REVIEW OF MARK LAUSE, RACE, AND RADICALISM IN THE UNION ARMY.
Review of Mark Lause, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army.
Summary of the book content.
Lause has played a significant role in filling a large historiography gap in Civil War studies at large. An interesting subject of discussion on interracial activism, Mark Lause writes about John Brown spearheading the formation of a triracial Federal Army that aimed at coming up with a union that would benefit the blacks, white soldiers, and the Indians at once and for sure in the end emerging victorious—fostered by the themes of racism, idealism, and greed, Lause sort to dig deep into the interaction of reform, radicalism, and some of the race-based interactions that existed among whites, blacks, and the Indians.
Lause is after knowing how the American people accepted the conception of the multiracial idea and how it thrived.[1] Lause also looks at the impact of abolitionist insertions on the relationship with Indians and the role of non-white people in that war, which was deemed crucial as he focuses on the men and women in Brown’s support regarding territorial Kansas. According to Lause, he feels like the experience made the three participants feel as though there is some interdependence in their destinies. Lause goes ahead to point out the significant impact the union triggered regarding the military’s course in the upper Trans-Mississippi.
Lause goes ahead to assert that the government willfully redefined the profitable land of Indians and gave it to some civilian officers, military, and contractors, which deemed the possibility of there being any interracial society. He says that the civil war results wiped out much of the memory about the Western war, especially in Oklahoma, the Indian Territory.
Major arguments made by Mark Lause.
He argues that a great contribution by John Brown to put up a spirited fight by leading a multiracial union into battle, which they emerged victorious over the confederacy on July 17, 1863, got forgotten in the collective history of America by the onset of Dixie’s myth “lost cause.” The narrative on racism and radicalism by Lause adds some twists to various key thematic reviews of West America and the civil war.
Mark insists that sectional conflict provided an incredible chances for the ideal turn-around in U.S social relationships during that era. He has incorporated the Indians in the history of the civil war in a unique way.[1] Lause points out the fearlessness of the black combatant fighter in the West since they worked with poor payments, federal abandonment of Indian lands because of the unions’ victories; there were supply shortages and attempts made by the whites and radicals to play the Indians against the colored Americans. He says that such sufferings were enough signs of pending deceptions by the Union military authorities related to business selfishness.
However, Mark Lause starts his story in Territorial Kansas, where he illustrates that the call to “white settlement” and the sanguinary fight over slavery attracted a mixture of trade unionists, spiritualists, land reformers, and socialists. All the mentioned reformers compounded resistance to slavery with a radical “free labor” observation of a “decentralized and democratized civilization” liberated from the autocracy of “capital as well as slaveholding.”[1] According to Lause, the reformers saw an equal opportunity in racial relations and class. John Brown facilitated to resolve biased laws by using army forces. In the book, Lause went further to argue that western theatre tested radicalization principles. The white slaveholders were more attached to the hierarchies than the Indian slaveholders. This meant that Indians were strongly opposed to slavery, while the white slaveholders like the Ottawa and Delaware were sympathetic to antislavery. The author has contributed significantly to the most current interpretations of the civil war history, stressing on the interconnection between the battlefront and home front of the civilian war men and the military who shaped the nature and outcome of the civil war. [1] Lause argues that the white federals mistreated Indians during and after the civil wars. In the last chapter, Lause illustrates that despite all the benefits that prompted the native population due to their outstanding support to the federal war efforts, most of the union members worked to do away with land titles and focused on provisioning native groups.
Mark Lause’s works have been well perceived by many since it has significantly contributed to the United States of the nineteenth century. The book has indicated the new ways of investigating U.S domestic politics, race relations, and the civil war battlefield. It, however, calls for thorough research on how economics, abolitionism, race, and intertribal conflict removal molded the Indian politics.
Reference
Lause, Mark A. Race and Radicalism in the Union Army. University of Illinois Press, 2010.
[1]. Mark A. Lause, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army. (University of Illinois Press, 2010).