A momentous week and 150 years

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

July 4, 1863, exactly 150 years ago, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg, Mississippi to Major General Ulysses S. Grant, thus ending Confederate domination of the Mississippi River.

As Abraham Lincoln stated upon hearing the news, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

The 4th of July was not celebrated in Vicksburg again until 1944, four weeks after D-Day.

Just the day before, July 3, 1863, under orders from General Robert E. Lee, Pickett’s Charge had failed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Thus came to an end the last major attempt by Confederate Forces to invade the Union.

Henceforth, until Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1965, the Civil War was a war of attrition.

Whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist, 150 years is a very small portion of time in the history of humankind. Yet, the change in conditions occasioned by these Union victories as well as many other occurrences since then is a reason to stop and assess a number of issues.

First, without these military outcomes, the Emancipation Proclamation, a mere six months old at the time, would have become a meaningless document. No doubt sometime between then and now, slavery as practiced then would have ceased, but perhaps it would have been via a process even messier than what actually happened.

Second, and largely independent of the Civil War, it is interesting to look at the technological changes that have taken place since then.

In July 1863, “high tech” had three notable components: the telegraph, rifled muzzleloaders, and the railroad.

Methods to make inexpensive steel (the “Bessemer Process”) were not introduced in the United States until 1865. Aluminum was rare and expensive.

The repeating rifle, using cartridges, came into use only at the very end of the Civil War, and in limited quantities.

The light bulb, telephone, radio, automobile, airplane and many, many other conveniences we take for granted were years and decades away. Even the kerosene lamp was largely a brand-new invention.

The Transcontinental Railroad was four years from completion.

All of the technology introduced in the ensuing 150 years has been a two-edged sword. For many, it has made life easier.

For many others, it has driven them from the workforce.

It was said in 2008, when the Great Recession started, that we could eliminate unemployment instantly by banning farm machinery. So true, but so unworkable.

Yet, it is a statement that dramatically demonstrates some of the problems promulgated by modern technology.

It is not a coincidence that modern experiments in governance, starting with Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” in 1867, paralleled the explosive expansion of technology. We still do not know how to deal with a world where people’s human exertions are not required from dawn to dusk for their mere sustenance.

In fact, one may say the problems of modern society are simply summed up as the existence of excessive idle time.

And this has made us weaker. Our technology has created an artificial world which many assume without thinking is the real world.

There was an article published just a week or so ago that predicted a major Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), delivered by natural or hostile forces, could cause a complete breakdown in the electrical grid from Washington, D.C. to New York City that would last up to two years.

How many people in that corridor have the knowledge or means to survive at even a mere sustenance level for that period of time?

One hundred fifty years ago, this would have not been a problem.

One of the major outcomes for the human psyche to grasp from these 150 years has been change. Many have been willing to experiment with changing the government in order to forestall changes in their own lives.

This is a problem we will cover in a future column.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.