XPost: alt.politics.liberalism, talk.politics.misc

On 8/21/25 11:46 PM, Auric Hellman wrote:

Lindsey Halligan, the White House official leading a review of the Smithsonian Institution, said you "can't really talk about slavery
honestly unless you talk about hope and progress" during a Newsmax
appearance on Wednesday.

Newsweek contacted the Smithsonian Institution for comment on Thursday
via email outside of regular office hours.

Why It Matters

On August 12 Halligan wrote to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch
saying the White House would lead "a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions."

On his Truth Social website President Donald Trump described the
Smithsonian as "OUT OF CONTROL" and said museums across the United
States are "WOKE."

Critics have accused the White House of "political interference" and
pushing a "sanitized" version of history, while supporters claim the Smithsonian fails to achieve political balance.

What To Know
Speaking to Newsmax Halligan said she had written to the Smithsonian
asking for details about its exhibits to try and find where the museum
group "went wrong," adding: "Museums that are over 70 percent funded
by the federal government shouldn't be laboratories for political experiments."

Referring to slavery Halligan added: "It's not about whitewashing it's
about full context, so while slavery is obviously a horrible aspect of
our nation's history you can't really talk about slavery honestly
unless you also talk about hope and progress and I think we need to be focusing on the progress that we've made then and we need to stop
focusing so much on the lack of progress.

"We need to keep moving forward as a country. Our 250th anniversary as
a country is coming up next July and we're hoping the Smithsonian and
D.C. is beautiful and amazing and a place that all Americans want to
come visit during that time."

https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-says-slavery-being-taught-wrong-should-not-so-negative-2117100

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war

How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans

In the brutal chaos that followed the civil war, life after emancipation was harsh and often short, new book argues

Paul Harris
New York
Sat 16 Jun 2012 14.06 CEST

Hundreds of thousands of slaves freed during the American civil war died
from disease and hunger after being liberated, according to a new book.

The analysis, by historian Jim Downs of Connecticut College, casts a shadow over one of the most celebrated narratives of American history, which sees
the freeing of the slaves as a triumphant righting of the wrongs of a
southern plantation system that kept millions of black Americans in chains.

But, as Downs shows in his book, Sick From Freedom, the reality of
emancipation during the chaos of war and its bloody aftermath often fell brutally short of that positive image. Instead, freed slaves were often neglected by union soldiers or faced rampant disease, including horrific outbreaks of smallpox and cholera. Many of them simply starved to death.

After combing through obscure records, newspapers and journals Downs
believes that about a quarter of the four million freed slaves either died
or suffered from illness between 1862 and 1870. He writes in the book that
it can be considered "the largest biological crisis of the 19th century" and yet it is one that has been little investigated by contemporary historians.

Downs believes much of that is because at the time of the civil war, which raged between 1861 and 1865 and pitted the unionist north against the confederate south, many people did not want to investigate the tragedy befalling the freed slaves. Many northerners were little more sympathetic
than their southern opponents when it came to the health of the freed slaves and anti-slavery abolitionists feared the disaster would prove their critics right.

"In the 19th century people did not want to talk about it. Some did not care and abolitionists, when they saw so many freed people dying, feared that it proved true what some people said: that slaves were not able to exist on
their own," Downs told the Observer.

Downs's book is full of terrible vignettes about the individual experiences
of slave families who embraced their freedom from the brutal plantations on which they had been born or sold to. Many ended up in encampments called "contraband camps" that were often near union army bases. However,
conditions were unsanitary and food supplies limited. Shockingly, some contraband camps were actually former slave pens, meaning newly freed people ended up being kept virtual prisoners back in the same cells that had previously held them. In many such camps disease and hunger led to countless deaths. Often the only way to leave the camp was to agree to go back to work
on the very same plantations from which the slaves had recently escaped.

Treatment by union soldiers could also be brutal. Downs reconstructed the experiences of one freed slave, Joseph Miller, who had come with his wife
and four children to a makeshift freed slave refugee camp within the union stronghold of Camp Nelson in Kentucky. In return for food and shelter for
his family Miller joined the army. Yet union soldiers in 1864 still cleared
the ex-slaves out of Camp Nelson, effectively abandoning them to scavenge in
a war-ravaged and disease-ridden landscape. One of Miller's young sons
quickly sickened and died. Three weeks later, his wife and another son died. Ten days after that, his daughter perished too. Finally, his last surviving child also fell terminally ill. By early 1865 Miller himself was dead. For Downs such tales are heartbreaking. "So many of these people are dying of starvation and that is such a slow death," he said.

Downs has collected numerous shocking accounts of the lives of freed slaves.
He came across accounts of deplorable conditions in hospitals and refugee camps, where doctors often had racist theories about how black Americans reacted to disease. Things were so bad that one military official in
Tennessee in 1865 wrote that former slaves were: "dying by scores - that sometimes 30 per day die and are carried out by wagonloads without coffins,
and thrown promiscuously, like brutes, into a trench".

So bad were the health problems suffered by freed slaves, and so high the
death rates, that some observers of the time even wondered if they would all die out. One white religious leader in 1863 expected black Americans to
vanish. "Like his brother the Indian of the forest, he must melt away and disappear forever from the midst of us," the man wrote.

Such racial attitudes among northerners seem shocking, but Downs says they
were common. Yet Downs believes that his book takes nothing away from the
moral value of the emancipation.

Instead, he believes that acknowledging the terrible social cost born by the newly emancipated accentuates their heroism.

"This challenges the romantic narrative of emancipation. It was more complex and more nuanced than that. Freedom comes at a cost," Downs said.



(From _The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography_):

Patsy Mitchner, age 84 when interviewed on July 2, 1937:

Before two years had passed after the surrender, there was two out of every three slaves who wished they was back with their marsters. The marsters' kindness to the nigger after the war is the cause of the nigger having
things today. There was a lot of love between marster and slave, and there
is few of us that don't love the white folks today.

[...]

Slavery was better for us than things is now, in some cases. Niggers then didn't have no responsibility; just work, obey, and eat.

Betty Cofer, age 81:

The rest of the family was all fine folks and good to me, but I loved Miss
Ella better 'n anyone or anything else in the world. She was the best friend
I ever had. If I ever wanted for anything, I just asked her and she give it
to me or got it for me somehow.

[...]

I done lived to see three generations of my white folks come and go and
they're the finest folks on earth.

Adeline Johnson, age 93:

That was a happy time, with happy days.

[...]

I'll be satisfied to see my Savior that my old marster worshiped and my
husband preach about. I wants to be in heaven with all my white folks, just
to wait on them and love them, and serve them, sorta like I did in slavery time. That will be enough heaven for Adeline.

Mary Anderson, age 86:

I think slavery was a mighty good thing for Mother, Father, me and the other members of the family, and I cannot say anything but good for my old marster and missus, but I can only speak for those whose conditions I have known
during slavery and since. For myself and them, I will say again, slavery was
a mighty good thing.

Simuel Riddick, age 95:

My white folks were fine people.

[...]

I haven't anything to say against slavery. My old folks put my clothes on me when I was a boy. They gave me shoes and stockings and put them on me when I was a little boy. I loved them, and I can't go against them in anything.
There were things I did not like about slavery on some plantations, whupping and selling parents and children from each other, but I haven't much to say.
I was treated good.

Sylvia Cannon, age 85:

Things sure better long time ago then they be now. I know it. Colored people never had no debt to pay in slavery time. Never hear tell about no colored people been put in jail before freedom. Had more to eat and more to wear
then, and had good clothes all the time 'cause white folks furnish
everything, everything. Had plenty peas, rice, hog meat, rabbit, fish, and
such as that.

(From _American Slave: North Carolina Narratives_):

Tempe Herndon Durham:

I was thirty-one years ole when de surrender come. Dat makes me sho nuff
ole. Near bout a hundred an' three years done passed over dis here white
head of mine. I'se been here, I mean I'se been here. 'Spects I'se de oldest nigger in Durham. I'se been here so long dat I done forgot near 'bout as
much as dese here new generation knows or ever gwine know.

My white fo'ks lived in Chatham County. Dey was Marse George an' Mis' Betsy Herndon. Mis Betsy was a Snipes befo' she married Marse George. Dey had a
big plantation an' raised cawn, wheat, cotton an' 'bacca.

[...]

When I growed up I married Exter Durham. He belonged to Marse Snipes Durham
who had de plantation 'cross de county line in Orange County. We had a big weddin'. We was married on de front po'ch of de big house. Marse George
killed a shoat an' Mis' Betsy had Georgianna, de cook, to bake a big weddin' cake all iced up white as snow wid a bride an' groom standin' in de middle holdin' han's. De table was set out in de yard under de trees, an' you ain't never seed de like of eats. All de niggers come to de feas' an' Marse George had a for everybody. Dat was some weddin'. I had on a white dress, white
shoes an' long while gloves dat come to my elbow, an' Mis' Betsy done made
me a weddin' veil out of a white net window curtain. When she played de
weddin' ma'ch on de piano, me an' Exter ma'ched down de walk an' up on de
po'ch to de altar Mis' Betsy done fixed. Dat de pretties' altar I ever seed. Back 'gainst de rose vine dat was full or red roses, Mis' Betsy done put
tables filled wid flowers an' white candles. She spread down a bed sheet, a
sho nuff linen sheet, for us to stan' on, an' dey was a white pillow to
kneel down on. Exter done made me a weddin' ring. He made it out of a big
red button wid his pocket knife. He done cut it so roun' an' polished it so smooth dat it looked like a red satin ribbon tide 'roun' my finger. Dat sho
was a pretty ring. I wore it 'bout fifty years, den it got so thin dat I
lost it one day in de wash tub when I was washin' clothes.

Uncle Edmond Kirby married us. He was de nigger preacher dat preached at de plantation church. After Uncle Edmond said de las' words over me an' Exter, Marse George got to have his little fun: He say, 'Come on, Exter, you an' Tempie got to jump over de broom stick backwards; you got to do dat to see which one gwine be boss of your househol'.' Everybody come stan' 'roun to watch. Marse George hold de broom 'bout a foot high off de floor. De one dat jump over it backwards an' never touch de handle, gwine boss de house, an'
if bof of dem jump over widout touchin' it, dey won't gwine be no bossin',
dey jus' gwine be 'genial. I jumped fus', an' you ought to seed me. I sailed right over dat broom stick same as a cricket, but when Exter jump he done
had a big dram an' his feets was so big an' clumsy dat dey got all tangled
up in dat broom an' he fell head long. Marse George he laugh an' laugh, an' tole Exter he gwine be bossed 'twell he skeered to speak less'n I tole him
to speak. After de weddin' we went down to de cabin Mis' Betsy done all
dressed up, but Exter couldn' stay no longer den dat night kaze he belonged
to Marse Snipes Durham an' he had to go back home. He lef' de nex day for
his plantation, but he come back every Saturday night an' stay 'twell Sunday night. We had eleven chillun. Nine was bawn befo' surrender an' two after we was set free.

[...]

Freedom is all right, but de niggers was better off befo' surrender, kaze
den dey was looked after an' dey didn' get in no trouble fightin' an'
killin' like dey do dese days. If a nigger cut up an' got sassy in slavery times, his Ole Marse give him a good whippin' an' he went way back an' set
down an' 'haved hese'f. If he was sick, Marse an' Mistis looked after him,
an' if he needed store medicine, it was bought an' give to him; he didn'
have to pay nothin'. Dey didn' even have to think 'bout clothes nor nothin' like dat, dey was wove an' made an' give to dem. Maybe everybody's Marse and Mistis wuzn' good as Marse George and Mis' Betsy, but dey was de same as a mammy an' pappy to us niggers.

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