The tour guides at Lincoln’s hut village, the tomb and his family house were great. The stories they told were not at all political, and I appreciated that. For instance, we found out that Lincoln bought his small sons a toy that, adjusted for inflation and cost of living, would cost $900 today. A 19th-century iPad of sorts! It was a contraption to project images, so the analogy works.
Also, Lincoln’s wife Mary cooked on an open fire for years. Only a year before Lincoln became president did they get a stove. I have no idea what you can cook on an open fire beyond soup.
The only tour guide I didn’t like was at the Old State Capitol. She was obsessed with slavery. Didn’t want to talk about anything else, boring everybody to tears. We also had slavery where I’m from, and nobody cares on the least. I don’t see the gain from turning it into a sacred cult object.
Clarissa's Blog 
“I have no idea what you can cook on an open fire beyond soup.”
Kid, somebody with cast iron equipment over a heavy set of coals and ash can cook things far beyond soup. Most shore lunches are based around fresh caught fish, often fillets of Walleye(Pickerel) or whole Mountain Whitefish. And I am pretty certain you would be as happy as a clam ;-D
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I suppose the obsession with slavery which, as you rightly point out, has now turned into a veritable cult with its attendant liturgies, has to do with racial fetishism, by Euro-Americans as well as Blacks.
If the slaves in the US had been poor Whites, no American would care in the least today, let alone talk of reparations.
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This is why you never hear about indentured servitude, which is how an awful lot of the early white people got here.
ethyl
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Soup, stew, beans, meat, eggs, bread…
There were a lot of specialized cast-iron implements for the purpose, dutch ovens, trivets, skillets with legs, and long-handled hooks and spoons.
You mostly cook over a bed of hot coals, rather than open flame.
ethyl
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Re: Cooking over an open fire
Check out the YouTube channel, Early American, on life 200 years ago on the frontier
The system won’t let me log in, I am Raymond R
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Slightly off-topic: While waiting for your next installment of the worthwhile American novel, could you, please, recommend any book(s) about American history? There are so many partisan, poorly written slogs, that it’s hard to find the ones that are objective, non-partisan, and well-written ones. It could be a book (or books) about American history in general, about a particular period in American history, and/or a biography about an important political figure. Maybe your readers can offer suggestions as well.
Thank you.
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Done!
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Thank you so much!
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I was educated with the standard-issue slavery narrative like everybody else. All slavery is all evil all the time, no exceptions.
It was a bit of a shock to find myself, in middle age, way more ambivalent on the subject than I ever expected to be. It turns out that’s one more quaint luxury belief that is fine for affluent societies where everybody has access to a free education and nobody goes hungry for lack of money (yes, people still go hungry, here it’s mostly because their parents are addicts).
Now, any discussion of slavery… I’m not getting involved until everybody defines their terms. Which slavery? When? Where? Who? Why?
How do we define slavery? Is it buying and selling of persons? Compelled labor without pay? All compelled labor? Any job you are not allowed to quit?
There is… way more gray area in there than my textbooks ever mentioned. And dang it was a much easier topic to have clear, comfortable, righteous opinions on before I knew any of that.
ethyl
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Where I’m from, we did many things wrong and messed up royally a lot. But what we did right is not getting hung up on serfdom. It’s taught in schools, everybody knows about it but try bringing it up as a topic if conversation, and it will be weird. In the US, on the other hand, it’s obsessive. The only analogy that I know of is the Spanish obsession with the civil war which at least is more recent. But even that should be laid to rest already.
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Yes, but also: it’s a weirdly squishy term. To Americans, it means chattel slavery such as we had in the US before the Civil War. There are… lots of other things that may or may not qualify.
Are people in the military slaves because they can’t quit until their contract is up?
Are people drafted into the military slaves because their labor is compelled?
If you are required to say certain things to avoid being arrested or blacklisted from jobs, are you a slave?
Are people who work jobs in prison slaves?
Is purchasing a child to order through surrogacy slavery?
Is purchasing a child for adoption slavery?
Is indentured servitude slavery?
Is compelling someone to work for a company for a certain length of time by offering an upfront “relocation bonus” that they will have to pay back if they quit before their contract is up slavery?
If you gamble away your teenage daughter in a poker match, is that slavery?
If a poor family sells their children to a wealthy family for domestic servitude (informal adoption: still common in some places) in order to save them from starvation, is this slavery?
And for any of these things, there is also the question: is this always and everywhere wrong?
And… it’s a lot more complicated than my elementary civics books would have it.
ethyl
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