Practical Liberators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Racial Equality ◽  
Union Army ◽  
The West ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies ◽  
Internal Strains

During the first fifteen months of the Civil War, the policies and attitudes of Union officers toward emancipation in the western theater were, at best, inconsistent and fraught with internal strains. But after Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act in 1862, army policy became mostly consistent in its support of liberating the slaves in general, in spite of Union army officers' differences of opinion. By 1863 and the final Emancipation Proclamation, the army had transformed into the key force for instituting emancipation in the West. However, Kristopher Teters argues that the guiding principles behind this development in attitudes and policy were a result of military necessity and pragmatic strategies, rather than an effort to enact racial equality. Through extensive research in the letters and diaries of western Union officers, Teters demonstrates how practical considerations drove both the attitudes and policies of Union officers regarding emancipation. Officers primarily embraced emancipation and the use of black soldiers because they believed both policies would help them win the war and save the Union, but their views on race actually changed very little. In the end, however, despite its practical bent, Teters argues, the Union army was instrumental in bringing freedom to the slaves.

An Emancipationist Turn of Policy

2018 ◽  
pp. 36-59
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Union Army ◽  
The West ◽  
Border States ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Military

During the second half of 1862, most Union officers in the West adopted more emancipationist policies. They routinely confiscated the slaves of rebels and employed many of them as scouts, spies, laborers, cooks, etc. This became the predominant policy across the several armies operating in the West. Official policy not only authorized confiscation but also made the practice more uniform. In July of 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which allowed for the seizure of any slaves belonging to rebels. At the same time, army commanders such as Samuel Curtis and Benjamin Butler began to realize how slaves could serve the Union army and the military necessity of taking them away from rebels, and developed pro-emancipationist policies and attitudes as a result. Though some radical officers, like John Phelps, were on a mission to eliminate slavery, Butler and many others were simply hard-nosed realists who shifted towards emancipationist policies out of military necessity. There remained conflict over the status of fugitive and confiscated states, mainly in border states like Kentucky and Missouri. Yet on the whole, by the end of 1862, Union armies were much more consistent and emancipationist in their policies.

The Draft, Popularized

Men Is Cheap ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 143-176
Author(s):  
Brian P. Luskey
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Army Officers

Benjamin F. Butler’s ideas about how to “popularize” certain types of coercion—the Federal draft—unfolded at the end of 1863 on the Virginia coast as he and his subordinates defined the parameters of wage labor in their military department. That was a process dependent upon the intersecting imperatives of coercion and consent operating within the army. The ways white officers, recruiters, and black soldiers experienced and understood wage labor during the war was through the filter of force, obligation, and free will. Union Army officers and recruiting agents sought access to laborers and tried to harness them to the nation’s—and perhaps their personal—benefit. These men did so in different ways, and they came into conflict with each other because they disagreed about the legitimate balance of consent and coercion in a wage labor economy.

Modern Society and the Realms of Spirit

1961 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-36
Author(s):  
Glenn Tinder
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
The West ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
True Contact

There is a wide measure of agreement among contemporary observers that something is seriously wrong in modern industrial society. As to the exact nature of the disorder there are differences of opinion: some denounce above all a vulgarization of culture which they see as stemming from the supremacy of mass taste; others view modern men as victims of the illnesses of overorganization, with all spontaneity and uniqueness increasingly compressed within the patterns of public and private bureaucracies; still others believe that the crucial failure of present civilization in the West is that beneath the various forms of mass and organizational “togetherness,” the individual lies stranded, as it were, on the shores of nothingness, deprived of true contact with his fellowmen, with the physical world, or even with himself. Thus there is little agreement as to how the dehumanization of contemporary man is best to be described. That such dehumanization is a fact, however, is the subject of profound and widespread consensus.

A Practical Army of Liberation

2018 ◽  
pp. 106-132
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Border States ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Women And Children

After the final Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, western armies generally liberated slaves quite vigorously. But always driving this emancipation policy first and foremost were practical military considerations. Many officers supported emancipation because it would help win the war, and this was exactly how they carried out the policy. As much as possible, officers focused on freeing slaves for the army’s benefit, often targeting able-bodied men who could be of most use as teamsters, pioneers, laborers, and soldiers. Given these military priorities, officers frequently saw the slave women and children flocking to their camps as a military burden and usually sent them to hellish contraband camps or to labor for wages on plantations. In the politically sensitive border states of Kentucky and Missouri, emancipation was especially slow and conflict ridden. Yet even there, military necessity forced commanders to eventually adopt increasingly emancipationist policies. A few officers did support emancipation for moral reasons, but moral imperatives had very little influence on emancipation policies in the field. Officers’ prevailing racial beliefs help explain why many of them were more concerned with former slaves’ ability to help the army than with their welfare.

Union Officers and the Intense Debate over Emancipation and Black Troops

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-82
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Peace Democrats ◽  
Harsh Reality ◽  
Intense Debate

As Washington officials moved toward an emancipationist policy during the second half of 1862 and the beginning of 1863, Black soldiers and emancipation had both proved to be very divisive issues among western army officers. Most Union officers believed that the Union—not emancipation—was their cause. The Second Confiscation Act, along with the Preliminary and final Emancipation Proclamations, generated substantial discord in the army. Significant numbers of officers opposed these measures out of political, practical, and racial concerns. Other officers just as fervently approved these policies for their practical benefits, with some going much further and becoming downright abolitionists. But overall, pragmatism counted for far more than morality or idealism. In the political sphere, Peace Democrats, or “Copperheads”, of the Union adamantly opposed abolitionism and sought a negotiated peace. Opposition to emancipation declined strikingly after the first few months of 1863 because officers came to realize its practical benefits and, in some cases, came to understand the harsh reality of slavery. This pattern did not hold when it came to enrolling black troops. Many officers supported this policy out of practical considerations, but there was also considerable opposition that lasted through the end of the conflict.

The Cities and their Money

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiss Peter
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The West ◽  
Authority Control ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Provincia Asia ◽  
Narrow Space ◽  
Clear Conception

In their Kind Invitation to Contribute to this book the editors assigned me the topic of ‘Authority/control’. The authors of RPC devoted an intensive discussion to the subject, with many facets and displaying an extraordinary knowledge of the material. This is in many respects a difficult field, and it is obvious how wide and heterogeneous is the material, how different the presuppositions were in the various parts of the Roman empire, and with what a broad timespan one has to deal: some three centuries, in which there were many developments and several changes. Despite its gigantic bulk, the coinage affords far fewer unambiguous indications permitting a clear conception of how minting came about and was controlled than one would wish. Epigraphy, which in other cases provides an enormous fund of information, here by contrast leaves us almost entirely in the lurch. It follows that many differences of opinion exist, and in many matters, even on points of central importance, our vision is still clouded. The topic is too complex to permit a thorough discussion of all the questions before us in this narrow space. For that reason I have undertaken a limited evaluation. In what follows, I am concerned only with coins pertaining to the cities. Attention is therefore not paid, for example, to the cistophori in Asia, the coins of Alexandria in Egypt, or of Caesarea in Cappadocia, or to the provincial coinage of Syria. I shall first consider the question of Roman control, but only in the form of some basic observations and reflections. Much must here remain unresolved. My central concern will therefore be the following set of questions: How did the cities organize their monetary production? How were responsibilities apportioned, and who was directly involved? What range of possibilities was there? How in this context are we to interpret the numerous names and functional titles on the coins of many Roman cities, especially in the west, down to Julio-Claudian times, and above all, in continuity with Hellenistic practice, on very many coins from the Greek poleis in Provincia Asia?

The Law of War and Military Necessity

1953 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gerald Downey
Keyword(s):  
Brute Force ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Legal Restriction ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Military

To many international lawyers and army officers the terms “law of war” and “military necessity” are mutually incompatible. Many army officers consider the law of war as no more than a collection of pious platitudes, valueless, so they think, because it has no force and effect. Some international lawyers regard military necessity as the bête noire of international jurisprudence, destroying all legal restriction and allowinguncontrolled brute force to rage rampant over the battlefield or wherever the military have control.

scholarly journals Papers of Islamic Thought Figures of Al-Farabi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Makbul
Keyword(s):  
Western World ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Ibn Rushd ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
History Of

Islam with its culture has been running for approximately 15 centuries. In such a long journey there are 5 amazing journey centuries in philosophical thought, namely between the 7th century to the 12th century. During that time, the Islamic philosophers thought about how the position of humans with others, humans with nature and humans with God, using their minds. They think systematically, analytically and critically, thus giving birth to Islamic philosophers who have high abilities because of their wisdom. Islamic philosophy grows and develops in two different areas, namely philosophy in the Masyriqi region (east) and philosophy in the Maghreb region (West). After Islam came, the Arabs controlled the areas of Persia, Syria and Egypt. So that the center of government moved from Medina to Damascus. At that time, two major cities emerged that played an important role in the history of Islamic thought, namely Basra and Kufa.Islamic philosophy in the eastern part of the world is different from the philosophy of Islam in the western world. Among the Islamic philosophers in the two regions there were differences of opinion on various points of thought. In the East there are several prominent philosophers, such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. While in the West there are also some well-known philosophers, namely, Ibn Bajah, Ibn Thufail, and Ibn Rushd.

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