SC Ping
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Posted on 04/11/2004 5:14:37 AM PDT by aomagrat
This week’s six-day funeral of the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley will be a celebration of a thin slice of history — a brief, trailblazing underwater mission that resulted in the sinking of a Union ship.
But the pageantry surrounding the Hunley also will be a denial of other histories, a sanitizing of one of the most controversial American eras, some historians say.
Nowhere will it be mentioned that if the eight-man Hunley crew had been on the victorious side of the Civil War, 4 million black people would have continued to be slaves, the historians point out.
Nowhere will it be mentioned that, at the time of the Hunley’s mission, South Carolina’s 291,000 whites were forcing 400,000 black slaves to work without pay and with scant hope of freedom.
“The war was fought to perpetuate slavery,” said William Hine, history professor at South Carolina State University. He was one of about 75 S.C. professors who signed a public statement in 2000 saying the historical record “clearly shows” that the South’s wanting to preserve slavery was the fundamental cause of the Civil War.
“The whole Southern way of life was wrapped around slavery, and even though many white Southerners did not own slaves, it was still essential for their way of life,” Hine said. “People fought for that way of life even though they were not slave owners.”
Hunley Commission member John Courson, a Republican state senator from Columbia, said his commission really hasn’t discussed issues like secession or slavery. “The Hunley is such a unique story in itself, and it has a life of its own.”
That story involves the submariners’ courage; the new technology that enabled the Hunley to become the first submarine to sink a ship; and a tragic love story between its lost commander, Lt. George Dixon, and his intended, Queenie Bennett, Courson said. “All of that transcends anything else associated with the War Between the States.”
‘THE BRIAR PATCH’
Not dealing with the broader political and social context of history is nothing new when it comes to today’s slimmed-down modern treatments of long-ago events, some historians say.
“This happens all the time,” said historian Dan Carter of the University of South Carolina.
One of the best television documentaries ever was Ken Burns’ series on the Civil War, Carter said.
“It’s a heart-tugging film,” he said. “But you come away from that series with a very limited understanding of the broader context of the Civil War.
“By not looking at that context, you avoid having to take sides,” Carter said. “If you write about the heroism of the Southern soldiers — and my grandfather was one — nobody objects to that. But if you write about why they fought, then you are in the briar patch. Because the truth of the matter is — although the soldiers fought for many reasons — the cornerstone of the Confederacy rested upon slavery.”
Carter said if a Hunley museum is ever built — and a $40 million facility is planned — it will offer an opportunity to teach people about issues like slavery.
Museums have become an important tool for the public to learn about the past, he said. “We’ve had this explosion of interest in museums. More and more, Americans gather their ideas of history, not from dull history classes, but from historical museums.”
Hunley Commission member Randy Burbage said that when a museum is built years from now, officials hope to present the Hunley in the context of naval ships and technology in that era.
“It’s a maritime and naval story, not just involving that night,” he said. “That is one of the unique things of the War Between the States — how technology evolved from the archaic smooth-bore weapons into more modern warfare, including submarines.”
Asked whether slavery should be part of the Hunley’s context, he said, “I don’t have any comment on that right now.”
On the Hunley’s Internet site, the section about history includes no mention of slavery in a brief discussion of the Civil War.
The history section begins, “The Civil War-era was one of industrious innovation, fascination and sweeping cultural change. Not only would the country forever be changed, but warfare would be drastically transformed by the events that unfolded during this armed conflict of brother against brother.”
‘GIVE US SLAVERY OR GIVE US DEATH’
Most authoritative history books these days, such as Walter Edgar’s “South Carolina: A History,” leave little doubt slavery was a main cause of the Civil War.
In South Carolina, historians say, nearly all whites deeply believed the proper function of a black person was to be a slave.
In 1835, S.C. Gov. George McDuffie said “slavery bears the marks of divine approval” and urged execution of anyone urging freedom for slaves. McDuffie’s views were typical of Southern whites of his time. Another South Carolinian, Edward Bryan of what is now Colleton County, put it this way: “Give us slavery or give us death.”
In 1858, one of history’s most famous pro-slavery speeches was given by a South Carolinian, U.S. Sen. James Hammond.
Hammond told fellow senators that it is a law of nature that every society needs a “mud-sill” class to do “menial work, to perform the drudgery of life. This is a class requiring but a low order of intelligence and but little skill. ... ... Fortunately, for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose. ... We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves.”
Slavery was big business in South Carolina and made riches for slave owners. (More than 40 percent of white S.C. families owned slaves, according to Edgar.)
And 30 years after the Civil War ended, some S.C. whites were yearning to have their slaves back, saying without slaves, white men could not be truly free.
In 1895, at the S.C. Constitutional Convention, delegate George Tillman, a former Edgefield County slave trader and congressman, said: “We (whites) are not a free people. We have not been free since the (Civil) War. ... If we were free, instead of having Negro suffrage, we would have Negro slavery. Instead of having the United States government, we would have the Confederate States government.”
ONE SMALL ENCOUNTER
In the military context of the Civil War, the Hunley’s attack was one small encounter among thousands of skirmishes and battles over four years.
The Hunley’s exploit was Feb. 17, 1864, and did not affect the war’s outcome. Although the Hunley sank a Union ship, a federal blockade continued to cut off Charleston.
At that time, 14 months before the war’s end, there was a lull in the fighting.
The summer before, Gen. Robert E. Lee had failed at Gettysburg in his daring gambit to force the North to yield by invading the Pennsylvania countryside.
Three months after the Hunley’s attack, a huge Union Army under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant started to fight through Virginia to Richmond. The Army would claim victory at Appomattox in April 1865.
Meanwhile, as 1864 wore on, Confederate armies were losing in the west as Union Gen. William T. Sherman rampaged through the South.
In that context, the Hunley’s victory was militarily insignificant.
The most modern comprehensive history of South Carolina, by Edgar, makes only a one-sentence passing reference to the Hunley and doesn’t even include it in its giant index.
However, Edgar does mention another Civil War exploit in Charleston Harbor — the daring 1862 hijacking of a Confederate ship by slave Robert Smalls. Taking a cargo of ammunition and escaping slaves, Smalls posed as a Confederate officer and brought his boat through Confederate lines to the Union blockade.
‘THE WORLD’S FIRST SUBMARINE’
Still, the Hunley has military significance.
In his “The Civil War: A Narrative,” a widely admired trilogy, Shelby Foote devotes three detail-filled pages to the Hunley.
“She was, in short, the world’s first submarine,” Foote writes.
An intriguing historical question is whether the Hunley was built, at least in part, by slaves.
No one knows for sure. But S.C. State historian Hine is willing to speculate.
“Much of the labor in the South was done by slaves, and I would be at least more than mildly surprised if slave labor was not involved either in its direct construction or in the materials that went into the construction,” Hine said.
Leni
The Union did not outlaw slavery (for themselves) until Lincoln was in his grave and the 14th amendment was ratified.
The much vaunted Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Rebel States.
Don't like it, John? Then don't go to Charleston this week.
}:-)4
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All the Virginia Founders -- Jefferson, Washington, Lee -- were slaveholders. Tens of thousands of slaveholders supported the Patriot cause.
Contrary to Jaffa's mystic, metaphysical reading of the Declaration's equality clause, the Founders did not undertake the War of Independence with the aim of establishing universal social, economic or political equality. They wished only to free themselves and their states from British rule -- a very limited aim.
Jaffa pretends that self-government is incompatible with slavery. But both the Greeks (democracy) and Romans (republican) were slave-owning societies. And the American colonies had exercised local self-government for more than a century before the War of Independence, even while slavery flourished.
Jaffa, like others of his ilk, focus all their attention on a couple of dozen words in Jefferson's preamble, utterly ignoring the enumeration of specific grievances -- especially the indictments of the British for fostering servile insurrection and inciting the "Indian savages" -- which rather contradict the notion that the signers of the Declaration meant to usher in the universal brotherhood of man.
It seems to me that anti-Confederate conservatives like yourself (and Dr. Jaffa) are doing one of two things:
1. Intellectualizing a deeply held prejudice against the South; or
2. Seeking an historical pedigree for a "conservative" ideology that can embrace the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and '60s.
This second (and more likely) supposition points to a dividing line in the history of American conservatism. National Review, including Bill Buckley, opposed the civil rights movement from its inception; Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What neo-cons are engaged in, metaphorically speaking, is an effort to draft Martin Luther King Jr. as a "conservative" icon. This is neither accurate nor fair, either to MLK or to conservatism.
It is worth noting that many Confederate leaders, among them Robert E. Lee, welcomed the abolition of slavery as a blessing. In the same way, many Southern conservatives welcomed the abolition of Jim Crow. But just as Lee never repudiated his stand for Southern independence, Southern conservatives feel no need to repudiate George Wallace ... or Jeff Davis.
Principle ought to count for something, and if the principles of conservatism include limited federal government and opposition to radical egalitarianism, then both Lee and Wallace ought to be counted as partisans of the conservative cause. Otherwise, one is required to construct some sort of "conservative" pedigree for Wendell Phillips and Stokely Carmichael.
My belief is that it is easier to admit the inconvenient fact than to attempt, dishonestly, to square the circle. Conservatives have, in the past, given their support to causes which are today viewed as immoral or unjust. So be it. But let us not pervert the meaning of conservatism in a public-relations campaign to convince liberals that conservatism and liberalism are the same thing.
When I do get to visit the museum it will surprise me no end if I don't find blacks among the tour guides, curators or managers. What will not surprise me will be finding they treat their subject with respect and reverence (and matter of fact) that such events are due.
I will suspect they are descendents of ex slaves, freemen or freedmen that fought for the Confederacy.
People that can't look at that watershed in American history without denigrating the Confederacy (Let's see: South = Slavery = Evil) have never earned any rights to anything important in this world. They aren't smart enough to learn anything by experience. Some people put on a resume that they have 10 years of experience. What they really have is the same year only 10 times over.
The Confederacy produced some people as honorable as any that ever lived in the United States. The last crew of the Hunley should be marked as among them. For the life of me, I can't imagine volunteering for such a mission especially knowing the fate of previous crews on that very same boat.
I was born and raised in Minnesota.
I'm sure Heinz could provide the funds and Jessie Jackson has a kid somewhere who'd make a fine curator.
Do you not see the danger of Lincoln's claim? Where does this "constant labor" end? Drivers licenses for illegal immigrants? Gay marriage? The right of the "homeless" to trespass on private property? Where is there any inequality that cannot be attacked using this Lincolnian construction?
This Lincoln quote could be cited just as favorably by the ACLU or the National Lawyers Guild.
You've read Jaffa; you ought to read his nemesis, M.E. Bradford, who tried to expose the danger of the "teleocratic" conception of the Founding -- the idea (shared by Lincoln, Jaffa and, apparently, yourself) that the Founders, rather than seeking to establish a stable legal and political order (a "nomocratic" order, Bradford calls it), were setting afoot a chimerical quest for perfect equality.
One is faced with a stark choice: Bradford's "nomocratic" order, with a definite legal order within which the citizen may make his choices, certain that the same order will persist in the future, so that he or his descendants are not harmed by some unanticipated political intervention; or the Lincoln/Jaffa "teleocratic" order, where the sudden passions of the electorate (or the whims of "enlightened" jurists) constantly threaten to wreak havoc on the social order and its "little platoons."
The Lawrence v. Texas decision is one which suits Jaffa and Lincoln's idea of a continual pursuit of equality. Bradford would say not merely that Lawrence was wrongly decided, but rather that the Court never had any business hearing the case, since the Founders clearly never intended the federal government (in any of its three branches) to have the power to nullify such state laws as concerned only the ordinary police powers.
The constitutional crisis now upon us cannot be laid at the feet of a Confederate view of the Constitution, sir. You Yankees, however, have much to answer for.
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