Posted on 04/14/2004 9:56:42 AM PDT by Rebeleye
Nowhere will it be mentioned that if the eight-man Hunley crew had been on the victorious...4 million black people would have continued to be slaves.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestate.com ...
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.
Has nothing to do with this post, I was just wondering if I am the only one ignorant of this battle?<p.
I'd call it simplistic and disingenuous, but agree with you, nonetheless.
Hey, it was a dang good thing for the North, also - after all, if the South had won, where would we ship all the geezers each winter?
As for the rest: Northern slave owners (and immigrants who got the really dangerous jobs because they were less valuable than slaves)fight to free southern slaves. YAAAAWN!
Or is this just more 'Massah's great-great-great-great-great grandson owes ME!'
OK, enough denigration of American History. Lets get it over with. Pay 'reparations' in the form of a one-way ticket to Africa, any country, no deposit, no return, revoke citizenship and bye bye. Enough of this sh!t. In or out, love it or leave it, go elsewhere or shut up and get on with the program. It has been 141 years, for Pete's sake.
I really despise the distortion of a critical era in American History for what boils down to monetary gain.
Why? Because if you can't study history (just revised crap) you will never be able to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Sheesh! I suppose the Angles, Jutes, Druids, and Saxons will be next with their hands out over my Norman ancestors' involvement in that little bit back in AD 1066.
What a specious lot of bovine excrement. If that were true, all of Africa would be enslaved:
In the account which I have thus given of the natives, the reader must bear in mind that my observations apply chiefly to persons of FREE CONDITION, who constitute, I suppose, not more than one-fourth part of the inhabitants at large. The other three-fourths are in a state of hopeless and hereditary slavery, and are employed in cultivating the land, in the care of cattle, and in servile offices of all kinds, much in the same manner as the slaves in the West Indies. I was told, however, that the Mandingo master can neither deprive his slave of life, nor sell him to a stranger, without first calling a palaver on his conduct, or in other words, bringing him to a public trial. But this degree of protection is extended only to the native or domestic slave. Captives taken in war, and those unfortunate victims who are condemned to slavery for crimes or insolvency--and, in short, all those unhappy people who are brought down from the interior countries for sale--have no security whatever, but may be treated and disposed of in all respects as the owner thinks proper.
Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, Vol. 1 (from Project Gutenberg )
But then, few realize the State song was written by an expatriate Marylander in Louisiana during the war.
Historically, you have hit the nail precisely on the head.
Maryland did not vote for Lincoln, in fact the handful of people who did vote for him in Charles County were asked (forcefully) to leave.
Had Virginia been more timely in secession, chances are very good that Maryland would have followed suit, but the legislature was placed under house arrest (Habeas Corpus suspended) and interned in Ft. McHenry, forbidden to vote on a bill of secession.
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