More today about Lundberg's book on Greeley. On pp. 64-65, he is discussing Greeley's opposition to the war with Mexico.
"When the issue became apparent, Greeley was sure [in 1847] that a long-silenced Southern majority would overthrow Calhoun and his cabal."
Greeley formed three critical views at about this time, while opposing war with Mexico. First, that the aristocratic planters who owned most of the south's slaves were a powerful conspiratorial force, extending themselves not just west but north. Second, that a unified "north" had to be called into existence by the force of his own paper and such allies as could be mustered, to oppose this force (to oppose those he would soon start calling the Slave Power). Third, that the downtrodden southern whites, who owned few or no slaves, would before long join forces with the North and overthrow their social superiors in that region.
One great theme of Lundberg's book is that Greeley was wildly mistaken in the third of these beliefs. Maybe not in the first, and he did manage to pull off the task that he set himself through the second, but then he was wildly off in the third. Perhaps one might say, stealing from Chomsky, that to the extent the Slave Power did exist it was very good at manufacturing consent from the downtrodden laboring whites of its home region.
There is, Lundberg suggests, a straight line from Greeley's promotion of his false idea of the true suppressed feelings of downtrodden southern whites to the Union disaster of the first battle of Bull Run 14 years later. He believed, and arduously promoted the idea, that merely showing the flag with as sizeable an army as could be mustered quickly, and sending that army toward Richmond, would produce the desired result within the southern social structure, ensuring that this would be a quick war.
It didn't produce that result. It wasn't a quick war.
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