A Personal Request
Posted by Ginny on March 9th, 2006 (All posts by Ginny)
I’ve never been much interested in military history nor in the Civil War. (My relatives fought, I believe, on both sides, but - and this is telling - I’m not even sure about that.)
Still I love mid-nineteenth century lit. So, here I am - trying to pick the quite excellent and well-stocked brains of my co-Chicagoboyz and our knowledgeable commenters.
Clearly I have some really big holes in my knowledge. My impression (and something I always make a point of when teaching Frederick Douglass) is the splits in so many of the major Protestant denominations came from beliefs about slavery. (I’m sure economics & politics entered, as well, but to ignore the polarizing issue of slavery is to ignore the voices in the literature we read.)
I’d thought the church in the south found reasons to defend slavery, while the core of the Abolitionist movement came out of the Northern Protestant churches. I’m curious: am I wrong or have I been miseducating students? What are some good treatments of the role of religion in both the Civil War itself and the movements that led up to it?
My students have taken to politely observing that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, that the motives were political. This isn’t what the voices of Thoreau or Douglass would say, of course. I’ll accept there’s some truth to what they say, but my suspicion is that there isn’t as much as they would like to think. For instance, they are quite willing to see the Southern churches as hypocritical, but less willing to believe the Northern church’s role in the Abolitionist movement. Cynicism sounds more truthful when we are 18 or 20 than it does when we’ve seen a bit more of the world.
People’s motives are always a mixed bag, but it is best not to simplify them too much. When they approvingly quote their anthro teacher who argues that all of history is one group having something and another group wanting it and so wrenching it from them, I figure they are ignoring much that has compelled man to act. We are covetous, but we’re also complicated.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Ginny: Two essential books are Kevin Phillips’ The Cousins’ Wars and Freehling’s Road to Disunion. (The cites and a thumbnail summary are in the biblio to The Anglosphere Challenge which is on line at the URL above.) Of course it was about slavery. Slavery wasn’t a political issue? Duh!
On that particular question also see Jay Winik’s April 1865 and Freehling’s The South vs. The South, and in particular the discussion in both books about Confederate General Patrick Cleburne and his proposal to arm black troops for the Confederacy, which he realized would mean the end of slavery in the South as the price of independence. This proposal (which was secret for a long time) is fascinating because it split the Southern nationalists (who were willing to abolish slavery if that was the price of Southern independence) from the people who were fighting primarily to keep their slaves.
March 10th, 2006 at 8:07 am
“My students have taken to politely observing that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, that the motives were political.”
Odd isn’t it of the timing of the 13th and 14th Amendments? Odd too that for reestablishment of full representation after the rebellion that states were required to ratify it. [side note - since Kentucky never claimed succession, they didn't get around to ratification till the last decade, with much embarrassment.] Not just loyalty oaths were required, but ratification of two permanent changes to Constitution.
Its along the same rational that Posse Comitatus protects civil rights. In fact the Act removed the federal troops from the polls in the post war South resulting the loss of basic civil rights of hundreds of thousand and ultimately millions of blacks for nearly a hundred years.
March 10th, 2006 at 8:45 am
The problem with Civil War history is that there is so much of it, and so much of it is of good quality.
If I had to pick one book to get started, I would highly recommend James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. It covers the political as well as the military dimensions, it is thorough, it is well-written and it has an excellent bibliography to pursue matters in greater detail.
To get a feel for Northern attitudes to the war, the conduct of the war, and the war-weariness that led to early termination of Reconstruction, in effect abandoning the southern blacks, Jean Edward Smith’s superb biography of U.S. Grant is very good.
A book which I have sitting here but I have not yet read is Alan Guelzo’s The Emancipation Proclamation. This book addresses the cynical view of Lincoln’s actions — making the point that Lincoln was constrained by legal and military practicalities, and that he did as much as he could given the public’s mixed views on the issue. You might want to look at this so you can better confront your students with the reality of leaders who have to actually do things and try to make their policies work, as opposed to sitting in moral superiority from a chair in a classroom. Lincoln to his credit, thought like a lawyer, and he wanted to enact something that would be enforceable, and master of rhetoric that he was, he also knew when to employ dry, cold legal language. He used the language appropriate to get done what he wanted to get done. Review here
(Walter Russell Mead reviewed this book recently, which I had an itch to buy.)
I concur in Jim’s recommendation of The Cousins’ War, which is a brilliant though idiosyncratic book. Note that it is much broader in scope than just the Civil War. I have not yet read the Freehling books, or the Winik book.
Your basis understanding as set forth here is correct in general. Of course the war was about slavery. It was a timebomb that had been threatening to go off for decades. The people of that time were not cynical. They believed in their principles and killed and died for them. That in itself is hard for modern people to understand.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (20th Massachusetts, wounded three times) put it very well:
March 10th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Ginny,
Unfortunately, history has shown that religions tend to rationalize theology to justify the economic and political beliefs of their adherents. I think your observation that northern churches tended towards abolition and southern churches justified slavery is largely correct. More diversity existed earlier in the 1800’s but by the 1850 the lines where fairly well drawn.
I think that people do forget that up to the point the actual shooting started, abolition was a cost-free moral position for northerners to take. They would be materially unaffected either way. Southerners contemplating abolition had to face the restructuring of their entire social, political and economic order. Abolition for the vast majority of northerners was a cheap and easy route to moral elevation. (I think one of John Callhoun’s(sp?) famous pre-war speeches touched on that.)
Your students belief that the war was largely an economic/politica issue probably reflects the way the history of the war is taught in the south. When I was in college, conversations with other students educated in other parts of the country led me to investigate the textbooks used in various states. In the south, the economic and state’s rights aspects of the war are played up and the role of slavery played down. In the North, the war is presented largely as a moral crusade to abolish slavery and the economic and constitutional issues are played down.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Excellent information above, to which I can only add:
If slavery wasn’t the issue, why did all the Secession Resolutions mention it?
Having said that, there is a distinction to be drawn between the interests of the plantation owners and those of the Confederate rank and file, few of whom were slaveowners — thus the expression “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
My understanding is that Abolitionism was considered to be a fringe movement. One thing to check is the date that the mainline denominations fissioned. If it was before the election of 1860, it seems more likely that Abolitionists were directly responsible.
Great stuff from Lex, as usual, so I offer the following with no unduly critical intent: In our time, we are learning the limits of the sentiment expressed in “… we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief.” I don’t respect the shaheed.
An instructive contrast may be drawn between the respective roles of the church in the US and Brazil in abolishing slavery. My understanding is that the Catholic hierarchy in Brazil more or less said “game over,” and that was it. American Protestantism was too democratic for such a thing to be done here.
Finally, a shameless plug regarding Ginny’s: “Cynicism sounds more truthful when we are 18 or 20 than it does when we’ve seen a bit more of the world.” Ah, the progression of situational citizenship …
March 10th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Saying that the Civil War was about more than slavery is perfectly accurate. However, saying that the Civil War was not about slavery at all is an attempt to rewrite history. The Civil War was about many things but all of those issues turned on the axle of the issue of slavery.
Remember what the primary cause of the Civil War was the succession of Southern states due to the election of Lincoln. They did not do so out of some idea that Lincoln was some states’ rights buster but out of the fear that he was an abolitionist.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Here is what Lincoln had to say about the cause of the Civil War, in his Second Inaugural Address:
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
==========================
The burden of proof on those who would disagree is heavy.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Some blog that I visit linked to an analysis of Lincoln’s 1858 speech, in which the author argued that Lincoln effectively politically isolated Douglas, which somehow insured war. I don’t remember the details, but that guy thinks it’s the most important speech in American history. I’ll post the link if I find it, but I’m sure any political analysis of the Civil War must include that speech.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Ginny - You might also want to look at the first volume of an earlier popular history, Bruce Catton’s “The Coming Fury”.
To summarize very briefly, Catton says that Southern pro-slavery extremists blocked the nomination of Democrat Steven Douglas, demanded a pro-slavery platform, and divided the Democratic party. (One faction then nominated Douglas, the other, Breckinridge) The result was the election of Lincoln and the secession of most slave states — as extremists such as South Carolina’s William Yancey intended.
When South Carolina seceded, they cited as their principle grievance attacks on the institution of slavery, and they issued a call to all “Slave-holding States” to join them.
People have denied that slavery was the principle issue in the Civil War for two reasons, to make the South look better, and to make the United States look worse. But anyone who reads what most in the North and South said at the time can have no doubt that slavery was the main reason for the conflict.
If I were you, I would find those South Carolina statements and share them with your students, along with what Lincoln said in his second inaugural.
Here’s an Amazon link to the Catton history, which has recently been re-released in a paperback edition:
(Douglas’s great crime, from the point of view of the pro-slavery extremists, was that he believed in “popular sovereignty”, the right of the people of a state to decide not to have slavery.
It is quite likely that many Southern soldiers did not fight to preserve slavery, but to, as they saw it, defend their homes.)
March 10th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
The single best book on the civil war is Fletcher Pratt’s “Short History of the Civil War”; originally titled “Ordeal by Fire” in 1935. Modern scholarship shows some errors in the details, but check out the reviews at Amazon:
Bruce Catton could spend two pages describing a muddy campaign, and you will come away knowing it was muddy and what a logistical problem that was. Shelby Foote could spend a chapter on a muddy campaign and you will come away knowing it was muddy and how much the troops complained about it and maybe a funny incident or two. Fletcher Pratt could spend a paragraph or two on that campaign, and when done you’ll notice your legs hurt. Why? Because you didn’t want to get mud on your couch.
March 10th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
“Principal”, not “principle”. I usually get that one right.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
One of the resons I recommended Phillips was his detailed analysis of the partisan politics and social divisions of the US in the decades before the War, including the fascinating story of exactly how the Liberty Party (pure abolitionists) grew into the Free Soil party (a coalition with people merly opposed to the extension of slavery into the West, for many different reasons) and then combined with some of the remnants of the Whigs to for the Republican party. The story of how churches and other arms of civil society divided in the decade before the War addresses your questions directly.
The Abolitionists may have been a fringe element before 1850, but they rapidly gained more influence as events accelerated.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
It’s a modern liberal lie that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. Liberals want to make all Americans evil, when in fact the North sacrificed much in order to win freedom for the slaves.
I have been reading the book Twenty Years of Congress by James Blaine, which is about the political history of time before, during, and after the Civil War. James Blaine lived through it as a member of Congress and as the Speaker of the House, and he says the war was about slavery.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I am nit-picking here but as somebody from the other side of the Pond (who, nevertheless, has studied and read American history) I have always thought that what the Southern states wanted was secession. Yet several of the comments mention succession. Succession to what?
March 10th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Succession to superior spell-checkers. Secession was meant.
March 10th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Ginny,
One other thing about religion and the civil war. In the north, the desire to preserve the union was a far stronger incentive to fight the war than was abolition and that desire had strong religious roots. Many believed that America had a divinely granted imperative to be moral beacon for all mankind. It was therefor imperative that America survive intact. This belief was probably the most import for its practical impact on the course of the war.
March 10th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I’m sure there is good reason for their reticence, so you will not find much historical information from the churches themselves about the splits, most of which took place in the 1840’s. Here is a short account. Here is a more particular account of the Baptists, which notes that there were regional differences long before the 1845 split. Here is an original source, a Biblical “justification” of slavery. That same collection has many other manuscripts and publications from the period.
March 10th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Dear Ginny,
For the sheer pleasure of reading first-person accounts, I would recommend:
“Mary Chesnut’s Civil War”, edited by C. Vann Woodward, and
“The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan” edited by Charles East.
Mary Chesnut was married to a high-ranking member of the Confederate government which gives her diary some special added insight to the times, however, Sarah Morgan’s diary, begun when she was a mere teenager in Baton Rouge, has charm beyond belief.
Lesley
March 10th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Thanks to everybody - and to anyone who comes along later. You all have been very helpful - and shown why we must have some of the most generous commenters as well as bloggers on our site.
I can see my Amazon bill is going to enlarge & probably won’t be able to get to much before May. The only one of all those mentioned I’d read was Winik’s - which I really enjoyed but didn’t have enough context. Now, I will go back to it with a better focus.
The 1858 speech is I suspect the “House Divided” one. My impression: while Lincoln said that if the union could be kept together with slavery in the south, he would favor that. Clearly in his 2nd Inaugural he shows his passion was partially impelled by the reasons Shannon gives. But this speech argues that a house divided cannot long stand; it certainly implies a nation half slave & half free could not remain split on such an important issue.
I want to apply myself to at least some fo these works because they sound like they would help with other literary figures as well. For instance, Jim Bennett’s description of the party division might help me better understand William Cullen Bryant.
And, of course, the holes in my education argue
against specialization in a liberal arts education. How are we to understand these writers without understanding the context of their times, the newspapers they edited (and the audiences for them)? Only at the end of my own graduate classwork, as I was taking required Am Civ courses - I had tons of lit but nothing from other departments - did I begin to see how partial was the perspective I’d always taken on lit works.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Ginny,
Had the average preachers began their careers in the south (where slavery was an economic factor) rather than the north (where slavery was not a factor), then they would not have taken an abolishinists stand.
I know Lex and others disagree but the insistence upon union and consequent southern invasion to force union upon southern stataes was the act of a tyrancial (Lincoln-led) government.
The reason this is so relates to the process by which the constitution was ratified by the states 80 or so years earlier. If the constitution had contained a clause agreeing to a permanent union it would never have been adopted. Such language was actively argued for but was a stumbling block to ratification. A clause requiring a permanent arangement was not included in order to gain acceptance by the states.
So, the justification for the civil war was not a matter of the rule of law (and was contrary to American tradition) but a matter of the rule and desire of (Northern) men. It seems to me the “tyranical” appelation with respect to Lincoln in this regard (even though he agonized over it) is a just one.
BTW, Lincoln and company may have made the country great by preserving the union, but let’s call it (the northeren insistence upon union) what it was.
BTW#2 (I don’t want to dis Abe to much, but) Do you all think that, throughout the world, the bigger the statue errected, the more questionable the actions of the “model” are? Think Stalin, Saddam Husein,….
March 10th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
The only appropriate response from me is probably gratitude to all. And modesty - having already revealed by woeful lack of knowledge about American history in general & Civil War history in particular.
Nonetheless, Tyouth, I’m curious about your attitude toward slavery. That big elephant sat in the middle of the South’s living room. They developed an elaborate and chivalric code, but ignored that elephant. You can’t really pretend that it wasn’t important.
This reminds me of a woman I knew who looked at a poster I had up at my business. She said it was remarkable but, of course, the painting was so much more so. Then she said, ah, but I wouldn’t put up a poster from an exhibition I hadn’t seen. Such niceness might be that of a Henry James heroine, except at that point she was living with another woman’s husband.
Such disproportionality seems more like a psychological condition than a real take on history: I suspect that many a tyrant’s oppressed citizens would be happy to live in Lincoln’s America, which may have limited press & speech freedoms, but still allowed a remarkable level of criticism. McClellan would not have kept his head in either the government of Stalin or that of Saddam Hussein. Many a tyrant’s oppressed citizens would be surprised to see a free election conducted in the middle of a civil war. (You notice, Lincoln did not get 99% of the vote.) To compare Lincoln to Stalin & Saddam Hussein seems, well, over the top.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
If you want a really detailed discussion of the issues, and are willing to make the effort to wade through all the inter-relationships between political philosophies, theologies, foundational documents of the republic, and competing ideologies, see Harry Jaffa’s “Crisis of the House Divided,” and “A New Birth of Freedom.”
I also recommend Eric Foner’s “Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War,” which covers, for example, the tension between evangelical, revivalist Protestantism and abolitionism and its effect on the New York anti-abolition riots of 1834.
Finally, for an interesting look at how unrelated political agendas can be combined into a platform, see Tyler Anbinder’s “Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings & the Politics of the 1850’s.” Want to know what anti-Catholicism, alcohol prohibition, abolition, and anti-immigration have to do with each other? Just ask a Know Nothing.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
There were very few democracies in the world at the time. A lot of people believed that American democracy was a precious thing, that it was the mainstay of our liberty, that it was the treasure bought with the blood of the Revolutionary generation, and that much of the rest of the world was hoping that our free and democratic country would fail. They knew that a divided country would lead to both sections being preyed upon by foreign powers and a permanent state of warfare or at best armed truce between the sections — in other words the replication of European power politics here on our continent, something the Founders warned against. There were lots of reasons to be horrified at the prospect of secession.
The question of the supposed legality of secession is largely trumped up. The Constitution did not contemplate the unilateral withdrawal of any state from the Union. The legalistic arguments made by the Southerners on this point are not convincing. They wanted out, and they cooked up rationalizing arguments. .
The South lost an election and instead of accepting the outcome and working with it, started a war and began killing people. That is the antithesis of democracy, which requires the discipline to work within a system of law and accept results you don’t like. Taking up arms against the constitutionally legitimate government of the USA was considered an outrage by many in the North who would otherwise have tolerated slavery going on.
Tyouth has left many good comments but he has a blind spot as to Lincoln. The idea that Lincoln was like Stalin or Saddam is preposterous. Many libertarians detest Lincoln because they see the victory of the North as the victory of “government”. This is a blinkered and childish view of the situation. Read the history and make your own conclusions.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:10 am
Thanks Lex, it is always nice to keep in mind how fragile these people thought democracy was (Europe keeps seeing us as young, but frankly we’re the showcase for democracy - it is here that it has lasted).
Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech is in some ways in a direct line from Winthrop’s “On Christian Charity.” Both argue that the value (the Puritan interpretation of Christianity in the first and “government of the people, by the people & for the people” in the second) is bigger than the people whose responsibility it is to show the truth & beauty of that value by their actions in this world (being bound by the ligaments of love in the one case and demonstrating that the union will hold and such a government does work in the latter). If they fail, their failure with mean in the first case that their God will not be honored and in the second that their form of government will not be replicated. This is bigger than them - bigger, indeed, than the failure of a colony or the loss of a war.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:15 am
As to book recommendations, I think anyone who has to deal a lot with the Civil War, e.g. someone who teaches American literature, would benefit from the magisterial Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. The treasure trove of documents alone, e.g. Lincoln’s 1858 speech, the Dred Scott decision, and all the Ordinances of Secession, justifies the price of the volume.
I think Robin Goodfellow has it exactly right: “The Civil War was about many things but all of those issues turned on the axle of the issue of slavery.” Many issues divided the North and the South – the powers of the Federal Government vis a vis the States, conflicts about tariffs, a foreign policy that favored manufacturing or agriculture. The reason, however, that, in the end, these divisions could not be bridged was the division over slavery. Slavery was, to use another analogy, the linchpin that held together the various disputes between the North and South and what made them irresolvable.
I also think, however, that Jim Miller has it exactly right: “It is quite likely that many Southern soldiers did not fight to preserve slavery, but to, as they saw it, defend their homes.” The first round of secessions took place in December, 1860 and January, 1861. It was the election of Lincoln that led these states to bolt. It was not, however, until after Lincoln’s April 15, 1861 proclamation calling for volunteers and making it clear he was going to preserve the Union by force that the rest of the South, including Virginia, seceded. I believe the ordinary Southern soldier fought, not in support of slavery, but because the North had invaded the South. Many Southerners, certainly small and middle sized Southern farmers (think of Jimmy Stewart’s character in SHENANDOAH) hated slavery, but what they hated even more was those damnyankees invading the South to maintain the Union by force. Almost all Southerners really did see their liberty threatened by a Federal government run amok.
I think, therefore, we can best over simplify matters thus: Slavery ultimately led to secession, and Lincoln’s decision to preserve the Union by force led to war. Of course, secession eventually would have led to war anyway because, even if Lincoln had let the South go in peace, sooner or later, the USA and CSA would have come into armed conflict over, among other things, the Western territories. Thus, in the final analysis slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:07 am
” Secession ” mea culpa.
It’s easy in the popular history to start the events with the states’ declarations or the firing on Fort Sumter. However, to understand the events leading to these actions, I’d say that the war was fired by the actions which unfolded in ‘Bleeding Kansas’ years before. It was the pre-Civil War. It demonstrates what the ruckus was all about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
Now, just for fun and color [flavor not pure historical accuracy], dig out a copy of the movie “Santa Fe Trail”.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
“Many Southerners, certainly small and middle sized Southern farmers (think of Jimmy Stewart’s character in SHENANDOAH) hated slavery, but what they hated even more was those damnyankees invading the South to maintain the Union by force. Almost all Southerners really did see their liberty threatened by a Federal government run amok.”
This is a common interpretation, but I’ve never seen the evidence to support it. Southern states were more than happy to have the national government impose gag rules in Congress, prohibit abolitionist literature being sent through the US mails, enforce the fugative slave laws, and impose tarrifs favorable to southern interests. They only objected to federal authority when it was not used to actively support their interests. They were happy to have federal troops (US Marines to be precise) from Washington City enter Virginia to capture and hang John Brown for inciting servile insurrection. For some reason they were less supportive of US troops preventing Missouri Bushwackers from assaulting anti-slavery voters in Kansas.
They weren’t feeling threatened by a federal government run amok, they were feeling threatened because the federal government wasn’t beating the snot out of the abolitionist like they thought it should. They split the Democratic Party and rejected Steven Douglas’s principle of popular sovereignty because they did not believe that it should be legal for states to prohibit slavery. They likewise rejected the right of Utah to make polygamy legal within that state and expected the federal government to reject the Utah state constitution on those grounds despite the fact that the US Constitution is absolutely silent on the matter. Those are not positions based on any concept of state rights. They agreed with Chief Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott that negros have no rights under the Constition and that no state should be allowed to give them US citizenship despite the fact that that was not the matter before the court. They supported judicial activism by the Taney court when it favored them, and rejected it when it did not.
Further more, I’ve seen virtually no evidence to support the claim that the average southern soldier did not actively support slavery. Arguments based on slave ownership ignore the fact that many southern farmers, even the fairly large class of subsistence farms (who, by the way, virtually disappeared after the war) used slaves they did not own. They would rent or borrow them, just like we rent and borrow cars today. And not owning a car does not mean you don’t aspire to own one someday. And it also doesn’t mean you don’t see the value in someone else owning them and don’t support the taxes used to maintain roads and bridges.
For example, several years ago I got an opportunity to go through the spindle records of a general store in Richmond during the Civil War that are currently in the collection of the Library of Virginia in Richmond. As orders were processed in the store they would be stuck on a spike attached to the clerks desk. When the spindle filled up, they were pulled off and stored in a box. By chance, about 3 years of orders from one store survive. I was doing research into Civil War textiles and got permission to photograph the collection because many of the orders included an attached fabric sample. If someone wanted some fabric from the store but didn’t have time to visit the shop in person, they would write a note describing what they wanted (often attaching a sample to match) and send it with a “boy” to the store. The store would make up the order and either send it back with the “boy” that brought the order, or have it delivered by the store’s “boy.” The references on the notes to “boys” are ubiquitous. If you didn’t have a “boy” to send, you would ask your friend across the street if her “boy” could run an errand for you.
There were 4.5 million slaves in the south. They were everywhere. Everyone saw them. Everyone used them. They weren’t just on the plantations, they were in the railroad stations, and the blacksmiths shops, and in the grist mills, and on the river boats, and in the kitchens and laundries and bedrooms. If you grew up in the south, you couldn’t image the world without slaves regardless of whether you owned one or not.
The only big area in the south were there weren’t many slaves was in the Appalachians. Northwestern Georgia and South Carolina, western North Carolina, western Virgina and Maryland, eastern Kentucky and Tennesee were largely white — and largely Unionist.
Another thing many accounts ignore is that the military mobilization of the south occurred before secession. The main military force in the ante-bellum US were the state militias, not the regular army. Southern state militias exploded in the year preceding the war. The Charleston Zouave Cadets fired the first shots of the war and they were a South Carolina state militia company organized in the summer of 1860. What the Confederate government did after secession was to convert these local organizations into the national field armies with which we are familiar, but the sword was already drawn before Lincoln was inaugurated. Look at the photographs of the Richmond Grays (a Virginia State militia company) at John Brown’s execution and then look up how many of those men later served in the Army of Northern Virginia.
What you see in border states seceeding after Lincoln calls up the militia is the effect of a small number of swing voters. In March of 1861 Virginia is divided 49% for secession and 51% for union and the governor is actively working to avoid a convention on secession. Lincoln mobilizes the militia and 2% of the voters switch from being unionists to being secessionist. That is not the same thing as 51% of the voters becoming secessionists because Lincoln calls up the militia. And what really happens is that Virginia divides east/west. The west is pro-union and the east is pro-secession and the swing voters are all in Richmond. Of course it is not possible to know these kind of numbers with any certainty, but the point remains that a change in a state’s position on secession does not necessarily indicate a major shift in voter sentiment.
None of this is to say that the same things weren’t happening in the north. Northerns were just as happy to applaud SCOTUS decisions favoring them and condemn those they opposed. Most abolitionists were not in favor of negro voting rights and very few of them supported repeal of the laws against inter-racial marriages. Many people objected to slavery not because of sympathy for the slaves, but because they felt the “slavocracy” wielded inordinate power in the federal government. The 3/5ths representation in the constitution certainly supported this belief. And there were regional divisions as well. New York City was very supportive of secessionists, whereas the old North West Territories of the 1787 act, where especially hostile to it.
All the letters and all the speeches and all the pamphlets I’ve seen show that the southerns were very much aware of what they were fighting for, and that was explicitly a culture based on negro slavery. Everything else was an explanation of why that culture was worth fighting for, or why some particular event was threatening it. I haven’t seen a single letter from a soldier saying, “I hate slavery, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some Yankee set foot in my state.” I’ve seen lots that say the second part, but they never include the first part. There may be some out there, but it’s not many. I’ve also seen lots of letters from Union soldiers that say, “I hate N*****s, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let some Reb break up my country.”
After the war, with the benefit of perfect hindsight, many veterans change their tunes. Take Oliver Wendell Holmes conciliatory speeches on Decoration Day with a grain of salt. He might not have been so respectful of his opponents back when he hadn’t slept in 3 days, was up to his knees in mud, and his best friend had bled to death in his arms the day before.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
I offer a hearty “bravo” to Paul K’s comment.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Paul K writes: “Another thing many accounts ignore is that the military mobilization of the south occurred before secession. The main military force in the ante-bellum US were the state militias, not the regular army. Southern state militias exploded in the year preceding the war. The Charleston Zouave Cadets fired the first shots of the war and they were a South Carolina state militia company organized in the summer of 1860. What the Confederate government did after secession was to convert these local organizations into the national field armies with which we are familiar, but the sword was already drawn before Lincoln was inaugurated.”
All of this is certainly true. It was clear that, if Lincoln won, much of the South would secede. (Perhaps they would have seceded anyway.) Since much of the South had already set sail for the shores of secession, they had to prepare for war, if the Union President, whoever he was, decided to fight to save the Union. Also, Fort Sumner was in Charleston Harbor. It was only natural that South Carolina would want to remove what it held to be the outpost of a foreign regime. Had Lincoln decided not to save the Union by force (a decision that I believe would have been one of most tragically wrong decisions in all of history), there would have been no Civil War as we know it (though, as I indicated before, some sort of armed conflict between the USA and CSA would have happened eventually).
It’s one thing to say that most Southerners couldn’t imagine life without slavery or even that most Southerners benefited in some way from slavery (which, no doubt, is true). It’s quite another thing, however, to say that most Southerners fought to preserve slavery. After all, the letters from Southerners that Paul K cites, while they proclaim no hatred of slavery, do support the idea that the reason they were fighting was to repel the North’s invasion. (BTW, the cited Northerners’ letters indicated little sympathy for the plight of Southern Blacks and that, for many, the War was no campaign for Emancipation but, rather, one for Union.) Perhaps, many Southerners were hypocritical and condemned Federal actions only when they didn’t like them. Still, when it comes to seeing the Federal Government as running amok, a military invasion is rather more dramatic evidence than an activist Supreme Court.
March 11th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Ginny,
I feel that anti-slavery feeling was not very strong pre-hostilities and certainly nowhere close to strong enough to cause the civil-war. After hostilities I estimate it was used as propoganda (not to say that some folks didn’t have legit. strong anti-slavery feelings) to create as much anti Confederacy feeling as possible. In short, if hostilities had not started; when, if ever, would a civil war have started over the institution of slavery? If the north had devloped an economy based upon it one can easily guess it never would have been an issue at all at the time. To a large extent it was a change in fashion, wasn’t it? In 1820, for example, very very few would have had anything bad to say about it.
We can’t sit here, in another world, and judge the morality of persons in that time in a very meaningful way. Finally, on a personal note, re. slavery: I’m against it.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Lex,
You and Ginny may be right about my “large statue” comment (although I didn’t say A. Lincoln was “like” Stalin and Hussien) being “over the top”. I’ll give you that one.
However, you have (borrowing your phrase) a blind spot re.”the constitution not contemplating any state withdrawing from the union”. That is a pretty gross spin on the situation.
More to the point is that the constitution does not contemplate perpetual union. You question the “supposed legality” of secession. I think I gave a pretty strong argument about why it was legal. I don’t know how to cite a stronger precedent re. American tradition and law than the the arguments at the constiutional convention. I repeat, a prepetual union was contemplated there and, if a prepetual union had been included in the document, the constitution would not have been adopted. The right to seceed, “not mentioned”, was reserved. Makes sense to me and is strongest secession legal argument - for or against - that I’ve ever seen.
Where is the case for non-secession? (Emotional appeals to democracy, the morality of freeing the slaves, and “shining examples” for the world need not apply).
Re. taking up arms. I believe that S. Carolinia asked Fort Sumter to evacuate peacefully. After they had secceded (and, of course, given that they had the right to seceed) then they had every right to ask that force to evacuate and to fight for the S. Carolinian property the fed. troops occuppied.
March 11th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
There were all kinds of arguments on both sides. The argument that the union was not meant to be perpetual is wrong. I don’t have time to look it up. But even if it wasn’t a unilateral declaration followedy by armed violence, rather than some lawful separation cannot possibly have been “contemplated.” Anyway, there were decades of these arguments before the war. They were decided once and for all on the battlefield.
I think anti-Big-Government libertarians who romanticize the Confederacy do not do their cause much of a service. We always have a few such voices around here any time anyone mentions the civil war.
March 11th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
You talkin’ to me?
YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?
Seriously though, I generally don’t believe that “big government” is very efficient, it is prone to corruption, and it is especially not adept in handling new challanges quickly ( still, I’m not sure that’s “anti-big gov’t”) , and, without doubt, I am not a Libertarian. Still, you don’t approach the argument in describing me or my supposed traits.
Have I romanticized the Confederacy? Come on, Hitler decided Poland’s fate “on the battlefield”, a fine argument that - othe