A citizen of Vicksburg observed that during the siege "nothing was spared by the shells; the churchs fared especially severly, and the reverend clergy had narrow escapes." This was brought upon by  Ulysses S. Grant, who had taken control of the entire Mississippi River save the couple miles being guarded by the Confederate troops at Vicksburg. Grant launched his attack on Vicksburg on May 18, 1863. While most of the bloodshed initially took place on the eastern side of the city, Confederate artillery along the Mississippi engaged Union naval ships and heavy weaponry in an effort to protect the center of Vicksburg from an ever threatening invasion.

Colonel Edward Higgins, the commander of Vicksburg’s river batteries, was effective at repelling the Union assault of Vicksburg from late May through the first week of June. His well-placed batteries sunk the Cincinnati and held off the other three Union ironclads. The situation of the battle changed on June 11 when federal troops began to establish fortifications across the Mississippi River. The Union fortifications featured more cover and protection for its soldiers, making them less of a target than the rebels atop the barren banks of eastern shore. These new positions gave the Union the comfort of having both accurate artillery and constant naval support, a substantial advantage in the already close battle.

Due to the availability of Union supply, forces on the De Soto Peninsula  wielded two-hundred and seventy five cannons, a few of which were high caliber Parrott guns supplied by the US Navy. In contrast, Confederates had a hundred less cannons and this number consistently decreased due to the need for artillery on the eastern side of Vicksburg. Additionally, Confederate batteries lacked sufficient ammunition to combat Union cannons backed by an “inexhaustible” supply. The significance of the Confederate Army’s shortcomings became greater as the siege worn on and Union “superiority grew into dominance.”

After over five weeks of isolation and bombardment, Confederate commander J.C. Pemberton surrendered because he knew his men lacked the strength to fight any longer. In Higgins’s report, he does not claim the fall of Vicksburg as a failure on the part of himself or his men. In fact, they had performed their duties as defenders of the Mississippi while also guarding the eastern trenches at night and serving as the city guard. He believed that had his arsenal not been down-scaled because of the “weakness of our infantry force” it would have never permitted the Union to make advances.

The shortcomings of the rebels at Battle of Vicksburg are an accurate representation of the Confederate Army as a whole. As in Vicksburg, Confederates faced a foe that was better fed, supplied, reinforced, and armed. Confederate leaders were at times more disciplined and more tactically knowledgeable but it is because of the Union’s advanced overall management stemming from both its enormous industry and population that the rebellion was extinguished.

Edward Higgins.  “Report of Col. Edward Higgins, Confederate States’ Artillery.” War of Rebellion’s Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Part II, Series 1, Volume 24, 336-340.

“It was a tornado of iron on our left, a hurricane of shot on our right…we passed through the mouth of hell.” These are the words of a Union soldier who was part of the 21st Iowa Infantry Regiment that led the federal assault on Confederate fortifications along the Southern Mississippi Railroad in Vicksburg. Major George W. Mathieson, commander of the 31st Alabama Infantry, unleashed this “hell” upon Union assaulters even though he never took the time to describe it that vividly. Mathieson’s Alabama men were placed just south of the Railroad Redoubt as part of a concentrated defense given the task of holding the crucial path into Vicksburg.

Since the dawn of 1863, Grant focused on dislodging the Confederate railroads centered in Jackson, Mississippi. With this as the Union’s goal, Grant began the conquest of Mississippi by capturing Port Gibson and subsequently Jackson. Upon destroying the railroad hub there, Grant’s soldiers marched directly west along the Southern Mississippi Railroad. The Confederate Army had already lost control of the Mississippi River so losing this railroad would completely cut its western forces off from supplies and reinforcements. To prevent this from happening, Pemberton amassed a large Confederate force on the railroad.

It is on this railroad that Union soldiers led by General McClernand first attacked on May 19, 1863. The 31st Alabama Infantry, supported by two other Alabama units, kept the Union’s advances at bay by sustaining a slow but consistent barrage of fire, making sure that “no Abolitionist could show his head without danger from ball or buckshot.” Mathieson’s regiment had only lost one man and had killed roughly one-hundred and fifty. Following this onslaught, Grant began the siege of Vicksburg and on July 4, 1863 Pemberton surrendered.

Vicksburg had been labeled as the “nail head that holds the South’s two halves together” by the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis. He was justified in saying this because with complete control of the Mississippi River, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas were effectively separated from the rest of the Confederate States of America. The western states could no longer provide vital supply to the east, rendering the west almost useless from a military standpoint.

The events of the summer of 1863 also affected how the Confederacy’s population viewed the Civil War. The Confederate surrender at Vicksburg, in addition to the loss at Gettysburg, caused many southerners to doubt the Confederacy’s chances at gaining independence. Citizens of the Confederacy were discouraged by soldiers’ stories of the siege and southern hopes began to fade. As Liddell Hart once said, “it was the moral effect, above all, which made Vicksburg the great turning point of the war.”

George W. Mathieson. “Report of Major George W. Mathieson, Thirty-first Alabama Infantry.” War of Rebellion’s Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Part II, Series 1, Volume 24, 353-354.

John Brown, noted abolitionist, was arrested after his raid on Harper’s Ferry in early October 1859. He was taken to Charles Town, in present day West Virginia to be tried. Early in the trial, a surprise telegraph arrived that placed Brown’s sanity in question, but the court eventually disregarded the insanity plea largely aided by Brown himself who pronounced that he of all people, should know if he was insane and he deemed himself sane. Witnesses gave testimony on Brown’s raid. On October 31, Brown received the guilty verdict on all counts:  treason, conspiring with slaves to rebel, and murder.

On November 2, when the judge asked Brown if he had anything he wanted to say, Brown rose from the cot on which he had been lying the entire trial due to injuries sustained at Harper’s Ferry and addressed the court. Brown denied having committed any crime aside from wanting to free the slaves. He stated that he never intended to murder, to commit treason, or to incite slaves into a rebellion. However, having had committed murder, Brown did not appear remorseful of that fact. His only goal was to free the slaves as God wanted him to do. He seemed resigned saying, “if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments--I submit; so let it be done!” Brown spoke a couple more words to the court and then resumed his position on the cot.

A month after his closing words, on December 2, Brown was  hanged outside of Charles Town. Brown left a lasting impression on both the North and the South. Many southerners saw Brown as a fanatic and one who had threatened their way of life. Some northerners viewed Brown as a visionary man who wanted to help the deprived slaves while others agreed with the southern view. Still others chose to ignore him altogether. Even after Brown’s execution, his raid on Harper’s Ferry stood as the beginning of the end of civil relationships between the North and South.

Cyrus McCormick gave a public demonstration of his newly improved Reaper near the little town of Lexington, Virginia in 1832. Around 100 people were present to watch the twenty-three year-old innovator’s contraption take to a field of grain. Herbert N. Casson explained in his book, Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work, that the crowd included “several political leaders of local fame, farmers, professors, laborers, and a group of Negroes who frolicked and shouted in uncomprehending joy.” Undoubtedly, this demonstration would be one of the most important in American agricultural history, considering that the harvesting of grain was done by hand with scythes and sickles up until this point.

As McCormick made his way across John Ruff’s hilly field, the reaper appeared to be an utter failure as it jolted in various directions. Ruff shouted in protest, “Stop your horses. You are rattling the heads off my wheat!” The young farmer-inventor felt humiliated to have his machine proven faulty in front of this large group of bystanders.

Laborers celebrated McCormick’s failure, as his machine was their challenger in the labor market. These men resented the reaper, similar to the drivers of stage-coaches dislike for railroads. Professional harvesters felt that their jobs were threatened by the machine, considering it had the potential to harvest ten acres of grain per day compared to their average of two to three acres.

A young farmer, William Taylor, approached the dejected McCormick: “I’ll give you a fair chance, young man. That field of wheat on the other side of the fence belongs to me. Pull down the fence and cross over.” If Taylor did not ask for McCormick to try his machine in his patch of grain, it is unclear what might have become of his reputation.

McCormick gratefully accepted Taylor’s invitation. This field proved much more level which allowed the reaper to perform well. Before sundown, McCormick’s reaper had laid low six acres of wheat in front of the large audience.  The fear of those against the machine was rightfully formed. The reaper could harvest more in less than a day than they could do in several days.

The reaper was driven back to the courthouse square of Lexington, where it remained on display for the public to see, and praise. Professor Robert Bradshaw of the Lexington Female Academy said emphatically, “This-machine-is worth- a hundred-thousand-dollars.” McCormick joked that he would gladly sell his machine for nearly half as much. Little did he know that his machine was the beginning of a company that revolutionized grain harvesting.  With his reaper, he was able to defeat the task of feeding the hungry masses and eliminate the back breaking work of manually harvesting wheat.  The crude machine that Cyrus McCormick slaved over in the small log workshop on a Virginia farm, was about to revolutionize harvesting around the world.

In 1971, schools attempting to overcome segregation faced fierce opposition in the North. The year before the South passed the North in integration of schools and the North’s integration record continued to decline in the 1960s. The question facing Americans was whether the busing plans would overcome the opposition. Some cities moved forward with the forced integration via busing, but other cities fought back. Opposition ranged from legal appeals to violence. President Nixon held a strong anti-busing stance and instructed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to “work with individual school districts to hold busing to the minimum required by law.” Some felt that his opposition caused more problems.

The New York Times examined specific cases to see how desegregation was taking place. In Houston, Texas, Nixon intervened with citywide busing and “asked the Justice Department to appeal the ruling.” Denver, Colorado’s opposition won in their court case and went on to consider other plans. San Francisco, California saw “heckling and fist fights” at meetings discussing busing. They experienced large opposition from Chinese-Americans, as well as conservative whites. The assistant chief of the Office of Intergroup Relations for the California Department of Education, Ted Neff, felt that “Racial and ethnic isolation is increasing.” Wichita, Kansas, under pressure to integrate, chose to integrate according to the “city’s racial make-up”. Pontiac, Michigan appealed a court order to start busing in the fall failed and ten buses were firebombed as school was beginning that year. The Seattle, Washington school board attempted to implement a citywide busing plan, but was stopped by a court order. Rochester, New York began busing voluntarily, while Providence, Rhode Island was in it’s third stage of desegregation, there were still strong objections seen here. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth, of Minnesota, underwent partial integration. The states of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts sternly enforced busing, particularly in major cities. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania began a busing program in 1970 “based on the students’ racial and economic background.” Pittsburgh and Philadelphia appealed the order. “Richardson Dilworth, president of the Philadelphia school board and former Mayor, said, ‘The white population of this city would never permit the kind of massive cross-busing the order would require, nor would the City Council or the state legislature appropriate the money’” The Massachusetts Board of Education chose to deny $21.3 million dollars in funding from Boston, because of their unwillingness to comply with the busing program.

These events coincided with, and in some cases were a reaction to, the influential court case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971). This stated that because racial integration is so important, busing could be used, if necessary. Opponents to busing, like the cities mentioned in the article, felt busing interfered with their community. Although Nixon campaigned on a strict anti-busing stance, he was not able to stop the busing programs from moving forward. Americans feared that the same type of violence which was seen in the desegregation of the Southern schools would be seen in the North.

South Bostonians, mostly Irish-Americans, felt frustrated and angry after just three weeks of forced busing in 1974 according to the New York Times. Federal Judge W. Arthur Garity ordered busing because he felt that “the local school authorities operated a deliberately segregated system.” During the three weeks school was open, there had already been altercations, including “a lunch-tray hurling, spaghetti-tossing brawl that emptied the school.” Attempts were made to stop the tension with a “biracial committee of students”, but protestors felt this was not enough. Police stood by as crowd control when the marchers, joined by local politicians, gathered in Marine Park. The march, sponsored by the local Home and School Association, coincided with a boycott of schools “that cut school attendance in half.” The permit for the demonstration specified that protestors were not allowed to march to schools. Protestors, nearly 5,000 in number, represented a mixture of ages, mostly young to middle-aged and carried signs with slogans “with racial undercurrents.”

Boston schools faced many problems with desegregation. Desegregation in the North was harder in many ways because the segregation was de facto. White residents in these areas felt that busing hurt neighborhood schools. Boston’s particular busing plan caused a lot of turmoil that continued throughout the 1970s. The city was by far the most extreme case of busing. Making matters worse, as the protests and violence got stronger over the decade, the courts broadened the busing program. Busing in Boston finally ended in 1988.

Boston schools faced many problems with desegregation.  Desegregation in the North was harder in many ways because the segregation was de facto.  White residents in these areas felt that busing hurt neighborhood schools.  Boston’s particular busing plan caused a lot of turmoil that continued throughout the 1970s.  The city was by far the most extreme case of busing.  Making matters worse, as the protests and violence got stronger over the decade, the courts broadened the busing program.  Busing in Boston finally ended in 1988.

Many African-Americans had become frustrated with the slow rate of racial progress in the 1960s.  While Martin Luther King Jr. and others protested racial injustices in a nonviolent way, other African-American lost patience with the attitude of whites towards these movements.  Stokely Carmichael, a one-time non-violence believer, became an advocate and leader of the “Black Power” movement.  This movement called for a more violent and direct way of protesting against the inequality between whites and blacks.  “For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken in and got shot,” Carmichael stated in the New York Review of Books.  Indeed, much of the peaceful resistance put up by King and other Civil Rights leaders served only to frustrate the white population rather than make them change.  While the south was full of passive protests, Northerners like Carmichael felt a growing anger inside with the way racial progress was going.

            Carmichael called for young black people to join his Black Power Movement, which was more aggressive in both speech and actions.  Carmichael denounced the concept of integration, saying that “. . . in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school.”  Instead, he argued that blacks should have better facilities in the first place so they can be in a less hostile environment (presuming the hostility of schools consisting mainly of whites).

            This type of attitude appealed to many younger African-Americans who saw their parents and leaders of the Civil Rights Movement beaten down without any repercussions or retaliation.  The youth saw no progress being made and thought that a resistance that was not as passive may be the only way to get justice. Carmichael says in the New York Review of Books “One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.”  This type of movement was popular, but also drew the wrath of white law enforcement and the government, who were less likely to accept this method of resistance than the nonviolent variation adapted by the southern Civil Rights activists.

In the Fall of 1995 the Los Angeles Times gave a hard look at Los Angeles’ ethnic gulf and noted how the city was balkanizing. The city of Los Angeles has long been a tense place in terms of race-relations.  The intermixing of different peoples set the stage for violent race riots in the early 1990s, which were kicked off when Rodney King was beat savagely in 1992 by four LAPD officers and the police were found innocent of all charges.  The trial and subsequent acquittal of OJ Simpson in 1995 added fuel to the simmering divides between ethnicities..  The race riots did not simply take place between blacks and whites—Latinos and Asians also feuded with those who did not share the same heritage.  The time for peaceful resolutions to these race problems had long since passed, as Los Angeles has always been more open to a diverse population more so than other cities in the United States.  The Los Angeles Times journalists noted: “In many ways, L.A. symbolizes the racism in this country like probably no other city.  It’s become the poster city for racism in America.”  The economic problems of Los Angeles during this time, as well as the constant drug trafficking, further intensified the racial tension in the City of Angels.  Residents of Los Angeles competed for money whether they could obtain it legally or illegally, and if a member of a different race took another race’s means to make a profit, racial hostility occurred. 

            The riots in the early 1990s were brutal; residents reported incidents of people being dragged out of their cars and being beaten.  All races were involved in the simmering tensions in Los Angeles.  Buildings were looted and set ablaze, and Los Angeles’s reputation would not recover from the highly publicized events.  “A place once viewed as idyllic and tolerant, a palm-lined paradise, has come to be seen as quite the opposite—a worst-case example” claimed the Times writers..  The Los Angeles Race Riots were large in scale and gave the city a tarnished image in the view of the rest of America.  Citizens of the city found out that the easiest way to avoid the racial problems was to avoid other groups altogether.

Born Bobby Zimmerman, Bob Dylan escaped a life in small town Minnesota and eventually arrived in Greenwich Village, New York in 1961.   Andrew Muchin, author of the article “Dylan’s Jewish Pilgrimage,” argues that Dylan’s arrival in New York gave him the chance to “reinvent himself as the musical heir to folk troubadour Woody Guthrie.” Zimmerman’s choice of names, given the prominence he achieved as Bob Dylan, begs for explanation.

In Chronicles: Volume I, Dylan says himself that “I’d seen some poems by Dylan Thomas… People had always called me Robert or Bobby, but Bobby Dylan sounded to [sic] skittish to me…” By the time Dylan reached New York and was asked his name he “… instinctively and automatically without thinking simply said, ‘Bob Dylan.’”

When recreating himself something would have had to happen to the old identity. Dylan explains Zimmerman’s disappearance was due to a motorcycle accident in 1964. In the place of Bobby, Andrew Muchin believes, Bob Dylan began his career by “re-animating tradition-laden folk music with original, topical songs.” Bob Dylan found success with this in his songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War” and “Like A Rolling Stone.” As Dylan notes he became labeled the conscience of a generation but really, he felt he “…was only a musician.”  In Muchin’s article Dylan’s Jewish Identity is questioned and the feeling is “There’s a sense of Jewishness, especially culturally, but also an overriding feeling that ‘you’re an American.’”

By the 1990s popular opinion had turned against the stream of immigrants that had begun in the early 1980s, and illegal ones in particular (who amplified all the traditional anti-immigrant accusations of undermining wages and straining public services). In California this resentment was fanned by local politicians, including Republican Governor Pete Wilson - who was staring electoral defeat in the face over the state's abysmal economic performance - who latched onto the issue like leeches. By introducing Proposition 187 and tying it to the general election of November 8, 1994, they fed off popular anger and secured their return to power. Passed by a 58.93% margin, Proposition 187 banned illegal immigrants from all social services, all but emergency health care, and from public education within the state. Immigration appeared to have become a non-partisan issue, as although the Proposition was a child of the state's conservatives, support was widespread among moderates and even liberals too: the bill could never have been passed without their support. Yet support was far from unanimous: over 40% were against it.

People's position on Proposition 187 did not tell the whole story. In California the consequences of enforcing the bill began disturbing officials at many levels of the administration as soon as it was signed into law. Problems such as how to prevent the spread of communicable disease when part of the population was ineligible for vaccination, or the extra burden that enforcement would put on a police force struggling to cope with Los Angeles' crime epidemic, caused many public figures, like L.A. police chief Willie Williams, to publicly announce their intention to ignore it. This made the bill, and the government, look ridiculous. A state judge swiftly barred enforcement of the ban on public education for illegal immigrants, hardly a surprise given that the Supreme Court had already ruled on their right to free public education back in 1982. And on November 16, barely a week after the Proposition was signed into state law, Federal Judge Matthew Byrne Jr. issued a restraining order which prevented almost all of the bill’s clauses from coming into force. Californians had been humiliated over the bill, and were now angry with their leaders. As soon as they could, they punished the mostly Republican conservatives who'd championed the bill, making sure they went down with it. Illegal immigration and debate on what to do about it did not go away. Nor did the majority drop their broad opposition to it. But the realities of enforcing a law against illegals, quite apart from the legal challenges, appear to have turned people against the Proposition, and the government that had ridden it to stay in power. It is this fear of the potential consequences that led such a large percentage to vote against the bill in the first place, not love of illegal immigrants. The Republicans paid a high price for their perceived opportunism: with the [Understandable?] exception of 'The Governator' (Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor since 2003) no Republican has won a gubernatorial, senatorial, or presidential election in California since 1994.