(KML, am I doing this right? I am on Substack new, only - so far - to subscribe to you.)
In a nice string of coincidences I was on Quora tonite, just now, and I was hit with the thought: was Judah Benjamin the only CSA bigwig to profit from the CSA experience? I.e., by escaping to London with all the Confederate treasury he could carry.
Then I stumbled across Kevin Levin's mention of General Sharpe going to London to hunt Benjamin down.
(It's been this kind of a peak day. Started with my wife and myself marching in Emerita Pelosi's group in the San Francisco Pride Parade; her last career was in Nancy's office. We also met her special guest, Senate candidate Adam Schiff...and the state LtGov was thrilled to finally meet...my wife! Then just before this Benjamin find, my surfing discovered a feminist friend of ours, Mary Eastwood, had coauthored a seminal paper with Pauli Murray on gender bias in 1971, later used by RBG arguing her first Supremes case, which she won.) (Sorry if this was too too outa line.)
The report you reference in the first paragraph was done by a group of economists, I am positive you are correct about the lack of a historian among the researchers. It uses census data primarily to document movement of people across the United States primarily during the second half of the 19th and throughout the 20th century. It also uses voting pattern data to identify shifts in political attitude in geographic regions of the United States receiving large numbers of internal migrants. Their argument is that these shifts in voting patterns show a trend toward more conservative attitudes on the part of the American electorate. They are not just drawing conclusions about racial attitudes although I think the research group sees that as a significant point.
While I do think there is something to their research i think it can easily be overstated.
Thanks for the overview. I do hope to get to it at some point soon. I don't doubt that the finding are helpful, but I given the report cited in the post, I worry about a lack of historical context.
(KML, am I doing this right? I am on Substack new, only - so far - to subscribe to you.)
In a nice string of coincidences I was on Quora tonite, just now, and I was hit with the thought: was Judah Benjamin the only CSA bigwig to profit from the CSA experience? I.e., by escaping to London with all the Confederate treasury he could carry.
Then I stumbled across Kevin Levin's mention of General Sharpe going to London to hunt Benjamin down.
So I searched further and immediately hit this Jewish website, Tablet, with an article published just three days ago: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/hunt-for-judah-p-benjamin-jewish-confederate-spy. Thanks, Kevin!!
(It's been this kind of a peak day. Started with my wife and myself marching in Emerita Pelosi's group in the San Francisco Pride Parade; her last career was in Nancy's office. We also met her special guest, Senate candidate Adam Schiff...and the state LtGov was thrilled to finally meet...my wife! Then just before this Benjamin find, my surfing discovered a feminist friend of ours, Mary Eastwood, had coauthored a seminal paper with Pauli Murray on gender bias in 1971, later used by RBG arguing her first Supremes case, which she won.) (Sorry if this was too too outa line.)
The report you reference in the first paragraph was done by a group of economists, I am positive you are correct about the lack of a historian among the researchers. It uses census data primarily to document movement of people across the United States primarily during the second half of the 19th and throughout the 20th century. It also uses voting pattern data to identify shifts in political attitude in geographic regions of the United States receiving large numbers of internal migrants. Their argument is that these shifts in voting patterns show a trend toward more conservative attitudes on the part of the American electorate. They are not just drawing conclusions about racial attitudes although I think the research group sees that as a significant point.
While I do think there is something to their research i think it can easily be overstated.
Thanks for the overview. I do hope to get to it at some point soon. I don't doubt that the finding are helpful, but I given the report cited in the post, I worry about a lack of historical context.
I probably should have made more clear, I think the lack of historical context is a serious historical flaw.