the garrison A SHORT TIME LATER. Tucker is seemingly being tripped up by his unfamiliarity with the English language. But what Tucker deftly hides from us is that far from coming a short time later, Enrique's statements were made over sixty years after the fact, when he was an old man and perhaps his memory wasn't so good.
Anyway, what Enrique tells us "a short time later" is how it was so dark they couldn't see anything. (The Alamo Remembered, p. 71.) Tucker goes on at page 227: "Thereafter, as Enrique continued, the bitter 'end came suddenly and almost unexpectedly and with a rush. It came at night and when all was dark [and] Our men [had no chance because] Their ammunition was very low. That of many was entirely spent. Santa Anna must have known this, for his men had been able . . . to make several breeches in the walls [while] Many slept."
I have a lot to say about this passage. First of all, to suggest that "Enrique continued" is to imply that this was all part of one narrative. Actually, what follows the word "continued" is Enrique's story told to another newspaper interviewer still another five years later, in 1907! But that's a minor detail. More important is the use of brackets and that elipsis (. . .) to entirely distort what Enrique was saying.
Tucker is trying to establish, through Enrique's ancient recollection, that the Texians "had no chance" because their ammunition was low. But Enrique never says the Texians had no chance. He simply says the ammunition was low. The addition of "[had no chance]"---the brackets concededly indicating that Tucker is interpolating, not exactly quoting---is a total fabrication by Tucker. That is not how brackets are supposed to be used.
Tucker is also stating that according to Enrique, the Mexicans had made breaches in the walls WHILE many slept. In order to understand Tucker's perfidy here, and his insidious use of brackets and elipsis, you need to read what Enrique really said, according to the newspaper interviewer: "The end came suddenly and almost unexpectedly and with a rush. It came at night and when all was dark save when there was a gleam of light from the flash and flame of a fired gun. Our men fought hard all day long. Their ammunition was very low. That of many was entirely spent. Santa Anna must have known this, for his men had been able DURING THE DAY to make several breeches in the walls. Our men had fought long and hard and well. But their strength was spent. Many slept." The Alamo Remembered, p. 82. I don't think anyone seriously believes that the walls had been breached during the day of March 5. Enrique just got it wrong, but give him a break; he was a 78-year-old man reminiscing about an incredibly traumatic event that had occurred when he was eight. Tucker gives him a break all right, by replacing the key words "during the day" with three dots so we won't know that Enrique was claiming, erroneously, that Santa Anna had breached the walls in the daytime, long before anyone went to sleep. That way it would look as if Enrique, the eyewitness, was testifying "a short time" after the fact that the Mexicans breached the walls of the Alamo while the garrison was sleeping. Hell, maybe they did, but that's not what Enrique was saying, so shut up.
I don't even want to get into the fact that "breach" is misspelled. That wasn't Tucker's fault; he was just quoting the newspaper interview. But he didn't pick it up.
I don't know if Tucker's inflammatory views are accurate or not. But what we have here is blatant intellectual dishonesty, a disservice not just to the Alamo defenders, but even more to those serious scholars who might tend to agree with Tucker about some or all of his positions, and an insult to the intelligence of his readers. Jesse Waldinger
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Post by Jim Boylston on Jul 30, 2010 17:32:09 GMT -5
Thanks for your comments, Jesse, you've had far more patience with Tucker's tome than I, though I agree with your conclusion completely.
You might be surprised at the variety of political viewpoints represented by forum members. That's one reason we've all agreed to refrain from discussing contemporary politics!
Best, Jim
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 30, 2010 19:19:35 GMT -5
Great observatioins Jesse.
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Post by gtj222 on Jul 30, 2010 20:09:34 GMT -5
I agree completly. He cherry picks what he wants.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 30, 2010 22:14:20 GMT -5
what we have here is blatant intellectual dishonesty, a disservice not just to the Alamo defenders, but even more to those serious scholars who might tend to agree with Tucker about some or all of his positions, and an insult to the intelligence of his readers. Jesse Waldinger Thanks for ferreting this out, Jesse. I think that's the bottom line here. I think most students of the battle would be perfectly willing to accept new versions of what happened, provided they are supported with solid evidence. Tucker doesn't do that; he misrepresents old evidence to support his conclusion-driven book. I guess it takes a lot for some people to get a book published these days and this may be an example of that. The slogan for much that IS published seems to be "It smells, but it sells." Allen
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