Gaining a Nation, Losing the Republic: 

Reconstruction, 1863-1877

Bradley J. Birzer, Hillsdale College

For Sheldon Richman/The FREEMAN, January 2011

A dead president, carpetbaggers, scalawags, burning crosses, white hoods, an occupied South, Boss Tweed, Thomas Nast cartoons, the New York Democratic machine, and an imprisoned Jefferson Davis give us vivid images of the dozen years following the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s forces at Appomattox in April, 1865.  As every historian knows, often to his chagrin, these twelve years were tumultuous, confusing, and chaotic, especially in hindsight.  The time period, is also, of course, a let down after the tragedies and nobilities of the Civil War years.  Whereas men had clear purpose—no matter what side the person chose—during the war, political compromises and plunder defined Reconstruction.

A period of governmental corruption, monetary instability, gross expansion of political power, the solidification of public schooling, Anglo-Saxon racialist beliefs, manifest destiny, Indian Wars, and extreme violence, Reconstruction witnessed a giant leap toward a cohesive nation-state and far away from the founding vision of a decentralized federal republic.  

Plunder, Not Peace

A mere two months before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him, President Abraham Lincoln met with his two top generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, on the steamship, The River Queen, just outside of Hampton Roads, Virginia.  Though Lincoln would call for “malice toward none” and “charity for all” in his second inaugural, delivered early March of the same year, he offered his fullest plan and desires for what a reconstructed union might look like in a private conversation with Grant and Sherman.  Lincoln, he assured them, wanted nothing more than 

to get the deluded men of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their homes. . . Let them once surrender and reach their homes, [and] they won’t take up arms again. . . . Let them all go, officers and all, I want submission and no more bloodshed. . . I want no one punished; treat them liberally all around.  We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.^[1]

While Lincoln had waged a terribly hard and total war, he also desired the softest peace possible.  Indeed, if one takes Lincoln’s words on The River Queen at face value, the United States of 1865 would look very much like the United States of 1860, with one exception: returning states would need to accept the emancipation of all slaves through the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  His architects of total war, Grant and Sherman, agreed completely with the president.  Neither of Lincoln’s generals knew how much longer the war would last, they explained to him, but they believed the war was rapidly approaching its an end with possibly only one or two major battles left.  They had reached endgame.

            When Booth cut down Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday, two months later, he changed the entire course of American history.  Had Lincoln presided over the peace following the war, one has no reason to doubt, he would have reconciled constitutional relations with, among, and between the former Confederate states, officers, and citizens as quickly as politically possible.  The war, after all, had been viewed by almost all sides as a noble tragedy for the common good of the republic and the vision (no matter how varied) of the American founding fathers.  Men, for the most part, had chosen to fight, and they had chosen to fight, again and again.  Though a draft existed in the North, for example, after the summer of 1863, ninety-four percent of all Union soldiers had volunteered.  As General Joshua Chamberlain, the classicist from Maine’s Bowdoin College, had astutely observed of the surrender ceremonies in April, 1865:

Honor answering honor. . . . [as men] of near blood born, made nearer by blood shed. . . . On our part not a sound or a trumpet more, nor roll of drum; nor a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glory, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding.^[2]

Just outside of Appomattox Courthouse, Robert E. Lee’s former Confederate forces, what remained of the Army of Northern Virginia, walked through two lines of Union soldiers.  The Union soldiers saluted the defeated for hours on end that day. “Reluctantly, with agony of expression,” Chamberlain recorded, the Confederate soldiers

tenderly fold their flags, battle-worn and torn, blood-stained, heart holding colors, and lay them down; some frenziedly rushing from the ranks, kneeling over them, clinging to them, pressing them to their lips with burning tears.^[3]

Such a scene, of course, is a far cry from the militarization and politicization, the martial law and the intrusion of Leviathan that one normally associates with Reconstruction as it actually happened.  Though President Jefferson Davis’s final executive order called for all CSA troops to divide into terrorist cells and launch attacks against civilians and urban areas, Robert E. Lee countermanded the order through deed and word, telling the men to “be good citizens as they had been soldiers.”^[4]

            With Lincoln’s death, though, the war became personal in a way that it had not been during the mass bloodshed of the previous four years.  To many in the country, especially in the North, Lincoln’s death transformed him into a full-fledged American martyr, and his reputation exploded.  Those who took most advantage of this loss and manipulated it to their advantage were the Radicals within the Republican party—Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and Representative George Julian of Indiana, to name a few–men who had despised and resented Lincoln as a spineless moderate, lacking a proper nationalist and vindictive streak.  

The Radicals had attempted nothing less than a Congressional coup against Lincoln in December, 1862, had openly desired a military dictatorship throughout much of the war, and had proposed their own version of Reconstruction as early as 1863.  Their vision of post-war America involved remaking the entirety of the South in their own image, with extensive punishment for all involved.  Just as they had wanted Lincoln to wage an ever increasingly hard war, they wanted a peace imposed by the sword.  Lincoln’s death provided them with a symbol around which to rally Northerners against their southern brethren.  “Within eight hours of his murder Republican Congressmen in secret caucus agreed,” as Lincoln biographer, David Donald explained, “that ‘his death is a godsend to our cause.’”  As the leader of the Radicals, the Ohio Senator Ben Wade, stated, “there will be no more trouble running the government.”^[5]  

Wade and his fellow Radicals would have no small part in nationalizing the United States over the next dozen years. “The New England reformers thought they had struck down evil incarnate when they crushed the Sable Genius of the South; and their horror at the corruption and chaos of the Gilded Age was intensified proportionately as they discovered the extent of their own previous naiveté,” the cultural critic and historian, Russell Kirk wrote.  “They had dreaded an era of Jefferson Davis; but now they were in an era” of the radicals and “of worse.”  The true reformers “awoke to find their fellow-Republicans, the oligarchs of their party, intent upon concrete plunder.”^[6]

And, Leviathan Expands Again

            Not surprisingly, the size of government grew dramatically during the four years of the Civil War.  The Union printed greenbacks, founded the U.S. Secret Service (the second federal police force, the first having been set up after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850) to protect the green fiat money, taxed incomes, promoted university education, built war factories and railroads, raised tariffs, declared—in some places—martial law and suspended freedoms of speech and habeas corpus, used troops to break labor strikes, and encouraged mobs to do what it believed it could not do openly.  In the South, President Jefferson Davis nullified the Confederate constitution almost from day one.  Davis often ignored Congress and his own Vice President, and he used the full power of his office to harass any political opposition.  Most notably, through fraud, Davis shut down the one opposition to develop, the classical liberal “Conservative Party” of North Carolina.  The CSA taxed incomes, excess profits, and licenses, and raised tariffs on imports as well as exports.  Because currency flowed only intermittently throughout the South, the CSA printed an outrageous amount of paper currency and established—to the horror of average southerners—the Tax-In-Kind men, empowered by the government to take whatever livestock, produce, and materiel they deemed necessary for the war effort.  Unlike the North, the South conscripted throughout much of the war, set prices, and enforced loyalty oaths.  The CSA, contrary to popular memory, also rigorously enforced its own laws against the several states making up the Confederacy.

            In terms of institutional history, very few of these laws continued into the period of Reconstruction.  With the collapse of the Confederate government, no confederate laws continued, of course.  With the end of the war, the Union repealed many, if not most, of its war measures.  The legacy and symbolism of such martial laws, however, remained into the Progressive period and beyond.  If Lincoln could centralize the Union and defeat the Confederacy and Slavery, could we not also use the federal government to wage war against poor standards, poverty, immigrants, or whatever thing the individual Progressive might resent?  In this, the memory and influence of Civil War legacy is a powerful one.  Perhaps no figure better represents this than John Wesley Powell, a Union officer who lost his arm in the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, and is often regarded as the father of American progressives.  Tellingly, through the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Bureau of Ethnography, Powell crafted and promoted plans to remake the West (sometimes, physically) through the powers of the federal government.

            Believing the federal government under Lincoln had never gone far enough, the Radicals of Reconstruction expanded the scope and reach of the federal government as quickly as possible.   Not only did the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution nationalize the Bill of Rights, but it also repositioned virtually all federal law as superior to all state and local laws, thus attenuating even further the already difficult balance of federalism.  Most Reconstruction laws began in the Radical-controlled congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction, dominated by Ben Wade.  Most importantly, through the impetus of the Joint Committee, Congress passed a series of haphazard laws establishing martial law over various districts of the South.  The rule of law, such that it was, was enforced through military rather than civilian courts.  Through a series of laws, Congress provided extensive funding for public schooling, welfare (direct aid) for freed slaves, and, sometimes, enforced the property rights of blacks.  None of this should suggest that somehow the Radicals were, as a whole, pro-black.  As the Pulitzer-prize winning historian T.H. Williams once noted, the Radicals “loved the Negro less for himself than as an instrument with which they might fasten Republican political and economic control upon the South.”^[7]  In reality, the Radicals were little better in their promotion of rights, dignity, and liberties blacks than had been the plantation owners of the previous generations.  Each—white men of the North and South—desired to manipulate the black population for their own aggrandizement and profit.  As Robert Higgs has definitively shown in his path-breaking work, Competition and Coercion, American freedmen did exceedingly well in terms of culture, economics, and literacy in the fifty years after emancipation.  But, as Higgs persuasively argues, they did so through their own efforts and despite significant government and societal obstacles. 

Free from competitive counterpressures and strongly equipped to enforce compliance, public officials could discriminate pretty much as their pleasure or caprice might dictate.  Under these circumstances it was a definite blessing for the blacks that the governments of the post-bellum South were still quite limited in the range of functions to which they attended.  Such salvation as the black man found, he found in the private sector.^[8]

By 1910, Higgs shows, one in four blacks owned his own land, two-parent stable families accounted for all black families, and 70% of all blacks were literate.  By any measure, these are impressive gains considering the overwhelming majority of American blacks had never had a choice over any one of these things before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Not surprisingly, given the abusive attitudes white Radicals held toward American blacks, corruption proved endemic to the entire Reconstruction effort. So much money flowed from Congress into the reconstructed South that manipulators and opportunists profited wherever and whenever possible, which was more often than not.  The Reconstruction governments simply had no manpower or will to prevent the corruption.  More often than not, they participated directly in the corruption, using it for political gain.  The famous nineteenth-century Scottish observer of America, James Bryce, recorded his own thoughts on the time period.  “Such a Saturnalia of robbery and jobbery has seldom been seen in any civilized country, and certainly never before under the forms of a free self-government,” he wrote in his The American Commonwealth, comparing the American officials of Reconstruction to Roman provincial governors in the last days of the Republic.  

Greed was unchecked and roguery unabashed. The methods of plunder were numerous. Every branch of administration became wasteful. Public contracts were jobbed, and the profits shared. Extravagant salaries were paid to legislators; extravagant charges allowed for all sorts of work done at the public cost. But perhaps the commonest form of robbery, and that conducted on the largest scale, was for the legislature to direct the issue of bonds in aid of a railroad or other public work, these bonds being then delivered to contractors who sold them, shared the proceeds with the governing ring, and omitted to execute the work. Much money was however taken in an even more direct fashion from the state treasury or from that of the local authority; and as not only the guardians of the public funds, but even, in many cases, the courts of law, were under the control of the thieves, discovery was difficult and redress unattainable. In this way the industrious and property-holding classes saw the burdens of the state increase, with no power of arresting the process.^[9]

While almost all white leftist historians have downplayed or ignored this corruption since the 1960s, they do so at great peril to the dictates of honesty and truth.^[10]

As they had failed to do with Abraham Lincoln in the attempted Congressional coup of December 1862, the Radicals tried to gain control of President Andrew Johnson’s cabinet.  When Johnson violated this law in February of 1868, the House of Representatives impeached the president on a vote of 126-47, following strict party lines.  The failure of the Senate to support the House’s impeachment somewhat attenuated the strength and confidence of the Radicals.  Indeed, though Radical regimes remained in power until 1876, the Radicals never again wielded the same kind of power as they had in the second half of the 1860s.^[11]

The Lingering Agony of Nationalism

            In part, the Radicals also failed because the eighteenth president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, never accepted the fanatical premises upon which Radicalism had developed.^[12]  A moderate Republican at best, Grant resented the post-war bloodthirstiness of the Radicals, few of whom had ever seen battle.  Despite this, Grant was a determined nationalist and, when he was not dealing with the corruption in his own administration, he was promoting “Americanness” wherever possible.  This became most clear in his policy toward the American Indians.  

U.S. Government relations the Indians had never been consistent.  It had gravitated between vicious brutality toward the Indians (as had been the case under Andrew Jackson) to respect and protection of Indian property (such as had been the case under Franklin Pierce).  After the Civil War, under the Johnson and Grant administrations, the U.S. Government waged a fierce war against the American Indians, confiscating their best property, relegating what remained of the tribe to the worst land.  The greatest atrocity committed by the federal government against American Indians came just at the very end of the Reconstruction period.  After a tragic misunderstanding, the military decided to round up, forcibly remove, and detain a sizeable minority of the Nez Perce Indians, a tribe faithfully allied to America since 1805.  When the Nez Perce understandably resisted, the government spared neither time nor expense to defeat them.  As the periodical, The Nation, reported:

How far the Indian insurrection on the Pacific Slope is for the present suppressed is not decided, but it were well, while its lesson is fresh, to realize that the Nez-Perces are not to blame for the expensive and sanguinary campaign, unless being goaded into a brief madness by the direct and endless oppression of our Federal authorities be blameworthy. . . . the neglect and bad faith of the general Government, continued for a quarter of a century, are apparent in the records of Congress.  There was swindling, not in petty matters and by individuals, requiring detection and proof, but on a grand scale by the United States itself.^[13]

 It would be difficult to find a more telling example of government corruption and abuse of power during this period than its directing of the military against a peaceful, allied people, farmers and ranchers who had been occupying the same land—the Palouse and Camas Prairies of the Pacific Northwest—for nearly five hundred years.

Nation-building always and everywhere demands conformity and destruction of local and individual differences.  To overcome such divisions, the nation must create a religious type of myth and fundamental symbols to rally the population, and defend itself with unrelenting force.  The Reconstruction government did all of this without apology, and immigrants (especially Roman Catholics), blacks, and Indians suffered intensely.  “Nationalism in the sense of national greed has supplanted Liberalism,” one of the great classical liberals of the day, E.L. Godkin, noted in hindsight in 1900. “We hear no more of natural rights, but of inferior races, whose part it is to submit to the government of those whom God has made their superiors.”  Americans, Godkin argued, had forsaken the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution.  Further, he wrote, “The great party which boasted that it had secured for the negro the rights of humanity and of citizenship now listens in silence to proclamations of White Supremacy.”^[14]

Men who had fought valiantly on the battlefields of the Civil War must have asked themselves what it all had meant, if anything?

Bradley J. Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and Professor of History, Hillsdale College, Michigan.  He is the author of several books, including his most recent about the American founding, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (ISI Books, 2010).  He dedicates this article—for his friendship and inspiration for over twenty years—to Larry Reed.

^[1] Lincoln’s conversation quoted in Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 68.

^[2] Chamberlain quoted in Nesbitt, ed., Through Blood and Fire: Selected Civil War Papers of Major Joshua Chamberlain (Stackpole Books, 1996), 175.

^[3] Chamberlain quoted in Mark Nesbitt, ed., Through Blood and Fire, 176.

^[4] Jeffrey Hummel, Emancipating Slaves: Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1996), 282; and Robert E. Lee quoted in Bruce Catton, The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, 570.

^[5] David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era, 2^nd ed., enlarged (New York: Vintage, 1956), 4.

^[6] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 1^st ed., (Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1953), pg. 295.

^[7] T.H. Williams quoted in Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered, 105.  The obvious exception to this is Thaddeus Stevens.

^[8] Robert Higgs, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 133.

^[9] James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, with an Introduction by Gary L. McDowell (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995). Vol. 2: 335-336.

^[10] Whether one should emphasize the corruption of the Reconstruction period is an issue hotly debated by historians over the previous century.  While few historians outright dismiss the extent of the corruption, most historians since the 1960s have chosen to see Reconstruction as a failed noble attempt, branding those who focus on the corruption as somehow lacking in idealism.  See especially Kenneth Stampp, “The Tragic Legend of Reconstruction,” the first chapter of his The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 3-23.  Unfortunately, Stampp’s view has become orthodoxy among professional historians.

^[11] James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction 3d ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2001), 572-581.

^[12] The best biography of Grant is Josiah Bunting III, Ulysses S. Grant: The 18^th President, 1869-1877 (Times Books, 2004).

^[13] The Nation (August 2, 1877).

^[14] E.L. Godkin, “The Eclipse of Liberalism,” The Nation (August 9, 1900), 105. 

IZZ just released Real Life is Meeting by John Galgano, check it out here. 

“Doone Records is pleased to release, for the first time digitally, John Galgano’s solo album, Real Life is Meeting.

John Galgano is a founding member of art-rock group, IZZ, and has been one of the band’s primary songwriters and bass player since the band’s inception. Originally released in 2012, Real Life is Meeting presents nine tracks varying in styles and instrumentation, from the catchy, art-pop flavor of “Bigger on the Inside,” to the experimental, synth-based “The Only Thing,” to the bass-driven “Look Around” to the 19-minute piece “1000,” all the while taking the listener in unexpected directions.

Real Life is Meeting showcases Galgano’s humor, his introspective and confessional lyrics, and his surprising song structures. The result is a fluid and naked collection of philosophical musings set to music – meditations on what it means to be human in the 21st century.

Featuring IZZ mates Laura Meade, Brian Coralian, Greg DiMiceli & Paul Bremner. Produced & mixed by Shawn Bishop.”

To order, go here: https://izzmusic.bandcamp.com/album/real-life-is-meeting?from=fanpub_fb

. 

Steve Howe has no idea where the term progressive rock came from, but he makes one thing clear: It certainly didn’t start with him. “I never called us ‘progressive rock’ or ‘prog-rock,’” he says. “As I recall, when I first joined Yes, we all used to call our music different things. 

“There was ‘orchestral rock’ and ‘cinemagraphic rock.’ We never argued about it, but there were a lot of names and terms being tossed about.” So what term did he use to describe Yes’s music? 

Howe laughs. “I often called it ‘soft rock,’” he says. “I thought what I wrote was a sort of soft rock, but the phrase didn’t catch on, at least not with what we were doing. But progressive rock? Where that got started, I don’t know. I think it might have come after the fact.”
— Read on www.guitarplayer.com/players/fragile-at-50-steve-howe-tells-the-story-behind-yess-landmark-album

I loved Tad’s list of great albums of the year.  I’m in agreement with most of them, and I’m proud to be Tad’s friend and ally in this crazy world.  He’s a man of great insight.  

I will admit, I didn’t give as much time to music in 2022 as I normally do.  I was, for better or worse, spending almost all my free time on my own book manuscript, Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of the West (yes, this is a shameless plug!  Please look for it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2023).  Whether such a use of my time was worth it or not, time will tell.  In that book, though, I thank not only Tad, Kevin McCormick, Carl Olson, and Erik Heter of Spirit of Cecilia fame, but I also thank Greg Spawton of Big Big Train, Steve Babb of Glass Hammer, John Galgano and Laura Meade of IZZ, and Andy Tillison of The Tangent (and a few others) for inspiration.  I couldn’t have written what I wrote during 2022 without such inspiration.

I would also note, importantly, that the website Progarchy reached its 10^th anniversary.  Carl, Kevin, Erik, and a few others helped form it in 2012.  I’m very glad it’s thriving, especially under the loving care of Chris, Bryan, and Rick.  I’m no longer a part of Progarchy, but I wish them the best.

When it comes to 2022, let me start with a few non-music releases.  I absolutely loved Kevin J. Anderson’s (and Neil Peart’s) Clockwork Destiny.  Because of my friendship with Kevin, I was blessed and read the book in manuscript form.  I loved every moment of it, and I thought it was the perfect conclusion to the Clockwork trilogy.  Kevin is an amazing writer, and his imagination really knows no bounds.

I also read, with great enjoyment, Steven Wilson’s Limited Edition of One.  I still don’t quite get why he’s not totally satisfied with his community of fans, but the man’s “interestingness”, like Kevin’s imagination, knows no bounds.  Wilson could write an album about the Hillsdale phone book, and I’d be interested.  Remember phone books?  Of course not.  Regardless, Wilson’s Limited Edition of One (deluxe edition) was one of the greatest releases of the year.  I even gave it away as a gift to two of my closest friends.

I also read Rocket 88’s biography of Mark Hollis, A Perfect Silence.  It was detailed and interesting, but not great.  Hollis’s lyrics evoke imagination, but Ben Wardle’s book really just gave the nuts and bolts of the man’s life.  What about his mind?  His soul?  His heart?  He came from the lower class, but what did that mean about his faith and his view of the world?  All of this was missing from this good but flawed work.  It feels more like a reference work than a biography—with all due respect to Wardle, who clearly did his research.  I just wish he’d stretched his biographical imagination.

Though I didn’t spend as much time on music, as I normally do, I did, however, think the world of the following, released this past year:

Tim Bowness, Butterfly Mind.  Holy Moses, folks.  What more do anyone want?  Plaintive lyrics and progressive pop!  Incredible material from a true master.  Thank you, Tim.  What beauty, you’ve provided.

Cosmograf, Heroic Materials.  Admittedly, one of my all-time favorite artists is Robin Armstrong.  The man is one of the greatest audiophiles (next to Steven Wilson) of our era, and everything he produces matters.  This is an excellent release, a fine contribution to the Cosmograf discography.

Oak, The Quiet Rebellion of Compromise.  Ok, exactly does one say?  This is gorgeous music, whatever its genre (and, to be sure, I’m not sure what genre this is).  I loved the band’s second album, and this one seems like an extension of that one.  Glorious lyrics, glorious music.

Galahad, The Last Adventurer.  Stu Nicholson is a master of lyric writing.  Love this man, and his music.  Nothing he writes is unimportant, and in collaboration with Galahad, freaking brilliant.

The Cure, Wish (30^th anniversary edition).  Supposedly, The Cure is about to release an album or two. What does it have to lose?  Everything Robert Smith does is genius, and I’m sure that whatever new the band releases will be genius as well.  Wish, though schizophrenic, is genius as well.  So much prog, and so much pop—all mixed together in one brilliant release.

IZZ, I Move (anniversary edition).  Along with Glass Hammer, IZZ is a favorite American prog band.  Here, we have a re-release of a masterpiece—again, masterful in music as well as lyrics.  Galgano and Meade sing their hearts out. IZZ also released a number of singles this year–all of which grabbed my heart and soul. Because they came as singles and not as a single album, though, they gone generally unremarked upon in the prog community. Please go to Bandcamp and give these beauties a listen.

Tears for Fears, Tipping Point. I’ve never hidden my love of Tears for Fears, probably my favorite pop band. I’ve been a rather diehard fan since first hearing them in 1985. This album is really good, but it’s not great. Had the band employed some proggy elements–especially in terms of song segues, such as they did on Songs from the Big Chair–this might very well have become their best album ever. As it is, Tipping Point feels like another collection of really good songs, but it doesn’t feel like a proper album.

Ultravox, Rage in Eden (40^th edition).  I didn’t come to this album until it was five years old.  Yes, I heard it for the first time, sometime in the fall of 1986.  My great friend (and fellow Spirit of Cecilia writer), Kevin McCormick introduced it to me.  Wilson’s remix must be of the English version rather than the American version, for there’s at least one song missing.  Still, Wilson’s remix is wonderful, and I’m very glad to own this anniversary edition.

Glass Hammer, At the Gate.  What can I write about GH that I’ve not written before?  Everything this band does is important.  And, yet, each release—rather than fading away—becomes better and better.  I love to see such evolution in a band.  If critics identified early Glass Hammer, later ones might confuse the band with Rush.  Yet, what can be said definitively is 1) Glass Hammer honors those it loves; and 2) by doing so, always creates its own unique thing.  This is a superb ending to a recent trilogy.  See, also, Steve Babb’s first novel, the irrepressible Skallagrim – In the Vales Of Pagarna.

Ayreon, Universal Migrator, Parts 1 and 2.  I bought the deluxe (something, I’ve been doing more and more, as I get older) edition, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.  There’s nothing substantially new from the original release, but it’s great to hear what modern technology can do with the spacing of instruments and the flow of the music itself.

Gazpacho, Fireworking at St. Croix. I fell in love with this album on my first listen, and then I went a bit crazy. I bought the blu-ray, fell in love with it, and then I bought the deluxe earbook. It certainly vies as one of my two favorite releases of 2022.

Porcupine Tree, Closure/Continuation. I’m guessing that if I could calculate all the albums I listened to in 2022, this would rank as number one (or, two, given how many times I also listened to Gazpacho (just mentioned). I think it’s a great album, but I would rank it in the middle of Porcupine Tree releases. It’s neat, and it’s wonderful that PT reformed. But, this album, as good as it is, doesn’t come close to the wonders of Fear of a Blank Planet or Sky Moves Sideways.

I also want to note, that I’ve very much enjoyed all of Roine Stolt’s remixing and systematic reissuing of albums of The Flower Kings throughout 2022.  The latest—which just arrived and which has made me very happy) is the remix of Unfold the Future.  I hope that Stolt has a chance to reissue the whole catalogue.

I would also like to note, I’ve really not had time to check out Dave Kerzner’s The Traveler, Shearwater’s The Great Awakening, or The Tangent’s Songs from the Hard Shoulder. I very much look forward to doing so.

Finally, I must also note that in 2022, I had a front-row seat to the making of Promises of Hope by the Bardic Depths. I never cease to be amazed by the creativity and imagination of Dave Bandana. So wonderful to see that man make brilliant things.

Here’s to a great and glorious and proggy 2023!

P.S. I want to thank, especially, Burning Shed and Bandwagon USA for feeding my prog habit!

Hi Everyone,

We know that it’s not been long since the last news update, thus we could be likened to buses (Galabus anyone!?) i.e. nothing for a long while and then a couple in quick succession!

Firstly, we would just like to thank everyone who has supported and shown so much faith in us by purchasing, downloading or streaming our new album. It means so much as it helps to keep us motivated to keep writing, recording and hopefully performing again at some point, once Spencer, our wonderful drummer, has fully recovered from the return of his brain cancer, for which he has had to endure two long rounds of chemo therapy in the last couple of years. Hence why the lack of live activity as a full band on our part.

On a very positive note though, our new album ‘The Last Great Adventurer’ does which seem to be going down very well in ‘prog’ circles and beyond and has garnered some very positive reviews and responses for which we are very thankful. 

Obviously, we’d like to keep up the momentum for as long as we can by trying to increase and maintain a higher profile which isn’t that easy for a smaller band like us with limited financial and marketing resources and no back up from a large record company as such. In fact, after 37 years on the ‘scene’ as it were there a still many prog/music fans who don’t appear to have heard of us at all!!

However, although as a rule we are not really bothered about band polls as such….BUT…because of the timing and the fact that we do have a new album out there we would be incredibly grateful if you were to support us just a little bit more by voting in this year’s annual PROG Magazine readers poll, which means even more as it is voted for by actual fans. This would no doubt help to increase awareness of the band as PROG Magazine is easily the highest profile publication covering our type of music in the UK and maybe even Europe. 

It would be good to give some of the ‘big guns’ of prog a run for their money for a change.

Obviously, it’s up to everyone to decide whether to vote or not and who to vote for if they do but it would be appreciated very, very, very much by the band if you were to vote for us. 

Choices/votes can be sent by email using the subject header ‘Readers’ Poll 2022′ to: prog@futurenet.com. Last day for voting is 28 November.

Thank you so much in advance to those who will support us in this way and please spread the word if you can and feel so inclined.   

LOUDERSOUND.COM

Vote In The Prog Magazine Readers’ Poll 2022

It’s time for Prog readers to tell us what progged their word in 2022!

We also have just a couple of other news items:

ANOTHER NEW STUDIO ALBUM

Karl Groom will shortly commence mixing our next studio album which is provisionally titled  ‘The Long Goodbye’. This was recorded during the same sessions as ’The Last Great Adventurer’ and should be released later in 2023. 

‘THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURER’ LPs

Work is on-going to finalise the LP versions of the new album. We understand from Oskar/Music Mart in Poland that there will be three vinyl versions of this album available, one standard black version plus two limited edition colour versions.

More details will follow on the above as soon as we know, so please keep your eyes peeled on our official band website as well our Facebook page.

I thank that is all for now…..apart from mentioning that we’ve included an MP3 above of a little something that Dean and Stu have put together. J

KIND REGARDS, STAY SAFE AND KEEP (PROG) ROCKIN’

GALAHAD

www.galahadonline.com

The role conscious deception (noble lying) plays in public-health messaging needs to be assessed, because it inspired backlash instead of results.
— Read on www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/a-pandemic-amnesty-hell-no/