Confederates in the attic

The tut-tutting that in some cases verges on hysteria about the Virginia governor proclaiming Confederate History Month is misplaced on many levels. For one thing, it only reinforces the bunker mentality of many Southern whites — who do not by any means all live in the South — that their customs, culture and history are under attack. Thus, it drives them even more into the propaganda ministry of the white-right on Fox "News" and talk radio. I'm also uncomfortable with the implied censorship of those who would ban discussion of the Confederacy except as an indictment of slavery. And it's an invitation to yet more conformity in a big-box, chain-stored America that was once much more diverse in its cultures.

President Obama is right in saying that one can't understand the Civil War without understanding slavery. One can't understand even today's America without understanding the Civil War, a lifetime quest. And, I am sorry to tell my liberal and progressive friends, that one can't understand all these things, as well as many of the questions facing the union today, without a deep study of the Confederacy. Note "deep study." Not a white-right call to ignorant "heritage."

Slavery was a great evil, one that was only partially atoned for at places such as Antietam, Chickamuga and Gettysburg. It was not merely the creation of the South, but the nation as a whole. More and more histories of slavery are available, showing it in all its brutality but also the courage of the people and richness of the cultures they developed. Historians have also made great progress in plumbing Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the era of lynchings — all essential knowledge of our quest to make a more perfect union. As for Confederate history, bring it on.

We can thrill in the exploits of Stonewall Jackson beginning with his appearance in First Bull Run ("There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here and we will conquer!"). Robert E. Lee is endlessly fascinating, turning down command of the union forces because "his country," Virginia, had seceded, and then leading masterful campaigns against vastly greater forces backed by the industrial might of the North. Fascination with the Confederacy involves no small amount of rooting for the underdog. But one must drink the bitter along with the sweet. The Confederate Army had as many incompetent generals as the union. Jefferson Davis suffered all of Lincoln's troubles and was blessed with few of his qualities. The CSA government was riddled with infighting and ineptitude. Some states, such as North Carolina, were ambivalent in their support of the Lost Cause, as were regions within states. Guerrillas operating under the Confederate banner carried out atrocities in Missouri. And the hotheads in South Carolina not only fired the first shots, ensuring war and the eventual failure of secession, but also explicitly declaring that separation and war to be about...preservation of slavery.

In fact, the war and its roots were about more than slavery. The ruling white classes of the North and South not only had different cultures, but different vital interests. The Constitution had been a near-run thing, and not only about slavery, which most of the framers hoped would eventually wither away. The Nullification crisis during Andrew Jackson's presidency was primarily about conflicting economic interests. The manufacturing intensive North wanted a high tariff; the South, primarily agrarian, felt besieged by protectionism and forced to pay extravagant prices instead of enjoying free trade with Britain. The differing economic paths only intensified as the nation moved into the 1840s and 1850s, and lacked presidents as feared by South Carolina as was Old Hickory. Sectionalism and extremism found voice, particularly in the South (sound familiar?). The fabric of union was particularly torn by the South's desire to extend slavery ("property rights") into new territories.

And yet, pre-Civil War America was very different from the nation that emerged from the refiner's fire. Secession was an open constitutional question; the states had, after all, voluntarily joined the union, could they not vote to leave it? State power ("state's rights" is such a misleading term) was greater then, and many questions about the power of the central government were unresolved. President James Buchanan, for example, argued that he didn't have the authority to stop the quarreling sisters from departing. Lincoln stood for union, and said he would continue slavery or eliminate it, either one, if it would preserve the union. And he would raise federal troops to do so. But this was an assertion of presidential power without basis in the Constitution.

Lincoln understood that secession, once started, couldn't be stopped. Parts of New England flirted with leaving the union, while Confederate sympathies were strong (and remain so) in southern Ohio and Indiana. Jefferson Davis quickly encountered the contradiction himself, realizing that the South would be defeated without a strong central government (the Confederate Constitution was nearly identical to that of the U.S.). Yet he spent the entire war contending with governors jealous of their prerogatives, states that were suspicious of a new union, and the feuds between leaders who genuinely thought they were fighting a second American revolution and those who were merely protecting the whipping post, all of which in no small part doomed the CSA. So, too, did the differing agendas of the poor inland farmers and the Tidewater gentry.

I read the synopsis of a counterfactual novel years ago (I forget the title) that took place in contemporary times, except the South had won the war and now was in a nuclear standoff with the North. Another counterfactual had the South expanding to Cuba and even Mexico. I'm skeptical. The contradictions inherent in the Confederacy would have caused it to fall apart. The reliance on agriculture would have kept it backward in the industrial revolution. It still would have had to resolve slavery, which was a huge economic drag if one even grants the "right" of one man to hold another in bondage. The North would have been weaker, and perhaps would not have been able to intervene against Hitler, with consequences hellish to imagine. Had the South stayed together, it might have become a petro-superstate thanks to Texas — but only if it had developed the industrial mindset of the North that it loathed. And the South would not have benefited from the huge migration of Yankees and Yankee investment in the last half of the 20th century. Nor, with state power pre-eminent, would its poor regions been saved from Depression by such New Deal efforts as the TVA.

Sad to say, in the Civil War most contemporary white Americans were not fighting against or for slavery, and it's important to understanding history that we see the world as they did, not as we do in 2010. (I had forebears in both armies). Emancipation became more of a theme late in the war, but the union's stomach to occupy the South forever to ensure the rights of the freed men and woman was weak. After 1876, the evil of Jim Crow began its hideous run.

Even I have said the nation is more divided now than at any time since the eve of the Civil War. What that ultimately means is the subject of another post. But the failure of the Confederacy and its underlying assumptions offers some lessons. Study away.

Comments

[Joanna]

Information and Education, such a breath of fresh air. Thank you!

[Emil Pulsifer]

I have to disagree with your basic premise that critics of the governors of Virginia and Mississippi are overwrought.

There is a big difference between recognizing the historical importance of the Confederacy (an entity which existed for only four years), studying it, and discussing it from a historical standpoint, and on the other hand, celebrating it (which is what the imprimatur of official government declaration of "Confederate History Month" implies).

The government traditionally recognizes minority groups in "history months" to confer dignity and approval by means of official declaration.

Furthermore, one could scarcely say that slavery is NOT a central aspect of the Confederacy, so the failure of either governor to mention the topic in their declarations is further evidence that they were made with a wink to nostalgic Whites.

I agree that slavery was not the proximate cause of the war, whereas political economy was; but the distinction is subtle because the South's economy was based on slavery (an agricultural economy built around plantations manned by slaves); also that slavery had been made as much a part of the culture of the south as mint juleps.

Seven states seceded before Lincoln had even taken office -- before the inauguration but after his election. So, clearly secession was a response to Lincoln's election, not to his policies as President, and not to already existing federal policy on issues involving agriculturalism vs industrialism, tariffs, or states' rights.

Again, slavery was the central issue and difference between Lincoln and his opponent candidate, Douglas.

Douglas, in his Freeport Doctrine, argued that local settlers could decide whether to accept slavery or not, and could overrule the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott.

Lincoln's position was well known: in his Peoria Speech, remarking on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he noted that the Act was characterized by a "declared indifference" but a "covert zeal" for slavery, which he said he hated, not only for the "monstrous injustice of slavery itself" but also because it "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest".

In his famous "house divided" speech (accepting the Republican nomination for Senate in 1858) he stated: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

So, Lincoln's position was clear; and though he found preserving the union more compelling as a national interest than emancipation, and would no doubt have countenanced slavery's continuation in the South had the seceded states agreed to come back into the fold, it was his hostility to slavery as an institution that the Confederate leaders found threatening and intolerable from the leader of the nation and commander-in-chief.

I suspect, then, that whereas most northerners did not fight as abolitionists, most southerners fought (among other reasons) to maintain the economic and social institution of slavery.

[Emil Pulsifer]

P.S. Mr. Talton wrote:

"For one thing, it only reinforces the bunker mentality of many Southern whites — who do not by any means all live in the South — that their customs, culture and history are under attack. Thus, it drives them even more into the propaganda ministry of the white-right on Fox "News" and talk radio."

To this I say, tough titty: spank 'em, don't coddle 'em. The reactionaries already have a bunker mentality: that's why they respond to something as simple as the election of a center-left Black by stocking up on ammunition and discussing whether or not he's "The Antichrist".

They're already so far out of touch with reality that it verges on national psychosis. And the traditional of gentle, liberal intellectualism has done nothing to change that.

[eclecticdog]

The Civil War has long been an area of intense interest and study for me. That said, the most repulsive thing about the VA governor and the South as a whole, is the historical abomination of a REPUBLICAN, from the party that saved America in the 1860s, is now THE party of white Southerners. You'd think this irony would come up more often in our current discussions. Just one more reason I'm not a Republican any more (and we've been a Republican family ever since the Civil War).

[eclecticdog]

PS -- got a kick out of the title. The book is a good 'n nice quick read full of humor, history and insight.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Here's a bit of the concrete reality of slavery, and why Blacks hate Old Dixie the way that Jews hate the swastika:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cicatrices_de_flagellation_sur_un_esclave.jpg

They just don't show that on The Dukes of Hazard.

[soleri]

I sometimes wonder what amalgamation of nostalgia and fantasy is maintaining the Confederacy as a heritage issue. It's a pleasant literary diversion and an interesting historical discussion. But as a pretext to divide this nation, it's not merely toxic, it's nearly insane.

I'm not even sure if this is a matter of Southerners needing to feel validated in their cultural niche. My suspicion is that its a bit more complicated. We've experienced four decades now of Republican dog whistles and resentment peddling. It's worked marvelously in retarding this country's sense of social and economic justice. It has made the rich much richer. And it's provided a useful screen to let people blame minorities for everything that seemingly ails us as a nation.

I'm going to agree with Emil here. This is psychosis. It's not even remotely relevant to what ought to concern us going forward. The Confederacy was outright sedition and is now being fluffed by Republicans who usually play the treason card with national security issues. Granted, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can be irritating. Still, that's a poor excuse to hold this nation's future hostage to whiners, losers, and racists. It's been 150 years. Time to move on.

[azrebel]

An observation, if I may. I have many lifelong friends across the south as a result of doing business there over the years. Over many a dinner I sat and listened to stories of family land, property and belongings lost to the carpetbaggers after the war. These memories are not political in nature. They are painful family history memories and they last a long, long time. I'm a lifelong southwesterner. The people of the south are good people.

[Jim Hamblin]

Perhaps the bottom line on this discussion is the fact that our country is still riddled with the malignancies of long-held prejudice . . racial and political . . religious and sexual . . you name it. With a black man in the White House, we'd like to think we've come further. We'd like to blame much of it on older folks. And on and on . . maybe a good subject for further examination.

[Buford]

So you think slavery wasn't at the heart of the Confederacy?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/so_you_think_slavery_wasnt_at.php#comments

[Emil Pulsifer]

Soleri wrote:

"The Confederacy was outright sedition and is now being fluffed by Republicans who usually play the treason card with national security issues. Granted, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can be irritating. Still, that's a poor excuse to hold this nation's future hostage to whiners, losers, and racists. It's been 150 years. Time to move on."

Bravo!

[English Major]

I wonder if your "counterfactual novel" may have been "If The South Had Won the Civil War" by McKinlay Kantor. I believe it started life as an article in Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s. When readers responded enthusiastically, Kantor developed it into a novel.

Or perhaps it was the classic, "A Canticle for Leibowitz"?

Lots of counterfactualists out there, the rascals!

[truewayon]

We live day to day, in anticipation of the Apocalypse, in a world with no future.
But there is another way - http://trueroad.ru