WHY WERE BLACK OFFICERS NOT ENLISTED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR?

WHY WERE BLACK OFFICERS NOT ENLISTED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR?

Historians have argued for over 150 years about why Black American officers were not immediately enlisted in The American Civil War.  We do have a wealth of well-preserved facts to frame our argument today, some of which are matter of fact and others that remain open to interpretation.  Without question it can be said that history is nothing if not for the grey areas it invariably leaves as theoretical residue between fragments of truth and fact deposited in the wake of progress and the great continuum of time.   We know that before The Emancipation Proclamation officially freed the slaves they were technically the property of their master’s and in a legal sense neither they nor any free Black men living on United States Soil were considered to be United States citizens.   But the lack of U.S. citizenship status or rather the denial of it was a manifestation of a much larger argument preventing enlistment of Black officers into either the Union or Confederate armies and this singular obstruction lay in the concept of divine right, a grey area if you will factual yet open to broad interpretation as a driving force behind the fateful events of its day.  The day, the time, the place and the era, was mid nineteenth century America poised at the brink of a civil war for which the south had openly prepared 10 years in defiance seeking to preserve the socioeconomic and political organism of slavery as a matter of divine right!

The question of divine right had been under fire since the beginning of the European Enlightenment nearly 200 years before the Confederate sedition took shape.   Many wealthy Confederate slave owners, some of which traced their ancestry to European nobility, romanticized themselves as the American Aristocracy affecting airs as of ancient Roman patricians or European nobility.   Ironically, the Europeans whom they courted as allies refused to aid them in their conflict with the north striking a heavy blow to their culturally obsolete notions of absolute oligarchy.  The spurned Confederates faced war with an industrial behemoth in the north who they had no hope of defeating.  By today’s standards they were reduced to a comic “Mini-Me” of the European Aristocracy they aspired to become but in spite of the global chagrin they wore and the lamentation authored by their misguided continental Cinderella complex the Confederates still offered a formidable fight in defense of a way of life that the luminary author, novelist Margaret Mitchell coined as forever, “Gone With The Wind”.   At length the confederates were forced out of pining by the grim reality of their plight beneath the hammer of the Union Army and doubly wounded by the realization that they must now fight against the very men whom they had viciously and perpetually enslaved.  The entire affair was a tough racial pill to swallow.  150 years after the war white and black Americans still have not processed the profound racial message proclaimed by the enslavement of Black men by white men nor have they sufficiently subdued the lingering hostility inspired by the concept of divine right as justification for the notion of white supremacy.   

The Confederate army declared war against the United States to conserve the notion of the divine right of white men to possess absolute control over the fate, including life and death, of Black men.   According to the Americanized theology of divine right, it was believed that Black men were divinely preordained to be slaves.  The philosophy of divine right held sacrosanct the absolute inferiority of Black men to white and could never permit a Black man to take the life of his superior, (a white man), since the power to make life and death decisions was believed to lay solely in the hands of white men.  This philosophy appears to be arcane by today’s standards but only 154 years ago when The American Civil War was igniting it would have been considered to be the status quot.  In 1860 it was unimaginable for a Black man to detain threaten or assault a white man with our without the aid of a weapon under any circumstance.   Enlisting and paying a Black man to fight and kill another white man breached the most protected covenant of divine right and reversed the process of operant conditioning established to render the Black man docile.  In short, after the United States government had fully invested in the enslavement of Black men locking them out of socioeconomic advancement it could not concede any power to a black man that might equal that of a white man having perverted the law to qualify the white male as divinely superior.    In order for Americans to comprehend the historical facts defining the practise of slavery we must be prepared for the reality that it will require us to occupy the ugly racial landscape of the mid nineteenth century.  History forces us to become men we cannot be and do not wish to become.  We must unfortunately attempt to think with the mindset of white men who hated black men and black men who hated white men in order to understand both sides of the mathematical inequality represented by racism and enslavement In America with the result that we are able to transform old hatreds into new bonds of love and brotherhood. 

The slavery question had haunted America for 105 years at the outset of The Civil War.  A second draft of The Declaration of Independence had been drafted on July 3, 1776, the day before America Declared itself free from the tyranny of the English monarchy.  The Framers of the constitution knew full well that justice had not been delivered to Black men on that day and that the final draft had been crafted to bring wealthy southern planters on board with the revolution.  At the time it certainly must have appeared to have been and economic concession to the egalitarian ideals the framers intended to uphold.  It was a calculated risk that eventually the language encoded into the Declaration of Independence would eventually provide the legal argument needed to free the slaves but their grave foresight condemned millions of human beings over the period of 150 years to the cruelty of enslavement.   There was a second reason other than economics that the Emancipation of Black Slaves was delayed and that reason was most certainly to avoid having to answer the question of divine right.  White Americans knew full well, that slavery could not be justified as a matter of divine right; they knew it was an evil and immoral practise but they feared the extent to which its abolition would force them to share the economic wealth of this country.   Releasing millions of freed slaves and then adding them into the American economy should not have been any more of a concern than the waves of European immigrants just before and after The Civil War except for the matter of race.   America determined 85 years earlier in 1776 in The Declaration of Independence that the civil rights of white men were to be protected while those of Black men were to be denied.  It would not be until January 1, 1863 that the Emancipation Proclamation would deliver the death-blow to the first great challenge of the egalitarian ideals of the enlightenment manifested in the Confederate Movement.  One can only imagine the mixture of emotions that met on the battlefield so many years ago.  Confederate soldiers steeped in racism confronted their worst nightmare, a Black man armed and ready to fight for his freedom!  White northerners were challenged to embrace egalitarianism to fight as comrades with shared ideals beside those for whom they fought and would perhaps die to defend.  For the Black soldiers they were challenged to accept the white men they fought with as allies and to comprehend the revolutionary evolution from a slave to a soldier fighting for freedoms they might not live to enjoy!  At the end of the day the reasons why Black soldiers were not initially enlisted or utilised in The American Civil War could not outweigh the reasons why both Union Army enlisted them and the Confederate army employed them not as enlisted soldiers but as servile technicians.  The south did not enlist Black officers and send them to battle, its arcane philosophy of divine right had outlived its cultural usefulness and was put to rest on the bloody fields of the American Civil War.  In the end the north could only save face by living up to its own philosophy of racial equality and freedom which meant it had to discard the racially charged philosophy of divine right.  As the provocateur, the Confederate south accelerated its own inevitable demise but the northern Union Army forever erased the notion of the divine right of white men to enslave and order the destiny of Black men when it enlisted the first truly Black American soldiers in the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment…

Looking forward, we now see that while civilized white men and women from the Confederate and Union Fronts were sympathetic to the freedom of slaves from their oppression they still grappled with the issue of racial equality.  While they recognized that slavery was an evil institution and should be abolished they did not equate freeing the slaves with acknowledging them as equals. So the notion that white men were somehow divinely preordained to have been created as superior beings to Black men persisted as a remnant of the tenacious concept of divine right.  This is largely why racism has persisted to this very day.  Freeing the slaves got slavery off of America's conscience but white Americans still did not view Black men as equals in every dimension.  The Reconstruction set the stage for this revolutionary experiment.  For the first time in human history a peoples who had only months before been enslaved and denied every human and civil right common to man were unequivocally included as full-fledged American citizens and employed immediately as government officials and took offices in congress.  If this optimism could have been sustained we would be well rid of many of the racial inequities that plague our nation today.  But the fleetingly brilliant period of The American Reconstruction was ended with a terrible backlash of socio-economic and political repression. Nearly every freedom granted after emancipation and during The Reconstruction Era was reversed! America had been generous in its gifting of freedom but selfishly and greedily took back the lions share of its gift. Today white and black peoples still struggle with what has now been coined a sense of "Entitlement" of whites over blacks.  To make the soup even more complex, in the 150 or so years since The American Civil War the ethnic admixture of America has grown to include many other races who are largely oblivious to the history of racism between blacks and whites.  Black Americans now experience the phenomenon of other ethnic groups adopting the sense of entitlement over them as these groups assimilate the predominant culture of white Americans.

The lesson to be learned from the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of the Union Army and from the history of racism In America is that white and black people can come together in order to move history forward in positive ways but a great deal of thought and planning must be invested into the implementation of far reaching social reforms so that a climate is created which is responsive enough to guide these reforms through their infancy to maturity.  By no means can we discount the immense progress in the healing of race relations that black and white men diligently worked together to realize but every black man who has experienced the realness of racism understands that much more progress is needed and that it must be a combined effort.  Our American history which reveres the millions of men, women and children who died hopelessly under the pathological brutality of slavery demands that these inequities be balanced once and for all so that we can all move forward in brotherhood.  The American Civil War, the period of Reconstruction and the early years of The Civil Rights Movement are but flashes in the continuum of human history.  These social revolutions were driven by a dire human need to realize instantaneous results.  Because these movements absorbed the lives of those involved after they were achieved on paper everyone had to regroup emotionally, physically and intellectually to process what had really happened.  Building up momentum again after it has died to address critical fixes and implement evolutionary modifications  is much harder to achieve.  Many of the racial struggles of the twenty-first century between black and white men, including the presidency of the first Black American president, Barack Obama, can be attributed to the fact that the issue of freedom versus equality has never been effectively resolved and revisited as a continuing theme for the evolution of the American form of democracy.  As it was on the battlefield nearly 150 years ago we are challenged to solve the great issue of our day, that of "Freedom Versus Equality"!


FIN

Written by David Vollin

Admin: FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL SALON

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A GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES

LOOKING THROUGH A CRYSTAL BALL AT THE POSSIBILITY OF BISEXUAL MARRIAGE…

"LOOK... LOOK DEEPLY INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL…  NOW, WHAT DO YOU SEE....

A man walks through a heavily curtained doorway entering a small candle lit room.  Before him lay a small round table covered in tapestry with two ancient chairs heavily carved with figures.  Before him stands a Seer, a Clairvoyant dressed in Turkish garb wearing a dark purple felted fez with a singular eye embroidered upon it in spun gold.  The Seer tacitly motions him to sit down and his arm stretches out revealing that his robes are covered with ancient symbols, spells, charms, talismans, all now unknown to men save for a few who have passed down the lore of centuries.  At length the Seer walks to the table and sits down looking into space as if in meditation.  Presently he fixes his gaze upon the large crystal sphere levitating o’er the table; a spinning cloud of mist fills its impenetrable depths.  His hands move slowly toward the sphere causing it to glow an intense blue hue and as his long, bony fingers caress the visage of the orb he begins to speak to the gentleman sitting across from him, saying:

“Look into my crystal ball!… What do you see? Look closely, closely, deep into the depths of the mystical orb. Relax, allow yourself to be shown things which to others have not yet been revealed. You will see many, wonderful things some real, but all bound to the fate of possibility!  Look closely and there amidst the mist is a rising tide of social change.  You see two, no three people standing before a justice of the peace, they are dressed as if they are to be married, all three.  The vision has shifted, now you see four people who all are to be married to one another… three men and one woman… they are happy on their special day… but they show the weariness of care, for they have fought many hard years for this day…  O’ the vision fades… the crystal ball is grown silent now… What do you think of this vision?”

Though everyone does not have their own Seer to help them perceive events of the future we can usually foresee trending dimensions of social change long before they actually take center stage.  Bisexuality has been one of those slowly trending phenomenon that has captured the imagination of Americans as they struggle to explore the remaining issues of the sexual revolution.  But far from being merely a side show of media entertainment there is a growing population of bisexual Americans who are pushing the envelope of civil disobedience in order to attain what they perceive to be their right to be married under the laws of this great country.  Today the nation is embroiled in a battle regarding same sex marriage and for now has had little time to parley with the demands of the bisexual community.  But the floodgates of change will hopefully be generous once they are fully and truly opened and so the bisexual community continues the war charge to fight for their civil rights and freedoms under the law.

Bisexual marriage is a topic that few can admit they have actually devoted much thought to.  For most it remains something that exists on the fringe of reality and there are enough other day to day concerns to occupy their minds relegating the prospect of bisexual marriage to a place where it has remained for as long as we all can remember… the realm of fanciful “what-if’s” the improbable the unimaginable… But today the prospect of bisexual marriage has stepped up to become a real possibility and we will be obliged to help shape its realization in the years to come for it will not go away and it will surely gain momentum until it does achieve its ultimate goal.  So we must now ask ourselves many questions and seek answers as well.  When bisexual couples seek to satisfy their rights to get married what form will the marriage ceremony take?  How will the marriage document, which will now include 3 or more persons, be worded?  How exactly do we pave the way for the inevitability of bisexual marriages?

Bisexual relationships, which more and more people are openly sharing, already defy the concept of monogamy.   Marriages designed to memorialize bisexual relationships that consist of three or more people will push our concept of the nuptial duo into a refreshed and greatly expanded reality, we will have finally entered into the last phase of the sexual revolution.  Or perhaps this will usher in yet another window of human sexuality that has not yet been explored and must be vetted out in years to come…

As it stands, same sex marriage is one of the most significant social evolutions of human history to date.  Why, because it has forced into question the meaning of marriage itself, transforming it from an exclusive to a universal tradition intended to memorialize the legal, ethical and emotional dimensions of love and binding them with an interminable contract.  Bisexual marriage has a formidable battle ahead because the law does not allow more than two people to be married.  The rationale for this arbitrary law must be defeated in a legal battle.  The case is very simple, a legal marriage limited to two people discriminates against American citizens who share a loving bisexual relationship but are denied the privileges of marriage that have been crafted to accommodate only two people. 

Bisexual marriage must overcome its likeness to that inglorious adjective, polygamy.  As we move closer to a true separation between church and state such religiously biased terminology will be removed from the law books completely.  The task of purging religious prejudices from the law has already become one of the paramount concerns of freethinking Americans.  We can no longer operate government with a bible in one hand and a law book in the other, churches must be left alone to dictate morality within the confines of their community but the laws of the land must remain free of such subjective, religious interference so that they can safeguard the rights of American citizens from a position of objectivity.

The species we call homo sapiens, (we humans),  has existed upon this planet for over 100,000 years but only within the past 700 years, have they made consistent, significant strides toward a truly egalitarian society.  The European Enlightenment opened a door that precipitated the demise of the concept of divine right.  The American Civil War heralded in The Human Civil Rights Era.  The Sexual Revolution eroded concepts of heterosexual-male dominated culture, introduced the validity of homosexuality and same sex marriage and will ultimately usher in the institutionalized legality of bisexual marriages of three or more persons.  You do not need to rely upon a crystal ball, you have only to open your eyes to see what possibilities lay before you because the twentieth century is paving the way for bisexual marriage…

FIN

Written by David Vollin

A DUMBED-DOWN CULTURE DOESN'T KNOW IT’S DUMBED DOWN!

A DUMBED-DOWN CULTURE DOESN'T KNOW IT’S DUMBED DOWN!

Pyrite Mineral Crystals Specimen AKA Fools Gold

Some people have an issue with intelligence, they despise it, distrust it, fear and envy it, love and hate it; alas it is a scary and self-debilitating bonfire of the vanities.   Perhaps it is their upbringing, they were taught that simple is better; perhaps it is their fear of the unknown, perhaps they are just lazy, but for the first time in human history I see a trend where people who are intimidated by intelligence are actually vocal about it!  Now there is definitely something unsettlingly medieval about anyone being openly critical about the fact that anything is too intellectually lofty.  The classy thing to do would be to say nothing and let the big boys discuss their big things, but not anymore it seems.  This trend coincides with the widening gap in education not only among certain socioeconomic groups in America but also on an international level if one begins to compare the level of education between Americans and other countries; Americans are falling behind in education because our culture promotes mediocrity as a universal marketing tool. 

Pyrite Crystals embedded in limestone

Our culture has got so used to everything being dumbed-down for them that it gets down right combative when it encounters media that is produced for consumption by the higher end of the intellectual food chain.  Our media, largely driven by the retail interests of corporate America has cultivated a low-end of the intellectual food chain society consisting of generations of consumers who are invested in the perpetuation of a uniformly mediocre culture.  No wonder the SAT scores of American students are consistently plummeting.  The common American is being programmed to operate within a 5^th grade to 8^th grade comprehension level, if that which of course leaves no demand for a higher level of competency.  As the cliché goes, we Americans have, “Created A Monster”!

Pyrite Crystal

One of the residual and almost caracurturesque effects of dumbing-down our culture is that eventually people who lack the technical and intellectual expertise to comprehend and manipulate data forget that their comprehension level is dumbed-down.  I have seen people who have no degree or proven competency in a technical area openly challenge professionals and intellectuals in their celebrated field of expertise.  In my assessment this denotes a critical breakdown of the way our culture perceives that value and reliability of education and knowledge.  That is not to say that merely having a degree or certification makes one infallible, nobody is correct all the time.  I however will always bet my last penny on the man with an education when the bet is about something intellectual.  More than ever do I see the saying come more to life that, “The blind are leading the blind”. 

Pyrite embedded in Limestone

Many modern men challenge the dumbed-down theory of capitalism much preferring to exist in the esoteric realm of the academic, intellectual ivory tower but with a healthy dose of street-level realness!  They enjoy the loftiness achieved when the language they speak is elevated to an high, artistic form and not relegated to a 4^th grade level “This is how to put the puzzle pieces together children” instruction manual.  It just suits them as a refined and well-educated gentleman to have the ability to set themselves aside as extraordinary men who think on a level where most people want to be but pretend not to care about.  So unlike popular belief, the self-professed intellectual man is not the odd man out, he is at the front of the line, he is the provocateur, the innovator, the intellectual entrepreneur, he mover and shaker, the Avant Garde, he is, “The Bomb”!  But you will never hear anyone who is a member of the mediocrity club admit this; they are muted by virtue of their own lack of insight because a dumbed-down culture doesn't know it’s dumbed-down.

Pyrite Crystal

Written by David Vollin

Administrator: FOR THE BROTHAS INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL SALON

Visit us at: WWW.FORTHEBROTHAS.BLOGSPOT.COM  

A GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES:

HOW INSTANTANEOUS IS A REVELATION?

Antique Automata Circa 1880

HOW INSTANTANEOUS IS A REVELATION?

Antique Automata Circa 1920

In spite of the instantaneous nature of our culture no revelation is truly instantaneous although it may appear to be so.  Virtually every revelation is the painstaking result of billions or even trillions of bits of data, hours and conceivably years of psychical data, etc., that have completed their long journey after being processed in our minds.  

Antique Automata Circa 1920

One might argue, however that the principal element of revelation which makes it special is not its journey but rather the magical instant that the mind makes a conscious connection between elements which until that very moment were nothing more than random bits of information.  The point of truth, which we call revelation, is that same extraordinary moment remarkably different from the moment before and the moment directly after.  

Renaissance Automata Antiquity

Again, one might argue that were it not for the string of elements that build a revelation acting as nodes of connectivity or as a sort of learning continuum, then revelation would never be able to occur.  On the other hand re-mixing, adding or subtracting any of the contributing elements of knowledge that would otherwise have evinced themselves as a certain distinct revelation might cause the revelation to actualize in a different way similar perhaps but not identical or completely different to the extreme that no revelation might result at all.  

Automata

But because revelation is like a crystallized form of the entire spectrum of knowledge upon which it is built we must consider if it is to be credited as an instantaneous brilliance or as a brilliance that is incontrovertibly and inseparably the sum of its parts. 

Written by David Vollin

A GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES:

The gallery images are of various automata from man antique periods.  

Aside from the fact that they are visually handsome object's d'art

these antiquities share a metaphorical relationship with 

the subject matter of this article.  

Automata are typically powered by clockworks

so they must be wound up and expend their power to

get to their final destination.  

"POST IMPERIAL DELIRIUM": A COPING MECHANISM FOR THE RAPIDLY DECLINING AMERICAN ECONOMY...

A cotton gin

"THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FINDS AMERICANS ENAMORED OF WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED, POST-IMPERIAL DELIRIUM"

The economic robustness of what had been a tumultuously divided cluster of English colonies only 74 years earlier became the legendary Industrial super-power by the 1850’s.  Even so, young America was poised to thrust itself forward into another period of political unrest manifested in the Civil War which spawned a virtual technological supernova firmly establishing the U.S. as a leading innovator of design combined with the manufacturing muscle to fight with global impact.  The defeat of the south marked a fundamentally groundbreaking transition from obsolete means of production that had existed since ancient times.  America, drunken with new wealth and the nouveau riche vanity of manifest destiny had forgotten how it so very recently shed the fetters of imperialism and set about the task of founding a global empire to market its products. 

A slave originated the idea of the cotton gin  in the 18th century and it revolutionized early industrial production of cotton turning America into an industrial superpower after the raw cotton was processed in textile mills in the north.

Today nobody wants anything that is American made except weapons and the confusion that has become Popular Culture.  

America, the country that dominated the automobile industry until the late twentieth century has failed to innovate and capture the new green market for vehicles
in the twenty-first century.

America has become purveyors of weapons along with the associated violence and sexual desperation of a culture that is terminally infected with a socially, economically and ethically and morally degenerating disease.  The American culture has no immune system, it is doomed to a death far more rapidly consuming than civilizations in the past.  America is no Egypt or Rome, Nor will if slowly fade away like its English counterpart.  The economic death of America will be likened to a heart attack, a catastrophic, instantaneous system failure!

A  cotton gin

Today, Americans who lived through the 1950’s and 1960’s remember a stable, prosperous America which appeared to have recovered from the ravages of The Great Depression but it was to be a short-lived revival.  The more the world followed the sterling example of America, gaining their freedom and self-determination the smaller the world became for American greed and exploitation, suddenly, just like southern slave owners who had to share the wealth with those they had formerly enslaved, America had to share the wealth of the world with those who had once been in awe of our countries industriousness.  Not only did they want and deserve to be given back their piece of the pie, they wanted a share of America’s international pie as well.  Each time a country gained independence from American financial interests they took a healthy chunk of business away until finally America woke up to discover it was no longer the great technological innovator, manufacturer and global distributor of commodities anymore, in fact the reverse had happened, it became a country of perpetual consumers living off of the hoarded fat of only 150 years or so rather than hundreds of years as compared to the dimming brilliance of Great Britain.  The companies that had helped build the American economy for the past 150 years abandoned America relocating the most profitable portions of their business that had once represented jobs for Americans to other countries.  Furthermore, these companies gradually lost control of their own businesses having to sell stock to foreign interests who naturally preferred to relocate a vast portion of operations to their own side of the world to enrich their own economies with jobs and opportunity leaving the carcasses of these businesses to die a slow ceremonious death in the states.  During the mid nineteenth century America became involved in the Opium Wars with China in an attempt to sell American made commodities there.  It was one of our first international attempts at imperialism.  

American slaves using a cotton gin

Most twenty-first century Americans are still psychologically riding the long subsided wave of their economic past.  It’s like a magic show where the magician has moved so fast that the audience is left in a state of awe.  Everybody saw it coming, nobody saw it leave but with a surety what used to be known as American prosperity has literally been evanished seemingly at the tip of a wizard’s wand.  What is more, the magicians act does not include the part where economic prosperity is restored.  It is really the end of the show and the beginning of what might be called, “Post Imperial Delirium” a condition where socioeconomic decline occurs so rapidly from a place of former dominance that those who are on the side of loss, unable to cope or understand the phenomenon fall into a dramatically unrealistic state of denial.  What else could explain the virtual silence with which Americans watched congress seize control of the Government literally shutting it down and threatening the economy and what might have been left of the reputation of the nation.  People who are encapsulated in a state of delirium are not aware of the things around them in the sense that others are.  They remain obsessively focused on the surreal alternate realities that haunt their altered consciousness responding to variables in the normal world merely because it is an unavoidable obstacle in the way of addressing the hallucinations that captivate their minds.

A black man using an automated cotton gin

The symptoms of Post Imperial Delirium are a behavior that suppresses logical survival instincts to the obviously volatile economic climate creating a false optimism prone to excessive consumerism leading to hopeless indebtedness.  Such things can be quantified as entering into mortgage agreements that far exceed the owner’s ability to pay within their reasonable lifetime, layering of indebtedness with credit even under the most extreme conditions of high interest rates due to credit that has been evaluated as bad credit.  Attempting to approximate the same lifestyle as ones parents during a time of great economic stability is central to the psychosis.  All of these and many more are symptoms are typical of Post Imperial Delirium.  The idea that one has to make substantial purchases right now before the commodity becomes so expensive literally doubling or tripling overnight even thought everyone agrees it is already far too overpriced in relation to its real value is the classic example. 

A cotton gin

A norther textile mill processing the cotton into fabric

Americans cannot face the reality that America is not the stable cow it used to be and in all probability will never again be that animal.  They watch hopelessly, listlessly waiting for some magic act to restore economic prosperity in the form of jobs and opportunity, education and such and somehow, some way, I fear Americans are looking to congress and the white house to conjure up these elusive deliverables… Most of all they do not visualize themselves as having the power to effect positive change to save the American dream.  They have relinquished their power to corrupt politicians and the mind they might have spent do fight back is otherwise occupied or enslaved to a meaningless job inadequate to do anything but keep them under an economic lock and chain.  Twenty-first century Americans are no better of than medieval serfs bound to the land of their lords… but todays lords are corporations which have sucked up everything leaving nothing to compete with them.  The twenty-first century has painted a hopeless landscape for most Americans who cannot break free from an economic spiral that leaves them struggling for breath!  Their coping mechanism has been denial.  Apathy has been the morphine of Americans who find themselves enamored of what can be called, “Post Imperial Delirium”.

The grave of Eli Whitney credited with the invention of the cotton jin but who actually got the idea from a slave who had invented a cotton-comb for removing the husk.  Eli mechanized the slaves invention and patented it in 1793.
Many inventions made by slaves were usurped by their masters who considered them and their ideas
to be their own property the same as modern corporations who employ engineers and industrial designers
to innovate new products for them.  The difference, of course, is that slaves did not get compensation or credit
for their contributions to American technology.  The slave who truly invented the concept of the
cotton gin is known today only as "Sam".

Written by D. Vollin

FOR THE BROTHAS CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL SALON

The optimism of the 1950's could not have anticipated such a rapid decline in
American manufacturing and importation of machinery and other products.

A GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES

THE COTTON GIN REVOLUTIONIZED AMERICAN AGRICULTURE BELOW ARE IMAGES OF VARIOUS TYPES OF COTTON GINS 

A modern automated cotton gin

Scene depicting a northern textile mill

A cotton gin

A primitive cotton gin

Retail sales ad for a cotton gin

A Cotton gin.

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE FIRST AND SECOND OPIUM WARS WAS TO COMPEL CHINA, JAPAN AND OTHER ASIAN INTERESTS TO OPEN TRADE WITH WESTERN COUNTRIES. ORIGINALLY CHINA AND JAPAN HAD NOT INTEREST OR NEED FOR WESTERN COMMODITIES SO OPIUM WAS SMUGGLED IN CAUSING GREAT CULTURAL UNREST AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL...

Summer Palace burnt by British in the 1st Opium War

18th Century ad depicting Chinese Opium addicts after Britain and France began to smuggle the
drug illegally into the country

Second Opium War Ad showing Western powers dividing the trade interests
of China, America is shown in the lower right

Chinese Opium addicts